phd at university of rwanda

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Postgraduate Programmes

• On 16 Jul 2019

Masters Programmes The duration of Masters Programmes varies between eighteen (18) and twenty four (24) months. They are offered by coursework or purely by research. PhD Programmes Currently, PhD studies can only be undertaken by research only, in all the disciplines. The duration is at least three years. Medium of Instruction The medium of instruction at the University of Rwanda is English. Applicants will be tested for proficiency in English at a period which will be determined by the University of Rwanda before the commencement of lectures. Those not meeting the requirements will...

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PhD by research in rehabilitation Sciences

Phd by research in biomedical sciences, phd by research in public health, phd by research in nursing, phd by research in ict (option in computer science), phd in energy economics, phd in electrical power systems, phd in renewable energy, phd in iot with specialization in embedded computing systems, phd in water resource engineering.

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Interviews, a history lesson and football: what awaits people sent to Rwanda by UK?

Authorities in Kigali say ‘we are ready’ to accommodate refugees as Rishi Sunak’s plan moves closer

Daily interviews, an orientation session and football: this is what awaits refugees scheduled to land in Rwanda as part of the UK’s migration plan.

Some asylum seekers will be taken to the Hope hostel – a 20-minute drive from Kigali international airport – where they will be fed, taught about the country’s history and be allowed to walk past the armed security guards to stretch their legs.

“We have designated even smoking places,” said the hostel manager, Ismael Bakina.

This may soon be the reality for some, after Rishi Sunak’s vision for sending asylum seekers to Kigali became one step closer to being realised after legislation passed this week . The prime minister later said “nothing will stand in our way” when it comes to flying people out – and promised planes would be in the air within 12 weeks.

The Rwandan government said it was ready to meet that timeframe, with all arrangements in place. After all, the government has been waiting since 2022, when the agreement was signed.

“We are ready and even if asylum seekers arrive here tomorrow, we shall receive them and accommodate them,” said Alain Mukuralinda, the deputy government spokesperson.

After arriving at Kigali airport they would be taken straight to the hostel, he said. It is not clear how many people will be on the first flight.

The 50-room facility looks like any other hotel – elegant, well-painted and with fresh bedding – except for the security cameras in every corner.

Speaking to the Guardian in Kigali two days after the bill was passed, Bakina said the first step would be accommodating the arrivals. Their rooms will already be cleaned. After resting a bit they would be given three meals a day, he said.

Next, there would be orientation. In addition, “we shall offer them internet services”.

Bakina said that after a few days, when people were settled, the activity of processing their papers would begin – from tents that have already been erected. Briefings about Rwanda as a country, and what services they would receive while there, would follow.

This place would be a temporary shelter for about three months, government officials said. Bakina said interviews would be conducted on a daily basis but people would be free to engage in activities such as football, basketball or volleyball.

Those who do not want to eat what is prepared in the main kitchen can go for food outside the hostel – or prepare their own.

Rooms will be cleaned each day and there will be two categories of security guards – with some armed and others not.

At the hostel, there will be translators of different languages including English and Arabic. Every day in the evening, a red-carpeted prayer room has been reserved for those who wish to worship.

“This is not a prison or detention centre. The migrants will go everywhere they want to go including visiting the city centre,” Bakina said. Government officials say within three months, activities will focus on processing people’s documents.

For example, those who want to remain in Rwanda will be allowed to do so and officials say they will also help those who wish to return to their home countries.

However, after five years, people will have to start looking after themselves. The government said that after three months or so, people will be taken to live in permanent houses alongside Rwandans.

It is not yet known how much each arrival will be given for upkeep, but the government said it would take full responsibility for their welfare – including providing healthcare.

Those who are educated would look for jobs, Mukuralinda said. But some Rwandans wonder where they will find jobs when graduates in Kigali have failed to find employment.

“I am a graduate from the University of Butare but have been looking for a job for seven years in vain,” one former student said. Mukuralinda said the arrivals would never be held back by Rwandan culture as they are free to practise their own culture or beliefs.

