What ontologies and epistemologies inform contemporary scholarship on refugees? Has the field of refugee studies lost its scholar-activist roots? What are the impacts of the policy-orientation of the field? Has it been led to reflect contemporary states’ dehumanization of and hostility toward asylum-seekers and refugees? We argue that the current methodologies and foci of mainstream refugee studies limit the production of new and transformative knowledges that could have emancipatory impacts. This workshop seeks to join with existing radical research trajectories, and carve out new trajectories in refugee research that re-humanize people seeking refuge. We will explore how we can re-centre critical research in refugee studies. Can Critical Race Theory, and Postcolonial/Decolonial/anti-colonial/global Southism approaches bring fresh insights and point to more emancipatory scholarship and activism on refugees? How might such approaches inform the field methodologies that researchers employ?

This one-day workshop uses the format of interventions followed by open discussions to stir critical reflections and debates across disciplines about the limitations, complicities and implications of researching refugees today.

Speakers:
Speakers will include Prof. Patricia Daley (University of Oxford), Dr. Elena-Fiddian Qasmiyeh (UCL, London), Dr. Oliver Bakewell (University of Manchester), Dr. Jonathan Darling (University of Durham), and Yousif Qasmiyeh (University of Oxford).

Keynote:
The keynote address will be delivered via video message by Behrouz Boochani (Journalist, author of No Friend but the Mountains, and detainee on Manus Island).
Mr Boochani’s book is available here: www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781760555382