FMI Member Highlight: Angus Thomas and Our Partnership with WashU's Forced Migration Initiative
Our founder Angus Thomas is the Forced Migration Initiative’s Member Highlight for November 2026. It is a chance to say thank you to Dr Mitra Naseh, Dr Maryam Rafieifar and the team at Washington University in St Louis, who believed in our work and are helping us build the evidence behind it.
In the interview with Dr Mitra Naseh, Angus talks about how HEP began, the SMART Schools Program, the SOMA Girls’ Empowerment Program for 10 girls in Tamale, and why boys need to be part of prevention. FMI has also published the audio and a full transcript.
About the Forced Migration Initiative
The Forced Migration Initiative (FMI) is based at the Brown School at Washington University in St Louis. It leads research, education and training to improve the lives of people who have been forced to move, including refugees, survivors of trafficking and people displaced by climate change. It is also a hub for migration scholars, particularly in social work.
FMI’s founding director is Dr Mitra Naseh. HEP is one of FMI’s community partners, alongside refugee and immigrant organisations in Missouri, Virginia and Türkiye. Our partnership was formalised in 2025. In May 2026, Angus joined Dr Naseh and Dr Rafieifar for a panel at WashU on borders, vulnerability and protection.
What the partnership means to us
Working with Dr Naseh at WashU and Dr Rafieifar at the University of Texas at Arlington has been one of the great joys of HEP’s work.
Working with Maryam at UTA and [Mitra] has given me the most unbelievable confidence to carry on with what I’m doing.
He values being treated as an equal. “The most important thing that has happened to me in my relationship with Maryam and [Mitra] is that I am learning something,” he says, “and you are supporting me with respect as a lived experience practitioner.” He credits them with giving him the confidence to find his own voice, including on men and boys as protective factors.
The respect runs both ways. Closing the interview, Mitra said that the trust Angus has in the community “is like such an asset to any research team.”
A research team that believes in what you are doing brings structure, oversight and credibility. HEP brings trust in the community, a team on the ground in Tamale and questions that come straight from the classroom. Together we can turn what we see in Northern Ghana into evidence that others can use.
Pathways from Poverty to Exploitation
The partnership is about to move into its next stage. With a WashU grant, Dr Naseh will lead a new research project with HEP:
Pathways from Poverty to Exploitation: A Qualitative Study of Transactional Sex, Mental Health, and HIV Vulnerability Among Young Women in Northern Ghana
The project grew out of focus groups after the 2025 Tamale Pilot. It will work with young women aged 18 to 23 in Tamale, and lay the foundations for follow-up research with younger girls still in school. Read more on our Research page.
Thank you
To Dr Mitra Naseh and everyone at the Forced Migration Initiative, and to Dr Maryam Rafieifar at UTA: thank you for believing in HEP, for treating our team as partners, and for the joy of working with you. We are looking forward to the research ahead.
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