Making Migration Methodologies Series: Music and Poetry as Arts-Based Methods for Migration Research
The Centre for Refugee Studies at York University and the Oxford Department for International Development have partnered to present a unique hybrid workshop series for the Trinity term: Making Migration Methodologies - A Hands-On Exploration of Mobility through Creative Tools.
Migration is about more than movement—it’s about memory, loss, resilience, and belonging. This workshop series equips researchers, students, and advocates with creative, participatory tools to study and represent migration in more ethical and transformative ways. Across six sessions, participants will learn hands-on methods including photovoice, participatory video, body mapping, poetry, music, digital ethnography, and social cartography. Each workshop combines practical tutorials with critical discussion on how these methods can challenge dominant narratives, surface hidden geographies, and amplify migrant voices. Led by an international lineup of leading scholars, artists, and practitioners, the series explores real-world case studies—from bodymapping fisherfolk displaced by seawalls in the Philippines to Kurdish women documenting musical traditions in Germany. Whether you are a migration scholar, an artist, an activist, or a student, this series will give you new tools to make your research more visual, collaborative, and impactful.
Organizers: The workshop series was organized by Dr. Yvonne Su, Abril Ríos-Rivera, Carolina Rota and Tegan Hadisi.
Dates: Every Tuesday May 6th to June 17th (with the exception of June 3rd)
Time: 3:30pm BST / 10:30am EST
Location: ODID Seminar Room 1, 3 Mansfield Road, University of Oxford
Hybrid: Hosted by the Centre for Refugee Studies, please register: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/dsT5Yr64QuSSM-4hMbOaVA
Registration: Registration is required for online participation and preferred for in-person.
May 6th, 2025 - Introduction to Arts-based Methods and Photovoice Tutorial
Speakers: Dr. Yvonne Su, Abril Ríos-Rivera, and Tyler Valiquette
Moderator: Tegan Hadisi
May 13th, 2025 - Filmmaking, Participatory Video and Videovoice
Speakers: Dr. Amanda Alencar, Dr. Zhixi Zhuang and Dr. Yvonne Su
Moderator: Tyler Valiquette
May 20th, 2025 - Music and Poetry as Arts-Based Methods for Migration Research
Speakers: Dr. Helidah Ogude-Chambert, Dr. Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey, Rose Campion
Moderator: Abril Ríos-Rivera and Dr. Yvonne Su
May 27th, 2025 - Embodying Migration: How to do Body Mapping
Speakers: Dr. Maaret Jokela-Pansini and Dr. Yvonne Su
Moderator: Tegan Hadisi
June 10th, 2025 - Migrant Lives Online: Practicing Digital Research Methods
Speakers: TBD
Moderator: TBD
June 17th, 2025 - Drawing the City: Social Cartographies of Lives on the Move
Speakers: Dr. Valentina Montoya Robledo, Dr. Melissa Moralli, Carolina Rota
Moderator: Vasiliki Poula
Music and Poetry as Arts-Based Methods for Migration Research
Date: Tuesday, May 20th, 2025
Time: 3:30pm BST / 10:30am EST
Location: ODID Seminar Room 1, 3 Mansfield Road, University of Oxford
Hybrid: Zoom link hosted by the Centre for Refugee Studies: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/dsT5Yr64QuSSM-4hMbOaVA
Registration: Registration is required for online participation and preferred for in-person.
Music and poetry serve as profound mediums for articulating the diverse experiences of migration. This session will explore how these art forms can be used to understand, represent, and share migration stories. The session will delve into the nuances of creative expression within a migration context.
Helidah Ogude-Chambert, a Departmental Lecturer in Migration and Development at the University of Oxford, will discuss why form, in academia, particularly the use of metaphor and imagery is important to her scholarship, and how she applies music to disrupt Euro-patriarchal ways of reading ‘African cities.' She will share her poetry focused on Black people on the move, and insights about how popular music holds distinct sonic epistemologies in Nairobi and Johannesburg.
Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey, Director of Performance, St Catherine’s College, Faculty of Music of the University of Oxford, will introduce her collaborative poetry and music project, "Displaced Voices". She will also introduce her research on orchestral musicians from Afghanistan, focusing on the Afghan Songs in “Our Schools” project.
Rose Campion, DPhil candidate, University of Oxford Rose will present her latest music initiative with Kurdish women in Germany.
Participants will engage in a hands-on activity to explore poetry and music for migration research. The session will also reference existing research on arts-based methods, providing a deeper understanding of their application in migration studies. By merging academic insights with creative practice, this workshop offers a unique opportunity to discover the transformative power of music and poetry in studying the complexities of migration experiences.
Helidah Ogude-Chambert, Departmental Lecturer in Migration and Development at the University of Oxford
Dr. Helidah Ogude-Chambert is a Departmental Lecturer in Migration and Development at the University of Oxford. Her teaching focuses on international development, race and racism, borders, citizenship, and migration. Helidah's research critically examines how political elites manipulate emotions/affect and public discourse to normalize migrant precarity and justify state practices of cruelty and racialised expulsion. Her creative work, including poems recently published in Japa Fire: An Anthology of Poems on African and African Diasporic Migration (2024), explores themes of Black life and death, temporality, bodies of water, everyday atrocities, embodied decoloniality, and resistance. She is currently writing a book titled Strange Fish: The UK Government and Media’s Industrialization of Black Death at Sea.
Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey, Director of Performance, St Catherine’s College, Faculty of Music of the University of Oxford
Dr. Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey is an academic and orchestral conductor whose research is focused on the social-psychological and socio-political aspects of orchestral music-making. In her artistic practice has sought to leverage orchestral resources to amplify the voices of asylum seekers and refugees, while inviting a critical and academic reflection on the consequences of that work. Her Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship focused on the historical and contemporary practice of the orchestras of Afghanistan. She is Director of Performance at St Catherine’s College, an Honorary Research Fellow in Music at the University of Sheffield, Academic Lead at OAcademy, and Conducting Fellow of the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra.
Rose Campion, DPhil candidate, University of Oxford
Rose Campion is a DPhil candidate in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford. In her research, she works with forced migrant musicians in Germany who are reestablishing their careers in displacement. In 2024 Rose completed a co-produced ethnographic project with singer Sheyda Ghavami which explored the lives and livelihoods of Kurdish women musicians in Germany. The resulting “Song- and Storybook” brings together the life stories of 10 Kurdish women to celebrate their contributions to Germany’s musical landscape.
Moderator: Yvonne Su, Director of the Centre for Refugee Studies
Moderator: Abril Ríos-Rivera, DPhil candidate in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford and Consultant on Forced Displacement in East Africa
