Teaching Refugee History - Call for Participants
We are pleased to announce that RefugeeHistory.org will be hosting an in-person workshop exploring teaching refugee history at University College London on Monday 24 June 2024, supported by generous funding from the Department of Arts and Sciences and the Department of History at UCL.
The purpose of this event is to explore how refugee history is taught in universities. What are the particular considerations for designing, delivering and assessing history in this field? The workshop will bring together academics at all career stages who are engaged with teaching refugee history whether as part of the content of courses with wider remits or in specific modules and at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. We welcome submissions from scholars in other disciplines whose teaching on refugees has a historical aspect.
The workshop will grapple with the challenges of teaching refugee history to different students, questions of methodology, sources and approaches, and where refugee history fits within the broader curriculum. We will also consider questions of positionality, classroom dynamics and teaching difficult and complex histories.
Understanding that June is a busy time in the sector, we are not asking participants to produce papers or prepare formal presentations for the workshop. Instead, we invite each participant to submit a one-page summary of their teaching or pedagogic approach to this field in advance of the workshop, as a basis for conversation. This might introduce or address themes including but not limited to: primary source and archival work, secondary literature and interdisciplinarity, methods, teaching difficult topics and positionality, creative pedagogy and assessment.
This is a one-day workshop which will have an open format based around the themes raised in the advance material. Funding is available to support UK domestic travel and limited accommodation.
Timeline
Scholars of all career stages and disciplines are encouraged to submit expressions of interest to anna.maguire@ucl.ac.uk by Friday 10 May.
Selected participants will be informed by 15 May and will be asked to submit their summary by 1 June.
The workshop will take place in-person on Monday 24 June 2024 at University College London.
The banner image shows a classroom for refugee children, part of the American Hostels for Refugees (Accueil Franco-Americain aux Refugees, Belges & Francais), organized by Mrs. Edith Wharton & Mrs. Royall Tyler, under the American Red Cross, in France during the First World War.
Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. LC-DIG-anrc-06793. Available at: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017672598/
