Past event
Annual Sanctuary Lecture: Jen Stout In conversation with Professor David Herd - Free
This year, the University of St Andrews is celebrating five years as a University of Sanctuary, a testament to our commitment to making higher education accessible for those seeking sanctuary and to helping to foster a culture of welcome.
Our Annual Sanctuary Lecture is an opportunity to hear from experts about themes and issues connected to sanctuary. After opening remarks from the Deputy Principal and Vice-Principal (International Strategy and External Relations), Professor Brad MacKay, this year's Sanctuary Lecture will be given by author and award-winning journalist Jen Stout, in conversation with David Herd, Professor in the School of English and Berry Chair of Literature and Human Rights.
The lecture will open with Jen's account of the journeys that make up Night Train to Odesa, which takes the reader from Siberia to the Danube border crossings to Ukraine's frontlines, documenting the impact of Russian aggression. As it unfolds, the discussion will reflect on the causes of contemporary displacement, the need for renewed commitments to human rights, and the importance of story in creating spaces of welcome.
Jen Stout is an award-winning journalist, author and radio producer from Scotland. She has covered the war in Ukraine since the full-scale invasion in 2022 for outlets such as BBC radio, the London Review of Books, Prospect and the Sunday Post. Previously she had jobs in TV and radio with the BBC and was a local newspaper reporter. Her work in Ukraine was shortlisted for prizes by Amnesty International, the Foreign Press Association and the Scottish Press Awards. In 2023 she won a Travelling Scholarship from the Society of Authors. Jen's debut book Night Train to Odesa: Covering the Human Cost of Russia's War was published in 2024. It won First Book at the Saltire Society awards and was BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week.
Professor David Herd is a poet, critic and co-organiser of the project Refugee Tales. His work is at the intersection of literature and human rights. His critical history, Writing Against Expulsion in the Post-War World: Making Space for the Human, was shortlisted for the MSA (Modernist Studies Association) Book Prize 2024 and is out in paperback in June 2025. His most recent collection of poetry, Walk Song (2022), was a Book of the Year in the Australian Book Review. In collaboration with Anna Pincus and colleagues at Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group, he has co-organised Refugee Tales since 2014, articulating the call for a future without detention.
If you would like to attend, please register for the event.