Hospitality and Hostility in a Moving World: Call for proposals

Millions of people have fled conflicts and mass human rights violations as well as poverty and persecution across the Middle East, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia, as well as further afield. As they have crossed and resisted national boundaries both within and across these geopolitical areas, regional organisations, states, civil societies and individuals have found themselves increasingly implicated in, and affected by, a series of interconnected conflicts and crises, with reverberations across all aspects of contemporary society.

Across all of these local, national, regional and international spaces, displaced people from these overlapping crises of protection have been met by a combination of hospitality and welcome, and hostility and violence. This inter-disciplinaryconference will examine the diverse responses that have been developed on different scales and across different spaces.

We invite academic staff, doctoral and postdoctoral researchers from across the University of London to contribute papers that reflect on the ways that their research and/or practice can inform our understanding of the history, causes, experiences,
representations and/or implications of the numerous shifts in politics, people and perceptions that are taking place around the world. We invite papers, performances, posters and multi-media presentations that offer empirical insights and/or theoretical/aesthetic reflections that will help us develop a more nuanced understanding of the multiple human, material and representational effects that these crises continue to produce.

Image credit: Jan Hoffmann, Lensational