From October 2025 to December 2025, working with two Al-Azhar University graduates from Gaza, URBC conducted a survey to understand the effects of financial barriers that contribute to educational exclusion on university students in Gaza, before and after 7 October 2023. This exclusion is a symptom of ongoing genocide that is either preventing university students in Gaza from matriculating in their degree programmes or from graduating because of outstanding tuition fees owed.
Gaza’s higher education system relies heavily on students’ tuition fees to pay lecturers and to help rebuild its infrastructure, which has been damaged by scholasticide. Our roundtable will discuss findings from our survey conducted inside Gaza and an urge for academics, students, and activists to redirect their attention to supporting the stabilisation of Gaza’s higher education system and society by ensuring that these outstanding tuition fees are paid.
As migrant students and academics who face educational barriers and border violence because of the Hostile Environment Policy, we conducted this work with our Gaza colleagues to underscore the importance of connecting shared experiences and working to ensure the liberation of Palestine.
Sanaz Raji from URBC will chair a roundtable talk that will be joined by three students in Gaza: Heba Shaaban Sulaima Qudaih (Nurse Graduate), Mohammed Abuiwaili (Graduate from Al-Azhar University), Shaymaa Abu Azzoum (3rd Year Medical Student, Al-Azhar University ), along with Shaker Albuhaisi (University College Dublin).
Student and unwaged tickets for day attendance at the BRISMES conference can be found here. If you are having problems with the BRISMES day rate, send URBC an email, and we will help facilitate your attendance at our roundtable.