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2025 MRG PGR Migration Conference "Reimagining Migration: Decolonisation and identity across time and space | University of ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ, 20 June 2025".

Programme will be announced in early May. 

The 2025 Migration Research Group Postgraduate Conference brings together an international cohort of PhD students to critically engage with migration beyond restrictive colonial paradigms. This one-day event creates a platform for emerging scholars to present innovative theoretical approaches that center the lived experiences of migrants while confronting the power structures that condition mobility.

Taking place at a critical juncture when migration research is increasingly reckoning with its own role in reproducing problematic knowledge hierarchies, the conference showcases work that approaches migration not merely as a phenomenon to be documented but as a generative site for theoretical innovation. Presentations will explore how people navigate increasingly hostile border regimes through everyday practices, how researchers can engage with migrant experiences ethically, and how colonial legacies persist in contemporary migration governance while highlighting potential alternative arrangements.

1. Embodiment and emotionality across the life course – Examining how migration is experienced through bodies and emotions through the life course.
2. Methods and ethics – Interrogating methodological innovations, questions of reflexivity and epistemic justice.
3. Decolonisation in theory and practice – Challenging Eurocentric frameworks and developing alternative approaches to migration research.
4. Temporalities and geographies – Exploring how migration reconfigures relationships to time and space.

These themes reflect the multidimensional nature of migration experiences, where embodied realities intersect with methodological, decolonial, temporal and spatial considerations. By bringing together presentations across these themes, the conference creates opportunities for productive dialogue that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. Each thematic session will be chaired by a leading academic from a range of departments within the University.

The day will conclude with the MRG Annual Lecture with Professor Jenny Phillimore (University of Birmingham) on "Encounters with kindness: everyday and extraordinary kind interventions in the lives of forced migrant survivors of sexual and gender based violence". This keynote examines how acts of care emerge within systems of institutional neglect, offering crucial insights into support mechanisms for vulnerable migrants.

This gathering of emerging migration scholars represents a collective effort to develop more nuanced understandings of contemporary migration while working toward futures where movement is not defined by violence and exclusion.