Research and Publications

Popular views of migrants and refugees - and policies and law - are often shaped more by ignorance than by reality. By researching historical and contemporary aspects of displacement, including researching with and through the words of displaced people, we seek to change narratives and improve lives. Located within the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, we work interdisciplinarily but always with a firm humanistic perspective.

The Critical Displacement Reader, Rebecca Hester, Molly Todd, Katrina Powell, Brett Shadle, and Lois Ngueyn, editors (Virginia Tech Press, forthcoming 2026).The genesis for this collection was a year-long, cross-disciplinary initiative through CRMDS in 2021-2022. With funding from the Social Science Research Council/National Endowment for the Humanities Sustaining the Humanities grant, we proposed the “Converging Displacements” project in order to bring together scholars from across disciplines to discuss the complexities of displacement, the various disciplinary approaches to displacement, and the urgent need that humanistic approaches inform an interventions in displacement policy and resources.

It includes the following chapters from team members:

• Rebecca Hester, Molly Todd, Katrina Powell, and Brett Shadle, “Introduction”
• Alum of Elimisha Kakuma (edited and introduced by Deirdre Hand and Brett Shadle) “The Refugee Label”
• Olha Nimko and Katrina Powell, “Comprehensive Pathways to Refugee Food Security: Understanding, Empowering, and Sustaining.”
• Brett Shadle, “Displaced Time: How Displaced People Experience Time”

Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia (MAAV) is a multi-year partnership between CRMDS and VT’s Appalachian Studies Program, and supported by the Mellon Foundation. MAAV has funded nine monuments through projects led by the community and Virginia Tech faculty, with a focus on the diversity of Appalachian communities, movement across the landscape via migration and population displacement, resource extraction and environmental change, and collective struggles for social justice.

Roots & Resettlement is a multimodal collection of writing, art, and compositions about displacement, resettlement, place, and belonging. The series seeks to explore notions of place, examining the ways that memories, stories, visions, and hopes are evoked when we think of our roots in the context of our mobility and/or resettlement. Four issues have been published, with a fifth focussed on Ukraine scheduled to appear in late 2025. 

Directions in Displacement is the CRMDS blog, where we feature short writing by academics and people with histories of displacement. 

Elimisha Kakuma - Virginia Tech Research Group is a rotating set of students who collaboratively research and write reports on pressing issues in displacement.  The 2024 group wrote, “Barriers to Education in Kakuma Refugee Camp”, while the 2025 group wrote “Access to Higher Education in Kakuma Refugee Camp.”

The Right to Joy: Daily Life for Displaced People, Vincent Maluwa, Deirdre Hand, Katrina Powell, and Brett Shadle, editors. A proposed edited volume that reframes displacement through an interdisciplinary lens that focuses the everyday acts of joy, creativity, and connection among displaced people. Moving beyond narratives of suffering and victimhood, this volume challenges humanitarian and securitized frameworks by highlighting the full dignity and complexity of human life.

The Center is pleased to collaborate with and support students and faculty at Virginia Tech in their research. Through the generous support of an anonymous donor, we are able to offer the Faculty Research Fellowship. The inaugural awardees were Dr. Edward Polanco (History) to study the cultural history of Nahuatl peoples in their migrations through meso America, and Dr. Lillian Frost (Political Science) for her work on the legal status of refugees in Jordan.

In 2023-24, with the financial support of the Cranwell Family Foundation, we hosted Dr. Ohla Nimko as our first Displaced Scholar.

When possible, we provide support to graduate and undergraduate students for their research projects and conference presentations.

Aggarwal, Raaj. “Continuity and Change between Colonial Education in Kenya and Refugee Education in Kakuma,” Philologia Spring 2025

Powell, Katrina, ed. Beginning Again: Stories of Movement and Migration in Appalachia. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2024.

Shadle, Brett, and Kerri Mosely-Hobbs, “The Merry Tree,” https://themerrytree.vt.domains/ 2024.

Nimko,Ohla.  “Enhancing food security for refugees through land use planning and land banks. Scientific Collection «InterConf+», 37 (2023): 223–227.

Paynter, Eleanor and Katrina Powell. “‘Out Law Yard’: Reading Traces of Displacement as Testimonial Inscription.” Migration and Society, 6 (2023): 87-104.

Hester, Rebecca. Embodied Politics: Health Promotion in Indigenous Mexican Migrant Communities in California, Rutgers University Press, 2022.

Powell, Katrina, and Savannah P. Murray. “The Gift of Good Land: Loss, Resettlement, and Stewardship Through Everyday Nature in the Shenandoah National Park and on the New River.” In Lost in Transition: Removing, Resettling, and Renewing Appalachia. Ed. Aaron Purcell. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2022. 67-88.

Powell, Katrina, Katherine Randall, and Rebecca Hester. “Refugee and Migrant Partnerships in Virginia: Fostering Connectivity and Reciprocity.” Vibrant Virginia: Engaging the Commonwealth to Expand Economic Vitality, ed. by Margaret Cowell and Sarah Lyon-Hill.  Virginia Tech Publishing, 2022. https://publishing.vt.edu/books/e/10.21061/cowell

Shadle, Brett.  “The ‘Problem’ of the Urban Refugee: The African Refugee Regime and the Joint Refugee Services of Kenya (1967-1982),” Canadian Journal of African Studies 55: 3 (2021): 519-41  https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2020.1869051

Shadle, Brett.  “The Unity of Black People and the Redemption of Ethiopia: The Ethiopian World Federation and a New Black Nationalism, 1936-1941,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 54 (2021): 193-215.

Randall, Katherine, Katrina Powell, and Brett Shadle, “Ethical Concerns in the Oral History Archive,” Displaced Voices: A Journal of Archives, Migration and Cultural Heritage 1 (2020): 76-9.

Powell, Katrina M. and Katherine Randall. “Community Workshops and Rhetorics of Home in the Stories of Persons Seeking Refuge.” albeit: Journal of teaching and scholarship 5.1 (2018)