Postgraduate Conference

December 2006

The Diasporas, Migration and Identities Programme runs from January 2005 to February 2010 with a budget of £6.3 million.

‘Diasporas, Migration and Identities’ is the first strategic research programme to be funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Two other programmes have now been launched: ‘Landscape and Environment’, and ‘Religion and Society’.

The purpose of such programmes is “to invest in areas where there is a sense of intellectual urgency and where a concentrated stream of funding may be needed in order rapidly to advance the field”.

AHRC strategic initiatives

The Programme:

Themes, schemes and other activities

Launch, 21 April 2005

Museum of Immigration and Diversity,Spitalfields

The programme covers the full range of arts and humanities disciplines. Its themes are,

• migration, settlement and diaspora: modes, stages and forms;

• representation, performance and discourse;• languages and linguistic change;• subjectivity, emotion and identity;• objects, practices and places;• beliefs, values and laws.

Interdisciplinary research themes

The schemes funded within the programme are,

• Workshop and Network grants (workshops for one year, and networks for two years);

• Small research grants, either individual or collaborative (one year duration);

• Large collaborative research grants (with full economic costs up to £600,000 (€875,000), up to a maximum of three years).

Schemes of research within the programme

Other programme activities include,• Programme database and email updates;• Programme website, www.diasporas.ac.uk;• Workshops for award-holders, RAs and PGs; • Two postgraduate conferences, 2006 and 2008;• A series of open seminars in 2007/08;• Stakeholder events;• A final conference in 2009;• A programme book: Diasporas: Concepts,

Identities, Intersections.

Other programme activities

In October 2005, we commissioned• 20 small research projects • 14 workshops and networks

In July 2006, we commissioned• 15 large research grants (from a total of 157

applications, short-listed to 25), including four studentships.

Commissioning projects within the programme

• The Comparative Study of Jews and Muslims in Britain, Europe and North America

• Early Cinema and the Diasporic Imagination: the Irish in America 1890-1930

• Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe• Toleration and the Public Sphere• Performance and Asylum: Embodiment, Ethics, Community• Migration and Diaspora Cultural Studies Network• Migration in the First Millennium• Language, Religion and Print Cultures in the Welsh Diaspora• Viking Identities Network• From Diaspora to Multi-Locality: Writing British-Asian Cities• Making the Connections: The Arts, Migration and Diaspora• Mobility and Identity Formation: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the

'Italian Case‘• Migration: Emotions and Human Mobility• Dress and the African Diaspora

Networks and Workshops

On a variety of subjects including, Memory and identity among Palestinian women refugees Migrating foods and sensual experience Afghan music in London Risorgimento in exile Sudanese refugees dealing with displacement Migrant club cultures and queer diasporic identifications Black British drama Artefacts and narratives of migration, The making of gypsy diasporas.

Small research projects

Tanya Kaiser, SOASAnswering Exile: how Sudanese refugees deal with

displacement

This project sets out to develop recent thinking on the socio-cultural construction of place in the context of debates about human displacement and emplacement. Its ethnographic focus is some of the multiply displaced Southern Sudanese groups currently resident in Uganda and in Sudan. The project investigates relationships between place and the social and ritual activity performed there, and raises questions about the construction of identity and of social value in this context.

Small research projects: example 1

Dr Kate Pahl, University of SheffieldArtefacts and narratives of migration: Rotherham museum

collections and the Pakistan/Kashmiri community

This project involves collaboration between the universities, Creative Partnerships, a museum, local families, a school, a Sure Start centre, and a visual artist (Zahir Rafiq). It explores ways in which museum practices and the collection of artefacts within a museum are both upheld and disrupted through the presentation of an exhibition of identity narratives. The exhibition, at Clifton Park Museum in Rotherham, is scheduled for February 2007, and a web-based version is in the process of development at http://www.ferhamfamilies.com/intro.html. 

