Dr Bashàïr Ahmed, Shabaka, and Professor Paul Statham, Editor in Chief, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
In Sudan, Emergency Response Rooms coordinated the distribution of food and medicine supplies in neighbourhoods to places where international agencies could not access — and built governance structures that outlasted the emergencies that created them. In Yemen, community committees and local solidarity networks sustained civilian life through years of siege and aerial bombardment, filling critical gaps left by the collapse of formal institutions. In Somalia, community-led organisations sustained health and education services through cycles of drought and displacement that formal aid and development systems repeatedly failed to address.
In every case, communities were not just responding; they were acting, and by acting they were learning and generating knowledge. This important contribution is seldom acknowledged. Developing approaches that Indeed the wider crisis and development world has been slow to recognise — and slower still to resource – the emergent approaches generated in situ by communities.
This crucial knowledge and know-how hardly ever makes it into academic discussions, in scholarly journals, or into policy briefs. Rarely are people from communities who have developed these understandings on the job invited into the rooms and corridors of power where critical decisions about them and that concern their livelihoods deeply — often with consequences lasting decades — are made. That is the gap we want to address through the Nafeer Community Knowledge Lab.
A partnership with purpose
Shabaka and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with a commitment to advance academic scholarship, debates and knowledge on diaspora humanitarian action, community-led crisis response, and mutual aid networks — that centre on scholars and scholarship from the Global South.
https://www.sussex.ac.uk/about/facts/rankings/development-studiesJEMS is an intentionally a broad church, publishing across all forms of migration, ethnic relations, and diversity from a wide range of disciplines and regions. Over the last decade, JEMS has become one of the largest and highest-ranking scholarly journals in the social sciences. With support of the publisher Taylor and Francis, the journal pursues a globalisation strategy that aims to make academic debates and scholarship on migration and related issues truly global. JEMS has mobilised specific initiatives to better include scholars from, and scholarship on, lesser included and studied regions. So far, this includes initiatives targeting SE Asia, China and Latin America. JEMS is hosted by the Sussex Centre for Migration Research (SCMR), a Centre of Excellence at the University of Sussex, ranked first in the world for Migration Studies in the 2025 ScholarGPS rankings. The SCMR migration centre is affiliated to the School of Global Studies and the Sussex School for Progressive Futures, while the University of Sussex has been ranked 1st in the world for Development Studies for ten successive years (World University Rankings). All this makes JEMS and the SCMR a natural institutional home for the type of engagement and scholarship we envisage.
Shabaka is a practice-oriented research and advisory organisation founded in 2014 in response to a humanitarian ecosystem that systematically excludes crisis-affected communities. Over more than a decade, Shabaka has built deep relationships with diaspora networks, mutual aid groups, and community-led organisations across East and North Africa and West Asia, producing evidence and shaping policy at the intersection of localisation, humanitarian and development action, and decolonial practice.
Its work is both conceptual and applied. Shabaka incubated the Crisis Coordination Unit Sudan — which documented hundreds of mutual aid and diaspora initiatives during the current conflict, and is now an independent organisation. It has established the Diaspora Humanitarian Engagement Group, a peer-learning space for UK-based diaspora organisations coordinating crisis responses. Shabaka has also seen the formation of a medics initiative, the Academy of Medical Education During Conflicts, emerging and evolving into an independent organisation which trains healthcare professionals in conflict settings using simulation-based methodologies. Shabaka has developed the Switchboard app, a platform connecting communities with services and with one another. Each initiative was designed to transition to independent community leadership, reflecting Shabaka’s foundational commitment to strengthening capacity, then stepping back.
That commitment to facilitating rather than controlling makes the Nafeer Lab a natural extension of Shabaka’s practice. The partnership between Shabaka and JEMS rests on a shared commitment to building the conditions in which scholars from under-represented regions contribute to — rather than merely feature as subjects of — global conversations about the crises that affect them.
This is not a symbolic handshake. It is a practical commitment to shifting who gets to produce, publish, and shape knowledge about communities navigating crisis.
What we’re building together — starting with the Red Sea corridor
In its first year, the Lab will focus on Sudan and the broader Red Sea corridor—from Northeast Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. This is where the need is most acute, where Shabaka’s networks run deepest, and where some of the most significant and under-documented community-led responses of the past decade have taken place.
We call our early collaboration within the Nafeer Community Lab, the Red Sea Researchers Network. Through the Red Sea Researchers Network initiative, we aim to bring visibility, legitimacy and resonance to knowledge and understandings this region. To achieve this goal we will mobilise joint events bringing scholars and community activists together, initiate special issues as an opportunity structure for scholars from the region, and provide support in research and publication.
Researchers from across the Red Sea corridor will have structured opportunities to support their pathway to publication in JEMS. Early-career scholars will receive academic mentorship to navigate publication pathways. Joint events — panels, convenings, and international forums — will bring researchers, practitioners, and policymakers into the same room. And hands-on capacity support, from academic writing guidance to dissemination of published work, will be available to scholars working in and on crisis-affected contexts.
JEMS retains full editorial independence throughout. Rigour is non-negotiable. What we’re changing is access, not standards.
Why this matters — and what it won’t fix
Communities on the frontlines of crisis — whether conflict, climate, economic collapse, or displacement — are uniquely positioned to be producers of knowledge. Community-led responses are often the most agile, trusted, and effective. Yet, research documenting them rarely reaches the journals and policy spaces that shape how future responses are designed and funded.
Part of the problem is structural. Researchers working in or near active conflict zones often lack adequate institutional support for writing-time, editing, and translation that can lead to publication. Global South scholars are usually under-represented and less present in mainstream academic debates, not due to abilities, but because existing structures privilege authors from elsewhere.
This partnership is one small baby step towards changing that infrastructure. While we recognise that the challenges facing communities in crisis are enormous, and our collaboration will not resolve them. But if we can help ensure that the knowledge communities are already generating reach the people and institutions with the power to act on it, we believe that this initiative is worth doing.
A lab that aims to grow
The Nafeer Community Knowledge Lab takes its name from a Sudanese concept of collective action — a call to come together, to show up, to contribute what you have. Sudan is the starting point, but the Lab’s ambitions extend well beyond it. Through new partnerships and collaborations, the aim is to expand across regions and communities over time, so that more voices — from more places — can shape the knowledge that influences crisis and development responses, globally.
As it grows, the aspiration is for the Lab to relocate — to Sudan, or another relevant Global South location — when conditions allow. We believe that infrastructure for producing knowledge should sit closest to the communities it serves. That is our direction of travel.
What comes next
Over the coming year, the Red Sea Researchers Network will launch through a founding membership and first convened meeting, while discussions on a first Special Issue proposal focussing on the region will begin.
This is the start of something. It will be shaped — as it should be — by the communities whose knowledge it is designed to serve.
The Nafeer Community Knowledge Lab is a partnership between Shabaka and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS) hosted by the Sussex Centre for Migration Research at the University of Sussex, UK. For more information, please contact Paul Statham (paul.statham@sussex.ac.uk) or Bashàïr Ahmed (bashair@shabaka.org).