Transcript Slide 1

Postgraduate Conference
December 2006
The Diasporas, Migration
and Identities Programme
runs from January 2005 to
February 2010 with a budget
of £6.3 million.
AHRC strategic initiatives
‘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”.
The Programme:
Themes, schemes and
other activities
Launch,
21 April 2005
Museum of
Immigration
and Diversity,
Spitalfields
Interdisciplinary
research themes
The programme covers the full range of arts and
humanities disciplines. Its themes are,
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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.
Schemes of research
within the programme
The schemes funded within the programme are,
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Workshop and Network grants (workshops for
one year, and networks for two years);
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Small research grants, either individual or
collaborative (one year duration);
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Large collaborative research grants (with full
economic costs up to £600,000 (€875,000), up
to a maximum of three years).
Other programme
activities
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.
Commissioning projects
within the programme
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.
Networks and Workshops
• 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
Small research projects
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:
example 1
Tanya Kaiser, SOAS
Answering 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 2
Dr Kate Pahl, University of Sheffield
Artefacts 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 webbased version is in the process of development at
http://www.ferhamfamilies.com/intro.html.
Large research grants 1
• 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 2
• 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
Postgraduate involvement in
the programme
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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.
AHRC Research programmes:
Key priorities
Key priorities
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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.
Research engagement
and dissemination
AHRC stresses the importance of research engagement and
dissemination,
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 nonacademic audience (e.g. web pages, exhibitions, theatre,
music, installations, public lectures or presentations).
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Collaboration and
interdisciplinarity
It is important for the programme to,
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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.
Seeking to improve public
awareness of arts and
humanities research
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.
Embedding diasporas and migration
research in future agenda
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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.
Kim Knott
University of Leeds
December 2006