The global refugee crisis: how can transformative service researchers help?

This conceptual paper argues that Transformative Service Researchers (TSR) can work on solving the global refugee crisis. For this purpose, we explore the breadth and depth of the global refugee crisis through the lens of TSR. We advocate the need to consider “relieving suffering” as an overlooked TSR outcome by encouraging deeper research that seeks to provide for basic human needs such as education, healthcare, and freedom of speech. As such, instead of solely focusing on “improving well-being”, there is a profound need to include the idea of “relieving suffering” into the definition and subsequent research within TSR. Transdisciplinary research and service design research are proposed as cornerstones for understanding and solving important service system problems in the global refugee crisis. We issue our call to action for researchers to engage with the global refugee crisis. Subsequently, we propose several avenues to help improve the well-being of global refugees. The paper ends with a discussion of the key opportunities and challenges that must be addressed to move this research forward. We advocate collaborating to reduce the suffering of all refugees trapped in the global refugee crisis and moving service research much closer to solving many more major real-world problems.