Supporting each other in times of displacement and crisis: reflections from the US, Lebanon, Uganda, and Sri Lanka

The Centre for Lebanese Studies invites you to attend a webinar marking the Refugee Week 2023

“Supporting each other in times of displacement and crisis: reflections from the US, Lebanon, Uganda, and Sri Lanka”

Wednesday 21 June 2023
5 pm Lebanon time
10 am US EST

Please register here:

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYlceigqjsuE9wD_NPBezQamavex847O-xw 

The webinar:

People find alternative ways of seeking support and protection. Sometimes this ends up in establishing community-based organisations or collectives, oftentimes the support may be seen as ad hoc and as taking place on an individual basis. But these are practices that emerge out of the way people co-exist and relate to each other in specific contexts.

In this webinar, we discuss experiences of such support networks and initiatives across four different contexts: the United States, Uganda, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka.

We discuss the similarities and differences of displacement experiences across these four contexts and how people may organise and mobilise for support.

Speakers:

• Maria Maalouf 
• Mohideen M. Alikhan
• Benjamin Kagigi
• Emmanuel Viga

Moderated by Professor Anita Häuserman Fábos and Cathrine Brun

Speakers’ bios

Maria Maalouf

Has worked with the VULNER Project and the Centre for Lebanese Studies since 2020. Her research is in the field of forced migration as well as social movements. She completed her master’s degree in 2022 with a thesis entitled “The UNHCR and the States Sovereignty – Lebanon as a Case Study” analysing the legal and practical framework of the UNHCR within the framework of the Lebanese sovereignty. Maria has two years of experience working with local NGOs on Women’s and People with Disabilities rights. She also had a research internship with the Refugee Research and Policy Program at Issam Fares Institute For Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) at AUB. 

Mohideen M. Alikhan 

Is a senior lecturer at the Department of Geography, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He has been a visiting lecturer at the Department of Geography, University of Colombo. He graduated from the University of Colombo and then he did his MPhil at the Department of Geography, the University of Peradeniya. Alikhan has recently completed his PhD on ‘Conviviality, tension and everyday negotiations: subaltern cosmopolitanism and governance dynamics of low-income neighbourhoods in Colombo, Sri Lanka’ at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom. His research areas of interest include urban governance, housing, migration with special focus on displacement, relocations and labour. 

Benjamin Kagigi 

Is Outreach Manager African Community Education (ACE). He was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and spent time in Kenya and Rwanda before coming to the United States in 2014 with his family. Having experience assisting refugees with interpretation and gaining access to education in Kenya, he joined ACE in 2015. As head of our Outreach Team, Benjamin enjoys using his own experiences to serve the families of ACE in building successful lives. He has his Bachelor’s in Education from the University of Kibungo in Rwanda and is currently pursuing his Master’s in International Development and Social Change from Clark University. Benjamin speaks six languages, including French and Swahili. He enjoys spending time with his wife and five children and is an avid viewer of local Worcester sports, especially soccer.

Emmanuel Viga 

Is a PhD candidate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He is currently writing a dissertation on accountability practices among civic humanitarian actors in Uganda: case of South Sudanese protracted displacement. As someone who spent his early years of childhood in a refugee camp in South Sudan, formerly southern Sudan before 2011, Emmanuel is deeply invested in the plights of refugees and their struggles to attain a meaningful living. Prior to his PhD, he worked with Internally Displaced Persons in Northern Uganda and served as a consultant for UNDP on Sexual and Gender Based Violence response and prevention mechanisms in the same region. Emmanuel is interested in research that explores humanitarianism, migration, internally displaced persons, post conflict reconstruction. 

Anita Fábos 

Is an anthropologist who has worked and conducted research together with Muslim Arab Sudanese refugees in the Middle East, Europe, and North America. Formerly the Director of the Forced Migration and Refugee Studies program at the American University in Cairo, and later Programme Coordinator for the graduate program in Refugee Studies at the University of East London, Fábos has integrated teaching, research, and participatory programs that have incorporated refugee and forced migrant perspectives into collaborative work with scholars, practitioners, refugee organizations, policy makers, and international organizations. Fábos and her writing partner Cathrine Brun (Professor and Deputy Director at CLS ) are working on a book on home and home-making for people in circumstances of long-term displacement, entitled Constellations of Home. She is also co-principle investigator (with Ed Carr) of the Worcester, MA site for Project MISTY, a six-city initiative with funding through the Belmont Forum that explores the ways that migration interacts with sustainability concerns in destination cities, with an emphasis on the unrecognized benefits that it can bring.

Cathrine Brun 

Is a human geographer and her research-interests concern forced migration and conflict, housing and home; theory, ethics and practice of humanitarianism. Her approach to research is qualitative and ethnographic with action research as a central way of co-producing knowledge. Cathrine has a PhD in human geography and has worked with forced displacement, disasters and urban development in Sri Lanka, Georgia, Malawi, Uganda, Jordan and Lebanon. Prior to joining the CLS, she was a Professor in Geography at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (till 2015) and the Director of the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP) at Oxford Brookes University (on leave from 2021).