PIC Successful Applications and Reports
Ongoing and Future Activities - Funded via PIC
 | Hospitality, Storytelling and Integration in a Mobile World - Research Project Ongoing The project draws on the insights developed through my past (and published) research on the rise of the European novel and its integral connection with the dawn of commercial and mobile modernity. The focus is on the power of storytelling as a key resource and often last resort, of the homeless traveller or picaro, structuring affective relationships between strangers and helping newcomers adapt and be accepted in new contexts. The next stage of the research is to work more intensively with different groups in the local community of Peterborough and gather data about the use of storytelling as a tool for integration. The data will be collected in the context of four storytelling workshops involving performance (faciliated by English Pocket Opera Company) and discussion about the opportunities and dangers of storytelling by, with and about migrants and diaspora. The workshops will be recorded and elements from each used to construct a film that links the stories of different groups together: 'A Peterborough picaresque'. The film will provide a resource for fostering further engagement with members of the local community and with community leaders to generate a second level of reflection upon storytelling as a tool for integration and to then produce a policy-facing report relating to Central Government's Integrated Communities initiative – Peterborough being one of the five areas chosen to participate in this pilot and its evaluation. Dr Jenny Mander |
 | Language, Heritage, Migration - Research Project Ongoing Language and heritage play an important role in the process of global human movement and in the experience of transnational migrants. In this strand we seek to establish a new field of interdisciplinary scholarship which spans multiple disciplines and in particular to link together three university research initiatives on language, heritage and migration. The programme focuses on a core question pertaining to in what way we can capitalise on the ‘language heritage capital’ in homes, schools and communities to support migrant children’s learning, integration and mobility across the life span. It builds upon the groundwork of Cambridge Research in Community Language Education Network established in 2014 which brings together policy makers, practitioners, academics and research students in the Cambridge area to examine critical issues in relation to language heritage in the context of education and schooling of bilingual children on the move. |
 | Cambridge Interdisciplinary Performance Network (CIPN) Ongoing The Cambridge Interdisciplinary Performance Network (CIPN) brings together people from a wide variety of different backgrounds in Cambridge and beyond to explore the idea of performance as a concept, from music and literary studies to history, anthropology, architecture and medicine. CIPN strives to foster exchange on the potential of performance to engender dialogue across conventionally separated cultural categories, practices and disciplines. A CRASSH initiative in 2013-2019, CIPN continues as a cross-disciplinary platform jointly funded by the Faculties of Classics, Divinity and Music. This year, we aim to open up cross-disciplinary conversations about ‘Theatricality and Public Space’, moving from Europe as a conceptual site of in/exclusion in Michaelmas Term to the performance of sacred landscapes in Lent Term to music and the soundscapes of theatricality in Easter Term. Our proposed activities in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement would complement this thematic programme, by extending our Michaelmas Term focus. |
The Post-Windrush Generation: Black British Voices of Resistance Planned 21-22 May 2021 This groundbreaking conference will explore what it really means to be black in Britain, by providing a space for leading black commentators to address a range of core themes including identity, belonging, and resistance via the conduit of artistic expression. This event will bring together leading academics, performers and to chronicle the muted and thorny legacy of race relations in the UK, and the manner in which the Post-Windrush generation have tirelessly fought for acknowledgment, equity and equality, in a period spanning Thatcherism to Brexit. Building upon the recent highly impactful visits of David Lammy, Afua Hirsch and Reni Eddo-Lodge, this conference will be the first time that Cambridge University brings together such a wide variety of leading black British voices in conversation, to provide an authenticated and revealing insight into black British culture. As well as academic enquiry, performative art will lie at the core of this event, as it has acted as a mechanism by which members of the Post-Windrush generation have negotiated multiple layers of discrimination in order to establish a socio-political foothold in Britain. | |
 | Memories in Transit Planned 2021 - Date to be announced This interdisciplinary conference will bring together scholars from various disciplines researching transnational dimensions of memory, subjectivity and identity formation, broadly defined. Exploring the social-political processes and identities that resist or transcend neat categorisations of the ‘local’, ‘national’ or ‘global’, this conference explores different modes of transnational memory and commemoration that shape identities such as race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, and sexuality. The conference seeks to refine conceptual and methodological issues surrounding transnational memories, forms of remembering, and identities through a discussion of contemporary and historical case studies from across the globe as well as theoretically focused contributions to the field. The conference will be relevant to sociologists, historians, literary critics, political scientists, and human geographers interested in the relationships between memory and mobility. |
Completed Activities
 | How the stories we tell, shape the communities we live in 24 May 2018, Newnham College, University of Cambridge This workshop was led by Dr Jenny Mander, Fellow and Director of Studies in Modern and Medieval Languages at Newnham. In collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement, the day considered the representation of minority groups, language diversity and social cohesion. Read More |
 | Studying Saint-Domingue after the Haitian Aid Crisis 3 Sept 2018,Newnham College, University of Cambridge This workshop was led by Dr. Rhys Jones, Research Fellow in History at Sidney Sussex College, and Dr. Jenny Mander, Fellow and Director of Studies in Modern and Medieval Language at Newnham. In collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement, the day considered how scholars of colonial Haiti (Saint-Domingue) should approach their subject matter in the wake of sexual misconduct and corruption accusations made against aid workers in Haiti earlier in 2018. The attendees represented a huge diversity of experience and opinion: the Haitian diaspora, United Haitian in the UK, the Haitian Support Group, the Ethical Journalism Network, the European Union diplomatic service, the Haitian tourism industry, Christian Aid and other interested charitable organisations, and UK higher education centres, including several academics from the University of Cambridge. Read More |
 | Cambridge Emergency and Displacement Group Approved Feb 2019, Ongoing Research Group This interdisciplinary group addresses brings together existing research groups, projects and individuals working on displacement, emergency relief, on refugee camps and holding centres globally, particularly but not only in the Global South. It aims to draw upon extensive research experience of academics and graduates working with displaced, migrant and refugee communities and individuals and with international humanitarian organisations, public and private sector aid givers and national and local government agencies so as to address the pressing challenges associated with global human movement. |
 | “Governing migration beyond ‘Fortress Europe’” 16-17 September 2019, Alison Richard Building, University of Cambridge This 1.5 day conference attracted over 70 abstracts during the call for papers process, 16 of which were selected for inclusion into the final program. Beside the panellists, participants included Prof. Ferruccio Pastore (FIERI, Italy), who delivered the keynote speech, and Dr. Federica Infantino (ULB, Belgium), who presented her newly published book. Speakers were from institutions based in 10 different countries in Europe, North America and Africa, and 13 participants out of 18 were women. Read More |
 | No Place Like Home? Policy Workshop on refugees and forced displacement 20 Sept 2019, Clare Hall Cambridge On Friday, 20 September, scholars, policymakers and participants with a refugee background gathered at Clare Hall for the workshop No Place Like Home? New Perspectives on Displacement and the Modern Refugee System. |
 | Journeys and Destinations Film Festival 9 - 18 October 2020 queer qandī Journeys and Destinations film fest was a queer film festival focused on issues of migration and movement made in SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) region. The festival also hosted conversations and panel discussions with filmmakers, activists and scholars operating in and/or studying the region. The conversations and the panel discussions ended the festival during the weekend of 17-18 October. The festival was composed of 17 film screenings, two panel discussions, four conversations and a scriptwriting workshop. Due to the pandemic the ten days long festival was held entirely online. Read More |