Campion Lecture (Hilary Term) 2025

Prior to joining LAU, Dr. Rodgers was a senior researcher at Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre, where he was the principal investigator of the Social Cohesion as a Humanitarian Objective project (2020-2023), which investigated the impact of interventions intended to promote “social cohesion” between displaced populations and their host populations. Rodgers was the Pedro Arrupe Fellow in Forced Migration Studies at Campion Hall from 2018-2020 and now serves on the Advisory Board for the Reconciliation Program of the Jesuit Refugee Service.

Cory recently co-authored an article entitled Social cohesion or social coercion? How policies to improve refugee–host relations can go astray.

Relations among Lebanon’s constituent confessional groups or sects has been a long-standing concern both within the country and beyond, with decades of grassroots and international interventions attempting to build a more “cohesive” national body. Cohesion received renewed attention after the onset of the war in neighbouring Syria in 2011, this time with a focus on relations between displaced Syrians and their Lebanese “hosts”. Yet it is often remarked that definitions of cohesion are too numerous to give it “cohesive” meaning. Is it a quality of relations between collective groups, a product of inter-group perceptions held by individuals, or simply a lack of conflict and tension as people go about their lives?

In this lecture, Cory Rodgers reflected on the state of “cohesion” in Lebanon. Drawing on case studies of community interventions conducted from 2020-2022, he considered how various definitions of “social cohesion” used by peace, development and humanitarian actors do or do not capture the prevailing concerns about stability, security and solidarity for different groups, including citizens, refugees and other migrants.

We invite you to view the recording of the lecture here.