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This Â鶹ÒùÔº Blog Special Issue responds to a critical moment in the world’s history marked by a series of interconnected and overlapping global crises. The hallmarks of this are armed conflicts on the rise worldwide and violent onslaughts, human rights violations, growing authoritarianism, sustained threats to democratic institutions and processes, an overhyped technological incursion which largely exists beyond governance, and alarming and steadily increasing numbers of forcibly displaced people. As a result, and at the time of writing, more than . Digital technologies are and the humanitarian systems they interact with. Their repatriation, national inclusion or settlement is increasingly seen through the lens of digital technologies, a trend that artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will undoubtedly accelerate. As such, the focus of this Special Issue is on how digital technologies have been used with forcibly displaced populations in educational provision and what that use portends about ways forward for this field.

The contributions to this issue explore:

• refugee-led networks as allowing displaced students to share knowledge, organise collectively and engage in advocacy 
• a global study on facilitating access and participation for students with refugee backgrounds through HE access programmes and connected education
• the right of students to participate in education with offline-first learning that enables continuity across offline and online environments, allowing learners to move between spaces and modes without losing progress
• the right to education despite displacement and the need to move from access to technology to creating supportive connected learning leveraging on technology
• the need for displaced learners to acquire soft skills and why systems support matters for displaced learners
• the use of photovoice method towards conducting needs assessment of teachers in a camp in Nigeria
• an impact evaluation of a prominent programme of connected learning provided by InZone at the University of Geneva, Certificate of Open Studies, giving recommendations based on insights of challenges experienced
• a case for greater emphasis on relational aspects of teaching and learning in distance HE
• an example of how new, multi-stakeholder collaboration models can help place HE as an equitable and sustainable response to displacement.