Allegra Lab

In this final episode, the conversation turns to advocacy - what it means to do it from within a country shaped by donor dependency, short-term project cycles, and the structural inequalities discussed in the previous episode. Drawing on seven years of experience, participants reflect critically on why most funding for migration-related civil society work comes from European organizations whose pr...

In this episode, the conversation turns to the structural conditions that make the backway feel like the only viable option for so many Gambians. Moving from the individual to the systemic, the episode examines how unemployment, an inherited colonial education system that teaches in English and ignores local knowledge, nepotism in the job market, and the extractive exploitation of Gambian resource...

In this episode of Displacing Universities Ian speaks with Elisabeth Boston. Elisabeth is the Refugee policy officer at UCLouvain in Belgium. They speak about Access2University (A2U), a programme that aims to prepare refugees (applicants) with little or no knowledge of French to resume university studies, and Education Pathways, which is an initiative to bring displaced people to Belgium to study.

In this episode, YAIM members describe how they kept their sanity inside Tariq al Sikka through music, shared prayers, and solidarity across nationalities, before recounting what happened once they were repatriated to The Gambia through what IOM calls Assisted Voluntary Return. It traces the gap between what they were promised and what they actually received, and follows their attempts to build a...

In this episode, YAIM members recount their experience of detention in Tariq al Sikka, one of Libya's official detention centers, where they were held for three to four months in early 2017 following the violent raid in Gargaresh. Through their testimonies, we confront the devastating conditions inside - extreme overcrowding, lack of food, sanitation, and medical care, and the constant threat of v...

In this episode of Displacing Universities Svitlana and Ian speak with Marie-Christine Ukelo-Mbolo Merga about Perspectives AlterEgauZ* at the University of Fribourg.

In this episode of Displacing Universities Ian speaks with Paul O’Keefe. Paul worked for many years at in Kakkuma refugee camp in Kenya, including for the University of Geneva’s Inzone project. He also has strong ties with Vijana Twaweza Club, a sustainable agriculture organisation which is based in the camp, a group he keeps in touch with as part of his new job as Head of Education and Research a...

In this episode YAIM members retrace their perilous backway journey towards Europe in 2016/2017, across West African borders into Libya, highlighting the systemic violence, corruption, and gendered abuse inherent in these routes. Trigger warning: the following content contains graphic descriptions of torture, sexual violence, and death. Beyond documenting the brutal conditions of Mitiga Prison and...

The Displacing University podcast series is a series of long form interviews with people who have set up, run or research education programmes at European universities for people who have experienced displacement, including refugees and asylum seekers. In this episode of Displacing Universities Ian and Monica are speaking about the various Initiatives for Refugees at University of Cologne with Ari...

The Displacing University podcast series is a series of long form interviews with people who have set up, run or research education programmes at European universities for people who have experienced displacement, including refugees and asylum seekers. In this episode of Displacing Universities Ian is speaking with Andrew Flaus about Education Pathways at the University of Galway who, along with h...

The second episode explores the material and symbolic motivations for Gambian youth choosing the backway to Europe, contrasting the modern, individualized pressure to provide for family through remittances with the more communal and respected social status of "semesters" (emigrants) from previous generations.

The Displacing University podcast series is a series of long form interviews with people who have set up, run or research education programmes at European universities for people who have experienced displacement, including refugees and asylum seekers. In this episode Ian and Ibrar speak with Judith Beyer and Leila Dedial about The Hilde Domin Training Programme at University of Konstanz, Germany....

Backway to Europe: Talking Borders and Migration with Gambians on the Move by Viola Castellano Backway to Europe is a podcast series produced in collaboration with Gambian advocates and activists. It centers their analyses of the border regime through their direct experiences of “the backway” — the local term for the illegalized route to Europe. These experiences resonate with many who have attemp...

An audio essay by Ian M. Cook with anthropologists who have gone beyond critique for critique's sake. Anthropologists who have creatively intervened in the world in ways that blur the scholar/activist categories and centre anthropology's tentative, non-absolutist mode of knowledge creation. The essay argues that the attempts at political practice by anthropologists, combined with the work of those...

