Bristol University academic denied visa for young daughter

Dr Doseline Kiguru, a Kenyan expert in world literature, was overjoyed when she secured a permanent position at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. But that all changed last week when the Home Office refused to allow her six-year-old daughter to join her, writes Anna Fazackerley for The Guardian.

The decision, which furious colleagues have called “an act of unthinkable cruelty”, will fuel fears that the government is disproportionately blocking academics from the Global South from coming to the UK, despite Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge to make Britain a global “science superpower”. It echoes two similar cases in 2019, where the Home Office was forced to do a U-turn on refusing entry to the children of two women researchers at the University of Oxford after widespread condemnation from academics across the world.

Academics say that banning the children of researchers is not uncommon, but parents are typically too scared to go public. Kiguru said this weekend that she was “devastated” by the “horrific” decision to ban her daughter from moving to the UK and could not bear “to think about how alone and isolated she is feeling” back in Kenya.
Full report on The Guardian site