News and Media

  On November 14, 2022, DIASCON project member Vadim Romashov gave a public online-lecture on ethnographic peace research at the Carter School Methods Mondays. The lecture presented methodological insights from his ethnographic research on everyday practices and narratives of living together in Armenian-Azerbaijani villages in the southern borderland of Georgia You can access the online […]

On November 24-25, 2022, project members of DIASCON Vadim Romashov and Anush Petrosyan participated in the Conference “Mobile Lives, Glocal Complexities” organized by the Society of Ethnic Relations and International Migration (ETMU). Partaking in the workshop on Activist research in practice: Methodological and ethical conversations, Romashov and Petrosyan presented the abstract of an upcoming paper […]

Written by Zahra Edalati and Majid Imani    The death of 22-year-old Mahsa (Zhina) Amini sparked mass protests in Iran that have persisted for about two months in different cities in Iran, as well as far from Iran’s borders. Mahsa was detained, beaten, and killed by Iran’s morality police for what they deemed an inappropriate […]

Our very own Vadim Romashov defended his PhD in Peace and Conflict Research at Tampere University this fall! Vadim’s dissertation is an ethnographic story-based interpretation of everyday practices and narratives of living together in Armenian-Azerbaijani rural communities in Georgia. At the center of his research, is a concern with how members of communities live together […]

In a new blog titled “(Ukrainian) diasporas can play an important role during and after the conflict” on the site “Liikkeessä yli rajonen” (Moving across borders), Élise Féron and Mari Toivanen discuss the ways diasporas can contribute to reconstruction, solidarity-building and mobilization both during and after war. Read the full text here.

Project researcher Sofiya Voytiv has written a blog on “Liikkeessä yli rajonen” (Moving across borders), in which she reflects on patterns of solidarity for Ukraine in diasporic spaces in Sweden in 2014 and now, based on her own experiences as a Ukrainian living in Sweden. Read the full post here

Great news! The DIASCON team will be hosting two panel sessions on “Diasporas and peace” at the 2022 European Peace Research Association (EuPRA) conference in Tampere from 1-4 June! The title of the conference is “Empowering Peace: The Role of Civil Society in Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation” and we look forward to presenting our ongoing […]

We are happy to share with you that the DIASCON handbook is now fully available online and can be found here: DIASCON HANDBOOK The  handbook is a result of interviews, workshops and additional research conducted in the frame of the DIASCON project and is intended for practitioners working with diasporas and migrants, civil society organizations […]

DIASCON project members Élise Féron and Sofiya Voytiv published their article “Toward a Theory of Diaspora Formation through Conflict Deterritorialization” in Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism. You can find the article here: http://doi.org/10.1111/sena.12354   

Our handbook ‘Diasporas and conflict transportation: Challenges and creative practices’ is now ready in print and we are very excited! The handbook is a guide for practitioners working with migrant and diaspora communities and it focuses on inter- and intra-diaspora relations in countries of settlement, as well as on relationships between diaspora organizations, policy makers […]

Bahar Baser and Élise Féron recently published their article “Host State Reactions to Home State Diaspora Engagement Policies: Rethinking State Sovereignty and Limits of Diaspora Governance” in Global Networks. You can find the full article right here: https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12341 

Held at the University of Zürich on September 23rd and 24th, project members Bruno Lefort, Élise Féron and Bahar Baser each presented in the workshop “Dealing with the past: transnational dimensions dimensions and diasporic experiences”. Their presentations dealt with transmission of conflict memories in different diasporic spaces. More information and the abstracts can be found […]

DIASCON project researcher Élise Féron recently published a chapter entitled ‘Gender and Diasporas’ in Routledge Handbook of Feminist Peace Research, edited by Tarja Väyrynen, Élise Féron, Swati Parashar and Catia C. Confortini. You can find the handbook here: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Feminist-Peace-Research/Vayrynen-Parashar-Feron-Confortini/p/book/9780367109844

DIASCON project member Élise Féron was invited as keynote speaker at the Migration Conference on July 6th-10th in London (ONLINE). Her keynote was entitled “Diasporas, new generations, and homeland conflicts: between transmission and rearticulation of the conflict heritage”. 

On April 21st-23rd, DIASCON project members Sofiya Voytiv and Cæcilie Svop Jensen presented their research at the online conference “Migrant belongings: digital practices and the everyday” organized by Utrecht University. The book of abstracts as well as the programme can be viewed here

DIASCON hosted its 2nd tripartite workshop online on the 16th of April 2021. This workshop focused on the inclusion and exclusion from policymaking faced by diasporas in host country settings. Migrant and diaspora groups are more often than not targets, rather than actors in security politics, and/or have limited access to policy processes in the […]

By Anna Quattrone   I recently analysed the processes of identification and mobilisation of Sri Lankan diasporas in Italy. It has proved of great interest, given the lack of comprehensive academic work on their political engagement in home and host countries beyond the peace vs war maker dichotomisation and the LTTE’s politics. My objective was […]

DIASCON is hosting its first online workshop on diasporas the 2nd of October 2020. The workshop brings together relevant stakeholders working with diasporas to discuss approaches and challenges related to their work. Participants of the workshop include diaspora-organizations, NGOs and other relevant institutions working with diaspora groups. The workshop aims to explore the relationships between […]

Project researchers Élise Féron and Bruno Lefort published their article “Diasporas and conflicts – understanding the nexus” in the journal Diaspora Studies in January 2019. In the article they bring forth alternative approaches to understanding and investigating the conflict-diaspora nexus through a critical examination of current academic literature on conflict-generated diasporas. Read the full article […]

Élise Féron’s article “Embracing complexity: Diaspora politics as a co-construction” is published in Migration Letters, vol. 17, no. 1. In the article, she argues how attempts to understand diaspora politics as produced mostly in host or home countries, fail to capture the complexity of diasporas as political actors. Instead she proposes to focus on transnational […]