Book Launch: Displacement, Environments and Photo-Politics in the Mediterranean: Migrant Sea by Professor Parvati Nair
When: Tuesday, February 11, 2025, 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Where: Bookmarks Bookshop, 1 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3QE
Borderlines is delighted to co-host this wonderful gathering, celebrating the launch of Professor Parvati Nair’s latest book. This hybrid event brings together an in-person audience at Bookmarks Bookshop and a global online audience via Zoom to reflect on themes of migration, displacement, and visual politics in the Mediterranean.
Order of Events:
- 18:30 – 18:40: Welcome and arrivals
- 18:40 – 18:50: Chair’s Opening: Professor Yasmin Ibrahim
- 18:50 – 19:00: Series Editor’s Remarks: Professor Liz Wells
- 19:00 – 19:20: Author’s Presentation: Professor Parvati Nair
- 19:20 – 19:45: Discussants’ Remarks: Professor Shahram Khosravi
- 19:45 – 20:30: Q&A Session
This is a Hybrid event.
About the Book
Publisher: Routledge (Series on Photography, Place, Environment)
Publication Date: October 31st, 2024
Displacement, Environments and Photo-Politics in the Mediterranean: Migrant Sea is Professor Parvati Nair’s latest book, which critically examines the visual politics of migration across the Mediterranean. Through a transdisciplinary approach that blends ethnography with visual analysis, the book explores how photography documents and mediates the human experience of displacement in one of the world’s most contested border zones.
About the Author
Professor Parvati Nair
Parvati Nair is Professor of Hispanic, Cultural and Migration Studies at Queen Mary University of London. She writes on visual representations of migration and displacement. Her work is transdisciplinary, reliant on methodologies that combine conceptually informed visual analysis with ethnography. Her preferred medium as an entry point to reflecting on the complexities and challenges of migration is photography, as viewed against existing cross-border policies and practices that affect displaced and refugee populations. Between 2012 and 2019, she was seconded to the United Nations University, where she led work at the United Nations on international migration and cross-border policy revisions. Her many publications include the books Configuring Community: Theories, Narratives and Practices of Community Identities in Contemporary Spain (London: MHRA, 2004), Rumbo al norte: inmigración y movimientos culturales entre el Magreb y España (Barcelona: Edicions Bellaterra, 2006), A Different Light: The Photography of Sebastião Salgado (London and Durham: Duke University Press, 2011). She is the co-editor of Gender and Spanish Cinema (Oxford: Berg, 2006), Hispanic and Lusophone Women Film-makers: theory, Practice and Difference (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013) and Migration Across Boundaries (London: Ashgate, 2015) and the Founding and Principal Editor of Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture. Her current research includes the funded project The Refugee Influx from Syria and Sudan in Cairo: an analysis of the dynamics of resilience, hospitality and hostility.
Displacement, Environments and Photo-Politics in the Mediterranean: Migrant Sea (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, October 2024) is her most recent book.
Chair of the Event
Professor Yasmin Ibrahim
Yasmin Ibrahim is a Professor of Digital Economy and Culture at Queen Mary University of London. Her research explores the socio-cultural dimensions of digital technologies and its implications for humanity. She teaches on the digital economy and has published numerous books and articles on the topic. She also writes extensively on race, migration, border controls, Islam and terrorism. Her recent books include Posthuman Capitalism; Dancing with Data in the Digital Economy, Migrants, Refugees at UK Borders: Hostility and 'Unmaking' the Human and ‘Technologies of Trauma; Cultural Formations over time, and ‘Digital Racial: Algorithmic Violence and Digital Platforms’.
Series Editor
Professor Liz Wells
Liz Wells, writer, curator, and Professor Emeritus in Photographic Culture, University of Plymouth, UK, is series editor for Photography, Place, Environment, Routledge Academic and founding co-editor for photographies journal. Her research centres on land, landscape, place and contemporary environmental issues. Publications include Photography, Curation, Criticism – an anthology (2023) and Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity (reprinted, 2021). Website: http://lizwellswriter-curator.co.uk
Discussants
Professor Shahram Khosravi
Shahram Khosravi is Professor of Anthropology at Stockholm University. Khosravi has published eight books and many articles on Iran, borders, and migration. The most recent books are Seeing Like a Smuggler (2022) and an artbook The Gaze of the X-ray: An Archive of Violence (2024). Some years ago, he started Critical Border Studies, a network for scholars, artists and activists to interact.
We look forward to welcoming you to this special event! Register your interest on Eventbrite.
About Borderlines
Borderlines is an Interdisciplinary Research Collective dedicated to advancing social justice through radical, experimental, and innovative methodologies. We champion interdisciplinary pedagogies and conceptual paradigms, bringing together scholars from diverse backgrounds who resist the strict definitions of traditional academic fields and disciplines.
Thriving through difference and embracing alternative vantage points, Borderlines is committed to decolonising praxis and interrogating the normative through critical enquiry. Our work seeks to challenge the margins, peripheries, boundaries, and notions of alterity, fostering new ways of thinking and engaging with the world.
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