“In Rwanda, we don’t segregate but those who will be attracted to our culture are welcome,” Mukurinda said.

Corruption is not as widespread as in other neighbouring countries. But poverty is still rampant, with most people still surviving on subsistence agriculture.

Mukuralinda said those who claimed Rwanda was not safe had been proved wrong after the UK government finally approved the sending of refugees.

The Rwandan opposition leader, Frank Habineza – who initially opposed the idea of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, citing limited economic opportunities – said: “Since this agreement has become a law, we cannot oppose it but our government should respect the law and the rights of the migrants.”

After the bill was passed this week, the Rwandan government spokesperson, Yolande Makolo, said: “We are pleased that the bill has been passed by the UK parliament. However, it doesn’t alter what we have always known to be true: we have worked hard over the last 30 years to make Rwanda a safe and secure country for Rwandans and non-Rwandans alike.”

• Immigration and asylum

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Most viewed.

University of Birmingham

Five months ago, the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that the plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful . The court found the African country was “unsafe” under international law on refugee protection.

The UK government, rather than changing the plan, has just passed a new law to declare that Rwanda is safe. This is not just a farcical legal workaround, it is deeply ironic given the unsafe conditions for asylum seekers in the UK. And, it is dangerous for the wider legal and political system when the government forces through legislation to overturn legal decisions that it does not like, making us all less safe.

The Supreme Court found that sending people to Rwanda risks violating international treaties prohibiting refoulement (returning people to places of persecution). UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, provided the court with evidence of Rwanda’s poor human rights record and defective asylum decision making.

The British embassy in Kigali gave similar feedback in 2020, recommending the UK government should not pursue the Rwanda plan. When, in 2013, Israel entered into a similar deal, thousands of people were then expelled from Rwanda without being allowed to claim asylum.

The UK government knows Rwanda isn’t safe for many people. The Home Office grants refugee status to  half of Rwandan asylum applicants  each year, with most of those refused then  granted protection at appeal .

The UK government's new law to declare that Rwanda is safe is not just a farcical legal workaround, it is deeply ironic given the unsafe conditions for asylum seekers in the UK. Dr Melanie Griffiths, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

But focusing solely on the safety of Rwanda misses three key points.

First, that the UK has been forcibly sending asylum seekers to other countries for decades, including to arguably unsafe ones. Second, that asylum seekers – including tens of thousands who cannot be sent to Rwanda due to logistical capacity – are unsafe themselves in the UK. And third, that the new law unilaterally declaring Rwanda “safe” raises dangers for the UK’s own political and legal system.

Asylum seeker removal

European countries have been sending asylum seekers to other member states since 1997. Under the Dublin regulation (which the UK left with Brexit), countries may send people back to the first EU country they arrived in. These countries are not necessarily safe.

Asylum seekers I interviewed for my PhD research described violent police officers and abusive border officers, of being prevented from lodging asylum claims, and being denied accommodation and support in multiple European countries. The European Council on Refugees and Exiles , a network of NGOs working on refugee protection, and the UNHCR have raised similar concerns.

In 2008, several EU countries suspended Dublin transfers to Greece because of its poor treatment of asylum seekers. This included worrying police conduct and detention conditions, and the forcible return of people to inhumane and degrading treatment – raising serious questions about safety.

Safety in the UK

The 1951 UN refugee convention stipulates that people must not be punished for breaking immigration rules in the course of seeking safety. And yet, the UK’s illegal migration act 2023 subjects people who arrive in the UK irregularly to criminal records and lengthy prison sentences , and – shockingly – strips them of their right to have their refugee claims considered .

But people have little choice but to arrive irregularly. The UK has only a handful of legal routes available. It officially resettles barely 700 refugees a year , forcing thousands of people to risk their lives to reach safety.

If people reach the UK, they enter a massive “ perma-backlog ” of undecided asylum claims and are forced into dangerous accommodation. Each year, the UK incarcerates thousands of asylum seekers in prison-like immigration detention centres . Unlike the rest of Europe, this incarceration has no time limit.

