Biography
Lucy is a Senior Researcher at the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity, focusing on local government policy and provision for migrants and refugees. She has recently worked on research projects exploring UK local government policy and provision for vulnerable destitute migrants, a comparative analysis of European local-level policies around irregular migration and education outcomes for newly arrived young people from Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Ukraine. Lucy has worked in the migration and children’s sector for over twenty years as a frontline practitioner, service manager, policy adviser and researcher.
Before joining COMPAS, she worked at UCL on the Children Caring on the Move research project, collaborating with a team of peer researchers who used participatory methods to explore the experiences of care among separated children and young people. She also worked as a policy and practice adviser for migrant children and families at The Children's Society, leading the charity's policy and research work on immigration issues. Lucy’s work focuses on knowledge exchange, promoting the reciprocal sharing of expertise among academics, policymakers, practitioners and people with lived experience. Lucy takes a co-productive and non-extractive approach to knowledge production and exchange, setting up and supporting user-led initiatives, including expert-by-experience advisory boards and participatory research projects, which involve and train people with lived experience as co-researchers. Lucy has a BA in Anthropology and Geography and an MA in the Sociology of Childhood and Children’s Rights from UCL, where she focused on migrant children and young people’s rights in the UK.
Selected publications
Leon, L., & Rosen, R. (2023) Unaccompanied migrant children and indebted relations: Weaponising safeguarding. Child & Family Social Work, 28(4), 1056-1065. https://doi.org/10.1111/cfs.13025
S. Hadfield-Hill, M. Finn, J. Dudman, C. Ergler, C. Freeman, T. A. Hayes, P. Jarman, L. Leon, M. C. Lazaro, A. Latai-Niusulu, E. Oza, E. Robson, R. Rosen, M. Schaaf, S. Taua’a, H. Tanielu & L. Walker. (2023) Expanding the scope of ethical research with and for children and young people – six viewpoints on crisis, cross-cultural working and reciprocity, Children's Geographies, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2023.2259331
Aissatou, Prokopiou, E., Leon, L., Abdullayeva, M., Mirfat, Osman, Iyambo, P., Rosen, R., Rebin, Meetoo, V., & Zak. (2022) Stories Too Big for a Case File: Unaccompanied Young People Confront the Hostile Environment in Pandemic Times. Sociological Research Online, 27(3), 550–558. https://doi.org/10.1177/13607804211064914
