Refugee and Forced Migration Studies Online: Harnessing “the Cloud” for Knowledge Generation, Instruction, and Mobilization

IASFM 14: Contested Spaces and Cartographic Challenges
Kolkata, India, January 6-9, 2013

ABSTRACT for a Roundtable on the topic of
Refugee and Forced Migration Studies Online: Harnessing “the Cloud” for Knowledge Generation, Instruction, and Mobilization
With the advent of the Internet and the proliferation of websites and online instruments on refugee and forced migration studies the nature of research and information gathering, analysis, and dissemination, along with advocacy, has altered fundamentally both in its range, depth and scope. This Roundtable will seek to review how the latest developments in communications technologies and the Internet and the proliferation of websites such as the CARFMS – Online Research and Teaching Tool and Practitioners Forum (ORTT & PF) and the Refugee Research Network (RRN), as examples, have contributed to the accessibility of information, knowledge and the convergence of expertise amongst practitioners has transformed the nature of both research, teaching and policy-making in the field of refugee and forced migration studies. The amassing of concentrations of detailed information sources on the Internet or “the cloud” has created new modes and methods of research, information gathering, analysis, findings and knowledge dissemination, mobilization, instruction, and policy-making and implementation. This Roundtable will further seek to explore and to engage participants in a dialogue on how online instruments can be combined and utilized for supporting the research, instruction, whether tradition, hybrid or online, and policy practice in the field of refugee and forced migration studies. The Roundtable will feature the principal collaborators of the ORTT & PF who will outline how they have utilize this new open source website in their research and courses in refugee and forced migration studies at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The Roundtable discussants will feature: Professors James C. Simeon, Centre for Refugee Studies, York University; Giorgia Dona, School of Law and Social Sciences, University of East London, Vibeke Andersson, Co-ordinator, Global Refugee Studies, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark; Nanette Neuwahl, Faculty of Law, University of Montreal; and, Idil Atak, Centre for Human Rights and Liberal Pluralism, McGill University.