Theatre and Refugees: How can participatory theatre methods contribute to understanding the lives of refugees?

Social scientists have increasingly started to work with creative methods in order to understand and represent refugee lives. Creative methods may offer one way to work with refugees and migrants to facilitate their articulations of life and critically contest some of the stereotypical representations in public and political discourse.

With this seminar we want to focus on participatory theatre as an ethnographic research method and explore how theatre can contribute to perhaps new ways of understanding the lives of refugees and migrants. Presenting different examples of working with participatory theatre we offer perspectives on what kind of empirical data arises and how we can use it in our analysis.

Program:

13.00 - 13.05: Welcome

13.05 - 13.50: Marieke Van Houte (Post.Doc., Erasmus University Rotterdam)

“Contained: Participatory theatre as an action-research methodology to understand and promote social resilience in polarized refugee-receiving communities”.

13.50 - 14.30: Julie Nynne Bune (PhD student, Aarhus University)

”Forum theatre as embodied storytelling: Articulations of life among young adult Afghan refugees in Denmark.”

14.30 - 14.45: Coffee and cake

14.45 - 15.30: Alexandra D’Onofrio (Sociological Review Fellow, Keele University)

“Performing im/mobility: theatre improvisation creating ethnographic encounters with experiences of migration”.

15.30 - 16.00: Discussion (AU)

For any questions please contact Julie Nynne Bune, 30615118 or jnb@cas.au.dk