Research
The Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Eduction is dedicated to bridging the gaps which have traditionally separated scholarly research, pedagogy, and community initiatives. To this end, the Consortium’s structure permits members of affiliated campuses to share resources across disciplines and research areas.
While innovative research inside and outside the classroom is ongoing, there are a few special venues through which Consortium research is showcased:
EuropeNow
The Consortium is partnered with EuropeNow, the online journal of the Council for European Studies (CES). EuropeNow is the first and only online journal to give equal weight to research, criticism, journalism, and pedagogy alongside literary nonfiction, fiction, poetry, translations, and visual art from or concerning Europe through a comparative lens. With more than 100,000 readers per month, the platform provides global visibility to the work of the Consortium on Forced Migration, which has its own subsection on EuropeNow Campus. EuropeNow Campus is the teaching- and training-focused section of EuropeNow. This section highlights how educators are engaging students and the community with major research questions relating to Europe, gathers educational materials to give teachers innovative tools on a variety of critical topics, and runs interviews with students and educators who are erasing the gap between classroom learning and real-world impact. The Consortium intends for these pieces to serve as inspirations, models, or blueprints for educators of all stripes. Further, EuropeNow Campus offers the various institutional partners of the Consortium a digital media channel in which members can upload, among others, their podcasts, syllabi, videos, and art.
International Conference of Europeanists
The Consortium and the Council of European Studies (CES) organize methodology and pedagogy workshops at the annual International Conference of Europeanists, which attracts between 1,000 and 1,500 scholars and policy-makers from across the globe. This year, the Consortium, together with University Alliance for Refugees and At-Risk Migrants (UARRM) will be sponsoring two panels devoted to the topic, "Forced Migration: Challenges and Opportunities for High Education."
The Consortium will also host a special Symposium at CES’s 50th anniversary conference in Iceland in 2020. The conference platform not only provides the Consortium with global visibility but it also serves as a mentorship opportunity for students. Consortium students, professors, and refugee scholars participate in research about pressing global issues, and they have opportunities to share their work with an international and interdisciplinary academic audience.
Scholarly Conferences
To challenge ourselves as scholars and teachers and engage a larger educational community, the Consortium is organizing two research-based, scholarly conferences for the Consortium and the larger scholarly community. These conferences bring together internationally renowned scholars and practitioners to reflect on the great challenges of our time.
Our first conference will be held at Vassar College. The gathering is focused upon important issues regarding health care needs of refugees and the impact of forced migration on health care systems in host countries. The conference will include an interdisciplinary set of scholars and practitioners spanning medicine, law, public policy, non-governmental organizations, and private industry. A particular focus of the conference will be the examination of how barriers to health and healthcare are shaped by issues such as xenophobia, discrimination, and complex legal frameworks. In addition, the conference will feature presentations from a diverse set of researchers, community organizers, and policy makers working to reduce gaps in healthcare equity for refugees as well as panels fostering dialogue and partnerships between scholars, students, community organizations, and representatives from the refugee community.
Our second conference is an Afghan/Iraqi translator conference proposed by Bennington College. The Consortium is interested in exploring this particular refugee group brought about by America’s foreign wars going back to the Vietnam War. Such a conference is an important moment to bring together translators, scholars of America’s wars, veterans who fought in these wars, and scholars from the military academies, who are faced with ethical dilemmas regarding their translators and local guides, who are often left behind when the U.S. military leaves.
Teaching Labs
Key to our shared curriculum, and foundational to faculty development and dissemination of our work, is a yearly Teaching Laboratory that brings together Consortium schools. In order to learn from each other and to expand our knowledge of new models of engagement, representatives from the most interesting and innovative classes and projects in education for (im)migrants and refugees/migrant education are invited. The Teaching Lab features training sessions and hands-on workshops where attendees can learn new practices and skills. Faculty from local colleges, universities, community colleges, high schools and community agencies are invited; this is an opportunity to have teachers and local leaders in the refugee community teach us. Students coordinate their own sections and present their senior research projects. These teaching labs are documented and will soon be available for public dissemination to any institutions of higher learning or organizations who may be interested.