Founders
Ester Nergis Canefe is a Full Professor of Politics, Public Policy, and Law at York University, immediate past Associate Director of the Center for Refugee Studies (CRS), and the current acting President of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM). Holding a PhD from York’s Social and Political Thought program and an SJD from Osgoode Hall Law School, your work serves as a critical bridge between international human rights jurisprudence, critical political theory, and creative practice. What makes her scholarship particularly distinctive is how it intentionally intertwines with visual art and craft. She is a prolific mural painter who uses creative mediums as tools for critical inquiry and memory-work. By bringing artistic methodologies into dialogue with socio-legal analysis, her work continuously challenges the boundaries of how academic institutions archive human trauma, precarity, and resilience. Email: nergiscanefe@yorku.ca
Jesse O’Reilly-Conlin is a researcher, writer, and PhD candidate at York University. Alongside his scholarship in international law and human rights, Jesse O’Reilly-Conlin has built a prolific profile in creative writing and literary nonfiction, bridging his global perspectives on history, geography, and memory through creative art forms. Email: jesseoc88@gmail.com
Katarzyna Grabska is a highly prominent feminist anthropologist, researcher, and filmmaker who works extensively at the intersection of forced migration, gender, and the arts. She is currently a Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in Norway and a visiting professor at several European institutions. Her work is deeply relevant to critical migration studies, particularly for her innovative use of collaborative, arts-based research methods. She uses drawing, storytelling, soundscapes, and filmmaking not just to document stories but as a primary method of co-producing knowledge with displaced people. Her project INSPIRE (Creative Arts and Visual Storytelling in Flux) is a major undertaking exploring the role of creative arts in contexts of war, exile, and political activism. It examines how artists from places like Sudan, Syria, and Myanmar use their work to process trauma and engage in political resistance. She has written extensively on the ethics, opportunities, and limitations of using visual and performative arts when researching vulnerable or displaced populations. Email: kgrabska@yahoo.com
Staci B. Martin is an Assistant Professor of Practice in the School of Social Work at Portland State University, whose scholarly and practitioner work deeply intersects with forced migration, refugee education, and peacebuilding. Her work has an extensive focus on co-researching and arts-based methodologies with displaced populations. Moving past “manufactured or false hope” to foster authentic, transformative dialogues in marginalized communities, she is actively disrupting top-down academic paradigms by co-authoring and conducting community-based participatory action research alongside BIPOC and Global South communities. Email: mar24@pdx.edu
Kiril Sharapov, an Associate Professor of Applied Social Sciences at Edinburgh Napier University in the UK. He is a prominent scholar in critical migration studies, forced migration, and human rights, with a particular focus on the critical analysis of anti-trafficking policies, funding, and public perceptions. He is the Associate Director of the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science (SGSSS), and convenor of the Migration and Mobilities Research Network in Edinburgh. His work occasionally intersects with the performing arts and cultural representations as tools for raising public awareness and shaping political narratives. Email: k.sharapov@napier.ac.uk