ACCESS Seminar: Ubuntu-led emplacement: migrant aspirations for settlement in regional Australia

Abstract:

You are invited into the unfolding journey of ‘Ubuntu-led emplacement’ which has emerged, as practice and concept, through my PhD research with community members from the Great Lakes Region of Africa. Ubuntu-led emplacement offers new ways to think about how settlement policy and practice can attend to the dynamic, complex and relational experiences of migration that these community members are having in Australia. In taking a more-than-human approach, I welcome inanga (harp) to guide us as we explore the co-presence of humans, non-humans, and overlapping times and places within research participants’ emplacement. 

Biography:

Eliza is an Associate Research Fellow in Geography and Sustainability in the School of Health and Society at the University of Wollongong. Her ongoing research seeks to better understand experiences of people from refugee backgrounds settling in Australia. Her PhD working with communities from the Great Lakes Region of Africa, and her current role exploring settlement in regional Australia more broadly. Eliza’s PhD engaged a cultural and material lens to consider both how African ways of knowing and being (Ubuntu) and the more-than-human world contribute to emplacement in Australia, and how this thinking might inform more culturally relevant settlement policy and practice. She is interested in understanding the contributions that people from refugee backgrounds, and the non-humans that travel with them, make as part of Australian communities. Further, she hopes to contribute to the creation of spaces for migrant voices to guide policy and practice that celebrate these contributions and strive for improved wellbeing.