Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge
Launched in October 2019, Cornell’s first-ever Global Grand Challenge nurtured collaboration between the university's migration experts. The Migrations initiative brought researching, teaching, and engagement for a world on the move to the forefront.
First Global Grand Challenge
Migrations was chosen as the first Cornell Global Grand Challenge, based on dialogues during and after the Global Grand Challenges Symposium, held November 2018 on the Ithaca campus. Since its launch in 2019, Cornell's Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge has catalyzed interdisciplinary, multispecies research on migration.
Our world is increasingly in motion. The unprecedented pace, scale, and complexity of movement on our planet—of humans, plants, animals, cultural messages and artifacts, resources, pathogens, and more—present a diverse suite of challenges and opportunities that play out across local, regional, national, and international scales.
-Migrations Task Force Report
Cross-Border Movements: Racism, Dispossession, and Migration
In 2021, the Migrations initiative received $5 million from the Mellon Foundation Just Futures Initiative to advance the study of racism, dispossession, and migration. Over three years, this support funded multidisciplinary research and brought migration-related art, workshops, events, videos, and more to a broad audience of students, scholars, and community members.
Migrations Impact
One of the fundamental goals of the Migrations initiative was to cultivate and engage an interdisciplinary community of scholars and practitioners focused on migration studies. This work was achieved through three key activities laid out by the initiative's founding task force.
Advance interdisciplinary scholarship, discovery, and innovation
Train a new generation of scholars and practitioners
Engage the broader community
Migrations Program
The work of Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge is continuing as the Migrations Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.
In its next phase, Cornell faculty and students will continue to forecast migrations, reduce harm to migrants, and shape policy to improve outcomes—for individuals and our world. Stay connected by following us on X.