Kay Mars holds a Master of Science in Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies (Radboud University) and a Master of Science in Human Geography (University of Amsterdam). With a specialization in ‘Diversity, Multicultural Citizenship and Urban Geographies’, their latest thesis project revolved around the mapping of urban queer sexualities in Porto Alegre (RS), Brazil.
Kay has been involved in the Migration and Diversity Centre at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam from 2017 until 2019, where they coordinated seminars, forums, and academic workshops on issues related to Migration and/or Diversity. Currently, Kay is involved as project coordinator for the Engaged Scholarship and Narratives of Change research project.
'My personal ambition is to continue and enlarge the unique approach to refugee inclusion that the Refugee Academy has followed in the past years. I see it as an encouraging challenge to build bridges between theoretical knowledge and personal, lived experiences of people, and to explore the different relationships between the two. I feel that the most central to the Refugee Academy is its engaged character and facilitating a democratic research context.'
