News from WG1
By Katelin Marit Parsons (Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, Reykjavík, Iceland)
Our working group welcomed new members Chloé Goualc’h and Brigitte le Normand at our first meeting of 2022, held online on 11 February. Taking inspiration from WG2, we are organising a group transcribathon on 4 March, starting at 9 a.m. CET, to get our data onto the map. Our map will locate archives and libraries in Europe with relevant holdings on migrant women. For each archive and library, a sample collection will be featured on the map. We will continue to meet monthly online and advance our work on the repository of primary sources, which will include more detailed information on archive and library holdings across Europe. Currently, not all countries participating in WEMov have a presence in our repository, and we hope to continue to build cooperation with researchers and archives in the coming year to broaden and enhance the repository.
Our colleague Mateusz Wyżga is organising our next in-person meeting, which will be held at the Pedagogical University of Krakow, Poland, on 27-28 June. We look forward to meeting again in person after our first successful meeting in Budapest in September 2021.
News from WG2
By Veronika Čapská (Charles University, Czech Republic) , Pirita Frigren (University of Pori) & Bénédicte Miyamoto (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)
Working Group 2 held its online meeting on 24 January 2022 and planned to organize the so called transcribathon, an event to which all WEMov COST Action participants are cordially invited. Our WG2 co-leader, Bénédicte Miyamoto, who has ample experience with the Register of Migrant Women Landmarks, kindly offered to host the transcribathon. The event will take place online on 11 March between 10 am and 1 pm CET (see poster above). We have also been preparing the WG2 meeting and workshop on the theme of « Transcultural Memory of Female Migration – Concepts, Practices, Case Studies ». The meeting and workshop will be hosted by the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in the historical centre of Prague, Old Town (27-28 June 2022). The deadline for the submission of paper abstracts is 8 March. The Call for Papers to the Prague meeting is available in Teams.
The News is available on our website News section.
News from WG3
By Nicoleta Roman (Nicolae Iorga Institute of History, Bucharest, Romania) & Beatrice Zucca (Cambridge University, UK)
Co-WG leaders propose the following theme « Gender and Migration: Biography as a source » for WG3 meeting in Cyprus on 30 April. The meeting will be opened by a keynote lecture given by Prof. Umut Erel (Open University, London).
WG3’s ongoing projects include its Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) which refers to free online courses exploring the interplay between migration and gender throughout history and contemporary times. The MOOC has become a transversal project, the platform will be hosted by Université de Paris, and videos will be shot in Cyprus. WEMov’s first book series, Women on the Move from Manchester University Press, has been launched.
The Unknown stories project is also developing: Across Europe, from early modern to present time. Migrant women and their unknown success stories (Unknown stories project). The book aims to highlight the crucial role played by unknown migrant women who made important contributions in various domains like art, education, culture, economy, welfare, etc. in their receiving country. For proposals, please contact the WG3 leaders. `
WG3 meetings for the following months are scheduled at 11:30 am CEST on 25 February; 25 March, 27 May via Zoom. In April the in-person meeting will take place in Cyprus.
News from WG4
By Sónia Ferreira (Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia, Lisbon, Portugal) & Miguel Oliveros Mediavilla (Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, Madrid, Spain)
At WG4 we are preparing our annual meeting which will take place in Madrid between 31 June and 1 July. At the meeting we will have a conference with a guest speaker and a visual workshop, where we will work collectively on the materials gathered and will start preparing material not only for the website but also for the network exhibitions.
We have also made progress in making videos about migrant women in Europe. At the moment we already have a set of six small films from Iceland, France, Slovakia, Spain and Portugal with very different and interesting stories about migrant women in Europe. These videos are in post-production and will soon be available on our website in small clips.
We are also starting to organize our proposal for a collective publication, defining the theme and the general approach so that the members of WG4 can prepare their contribution. We seek to edit a publication that reflects, theoretically but also methodologically, the work of producing a cross-cultural collective documentary with challenges, particularities and unexpected results.
We continue to collect visual resources on migrant women that will be published on our website, and every contribution from the WEMov members to this list is welcomed.