Gemma Bird

Trump’s Davos speech is just one racist, colonial, misogynistic stereotype after another! Rambling and offensive throughout!

Rights groups hail acquittal after seven years of aid workers prosecuted during Greece refugee crisis Lesbos court clears aid workers of people smuggling, a move Human Rights Watch called a vindication of their lifesaving activities at sea

There ought to be consequences for the abusive use of meritless prosecutions to harass activists.

Wrote a piece with @davideschmid.bsky.social on the “new” Guest Worker schemes in Europe and how they borrow from practices of the past!

Heading to the The University of Leeds for the day as the lovely people of the political theory seminar series kindly invited me to speak. Looking forward to testing out some of the ideas from the book I have been working on for the last eight years and that I am now in the final stages of editing!

See below EOI for AHRC-funded PhDs at UoL. Keen to supervise a project on critical approaches to migration.

Really excited to be spending the day in the @liverpooluni.bsky.social VG&M with the exhibition “A Place Along the Way: Stories from the Island of Samos” as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science where we are also collecting your recipes as a response to the wonderful work of Project Armonia.

Really excited to be involved in a pop up exhibition Migration, Refuge & Solidarity‘ on 7th & 8th Nov at @victoriagallery.bsky.social. I will be sharing audio-visual exhibition ‘A Place Along the Way: Stories from the Island of Samos’ as a part of it. vgm.liverpool.ac.uk/whats-on/exh...

Congratulations to Dr Sarah Elmammeri, our former PhD candidate and the winner of the Manchester Jean Monnet Centre of ExcellenceDoctoral Thesis Prize.Her lecture titled ‘Between Layers of Borders: Reflecting on EU Policies and Asylum Seekers’ reflects the very best of our PhD student scholarship.

1️⃣ Reporting on migration & accountability can often feel futile

Not today

The ECHR ruled Greece violated the right to life in the 2018 Agathonisi shipwreck: 16 dead, incl. 7 children & 2 babies

@rsaegean.org fought for the families; We had investigated w/ former @spiegel.de colleagues

Decision ⬇️

Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead Every name on a list compiled by health authorities in Gaza of the child victims of Israel’s offensive

no words

Thank you to the SI editors @nawalabu72.bsky.social, Anna Agathangelou and Christian Kaunert for including us in this important collection.

Pleased to share our new article in which we critically engage with the role that the “categories of migration” play in determining who does and does not “belong” in Europe and how they are changing.

“Cinema is a friend for life”. Never a truer word spoken from @markcousinsfilm.bsky.social at the @cinemaforall.bsky.social #100YearsGala

If you would like to support the work of Project Armonia and cook some of these brilliant recipes the cook book is available here- projectarmonia.org/en/support-o...

Loved attending the opening of Lightbulb Moments at the The University of Liverpool yesterday and sharing an object in it. It’s a privilege to work with the amazing Project Armonia and to be able to bring their cook book sharing the power of food and stories to a whole new audience is very special.

“#Gaza is being obliterated, reduced to a wasteland.

Gaza is being emptied from its starving population forced to move into the so called “humanitarian” area of Mawasi.”

Full statement by UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini: www.unrwa.org/newsroom/off...

Some great summer reads!

‘It kept me going’: halt to refugee reunion scheme in UK shatters hopes Afghan man seeking asylum and permission to bring wife to Britain describes shock at home secretary’s announcement

“I had to break the news to my wife. She hasn’t been able to stop crying since she heard the news. What is the value of this life if you have to be separated from the people you love? Both of us are completely shattered by this."

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Now they're coming after families If today’s announcement felt like another crossing of the Rubicon, that's because it is.

They tried students and they tried care workers, but that wasn't enough. Now they're coming for families.

My impassioned thoughts on today's sickening family reunion announcement.

open.substack.com/pub/notanoth...

UK to make it harder for refugees to bring family members to country Home secretary to announce overhaul of family reunion policy in attempt to quell fractious immigration debate

This is appalling! People flea unimaginable horrors, claim asylum and will then face another awful challenge of fighting to be back with their family. This is just an added layer of cruelty in a broken system that no longer truly gives the refuge it should! www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

“All of those who have influence must use it with determination and a sense of moral duty. Every hour counts," says UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.

The amount of aid entering the #Gaza Strip is insufficient to meet the scale of humanitarian need. This can be reversed.

Let aid in.

Israel bombed Gaza hospital a second time, killing rescuers, say health officials At least 20 people, including five journalists, died as they rushed to help those wounded in the first strike

Condemnation and words are not enough. Political figures worldwide need to do so much more in the face of these constant atrocities! www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

‘Too hungry to think, too weak to sit upright. Concentration slips away’: the struggle to stay focused as an academic in Gaza It is hard to keep the mind sharp when the body is thin and dehydrated, but solidarity is teaching starving students their thoughts still matter

“In Gaza, to be an academic today is to refuse to be reduced to a statistic.” www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

The British media keeps calling the situation in Gaza a hunger crisis, but this underplays the reality. What we are witnessing is a starvation crisis, this is an active choice not to deliver aid, not a passive outcome with an unknown cause!

Palestine: As mass starvation spreads across Gaza, our colleagues and communities we work with are wasting away | Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF ... Over 100 humanitarian groups, including MSF, urge governments to act as starvation spreads in Gaza.

Doctors Without Borders joins more than 100 organizations to sounding the alarm that lifesaving aid must enter #Gaza.

www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/palestine-as...

Gaza: More than 30 people killed 'as Israeli troops open fire towards Palestinians waiting for aid' More than 30 people have been killed after Israeli troops opened fire towards crowds of Palestinians waiting for aid, according to witnesses and hospital officials.

Gaza: More than 30 people killed 'as Israeli troops open fire towards Palestinians waiting for aid'

Israeli airstrike kills at least 10, including six children, at Gaza water station, say health officials Nine killed in separate bombing of a home on Sunday and 31 others shot dead near aid distribution site on Saturday

What more will it take for the world’s leaders to respond than the killing of children waiting for water! www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Suspension of processing of #asylum applications just announced by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is illegal! #Greece

The Greek government announced today that emergency legislation will be tabled in Parliament tomorrow, Thursday, 10 July, for the suspension of asylum processing of (1/6)

10 years after the so-called long summer of migration, the deadliness of the European border regime is back in full swing.

@alraven.bsky.social from our Research and Investigations team tries to put a figure on the extent of the suffering this regime has brought.

borderviolence.eu/blog/tallyin...