PRF Introduces New 2020-21 Theme: Displacement and Justice | University of Portland

PRF Introduces New 2020-21 Theme: Displacement and Justice

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The program is pleased to announce its 2020-21 theme: Displacement and Justice, proposed by Dr. Lara-Zuzan Golesorkhi (Political Science and Global Affairs / Gender and Women's Studies). Like last year’s theme, “The Women’s Suffrage Centennial,” Golesorkhi proposed this year’s theme to prompt exploration of another significant commemoration: the Geneva Convention’s 70th anniversary in 2021. This anniversary coincides with record levels of displacement across the world: nearly 71 million people are forcibly displaced from their homes and habitual residences. Portland has its own troubled relationship to this theme, with its history of displacing marginalized groups through practices such as redlining. Golesorkhi believes that this anniversary presents an opportunity for fellows in the program to launch multifaceted explorations of displacement and justice, from the global to the local. The pandemic has only “heightened” and “exacerbated” the significance of displacement in our current era, according to Golesorkhi.

As a migrant woman and a scholar of migration, gender, and human rights, Golesorkhi’s motivation for this work is “personal and political.” She founded the nonprofit, non-governmental organization, the Center for Migration, Gender, and Justice which pursues gender justice beyond borders. Her project for this year will encompass a timeline of the Geneva Convention, a social media campaign engaging people in this topic, and a video series featuring first-hand accounts of displacement. Golesorkhi finds it crucial to document “actual lived experience” and wants her project to “ensure agency and representation.” She emphasizes that “the key thing about community-based research is trust.”

Golesorkhi is excited to see all the projects in PRF build off of this new theme. In addition to her own project’s work, she is also the PRF knowledge curator this year, a role in which she synthesizes how the projects speak to each other, to their fields, and to the world. The projects will enrich and broaden her own ideas of the subject beyond her area of expertise, she predicts.

Golesorkhi believes that we need to be “making research matter.” There is too often a discrepancy between scholarly work and lived experiences. For her, PRF presents an opportunity to "problematize, challenge, and rethink how and where knowledge is produced,” activities that, in this challenging year, are more important than ever.

Golesorkhi will give a talk titled "Displaced Justice: On Agency, Representation, and Accountability" at the PRF 2020-21 kickoff on Friday, November 13th, 3:30-4:45 PST.

Click here for the event flyer. 

Join the Zoom event here.