Conversations with Iris: Podcast on migration, diversity and displacement

[Conversation in Portuguese] Dr Andrea Poleto Oltramari (Visiting Fellow at IRiS) and Dr Josiane Silva de Oliveira discuss the racialised and gendered effects of Covid-19 in Brazil.

IRiS Researcher Laurence Lessard-Phillips, talks to Maureen Lewis, Chief Officer of Walsall Black Sisters Collective and Advisory Board member of Walsall for All. They discuss Maureen’s important work, the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement and the importance of learning from our collective history.

Sandra Pertek, IRiS Researcher, speaks to Pip McKnight of Refugee Women Connect and Hana Leshaj, asylum seeker based in Liverpool and member of Refugee Women Connect Advocacy Group, about the deteriorating reality post COVID-19 for migrants and asylum seekers in the UK, at the time of easing lockdown restrictions.

IRiS Researchers, Annavittoria Sarli and Natasha Nicholls talk to Nina Sahraoui from the Paris Centre for Sociological and Political Research (CNRS) and Sabrina Marchetti from the University Ca’ Foscari in Venice, specialists in the intersection of gender and migration.

[Conversation in Italian] IRiS Researcher, Annavittoria Sarli talks to Giuseppe Pugliese, an activist at SOS Rosarno, a civil society organisation that fights against the exploitation of agricultural workers, mostly migrants, in Italy.

Professor Jenny Phillimore talks to Ruth Forecast and Sharon Baker from the Malvern Welcomes Community Sponsorship Group. They discuss the challenges that refugee families and volunteers have faced in the time of Covid-19, including getting to grips with new technologies, supporting children with school work and enabling families to understand the regular Government updates and information. Find o...

In 2017, the Iranian-Kurdish writer, Behrouz Boochani, published an extraordinary book, “No Friend But the Mountains” which documented his life imprisoned in the Australian-run immigration detention centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. Combining political theory, myth, poetry, memoir, the book rises to the challenge of resisting oppression by creating a new literary form of knowledge. Written...

In this episode, IRiS Director Professor Nando Sigona talks to Dr Alan Gamlen, Associate Professor of Geography at Monash University, Australia, founding editor-in-chief of the journal Migration Studies (OUP) and co-editor of the “Global Migration and Social Change” book series for Bristol University Press. Inspired by Alan Gamlen’s recent COMPAS Working Paper on migration and the pandemic, this c...

Dawn River, academic at IRiS talks to Dr Rubina Jasani, Programme Director for Global Health at The Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute in Manchester. Rubina has an interest in exploring people’s lived experience of violence, displacement and identities; gender and sexuality; and suffering and healing. As a founding member of ‘No Recourse! Peer Research Project’ in partnership with WAST (...

Melash Zeleke is from Ethiopia and is a not sighted asylum seeker currently living in a reception centre in Rome, Italy. He tells Natasha Nicholls and Annavittoria Sarli (IRiS) about his story and his life.

In this episode, Lyndsey Stonebridge, professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham, talks to Daniel Trilling, former editor of the New Humanist, journalist and author of Lights in the Distance. Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe (2018) and Bloody Nasty People. The Rise of Britain’s Far Right (2012).

This conversation between Espoir Njei and Dawn River took place one month into the coronavirus lockdown. They built a friendship through their shared commitment to supporting LGBTIQ migrants fleeing persecution. Espoir is a lesbian asylum seeker from the Cameroon currently in lockdown in Birmingham and Dawn is a queer academic at the University of Birmingham currently in lockdown in Germany.

Lyndsey Stonebridge, professor of humanities and human rights at the University of Birmingham, dialogues with Les Back, professor of sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and recently co-author of “Migrant City” (Routledge 2018).