Webinar: Doing Migration Studies with an Accent - Shahram Khosravi

Doing Migration Studies with an Accent

Speaker: Prof. Shahram Khosravi, Stockholms University

Abstract: In this talk I use accent not in terms of a linguistic meaning but rather as a position. Accent as verb means to speak forcefully, to emphasize, and to accentuate. Accent means also breaking, a disruption of mainstream language. Accent reveals gaps and cracks in the otherwise imagined intact language, conversation, thinking. Accent as method offers a way to smash what otherwise is imagined as a whole and homogenous and thereby it highlights conflicts, contradictions, and disagreements. Accented-ness is a response and a reaction to the condition of coloniality that structures the processes of knowledge production. I use ‘accent as method’ to frame my critique of knowledge formation in the field of migration studies.

Bio: Shahram Khosravi is professor of Anthropology at Stockholms University. His research interests include anthropology of Iran, forced displacement, border studies, and temporality. Khosravi is the author of several books such as : Young and Defiant in Tehran (2008); The Illegal Traveler: an auto-ethnography of borders, (2010); Precarious Lives: Waiting and Hope in Iran, (2017); After Deportation: Ethnographic Perspectives, Palgrave (2017, edited volume); Waiting. A project in Conversation (2021, edited volume), and Seeing Like a Smuggler (2022, edited volume).  He has been an active writer in the international press. He is a co-founder of Critical Border Studies, a network for scholars, artists and activists to interact.

Registration will open soon.