In honour of Refugee Week, The Academy for Gender Equality and Social Justice Research in Organisations welcomed Prof. Haya Al-Dajani, to present her pioneering and decades long work on women refugees’ entrepreneurship.

Her presentation "Refugee Entrepreneurship Research: Emergence and Future Outlooks" examines the emergence and future directions of refugee entrepreneurship research, offering a critical analysis of dominant narratives surrounding resilience and empowerment. Drawing on feminist critiques and global policy trends, it highlighted how current discourse often romanticizes refugees’ endurance, while overlooking the structural barriers they face.

Prof Al-Dajani states “When it comes to supporting refugees we must shift from symbolic to substantive empowerment, and emphasize collective action, access to resources, and meaningful policy inclusion”. Ultimately, her research questioned and discussed the extent to which refugee entrepreneurship can offer transformative change, rather than remain a series of isolated, individual acts of resilience.

Haya Al-Dajani is Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Mohammed Bin Salman College of Business and Entrepreneurship (MBSC) in Saudi Arabia. Her award-winning research has secured over two million GBPs in international funding, and explores the intersection of gender, empowerment and entrepreneurship, particularly, women’s entrepreneurship in the constrained contexts of the Arab world. She is Associate Editor of Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research, and Gender Work and Organization, and is a member of the Advisory Boards of DIRI andInternational Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship.