Dates for the conference
20-22 February 2018
Call for Papers
The multidisciplinary Centre for Global Migrations examines the historical and contemporary movement of people, objects, and ideas across time and space. For our inaugural major conference, we welcome proposals on these aspects from academics, students, and other researchers. Both individual and panel proposals are welcome.
Please provide before the deadline of 1 November 2017:
- a title
- abstract of your paper (100 words)
- brief biographical information (including institutional affiliation and contact details)
Presenters requiring earlier notification of acceptance are welcome to submit a proposal at any time and ask for early confirmation of acceptance.
Please send proposals or requests for further information to Lien Trinh at gmevents@otago.ac.nz.
Regrettably, we are unable to provide funding support for participants.
Keynote Speakers
Professor Vered Amit, Concordia University
Vered Amit is a Professor of Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. She received her educational training at McGill, University of Toronto and the University of Manchester. Her research has explored a diverse range of issues, circumstances and locales, including social boundaries among Armenians in London; notions of community and mobility among high school leavers in Quebec; ethnic lobbying; expatriacy and conceptions of belonging and citizenship in the Cayman Islands; peripatetic international consultants; student and youth travel as well as the implications of inherited dual citizenship. Running through these different projects has been an ongoing preoccupation with the workings of and intersections between different forms of spatial mobility. Another recurrent theme in her research focuses on ideas of youth, the life course and coming of age. Finally but by no means least, she has also written extensively on conceptions of community, cosmopolitanism and sociality.
Professor Emeritus Richard Bedford, QSO, FRSNZ, Auckland University of Technology and President, Royal Society of New Zealand
Richard ('Dick') Bedford is Emeritus Professor at the University of Waikato and the Auckland University of Technology and President of the Royal Society Te Apārangi. He is a population geographer who specialises in migration research and since the mid-1960s he has been researching processes of population movement and demographic change in the Asia-Pacific region. He is currently chair of the Governance Group for the Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities National Science Challenge, chair of Superu's Social Science Experts Panel and a member of their He Awa Whiria Advisory Group.
Professor Erika Lee, University of Minnesota
Erika Lee is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor, the Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair in Immigration History, and the Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of three award-winning books in US immigration and Asian American history: At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943; Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America (co-authored with Judy Yung), and most recently, The Making of Asian America: A History which was the recipient of the 2015 Asian Pacific American Award for Literature from the American Library Association. It was an 'Editor's Choice' by the New York Times and named to the Best Nonfiction Books of 2015 list by Kirkus Reviews. Professor Lee is currently working on a history of xenophobia in the United States. At the IHRC, she directs the Immigrant Stories digital storytelling and archiving project (immigrantstories.umn.edu) funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and she co-organised the #Immigration Syllabus project (www.immigrationsyllabus.umn.edu). Professor Lee is an active public intellectual and regularly appears in the media to discuss immigration issues and has given over 125 invited lectures in the US and abroad. She is an award-winning teacher and has served as a historical consultant on many public history projects.
Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley, FRNZ, Massey University
Paul Spoonley is Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Massey University. He is (or has been) the Principal Investigator on the Integration of Immigrants Programme, Nga Tangata Oho Mairangi and, currently, Capturing the Diversity Dividend of Aotearoa New Zealand (all funded by MBIE). He has published extensively (author or editor of 28 books) and is widely used as a media commentator. He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of California Berkeley in 2010, is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and is on the International Steering Group for Metropolis.
Conference Programme
Our final conference programme is now available.
Venue for the conference
All conference sessions will take place in the Castle Lecture Theatre complex, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
Registration
The registration fees are available by clicking the Register Now button. Fees include lunches, morning and afternoon teas, and a wine reception on Tuesday evening. There is also the option to attend the conference dinner.