Allegra Editor Ian podcasts together with Thread guest editors Aja Smith & Anne Line Dalsgård as they explore 'Building Bodies For Thought' a thread in which theorising and thinking is undertaken by bodies that are more receptive, more sentient, more response-able. https://allegralaboratory.net/category/thematic-threads/building-bodies-for-thought/ In the podcast you will hear hundreds written and...

Allegra Editor Ian sits down with Thread guest editors Viola Castellano & Olivia Casagrande to discuss 'Encountering precarities: ethnography, spurious solidarity and neoliberal academia.' The thematic thread engages with the multiple and asymmetrical forms of precarisation and vulnerabilisation involving both ethnographers and their interlocutors in and beyond the field. https://allegralaboratory...

ResonanceCast is a new multimodal series that seeks to tease out timely shared concerns. After their articles have been published on Allegra Lab, we invite two authors to come together to discuss each other’s texts and the wider-ranging issues both speak to. Their conversation is moderated by someone from the Allegra Lab editorial collective. We hope to continue this emergent, generative and diale...

Welcome to ResonanceCast from Allegra Lab (https://allegralaboratory.net). In this podcast series we discuss articles publish by Allegra that resonate with one another. We invite the authors to read each other’s papers and then come together to talk with someone from the Allegra Lab editorial collective. This episode features Pascale Schild and Sandhya Fuchs talking about their articles 'Reciproca...

Anand Pandian speaks to Allegra editor Ian M. Cook about his latest book A Possible Anthropology: Methods for Uneasy Times (Duke, 2019). Special guests Penelope Papailias and Laura Kunreuther send in their questions, generated from an 'experimental humanities' reading group they were both part of this last summer. Music credit: The Barren Sea Audio co-editing: Laura Isabel de los Reyes Walker-Beav...

How do we socially and culturally adapt to isolation? How do we experience empty spaces? Are new forms of solidarity emerging? How does it feel to have to work in hospitals, assembly lines or shops when others stay at home? What new questions are we asking ourselves about our parenting and being a child? What new forms of exploitation emerge from the increased digitalisation of work? What new spac...

The Corona Diaries 34: April 27 Aditya In Bengaluru allegralaboratory.net/the-corona-diaries/ How do we socially and culturally adapt to isolation? How do we experience empty spaces? Are new forms of solidarity emerging? How does it feel to have to work in hospitals, assembly lines or shops when others stay at home? What new questions are we asking ourselves about our parenting and being a child?...

The Corona Diaries 33: April 26 Tamara In Zagreb How do we socially and culturally adapt to isolation? How do we experience empty spaces? Are new forms of solidarity emerging? How does it feel to have to work in hospitals, assembly lines or shops when others stay at home? What new questions are we asking ourselves about our parenting and being a child? What new forms of exploitation emerge from th...

The Corona Diaries 32: April 25 Panagiota In Barcelona How do we socially and culturally adapt to isolation? How do we experience empty spaces? Are new forms of solidarity emerging? How does it feel to have to work in hospitals, assembly lines or shops when others stay at home? What new questions are we asking ourselves about our parenting and being a child? What new forms of exploitation emerge f...

The Corona Diaries 31: April 24 Priyanka In Mysuru allegralaboratory.net/the-corona-diaries/ How do we socially and culturally adapt to isolation? How do we experience empty spaces? Are new forms of solidarity emerging? How does it feel to have to work in hospitals, assembly lines or shops when others stay at home? What new questions are we asking ourselves about our parenting and being a child? W...

The Corona Diaries 30: April 23 Justin In Budapest allegralaboratory.net/the-corona-diaries/ How do we socially and culturally adapt to isolation? How do we experience empty spaces? Are new forms of solidarity emerging? How does it feel to have to work in hospitals, assembly lines or shops when others stay at home? What new questions are we asking ourselves about our parenting and being a child? W...