Asylum: Refugees and Mental Health

Asylum: Refugees and Mental Health aims to give voice to refugees' experiences of mental ill-health and make visible the emotional impacts of displacement, through a case-study of Belgian refugees who were admitted to British asylums during the First World War. Using newly-available institutional case notes, material culture and asylum photography, this project aims to uncover the affective histories of refugees and to challenge the power dynamics of labelling and categorisation.

The project’s investigators will pursue this research agenda together with partner organisations which themselves have direct links to the history of migration and mental health, and work with contemporary refugee service-users. This includes the London Metropolitan Archives, Alexandra Palace, the Mental Health Museum, and of course In Flanders Fields Museum in Belgium.

Our collaboration will focus on the extension and refashioning of the Tracing the Belgian Refugees-database to centre the institutional records and emotional histories of Belgian refugees in British institutions. This will form an integral part of the forthcoming exhibition, 'Displaced: the Belgian refugees of the First World War' which opens on 2 October of 2025.

The research project

The project is led by the University of Huddersfield in collaboration with the University of Utrecht and supported by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.