ICGC Colloquium Series

Ana Cláudia São Bernardo, Assistant Professor in African American & African Studies will present her and her co-author's, Raffaella Fernandez from Universidade de São Paulo's Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, current work.

Caroline Krafft, associate professor of economics in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and ICGC affiliate, will give a talk on her current work. 

Laira Rocha Tenca, ICGC Visiting Scholar during academic year 2025-26, will give a talk on her work in progress. 

Chau Pham, PhD candidate in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, will give a talk on her work in progress. 

Shankar CSR, PhD candidate in the Department of History, will give a talk on his work in progress. 

Lindsey Willow Smith, PhD student in the Department of History, will give a talk on her work in progress. 

How do recent refugee communities partake in the educational choice debate in the United States?  What role does their racial, religious and class status-play in their interactions with these institutions? This presentation examines public education experiences in Minnesota from perspectives of Somali parents, recent public-school graduates as well as public school administrators. The preliminary findings question the role of public education in refugee and migrant integration. While refugee families relentlessly strive to get good educational opportunities for their children, they nevertheless become embedded in failing and segregated traditional public schools, or in alternative failing ethno-centric charter schools. This case study makes us question the school ‘choice’ rhetoric and how differently positioned groups might succeed to land on educational “islands of adequacy” while others are left behind in a “sea of disparities.”

International travel has become ever more challenging for a wide variety of reasons, and the University has many resources to assist travelers. Whether you're traveling for an international conference, research, or other University-related purposes, the International Health, Safety, and Compliance team has resources to help with your trip preparation, mitigating risks, or managing an emergency. This session will cover University requirements for travel, how those requirements function to support your safety and wellbeing, and more recent developments in the world of travel that may impact your experience. This is not a session on the basics of how to pack and what to bring, but instead will outline University resources and recommendations that will help you from departure through the process of re-entry to the United States. Significant time will be allotted for Q&A. 

On any given day, the remains of countless deceased migrants are shipped around the world to be buried in ancestral soils. Others are laid to rest in countries of settlement, sometimes in cemeteries established for religious and ethnic minorities, where available. For immigrants and their descendants, perennial questions about the meaning of home and homeland take on a particular gravitas in death. When the boundaries of the nation and its members are contested, burial decisions are political acts. Building on multi-sited fieldwork in Berlin and Istanbul—where the author worked as an undertaker— this talk explores migrants’ end-of-life dilemmas, illustrating how they are connected to ongoing political struggles over the stakes of citizenship, belonging, and collective identity in contemporary Europe.

Dr. Anant Maringanti shares insights drawn from over a decade of practice as an engaged scholar in Hyderabad, India through Hyderabad Urban Lab. The presentation is structured as a conversation to highlight the threads connecting work at two different institutional locations - Hyderabad Urban Lab in the global south and ICGC in the global north.

My research is a journey into the heart of feminist methodologies and ethics in the pursuit of alternative justice addressing state and social violence against migrants. At the core of my inquiry lies an exploration of the methodological and ethical intricacies that shape transnational and translocal practices of accountability, focusing on public hearings, specifically on witness preparation and safety, and the transformative impact of these hearings on broader social justice movements. In this work I trace these principles through the lens of the 2015 Women’s Court—an emblematic regional model for justice in a time when impunity for war crimes and grave human rights violations in post-Yugoslav spaces still looms large. This work is a pedagogical offering, a guide in-the-making to those who co-travel alongside me in the creation of the Transbalkan Tribunal for Justice—an emerging force inspired by local, decolonial, and transnational feminist praxis, striving to build a future of migration and social justice.

Climate change is accelerating glacier retreat in the tropical Andes. However, the impacts of these rapid changes on ecosystem assembly remain largely understudied, particularly concerning a key pioneer group in this process—lichens and mosses—which are often overlooked in ecological research.

Lichens and mosses are slow-growing organisms known for their crucial role in soil formation, a fundamental step in the formation of new ecosystems. However, in some tropical regions, we have observed that their growth response is not keeping pace with the accelerated colonization by vascular plants. As a result, lichens and mosses may be competitively displaced from the successional system, with unknown consequences for ecosystem services.

In this talk, we will explore the effects of climate change in the Northern Andes, the role of lichens and mosses in primary succession, and the gaps in our scientific understanding of their contributions to ecosystem assembly. Finally, I will share my experiences as a tropical ecologist witnessing climate change firsthand and how my interactions with local communities have shaped my perspective on this global challenge.