https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-W2zLysusg In this webinar organised by the University of Birmingham’s Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) on 21 September, Professor Nasar Meer (The University of Edinburgh) explores the need to re-think two coterminous concerns: the rediscovery of the ‘local’ and the city in particular, and an understanding of the experience of displaced migration in Europe.... Continue Reading →
Bolsonaro, Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter: the politics of lockdown in Brazil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjopvgyNGyw In Episode #14 of Conversations with IRiS, Dr Andrea Poleto Oltramari and Dr Josiane Silva de Oliveira discuss the racialised and gendered effects of Covid-19 in Brazil. The Conversation was recorded at the end of June 2020. Dr Andrea Poleto Oltramari, Associate Professor at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul and Visiting... Continue Reading →
Black Lives Matter — Is This A Turning Point?
By Nicholas Bailey (@imnickbailey) and Nando Sigona (@nandosigona), University of Birmingham https://www.facebook.com/unibirmingham/videos/310858256686260/ BLM became something very different from its previous incarnation on the day George Floyd died. It transitioned from social organisation to symbolising a societal ideal. By any definition, 2020 has been a dramatic year. It was already the year of Australian bushfires, the... Continue Reading →
Displaced SGBV survivors and Covid-19
Early in June Sandra Pertek spoke to Pip McKnight of Refugee Women Connect and Hana Leshaj, asylum seeker based in Liverpool and member of Refugee Women Connect Advocacy Group, about the deteriorating reality post COVID-19 for migrants and asylum seekers in the UK, at the time of easing lockdown restrictions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12bNXVGpcIQ&t=140s The unprecedented COVID-19 crisis... Continue Reading →
Care workers, our heroes: a double edged sword
Care work and domestic labour is the main theme of this episode of Conversations with IRiS. Our guests are two scholars who have investigated closely the intersection of gender and migration for many years. https://youtu.be/Hwr7eXmxqvU "Care workers, our heroes: a double edged sword", Episode 11 of Conversations with Iris Nina Sahraoui is a Post-doctoral Researcher... Continue Reading →
Manus Island is the soul of the system: Lyndsey Stonebridge talks to Omid Tofighian
In 2017, the Iranian-Kurdish writer, Behrouz Boochani, published an extraordinary book, No Friend But the Mountains which documented his life imprisoned in the Australian-run immigration detention centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. Combining political theory, myth, poetry, memoir, the book rises to the challenge of resisting oppression by creating a new literary form of... Continue Reading →
The end of the “age of migration”? Nando Sigona in conversation with Alan Gamlen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3bZPf7cBb8 In this episode of Conversations with Iris, IRiS Director Professor Nando Sigona talks to Dr Alan Gamlen, Associate Professor of Geography at Monash University, Australia, founding editor-in-chief of the journal Migration Studies (OUP) and co-editor of the "Global Migration and Social Change" book series for Bristol University Press. Inspired by Alan Gamlen's recent COMPAS... Continue Reading →
The impact of Covid-19 on migrant women in the UK
In this episode of Conversations with Iris, Dawn River, academic at the Institute of Research into Superdiversity talks to Dr Rubina Jasani, Programme Director for Global Health at The Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute in Manchester (https://www.hcri.manchester.ac.uk/). As an anthropologist, Rubina has been interested in exploring people’s lived experience of violence, displacement and identities; gender... Continue Reading →
#IAMESPOIR: Espoir Njei in conversation with Dawn River
This is the recording of a conversation between Espoir Njei and Dawn River. The conversation took place on Tuesday 28th April 2020 - approx. one month into lockdown. Espoir and Dawn built a friendship through their shared commitment to supporting LGBTIQ migrants fleeing persecution. Espoir is a lesbian asylum seeker from the Cameroon currently in... Continue Reading →
Learning together at the time of Covid: Conversations with Iris
In the follow up to our first Conversations with Iris episode, Lyndsey Stonebridge (IRiS) talks to Les Back (Goldsmiths, University of London) about the future of universities. https://youtu.be/fUTB8-iE-6U

