We sat with Amandine Desille and Karolina Nikielska-Sekuła to discuss about the 2025 IMISCOE PhD School on “Developing a sensory methodology in migration studies”.
Could you tell us a few words about the institution hosting the 2025 IMISCOE PhD School and the people involved in its organization?
The 2025 IMISCOE PhD School “Developing a sensory methodology in migration studies” will be hosted by the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning (IGOT), a long-time member of IMISCOE and a very well-positioned geography teaching and research institute in Europe. For the second time, IGOT associates with the co-organiser Jagiellonian University of Kraków - the oldest higher education institution in Poland and one of the oldest in Europe (see our previous collaborative event here). We, Amandine Desille and Karolina Nikielska-Sekuła, are the organisers of the event, and we are both visual scholars researching processes of migration. We co-edited the IMISCOE awarded book Visual Methodlogies in Migration Studies back in 2021. Several of the trainers who will join us for the 2025 PhD School also contributed to this book: Patricia Prieto-Blanco, Lucie Bacon, Franz Buhr, and Stefano Piemontese; with the new addition of Kitti Baracsi and Nagehan Uskan.
The event will take place in Lisbon. The city is home to diverse populations and has been visibly transformed over the last years due to intensified mobilities. Its relatively small size should allow for visual exploration during the duration of the school. We are excited to host the group in Lisbon!
The School’s topic is “Developing a sensory methodology in migration studies”. Can you tell us more about this theme and why it is important for early-career researchers?
The aim of the summer school is to provide a full package of knowledge on how to design research using visual and sensory methods. Our discussions will include a critical analysis of the epistemological foundations of research methodology, but also on the ontological status of produced and existing images, ethical concerns, techniques for disseminating research conclusions and generating impact, and the selection of appropriate tools for collecting data. Visual and multisensory methodologies are gradually more often acknowledged as well suited for researching migration, especially in approaches oriented on producing qualitative and field-based knowledge on various aspects of human mobility. We trust that the 2025 IMISCOE PhD School will provide a unique opportunity to get theoretical knowledge and hands-on skills on visual techniques of data collection, bridging them with broader multisensory methodological approaches. PhD students will be able to take advantage of being in a group of dedicated visual scholars. Trainers invited to contribute to this school are experienced researchers (but also some artists and activists) working extensively with photography, film, critical cartography, and multimodal collaborative methods. PhD students and early-career researchers will have an opportunity to receive individualized guidance and feedback regarding the employment of these approaches in their own research.
What about the program of the event?
The program is divided into three modules:
- theoretical, focusing on methodology, epistemology, ontology of images, and ethics;
- a collective research project in a neighbourhood of Lisbon oriented on creating a model visual research project under the supervision of the trainers;
- the development of individual research projects brought by the participants involving planning, ethics, research methods and techniques, dissemination of results, and impact.
What does it mean concretely? That during each day, we will spend some time listening and discussing plenary theoretical keynote lectures; and some time doing collective practical activities in four themed sub-groups, each focusing on different media that can be employed in researching migration through visual and sensory tools. We will also spare some time during the week to see how individual visual and sensory projects develop.
What do you want participants to take away from this IMISCOE PhD school?
We think there are several dimensions. First, it will be great if participants will be able to accommodate these visual and multisensory data collection techniques within broader research design, from theory to dissemination. Second, we hope that the participants will gain practical experience of using visual and multisensory research. Often, in our own classrooms, we meet with students who are skeptical that this is more than illustrative. We want to prove them wrong. Third, and quite importantly for us, we hope that the participants will leave Lisbon with a strong sense of ethical implications of the employment of visual and multisensory methodologies in migration research, at the data collection, analyses and dissemination stage. We also hope they will have an understanding of the role of the epistemologies of places and people that enter the research situation in shaping choices regarding research process and data interpretations (and what to do about it!), especially when research involves production and dissemination of images. And fourth, and that was the case for all of us trainers back when we did our PhD, we hope they’ll find a “tribe” with whom to share concerns, to experiment, to collaborate… etc.- this is much needed when we start our research career!
Find out all details about the event here
pdf 2025 PhD School Flyer (1.29 MB)