Teaching

Teachers view a fabric sign that reads, "Fight Ignorance Not Immirgrance." — Migrations cosponsored the 2023 International Studies Summer Institute on testimonies of migration. New York State teachers learned how to engage with migrant stories and students in a culturally responsive way.

The Migrations initiative provided opportunities for a broad global public to get involved in the study of multispecies migration, including students of all levels, community college faculty, Cornell researchers, and more.

Summer Institutes

Over three summers, the initiative's summer institute, co-sponsored by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, immersed early-career scholars in the study of racism, dispossession, and migration in a collaborative space. Each year, the institute addressed a new topic under the leadership of a faculty researcher.

Past institutes include:

Cartographies of Racial Justice Beyond Borders (2021) led by Tao Leigh Goffe and Shannon Gleeson (School of Industrial and Labor Relations)
The Ongoing Afterlife of Dispossession in Africa and the Americas (2022) led by Judith Byfield (History, College of Arts and Sciences)
History and Memory: Migration, Militarism, and U.S. Empire (2023) led by Christine Bacareza Balance (Performing and Media Arts and Asian American Studies, A&S) and Derek Chang (History and Asian American Studies, A&S)

The World We Became: Map Quest 2350, A Speculative Atlas Beyond Climate Crisis

Participants from the 2021 summer institute—a collective of artists, poets, academics, curators, architects, and activists—tackled how racial justice and climate crisis are entangled in this essay and speculative cartography experiment.

Published in Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, the project maps global ecological crises and shared Black, Asian, Pacific, Middle Eastern, Latin American, Caribbean, and Indigenous futures with visual and audio components presenting a planetary vision of the year 2350 as an underwater future in ruins.

Summer Pathways

Summer Pathways provided hands-on research training to undergraduates and recent graduates from underrepresented backgrounds. Participants worked with mentors to explore their interest in pursuing migration studies in graduate school through interdisciplinary workshops on research methods, research presentations, social networking, and preparation for graduate school applications.

The program provided full funding, including housing and dining on campus, materials, and any program excursion costs. Former postdoctoral fellow Ángel Escamilla Garcia led both years of Summer Pathways.