Becoming A Migration Researcher
- Date
- November 13, 2025
- Time
- 9:30 AM EST - 4:15 PM EST
- Location
- Hybrid (In person at CERC Migration office / online via Zoom)
The Scholars of Excellence Workshop series indclude in-depth sessions where international scholars are invited to contribute to complex topics of interest to the academic community.
Our workshop is co-convened by Andreas Pott, University of Osnabruck and CERC Scholar of Excellence, and Anna Triandafyllidou, Chair, CERC Migration, Toronto Metropolitan University.
The growth of the interdisciplinary field of migration studies and the societal demand for migration-related knowledge have produced a new social persona – the migration researcher. Migration researchers are all uniquely influenced by their personal social, geographical, academic and biographical contexts. Conversely, migration researchers’ experiences, practices, concepts, interpretations and research-based interventions into scientific and public discourses contribute to the ongoing negotiation of migration. Assuming that the ways of becoming a migration researcher are key to a more nuanced understanding of the potentials and limitations of knowledge production on migration, the workshop explores the multiple manifestations and roles of migration researchers.
The workshop will explore the following questions: How does one become a migration researcher? Does one need to be a migrant to study migration? How are one’s lived experiences driving one’s research on migration? How can a researcher be self-reflexive in their study of migration without falling into scientific relativism? How does the epistemic trust that researchers build up or have in their data, paradigms, and findings evolve in times of growing distrust towards academically produced knowledge on migration? And how do societal and academic conditions of migration-related knowledge production influence researchers’ motivations and their potential impact?
| Program | |
| 9:30–10 AM EDT | Welcome coffee |
| 10 AM EDT | Opening remarks Anna Triandafyllidou, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration, Toronto Metropolitan University and Andreas Pott, University of Osnabruck CERC Migration Scholar of Excellence |
| 10 AM–12:30 PM EDT | Panel 1: Producing Knowledge on Migration and Becoming a Migration Researcher Chair: Andreas Pott, University of Osnabruck and CERC Scholar of Excellence Co-chair: Sharon Broughton, Toronto Metropolitan University Presentations:
|
| 12:30–1:30 PM EDT | Lunch break |
| 1:30–4 PM EDT | Panel 2: Migration and Becoming a Migration Researcher Chair: Anna Triandafyllidou, Toronto Metropolitan University Co-chair: Irmak Kurtulmus, Toronto Metropolitan University
|
| 4–4:15 PM EDT | Reflections and concluding remarks |