About the Center

The Center was founded in 2021 within the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences by Katrina Powell (as Founding Director), Brett Shadle (as Associate Director for Outreach), and Rebecca Hester (as Associate Director for Education. In 2025, Katie moved to Senior Research Fellow, Brett became Director, and Rebecaa became Associate Director Emeritus.

We incorporate our students in our outreach and research; we include partners in our classes and in our research; our research informs our teaching and outreach. This approach enriches all of our work and opens our students, our partners, and ourselves to richer understandings of the world, and deepens the impact of our work.

In all aspects of our research, teaching, and outreach, we draw on multiple disciplinary approaches and seek partners who bring their own unique perspectives. However, all of our work is deeply informed by our grounding in the liberal arts. Histories, images, words, and ways of seeing the world are central to understanding migration and displacement.

We agree with Yash Tandon, a Ugandan refugee in Kenya in the 1980s, who wrote that refugees “obviously know their problems better than anyone else.”* If we have any hope of addressing the issues that face migrants and refugees we must first learn from them, ask what issues face them, and how (and if) they would like outsiders to offer assistance. Solutions imposed from the outside are both doomed to fail and are deeply paternalistic.

The media, humanitarian agencies, politicians, and everyday citizens all portray migrants and refugees in particular ways, and in ways that don’t often reflect reality. As one individual put it, “Refugees are not just victims. We build communities, celebrate culture, and support one another. While the media focuses on suffering, they fail to capture the strength, ambition, and joy that also define us.” Through close listening, oral histories, and opening spaces for people to tell their own stories, we strive to counter false narratives and put in migrants’ and refugees’ own hands the power to present themselves as they wish.

_{Quotes from:
“Ugandan refugees in Kenya: A community of enforced self-reliance,” Disasters 8 (1984), 267-71.
“The Refugee Label,” in The Critical Displacement Reader, forthcoming.}