Darcy Alexandra is a lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern, Switzerland. Her co-creative ethnographic research and workshops have engaged with diverse participants including political asylum seekers, refugees, and undocumented migrants. Drawing from poetry, creative non-fiction, moving and still image, she has developed digital storytelling as a research method and mentors learning partners in representing their lived experiences and knowledge.

The title of her talk is Audiovisual Storytelling: Toward a Shared Practice of Inquiry

Koen Leurs is an assistant professor in Gender and Postcolonial Studies at the Department of Media and Culture, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. His research focus is on digital migration. His participatory action research seeks to enhance media literacy and critical consciousness of young migrants through media production – particularly of refugees, who are commonly the object of stereotypical visual media representation. 

The title of his talk is: Co-creating knowledge through researching personal digital archives with young connected migrants

During the so-called European refugee crisis (2015-2016) there was strong media attention for forced migrants arriving in Europe carrying smart phones and taking selfies. Now that the hype of the refugee selfie has subsided, this talk will explore whether and how personal digital archives (such as smartphones and social media profiles) of young connected migrants can work as resources for differently perceiving, narrating, and representing migration. From Lisa Malkki we know most audiences “have a strong visual sense of what ‘a refugee’ looks like” (1995, p. 10), but little is known about the gaze of migrants themselves, what do they chose to see and how do they self-represent themselves? This talk draws from participatory-action research fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2020 with 42 young refugees in the Netherlands.