Key note speaker: Prof. Mirjam Milharčič Hladnik
Title: The Importance of Transnational History of Migration and the Paradox of its Absence in Educational Systems and Museums
Date: 2 July 2020 CEST
The discourse in Europe regarding contemporary migration is based on the lack of knowledge about the history of migration as the core dynamic of development of the whole continent. The lack of knowledge stems from the absence of this topic in the curricula of the national educational systems and permanent exhibitions in national museums (Scandinavian countries might be an exception). The best way to introduce the history of migration to the broader audience is through personal historical and contemporary narratives of migrants who are immigrants and emigrants at the same time. With this approach, their stories connect spaces, people, emotions, and identities through time and transform the national mythology of “roots and land” into the story of “wings and mobility”. Most of all, they provide the perspective of homo migrants in which all of us are migrants.
Prof. Mirjam Milharčič Hladnik is a Research Advisor at the Slovenian Migration Institute at the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana and Associate Professor at the University of Nova Gorica. A passionate researcher of “the documents of life” (from migrant letters to testimonies and life stories) and specialist in migration and gender studies in Slovenia, she is the editor of From Slovenia to Egypt: Aleksandrinke’s trans-Mediterranean domestic workers’ migration and national imagination (2015) and the coeditor of Going places: Slovenian women’s stories on migration (2014).
She is the author of the screenplay for the documentary 100% Slovenian (2005) and Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Dve domovini / Two Homelands. She regularly participates in round tables and public discussions, not only those dealing with the questions about the Slovenian emigration, but also contemporary immigration to Slovenia connected to intercultural relationships and active citizenship.
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