Refugee Spaces: Hosting and Encounter, Ancient and Modern

Refugee spaces are described alternatively as sites of exception or protection, as liminal, condensed and organically structured, as laboratories for a radical politics and, all but, urban manifestations of permanent temporariness (a term devised by Petti and Hillal). As densely populated physical sites, not mere conceptual entities, these reveal practices that elude normalisation and against the odds strive to challenge Orwellian realities by also being sites of hosting, exceptional politics, innovative adaptation and crucibles of existence beyond the nation state. Without romanticising there are lessons to be learned from the transformations of refugee spaces across time – Can we even claim that such spaces existed in a world before the nation state and its special relationship between citizenship, territory and belonging took hold? The aim of this dialogue – across chronologies, geographies and practices – is to expose the diversity of meanings of refugee spaces and manifestations of their existence and (counter)liminality.

Speakers:

• Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (Migration and Refugee Studies, Geography, UCL, London)
• Murray Fraser (Architecture and Global Culture, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, London)
• Benjamin Gray (Ancient History, Birkbeck University of London)
• Elena Isayev (Ancient History and Place, University of Exeter)
• Yara Sharif (Architecture, University of Westminster/NG Architects, London)
• Camillo Boano (Urban Design and Critical Theory, Bartlett and UCL Urban Lab)

Panel Chair: Ceri Ashley (Endangered Materials, Africa, Oceania and Americas, British Museum)

This dialogue is an intersection between a number of initiatives, co-sponsoring this event:

• Mobility and Displacement in the Ancient World, a series of seminars in 2019, co-organised by Greg Woolf and Elena Isayev for the Institute of Classical Studies (ICS).
• Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) at UCL, whose 2017-2018 research theme was Vulnerability, and which hosts the Refuge in a Moving World research network led by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh.
• Refugee Hosts research project, led by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and funded by the AHRC-ESRC.

All welcome. Please note that there may be photography and/or audio recording at some events and that admission is on a first come first served basis. Please follow this FAQ link for more information.