Call for Panel Participation: Documentation, Preservation and Researching the History of Forced Migration: IASFM 2016

Dear All,

As part of our commitment to the working group of International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM), we are organizing a panel for the 16th Conference of the IASFM, to be hosted by the Centre for Migration Studies, the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, and the Faculty of Law and Public Administration at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, July 12-15, 2016.

The title of our proposed panel is:

“Documentation, Preservation and Researching the History of Forced Migration: Ethical and methodological developments”.                       

This panel seeks to examine some ethical and methodological considerations for documentation and preservation of refugee voices and history of forced migration. We recognise that there is a need to work on how knowledge in the field of forced migration is created/ produced and maintained. This panel will also address the growing critique of the divide between the knowledge of experts and migrants/ refugees. We would like to link the proposed panel into the conference theme 9, “Researching forced migration: engagements, methodologies and ethics.” This means that we are looking forward to papers which would cover ethical and methodological developments in relation to collating, researching and documenting testimonies of refugees and migrants for the purposes of constructing and documentation of social and political history of forced migration.

The proposals for papers will cover the below (and more) issues as relevant to the conference theme:

*  Could original stories of refugees and migrants be sufficiently digitised and documented without harming the participant? Or

*  Are digital archives an appropriate way to preserve and document the history of forced migration?

*  How do/can we document oral history of refugees and migrants without breaching confidentiality and sensibility of data?

*  How important is it to engage with ‘local’ refugee and migrants communities for understanding and documentation of history of forced migration?

*  Which ways could community archives, oral histories and digitised archives of (refugee and migrants) promote the preservation of history of forced migration?

*  What is the significance of diverse narrative methodology in understanding and researching history of forced migration?

*  What are the best practices for collating and archiving refugee and migrants’ testimonies, and how do we deal with major challenges in collating data on forced migration?

*  What are the high standards of collection care and long-term preservation of `refugee archives’, and how this could be maintained?

In addition to the above, papers addressing ethical and methodological issues, including the below are also welcome: who can/should collect documents of forced migration and testimonies of refugee? Who has the rights to document those collated narratives? Who can be researched? Whose voices should be heard and preserved in archives in the field of forced migration and refugee studies? How can we adequately document and preserve history of forced migration and refugees? We invite papers to examine these and further issues (should you wish) through the proposed panel.

If you are interested in joining us in this panel, please do contact Paul V Dudman (p.v.dudman@uel.ac.uk) or Dr. Rumana Hashem (r.hashem@uel.ac.uk) with abstracts of 200-300 words by 07 January 2016.

As panel proposals for the conference must be submitted by 01 February 2016,  we invite proposal of papers for this panel by no later than January 03, 2016.

If you have any question regarding this panel, please feel free to email me (Rumana on r.hashem@uel.ac.uk).

Details of the Full IASFM 2016 Call for Papers is available online here:  http://iasfm.org/conference/call-papers/

Thanks and Best wishes,

Rumana and Paul