During the First World War, approximately 250,000 Belgian refugees made their way to Great Britain. Some of them were labelled with a range of issues related to their mental health and admitted to what were then known as lunatic asylums. Until now, their life histories and migratory journeys have remained untold. Asylum: Refugees and Mental Health is an international historical research project which aims to give voice to refugees’ experience of mental ill-health and make visible the emotional impacts of displacement and war trauma. Our project raises timely questions about the relationship between refugee dispersal programmes, sponsorship and well-being. 

Using newly available institutional case notes and aligning them with other refugee records, we have a unique opportunity to uncover the histories of refugees and to think about labelling and categorisation. Our publications and public engagement activities use these resources to inquire into the negotiation of mental health and care in the case histories of Belgian refugees in England and Wales and Belgium. Through co-produced activities with our partners, our research will support exhibitions and work with school-age children and heritage volunteers.

The project is led by a UK-based Principal Investigator and Co-Investigators in the UK and the Netherlands. Our partners include The London Archives (TLA), Alexandra Palace and the Mental Health Museum in the UK, and In Flanders Fields Museum in Belgium.  As part of the project, this website offers a home to the newly extended and repurposed Tracing the Belgian Refugees database, making this important resource freely available. 

• The Tracing the Belgian Refugees Database was originally funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/P006655/1) with staff from the Universities of Leeds, KU Leuven and UCL. 
• Asylum: Refugees and Mental Health is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/X011372/1) with staff from Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Huddersfield and Utrecht University. 

Project team

The Asylum: Refugee and Mental Health project team is based at the Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Huddersfield, and Utrecht University.

Rob Ellis (PI) is a Professor of Modern British History at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research focuses on the histories of mental ill-health and learning disabilities, and his publications include London and its Asylums (Palgrave, 2020) and the co-edited volume Voices in the Histories of Madness (Palgrave, 2021). As part of his role, Rob has worked on a wide range of impact, outreach and engagement projects with present-day service users, statutory and charitable care providers, heritage professionals, theatre practitioners and artists. He is currently working on a history of community care and is the lead on the Asylum: Refugees and Mental Health project which explores the experiences of Belgian refugees during the First World War.

Dr Rebecca Gill (CI) is based at the University of Huddersfield, and researches and teaches twentieth century history with a focus on humanitarian relief in modern war, and women relief workers in particular. She is interested in the history of craft in relief and rehabilitation schemes with refugees and civilians, and is the co-editor of the collections Humanitarian handicraft (2025) and Craft in extremis (2027).

Christophe Declercq (CI) is Assistant Professor at Utrecht University and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London, where he was Senior Lecturer (2017–2022). He has also held posts at KU Leuven, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the University of Antwerp, where he is a Research Fellow. A great-grandson of a Belgian refugee, he earned his PhD from Imperial College London (2015) on the linguistic and socio-cultural identities of Belgian refugees in Britain during the First World War. His research examines Belgian refugees alongside translation and intercultural communication in historical and contemporary conflict settings. He co-convened the Languages and the First World War project (three co-edited volumes with Julian Walker) and co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Translation, Interpreting and Crisis (with Koen Kerremans) and Intercultural Crisis Communication (with Federico Federici). A notable focus is the Belgian exile press and its role in diasporic identity and transnational communication. Declercq’s public-facing work includes collaborations with the BBC and VRT, contributions to centenary and heritage initiatives, and roles on AHRC-funded projects such as the crowd-sourced Tracing the Belgian Refugees database and the Asylum: Refugees and Mental Health initiative. He served as UK liaison for the Amsab Institute of Social History and helped document 4,500 Belgian refugees in Wales through the Wales for Peace project.

Ute Oswald is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Manchester Metropolitan University on the project Asylum: Refugees and Mental Health, and an Associate Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of Medicine at the University of Warwick. She holds master’s degrees from the University of Hamburg (Germany) and the University of Oxford and completed her PhD at the University of Warwick. She is a historian of psychiatry, focusing on asylum and mental health histories in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Britain and abroad. She is a book review editor for the journal History of Psychiatry, an editorial board member of the journal Exchanges and part of the COST Action network on European Health Histories. She is also a member of the executive committee of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ History of Medicine Special Interest Group. She has given talks and published widely on recreation and religion in British asylums, and her first monograph entitled Entertaining the Insane: Recreation in Nineteenth-Century British Asylums is under contract with Palgrave Macmillan for publication in 2027.

Jozefien De Bock obtained her MA in Contemporary History at the University of Ghent and her PhD in History and Civilization at the European University Institute in Florence. After having curated an exhibition, based on her PhD research, with the Ghent City Museum, Jozefien embarked upon a career combining academic and public history work. She worked as a researcher and project writer for different museums, archival institutions and heritage organisations and as a post-doctoral research fellow for Ghent University, Fulbright and Utrecht University. Jozefien has published articles in several top journals and authored a monograph on the integration of post-war guest workers in the Belgian city of Ghent. Her research has been focused on the social-economic, political and cultural history of refugees, migrants and minorities.