Small research projects: example 2

• Dr L Brown: Mapping Migrant Cultures in Manchester 1880 – 2000*• Ms J Chatterji: The Bengal diaspora: Bengali settlers in South Asia

and Britain: a comparative and interdisciplinary study• Dr PA Crang: Fashioning diaspora space: textiles, pattern and

cultural exchange between Britain and South Asia*• Professor A Dewdney: Tate Encounters: Black and Asian Identities,

Britishness and Visual Culture• Dr H Eckardt: A long way from home - diaspora communities in

Roman Britain• Dr K Gardner: Home and Away: Experiences and Representations of

Transnational South Asian Children*• Dr M Gillespie: Tuning in: Diasporic Contact Zones at the BBC World

Service• Professor A Good: The Conversion of Asylum Applicants' Narratives

into Legal Discourses in the UK and France: A Comparative Study of Problems of Cultural Translation

Large research grants 1

• Professor C Humphrey: Black Sea Currents: Migration and cosmopolitan dynamics in two post-Imperial cities, Odessa and Istanbul

• Professor R King: Cultural Geographies of Counter-Diasporic Migration: The Second Generation Returns 'Home‘*

• Professor U Meinhof: Diaspora as Social and Cultural Practice: a Study of Transnational Networks across Europe and Africa

• Professor R E Pearson: Subverting stereotypes: Asian women's political activism - a comparison of the Grunwick and Gate Gourmet strikes

• Dr J Procter: Devolving Diasporas: Migration and Reception in Central Scotland, 1980 - present

• Dr R A Sales: Cityscapes of Diaspora: Images and Realities of London's Chinatown

• Professor P Werbner: In the Footsteps of Jesus and the Prophet: Sociality, Caring and the Religious Imagination in the Filipino Diaspora

Large research grants 2

Diasporas postgraduate e-mail list Postgraduate conferences, 2006 and 2008 Four postgraduate studentships (large research projects) Linking up with other AHRC funded postgraduates working

on diasporas, migration and identities Consideration of postgraduate contributions for web-based

working paper series (Forthcoming) Postgraduate section on

www.diasporas.ac.uk Postgraduate seminars and reading groups associated with

our networks and projects, e.g. University of Manchester.

Postgraduate involvement in the programme

AHRC Research programmes:

Key priorities

• Research quality, range and coherence; • Research engagement and dissemination

(including knowledge transfer);*• Collaboration and interdisciplinarity;*• Improving public awareness of arts and

humanities research;*• Embedding research in medium to long term

agenda;*• Monitoring and evaluation of research.

Key priorities

AHRC stresses the importance of research engagement and dissemination,

(i) research collaboration with the cultural sector (e.g. ‘Moving Here’, National Archive; regional and national museums and galleries);

(ii) engagement with public, voluntary or community bodies to share knowledge and develop outcomes of mutual interest and benefit (e.g. CEHR, community arts projects);

(iii) the development of outputs directed at a wide non-academic audience (e.g. web pages, exhibitions, theatre, music, installations, public lectures or presentations).

Research engagement and dissemination

It is important for the programme to,

• Break down disciplinary boundaries through research networks and collaborative projects;

• Develop links with research programmes and centres within AHRC (e.g. Landscape and Environment, Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, Religion and Society;

• Develop links with research programmes and centres outside AHRC, e.g. ESRC Identities and Social Action, COMPAS);

• Develop links with emerging programmes in Europe and beyond on related themes such as migration and cultural diversity.

Collaboration and interdisciplinarity

On public awareness, the programme seeks to,• promote research on DMI through its website; • engage with the interests of a diverse range of

stakeholders beyond the academy;• raise the profile of the programme and its projects

in the media;• link up with other related research programmes in

public events;• have an impact on public awareness and, as

appropriate, policy.

Seeking to improve public awareness of arts and humanities research

• By the end of the programme, research on diasporas, migration and identities should be embedded in the intellectual agenda of the arts and humanities;

• DMI should stimulate interest beyond its 5-year duration in applications from researchers and postgraduates;

• Funding in this area should have a substantial impact beyond the academy.

Embedding diasporas and migration research in future agenda

Kim KnottUniversity of Leeds

December 2006