CROSSINGS: THE NEXUS OF MIGRATION AND CULTURE_Conference Queen Mary (London) 1-2 July 2010

CROSSINGS: THE NEXUS OF MIGRATION AND CULTURE
July 1st and 2nd 2010
Laws G.4, Law Building,
Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road,
London E1 4NS

Conference Organizers:

Professor Parvati Nai (Director of the Centre for the Study of Migration) and Dr. Omar García-Obregón (Reader in Poetics of Exile, Censorship and Cultural Resistance - School of Languages, Linguistics and Film).

N.B.: This conference is free to all those who wish to attend. To reserve a place, please contact Queen Mary?s Events Office (events@qmul.ac.uk).
Refreshments and meals will be provided to speakers only. Others attending the conference must make their own arrangements. However numerous options for reasonably priced meals and refreshments are available on campus and nearby.


This two-day conference celebrates the launch of Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture (Intellect Publishers) based at the Centre for the Study of Migration. The conference will cover key thematic and theoretical areas that emerge from the nexus of migration and culture, when examined from diverse interdisciplinary perspectives. Speakers will interrogate questions of cultural migrancy, as well as of cultural identity and representation in the context of migration.
Areas of theoretical enquiry will include borders, diaspora, cultural difference and cultural memory, transnational connections and hybridity from disciplines as diverse as Law, Medicine, Politics, English, Development Studies, Museum Studies, Film Studies, Gender Studies and Anthropology. The conference will further count on the
participation of those working creatively in the culture industry on aspects of migration, so as to foment dialogue between the latter and the academy.

Keynote speakers are Professor Robin Cohen (Professor of Development Studies and Director, International Migration Institute, University of Oxford), Dr. Anne Kershen (Deputy-Director of the Centre for the Study of Migration, Queen Mary) and Professor Yosefa Loshitzky (Professor of Film and Media at the University of East London).

Invited artists include the poets Choman Hardi, John Siddique and others, as well as the photographer/artist/curator Shahidul Alam, founder/director of the Drik picture agency and of Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography, Dhaka, Bangladesh, as well as of Chobi Mela, the festival of photography in South Asia. Shahidul Alam
will show Under the Shade of the Banyan Tree, a short film that he made on migration and will offer a talk on his work on ?Migrant Lives.? The conference will end with a Poetry Fest, where the invited poets will offer readings and discussions of their work.
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For further details please contact:

Parvati Nair (p.nair@qmul.ac.uk)
Professor of Hispanic Cultural Studies,
Chair of Hispanic Studies,
School of Languages, Linguistics and Film
and Director, Centre for the Study of Migration,
Queen Mary, University of London,
Mile End Road,
London E1 4NS

Tel: +44 (0)20 7882 8317