Histories of Migration: Transatlantic and Global Perspectives
GHI West, the Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute Washington DC invites proposals for papers to be presented at the 3rd Bucerius Young Scholars Forum to be held at UC Berkeley, October 21-23, 2019. We seek proposals from post-doctoral scholars, recent PhDs, as well as those in the final stages of their dissertations with a background in history and/or related fields.
The Bucerius Young Scholars Forum, funded by the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius, is an annual program designed to bring together a transatlantic group of ten junior scholars based in Germany, Europe, and North America to explore new research in the history of migration with a particular focus on questions arising from interlacing the perspectives of migration and knowledge. The forum is connected to the Annual Bucerius Lecture on “Histories of Migration: Transatlantic and Global Perspectives,” given and commented on by two prominent figures in the field of migration studies.
We call for empirically rich contributions at the intersection of migration studies and the history of knowledge. Contributions might rephrase topics and methodological issues in migration studies from the perspective of the history of knowledge. They might also examine the history of the field of migration studies. Alternatively, contributions might test approaches in the history of knowledge from the vantage point of migration studies. Scholars of migration continually deal with the production of knowledge, particularly through the ways state officials categorize, racialize, or legalize migrants. Epistemological questions also arise when researchers follow migrants’ trajectories along the geographies and temporalities their very movements help shape and create. Migrants themselves often turn into experts of migration: They produce, contest, and deploy political, legal, or economic knowledge pertaining to their everyday lives as migrants. Moreover, they might possess and take with them other types of knowledge (professional, academic, religious, cultural).
The Bucerius Young Scholars Forum looks at its theme from a trans-epochal, transregional, or interdisciplinary perspective and seeks to account for categories such as religion, class, race/ethnicity, gender, or age and generation. While the focus of the forum will be on historic discourses, we encourage applications from emerging scholars working in the fields of social sciences, political sciences, anthropology, migration or area studies, etc.
Papers will be pre-circulated to allow maximum time for invited senior scholars and peers to engage in discussions on the state of the research field. The workshop language will be English. The organizers will cover basic expenses for travel and accommodation.