Ban Righ Centre: 50 Years Supporting Women Students — Queen’s Alumni Review
The Queen’s Alumni Review marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Ban Righ Centre — Queen’s University’s long-standing support centre for mature women students — with a feature that included Ningjing (Natalie) Zhang among the alumni whose paths were shaped by it.
What the Ban Righ Centre Has Been
The Ban Righ Centre has, for fifty years, supported generations of women returning to or entering university later in life, many of them juggling studies with family, employment, immigration status, and the kind of real-world responsibilities that traditional student services are not built for. Its alumni are lawyers, clinicians, public servants, community organizers, artists, and academics, and its fiftieth anniversary feature drew together those whose work in the world carries the Centre’s mission forward.
Ms. Zhang is among its alumni. The Alumni Review’s anniversary piece recognized the continuing contribution of women whose university education passed through the Ban Righ Centre, and counted her firm — focused on refugees, immigrants, and women navigating complex systems — as a direct extension of the Centre’s own work.
The Connection to Her Practice
For Ms. Zhang, the recognition threads directly into what she does now. Her refugee and immigration practice frequently represents women navigating systems that were not designed with them in mind — women escaping gender-based violence, women sponsoring or being sponsored by family, women rebuilding careers in a new country. The Ban Righ Centre’s support of women walking unconventional paths is, in her professional life, the same principle she now offers her clients.
A Milestone Worth Marking
Fifty years is a long time for an institution whose support is given mostly in quiet — counselling, a meal, a book subsidy, a place to study. The Alumni Review’s anniversary feature marked that history through the lives of those who passed through. For Ms. Zhang, inclusion in the feature places her work within a long tradition of women whose education the Ban Righ Centre helped make possible.
