Today’s episode is dedicated this episode to World Refugee Day on June 20th, and we have a very special guest for you, Debora Kayembe.

Debora grew up in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

She earned her law degree in Kinshasa and began her career as a human rights activist. After interning at the UN, she was called to the Congolese Bar Association in Matadi and became a lawyer with a specialty in international law in 2000. She arrived in the UK as a refugee in 2005 and lived near Manchester. However, her law degree was only recognized in Scotland, which is why she moved to Edinburgh in 2011 with her two young children, and qualified as a barrister.

In addition to her work as a human rights lawyer, she also has extensive experience in working as a translator for Refugees at the National Health Service in Scotland. She also set up her own language services company in 2009 with an international client base in the US and the UK.

In 2012, she joined the Scottish Refugee Council, where she served as a board member. That same year, she was added to the list of assistants to counsel for the victim support section of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In 2016, she joined the language service of the office of the Procecutor as well.  Shortly after, she became the first African woman to join the Royal Society of Edinburgh, where she holds a seat on the Working Group for Africa.



In light of the Black Lives Matter movement, Debora created the Freedom Walk Campaign, which aims to lobby, campaign on behalf of citizens by promoting social reforms, racial justice and community harmony.



In February 2021, Debora became the third woman, first black woman, and the first African immigrant to be named rector of the University of Edinburgh. She speaks French, Lingala, Kikongo, Swahili, English, Luba, Portuguese and is learning Turkish at the moment.

Go to our website to read the transcript!

MLST  is brought to you by volunteers at Bilingualism Matters    Edinburgh. The  views of our guests don’t always reflect our own, as  we   hope to provide  an accessible platform for the findings of current    research and the  perspectives of experts. For more resources like    definitions of  linguistic terms, episode transcripts, and information    about the team,  go to our website at www.mlstpodcast.com.

Recorded on 3/5/2021

Music: Arc of the Sun by The 126ersssssss