GAPs Kick-off Meeting
by: Soner Barthoma, Uppsala University | Zeynep Mencütek, BICC
GAPs had its official kick-off meeting on 8-9 March 2023 with a public panel event on 10 March 2023, the agenda of which can be viewed here.
The majority of the team members, members of our advisory board and our ethics advisor were present at the meeting.
Due to flight cancellations, some people couldn't make it to the meeting. While 32 consortium members were present in person, 20 team members joined our meeting online. After a short introduction of the agenda and a welcome by the Prefect of the host institution, all partners introduced themselves, their teams and their work packages.
The meeting was opened by the GAP co-ordinators. Representatives of all the institutions involved in the project introduced themselves and discussed the work plans.
The main part of the meeting is the presentation of the work packages that universities, research institutes and private entities will carry out during the 3-year programme of this project. More information on the specific activities can be found on the project website. Partners also presented impact activities, ethical challenges and data management. Each session was interactive and partners asked their questions in a very colloquial way. Partners had the opportunity to get to know each other better, to meet bilaterally and to network. The breakfasts and lunches were also full of social and scientific conversations, which definitely contributed to team building.
The kick-off meeting was enriched by two public events. The first was a screening of documentary videos by our partner organisation, Migration Matters, and a panel discussion entitled, Return Migration amidst Normative Concerns, Asylum Crisis and Resilience
Contact:
Soner Barthoma | Uppsala University | soner.barthoma@crs.uu.se
Zeynep Mencütek | Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies | zeynep.mencutek@bicc.de
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Story of One Returnee
One of the events of GAPs kick-off meeting was a film screening and discussion on the potential and challenges of digital storytelling for shifting migration narratives and informing research-based policy together with academics and migrants.
The second part of the meetıng focused on documentary storytelling from the international project Migrant Lives in Pandemic Times, featuring the stories of a diverse range of migrants around the world and how their lives were impacted by the pandemic in terms of work, family, mental and physical health, and community. This cluster included the story of one returnee[1] from the UAE to Kerala, India. The screened videos represented a mix of in-person productions and remote productions during Covid and were produced for diverse target groups, ranging from youth and university-level students to policy makers.