As we return from our summer recess and prepare for a new year at RefugeeHistory.org, let’s look back at the year past.

We opened the year with a conversation between Ismail Alkhateeb, Irem Karabağ, Marcia C. Schenck, and Kate Reed asking what would it mean to take seriously a right to research for those living in contexts of displacement, statelessness, and sub-citizenship? In their co-edited volume, they aimed to make visible the conditions of the production of history and their conversation thinks about what knowledge means and how it is shared. Our next post, by Laura Madokoro, continued the theme of historical method. In Rewriting Refuge, Laura reflects on what recent turns in Indigenous Studies can offer refugee histories. As Laura wrote, ‘there is much to be gained in bringing scholarship on imperialism, European colonialism, and settler colonialism into deeper dialogue.’ And in our last post for the year, Samantha Knapton and Katherine Rossy asked what did ‘rehabilitation’ mean in the aftermath of the Second World War? Was it specific to the newly created, but short-lived, UNRRA? Who was being ‘rehabilitated’, and why? These questions and more are explored in their new edited volume.

Methodological challenges and historical approaches abounded as Melissa Gatter described the process of writing the history of a modern refugee camp, in this case Azraq, in the middle of the eastern Jordanian desert. ‘By paying attention to the spatial and temporal fabrics of places like Azraq, we not only trace the legacies of camp technologies, but we also witness the histories of the camp itself being written by the people who govern them and those who live and work in them.’ Vesna Lukic and Thomas Kador turned to archaeological films as a primary source for writing Palestinian history, with an opportunity for readers to see clips from the film themselves. In a personal and evocative post, Lucy Fulford discussed what it means to write the personal, when history is your family story, following her work on Ugandan Asian displacement. Family history also underpinned Mikhal Dekel’s post about how a thousand unaccompanied child holocaust refugees ended up in Tehran, as she followed the journey of her father. Mikhal asks, ‘why has the story that belonged to the majority of survivors not been told? Why does it remain largely neglected and un-commemorated today?’

Other posts offered historical case studies of new research in the field. In January, Anna Maguire wrote about Challenging ‘Fortress Europe’: Refugee Solidarities in 1990s Britain, using the records of campaigning groups to track the rise of a language of rights across the political spectrum. Muhammad Hamid Zaman shared insights from his new book about the impact of statelessness on the denial of essential services, including healthcare, in Pakistan. Fionntán O’Hara shared fascinating new research on humanitarian mandates, Central American refugee camps and the Cold War, in a blog about refugee resistance to Médecins San Frontières in San Antonio, Honduras.

We are also able to share reviews of new refugee history books. This year, we featured Anne Irfan’s Refuge and Resistance: Palestinians and the International Refugee System reviewed by Laura Robson, a book of ‘style and verve’, which explores UNRWA, this central institution of the conflict and indeed of Palestinian life in exile.

One of the highlights of the past year was our mini-series on the UNHCR archives. So if research is on your agenda for the year ahead or if your students are planning new projects, don’t miss our beginner’s guide, our Q&A with the archivists and a reflection on analysing UNHCR documents from and beyond the UNHCR archives.

In the year ahead, look out for posts about Teaching Refugee History, following our successful workshop in June. If you have an idea for a blog yourself, whether based on your own research or a book you’d like to review, please just get in touch!

Featured Image: Refugees on the barge that brought them from Lizy-sur-Ourq to Paris http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.anrc