The other asylum accommodation sites are hardly better. The controversial Bibby Stockholm barge in Dorset has been found to be overcrowded and traumatising , had deadly legionella bacteria in the water supply, and was the site of a man’s death last December.

The Manston short-term holding facility in Kent was described as “really dangerous” by the former independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, who found severe overcrowding and outbreaks of rare, contagious diseases . Temporary accommodation site Napier Barracks was found to be so problematic that in 2021 the High Court found the Home Office guilty of employing unlawful practices in holding asylum seekers there.

In just the few months it’s been open, there have been countless acts of self-harm, including suicide attempts , at the Wethersfield airbase in Essex. Last December, the former borders watchdog raised concerns that the Home Office was not keeping Wethersfield “service users safe” and warned of immediate risk of criminality, arson and violence .

Since then, reports have emerged of unexploded ordnance, radiological contamination, inadequate storage of hazardous substances and contamination from poisonous gases.

Asylum accommodation hotels are also attracting far-right demonstrations and anti-immigrant violence. Tragically, but unsurprisingly, rising numbers of asylum seekers are dying in Home Office accommodation .

Even if they are granted permission to stay, asylum seekers are plunged into destitution at unprecedented rates. In England, 12,630 households faced homelessness after eviction from asylum accommodation in the two years to the end of September 2023.

A political distraction

The Rwanda plan is an expensive and unworkable political distraction from the UK’s failings on asylum policy. Even if flights do eventually take off, they will barely touch the massive, government-made backlog of 55,000 people who cannot have their claims processed and risk being left in indefinite limbo in unsafe accommodation.

The UK government’s current approaches to immigration are not reducing numbers. They are simply wasting vast sums of money , making an international mockery of our legal system, and – as tragically occurred on April 23 – costing people their lives .

The UK’s asylum system does not need flights to Rwanda, it needs safe and legal routes so that people do not have to risk their lives to seek protection. And once they arrive, they need better conditions and decision making so that they can get on with their lives in safety.

This article was originally published in  T he Conversation.

Featured staff

Dr Melanie Griffiths

Birmingham Fellow

Notes for editors

• For media enquiries please contact Beck Lockwood , Press Office, University of Birmingham, tel: +44 (0)121 414 2772.
• The University of Birmingham  is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, teachers and more than 8,000 international students from over 150 countries.

Extreme emotions and emotionlessness of UK immigration make migrants deportable and disposable

Anger, disgust, suspicion, and fear create an environment where migrants’ emotions and lives are met with disinterest and disbelief.

3 October 2023

Anthropology provides backbone to Glowacka’s work

College of Medicine – Phoenix assistant professor lays solid foundation for future health-care providers through her teaching of anatomy.

An anthropologist, Halszka Glowacka, PhD, first took anatomy as a graduate student and loved it so much, she now teaches anatomy of the head and neck.

Routine dental checkups send some people spiraling into a panic. 

Not Halszka Glowacka, PhD .

Halszka Glowacka, PhD, said she feels lucky to both teach and research.

A meticulous flosser and brusher, she never misses those semiannual visits.

“My dentist loves me,” laughed Glowacka, an assistant professor in the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine – Phoenix ’s Department of Basic Medical Sciences.

And not just because of Glowacka’s A-plus oral hygiene. The two have a lot in common, actually. An anthropologist, Glowacka is co-director of the Clinical Anatomy Block and teaches anatomy of the head and neck to first-year medical students. 

“I get very excited when I talk about the chewing system and teeth,” Glowacka said, adding that her dentist happily shares Glowacka’s published work with her peers. 

“She loves talking about my research,” said Glowacka, who is eagerly awaiting the time her 4-year-old daughter’s and 2-year-old son’s baby teeth can be part of her tooth collection, which so far only includes one from a family pooch. “She loves that I do what I do.”

That feeling is mutual, too.

