Diaspora Studies: Past, Present and Promise (Oxford Diasporas Programme Launch)
Thursday, 02 June 2011
Hosted by RSC, IMI and COMPAS
About the event
Professor Robin Cohen introduced the Oxford Diasporas Programme. Professor Khachig Tölölyan of Wesleyan University (and editor of Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies) gave the key lecture, entitled 'Diaspora studies: past, present and promise'. This was followed by drinks at Wadham College.
Professor Khachig Tölölyan is based at Wesleyan University and is founding editor of Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies. Tölölyan is the child of Armenian refugees from Turkey. His parents fled to northern Syria, where he was born. He continued to move with his family, first to Cairo, Egypt and then to Lebanon, Beirut, and finally, to Watertown, Massachusetts. Tölölyan has written on nationalism and diasporas, modern narrative and critical theory, Armenian studies and terrorism. He is interested in the increasing level of migration and dispersion; how these dispersions become ethnic and diasporic; and how they reshape the culture and politics of the nations that host them as well as the nations they left.
The RSC-led project on '(Re)Conceptualising Stateless Diasporas in the EU' is part of the Oxford Diasporas Programme.