Dr Esa Aldegheri is a multilingual academic, author and activist. Her ESRC-funded PhD analysed the influence of narrative exchange on the intercultural encounter between forced migrants and receiving communities in Edinburgh (Scotland) and Torino (Italy). She works as a research associate with the UNESCO Chair for refugee integration through language and the arts (RILA)  in the School of Education. In this role she works in partnership with the Scottish Government, COSLA and the Scottish Refugee Council to evaluate and develop the New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy. She is currently developing interdisciplinary research projects investigating how processes of refugee integration relate to differently narrated and bordered experiences of journey - linking academic research with her work as a creative writer and faciitator. 

Esa is the author of Free To Go (John Murray 2022), a travel book exploring the limits of freedom and non-freedom, motorbike journeys, motherhood and more. She is editing a forthcoming anthology of women's travel writing, There She Goes, due to be published by Saraband in 2025. She also co-ordinates and facilitates community arts-base integration projects. One such project (Making it Home, delivered in collaboration with Maryhill Integration Network) was commended by the Scottish Parliament and recently included in the National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive. 

Prior to being a researcher, Esa worked in the third sector for organisations supporting forced migrants in Italy, Lebanon and Scotland. Her roles includes community education, support and advocacy for detainees, language teaching, fundraising, project management and interpreting between English, Italian, Arabic, French and Spanish. 

She is currently Chair of Edinburgh City of Sanctuary.

Esa is especially interested in how processes of refugee integration relate to differently narrated and bordered experiences of journey. She is developing interdisciplinary research projects which link academic research with her work as a creative writer and faciitator of arts-based integration projects. 

Selected publications

Ashworth, S., Mackie, M. and Nixon, W.J. (2004) The DAEDALUS project, developing institutional repositories at Glasgow University:the story so far. Library Review, 53(5), pp. 259-264. (doi: 10.1108/00242530410538391)

Ashworth, S. (2003) The DAEDALUS Project. Serials, 16(3), pp. 249-253.

All publications

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ESRC scholarship (PhD)

Currently active as a Thesis Mentor. 

Esa is also an author of non-fiction. Her debut Free to Go (John Murray Press, 2022) explores aspects of free movement and its opposite by contrasting a motorbike journey to New Zealand and experiences of lockdown and border restrictions.

She is Chair of Edinburgh City of Sanctuary, part of a UK-wide network striving to create places of safety and welcome for people seeking sanctuary.