Beyond bones 

Glowacka came to the university to teach anatomy in 2018, but she learned her way around the lab well before then. Though she earned her doctoral degree in anthropology from Arizona State University, she completed her anatomy training at UArizona’s College of Medicine – Phoenix. Glowacka also worked as a teaching assistant for the gross anatomy lab director. 

“The more that I taught, the more I liked it and the more interested I became,” she said. “It got to the point where I thought, ‘I want to teach anatomy.’ It wasn’t my original intention, but I just loved it.”

Anatomical knowledge lays the foundation for the future health-care workers she teaches and as an anthropologist who studies the primate skull and specifically how their teeth and faces are adapted to diet, Glowacka gives students a perspective on studying human anatomy, too. 

When working with skeletal remains, it’s tempting to view them in isolation, but it’s important to consider them as part of a whole system, Glowacka said.

Halszka Glowacka fell in love with field work as an undergrad. This photo from 2006 was taken in Rudabánya, Hungary, while she was looking for fossils. (Courtesy of Halszka Glowacka)

“As an anthropologist, it’s really easy to only think about the bones and not the soft tissues that surround them, which are so important,” she said. “You don’t really think about it if you don’t work in anatomy and see it on a regular basis. I’ve gained a much deeper appreciation of the anatomy of the skull because I teach anatomy to medical and allied health students.” 

Glowacka has done field work in Hungary, Rwanda and Ethiopia. She said that while it’s thrilling – after hours of meticulous digging – to discover a well-preserved bone, it’s every bit as gratifying as teaching. 

“I also love hearing from my students, ‘Wow, you made this so much easier for me and I actually understand the cranial nerves now,’” Glowacka said. “That feels really amazing to me.”

She considers it payback for all of those who paved her journey into the world of science. “I was lucky to have mentors and people that I met along the way who fostered my interests,” she said. 

Discovering nature

Glowacka’s love of the natural world started at an early age. Born in Poland, she spent the first years of her life in Europe. Her grandfather was an archaeologist – an anthropology-adjacent field, Glowacka noted – and her grandmother a bee biologist. So, when she and her older sister were growing up, they would, as Glowacka put it, “spend summers frolicking in nature.” 

“It was really amazing,” she said. “I just grew up with the natural world as part of every day.”

The sisters helped collect samples and hung around other scientists. That put Glowacka on the path to studying zoology. An anthropology class she took on a whim made her shift course.

Halszka Glowacka, right, and her older sister, left, spent summers as young children exploring Poland’s landscape with their grandparents. (Courtesy of Halszka Glowacka)

“It wasn't anything that I was considering as a career, and I had a professor who was so passionate, and the way he described his research and anthropology made everything come to life,” she said. 

She works to do the same for her students.

“Some aspects of anatomy can feel a bit dry,” she said. “Sprinkling a little bit of your own research might pique somebody’s interest and make them pay a little more attention. I try to do that as much as I can.”

Evan M. Garofalo, PhD,  the UArizona College of Medicine – Phoenix’s clinical anatomy block director, said Glowacka is great at guiding students through the challenges of anatomy and medical school. 

“She does it with expertly considered course materials, humor, a great design aesthetic and enthusiasm,” Garofalo said. 

Back to the field

The mother of two squeezes in 5 a.m., at-home CrossFit workouts before heading to work, but don’t ask her what she does in her free time.

“That’s a personal attack for somebody with small children,” she said, smiling. 

The COVID-19 pandemic and having little kids curbed her field work, but Glowacka said she is looking forward to getting back to research, hopefully the summer of 2025, in Rwanda at the 12-acre Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund . It’s a project years in the making that gives her a chance to study what happens on the, uh, other end of the digestive tract.

“We're looking at gorilla poo to tell us something about how the chewing system works,” she said.

By putting the samples that have been collected for several years through a series of smaller sieves, researchers will get the straight scoop on how efficient gorillas, ranging from juveniles to older adults, are at eating their food.

Glowacka said she’s looking forward to the data she’ll collect, even if it’s a topic that others may not find …   glamorous.

“Yeah,” she said, “I think I probably wouldn’t bring it up at a dinner party.”