Seminar Series

In tandem with the International Network, ISO will also continue to hold migration themed seminars in Oxford, as part of the "Destinazione Italia" programme.

Ornela Vorpsi

These began in November 2009 with the visit to Oxford of Ornela Vorpsi, award-winning Albanian born author of Il paese dove non si muore mai (Einaudi, 2005), La mano che non mordi (Einaudi, 2007) and Bevete cacao Van Houten! (Einaudi, 2010).

Vorpsi was in conversation with Dr Emma Bond (University of Oxford), Dr Jennifer Burns (Warwick University) and Dr Maria Cristina Mauceri (Cassamarca Lecturer, University of Sydney; Honorary Research Fellow, University of Birmingham).

Further details, including extracts from Vorpsi's work and a poster for the event, are available here. 

Everything but Italian

The second seminar, Everything but Italian, held on the 10th March 2010, dealt with the representation of immigrants and ethnic minorities in the Italian press. The speakers were Dr Federico Faloppa, a lecturer in the Italian department of the University of Reading and an expert on the lexical / linguistic representations of otherness in the Italian media, and Aidan Lewis, a BBC journalist who recently wrote a series of articles investigating the situation of migrants in Italy.

Further details, including a poster for the event, are available here. 

Giallo a Milano

This was followed on 16th June 2010 by a screening of the award-winning documentary Giallo a Milano, a fascinating and aesthetically ground-breaking journey into Milan's Chinese community. The screening was followed by a short presentation by Daniele Cologna (Insubria University, Como), one of the sociologists who contributed to the fieldwork, and a discussion with him and Sergio Basso, the film's writer and director.

Further details about this event, including a poster, are available here. 

La Quarta Via

We also welcomed Simone Brioni (Warwick University) and Kaha Mohamed Aden on the 4th March 2011, to present Brioni's documentary La Quarta Via, in which Aden narrates her memories of Mogadishu, her birth city, and reconstructs its story in Pavia, where she now lives. The capital of Somalia is divided into five streets, which correspond to different historical periods. "La Quarta Via" symbolizes the actuality of civil war. This negates the preceding periods and makes it necessary to hope for a "fifth street".

Filmografia italo-libica

In June 2011 we held a very timely seminar with Daniele Comberiati (Brussels University) and Barbara Spadaro (SUM): Filmografia italo-libica: Una storia attraverso le immagini del colonialismo e del postcolonialismo italiano in Libia (1911-2008), chaired by Charles Burdett (Bristol University). We were lucky to have the opportunity to welcome Daniele back for a second seminar in November 2011, this time together with Federica Mazzara (UCL). Their discussion was on: Letteratura migrante e letteratura di genere: Quali relazioni?.

Old Italians and New Italians

Professor Enrico Pugliese also came to give a seminar in Oxford, ion the 25th October 2011, entitled, Old Italians and New Italians: Emigration, Immigration and Italian Identity. The seminar was chaired by Nando Sigona (COMPAS, Oxford University), and an abstract for Prof. Pugliese's paper is available here.

Details of forthcoming seminars will be posted here soon.