Alison Phipps አሊሰን
@alisonphipps
UNESCO Chair for Refugee Integration through Education, Languages & Arts at University of Glasgow
Busy day hosting Scottish Government Team Scotland Commonwealth Games event celebrating New Scots - dazzling array of sparkles and smiles, songs and strength. And then a chance to head to the new take away Café Red Sea Bites for a delicious wrap and exquisite Eritrean coffee ☕️
The BERRY harvest! Blowing my mind this year - plus broad beans, French beans, first plums and courgettes; onion harvest. Shallots. Herbs galore and some weird repeat fails like peas and parsnips this year.
Remembering Srebrenica in a moving ceremony, planting golden lilies in a crescent moon, held in the open circle of the peace bench gentling the tears that flow ever onwards as never again happens again. Thanks to the gardeners for beautiful, sensitive, child-friendly planting @rssba.bsky.social
Raspberry harvest begins and flowers are a tumbling bejewelled abundance in the gloaming #permaculture
Brilliant night celebrating courageous, patient, careful and most of all good Scottish journalism at Refugee Media Awards - with a record number of nominations for the bold, brave work of @scotnational.bsky.social team and some superb local reporting, including by Glasgow Bell.
Open Day in the Allotment A great celebration of World Refugee Day #Permaculture
First job - Spring School Day 2 - blow up the world and turn it upside down @uofgunescorila.bsky.social
Setting up Spring School 2026 and beginning by honouring Neil Miller a long time friend of our team and Photographer of all our events - some images from last year. RIP Neil - we miss you palpably.
A stunning day with our friends at Scottish Crannog Centre for the opening and tours around the new Crannog - with its beautiful thatching in progress and our jointly written new guidebook @uofgsocsci.bsky.social @uofgnews.bsky.social @uofgunescorila.bsky.social
Last night we gathered in Mosob - the beautiful Glaswegian Eritrean restaurant- and celebrated my PhD students past and present and the book we’ve written together with Piki & Tawona. Everyone dressed as flame and my daughter made a fire 🔥 cake @multi-ling-mat.bsky.social @uofgnews.bsky.social
Siberian Gold Quince blossoms for the first time on the allotment
Paid for out of the £500 million the Home Secretary gives France to do this work of abject shame and unending cruelty. More money to do this announced last month in case you missed it UK to pay France extra £16m in stopgap deal to patrol Channel beaches www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
We all have days when we reach the our wits end. I’ve been closer to this edge than normal because there are so many griefs, stacked one atop the other that I am presently mourning. I discovered the Quakers hold a meeting on Thursdays at noon on Campus - 20 minutes of silence at the peace bench. 🙏🏾
Peace garden moments @uofgnews.bsky.social @uofgunescorila.bsky.social
Happy Easter to all who seek to wrestle on in life against the forces of evil and death
We’d asked Davie - the University’s astonishingly creative gardener - if we might plant forget me nots and he gave us a crescent moon for this day. We sang in solidarity with human rights defenders in Minneapolis and shared seeds and food, tears and bright hope. 3/
We remembered those we dearly wish could sit with us in the garden, separated from us by war, immigration raids, ethnic cleansing, genocide. 2/
Marking the day when the light favours neither pole and Spring Equinox and Nowruz share their hope with Eid. A short ceremony at University of Glasgow Peace Garden; a gathering place in warm sun;
Motherings - all of them - the complicated, generationally compromised, orphaned, separated, exiled, grieving, babies-lost mothers. … All of them mothering love with the wipe of a sleeve full of children’s tears.
Remembering my Iona Community friend and neighbour of 30 years today - the Blessed Brian Quail - a prophetic voice for peace and the justice he loved into being. And lo - today my cursed damson which has never blossomed before - is abundant.