Refugee Integration Through Languages and the Arts

Do You Get My Drift?: ‘Sankofa’ and the Arts of Integrating the Old with the New

This lecture mines the contested concept of integration for its history, variation and substance. It considers the important work of law and social policy in developing frameworks and duties for integration, especially with regard to the work of New Scots Integration Strategy, Scotland. It then moves to examine the place of concepts of integration in conflict transformation, international relations and trauma healing. Finally it develops understandings of integration from indigenous sources of knowledge, looking at the concept of sankofa, indigenous practices of integration, and the decolonial thought.

With the new focus on languages and arts in the processes in individual and intercultural integration the lecture will work multilingually and artistically, as well as through more traditional forms of research presentation.

Alison Phipps, OBE, PhD, BA (hons), FRSE, FRSA, FAcSS

Alison Phipps holds the UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts at the University of Glasgow where she is also Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies, and Co-Convener of Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network (GRAMNET). She is a member of the Creativity, Culture and Faith group in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow where she teaches refugee studies, languages, religious and spiritual education, anthropology and intercultural education and education for non-violence.

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