Please join us for this year’s CeMoRe Winter Webinar at which Catharine Coleborne (Professor of History, Newcastle, AU) and Kaya Barry (Senior Lecturer in Geography and Art, Griffith, AU) will be presenting on their recent research. Although focusing on different periods in Australasian history, their research shares a common interest in the im/mobilities of the disenfranchised.

Catharine will speak to her recently published book, Vagrant Lives in Colonial Australasia: Regulating Mobility, 1840-1910 (Bloomsbury, 2024; pbk, 2025)

Kaya will reflect upon the findings of her ARC-funded research project, ‘Momentarily Immobile: the Futures of Backpacking and Seasonal Farm Workers’ with a short paper entitled: ‘Unseasonable Mobilities: practices of farming, weathering, and labour migration’.

Following the presentations, our two discussants, Katie Pickles (Professor of History, Canterbury, New Zealand) and Giovanni Bettini (Senior Lecturer, Lancaster’s Environment Centre and CeMoRe Associate Director) will share their thoughts and questions, after which we will open up the discussion to our online participants.

When:                   Friday 30 January 2026

Time:                    9.00-10.30am GMT (UK) (PLEASE CHECK YOUR TIME ZONE)

Chair:                     Lynne Pearce

Contact                 L.Pearce@lancaster.ac.uk

TEAMS LINK:

20 June 2025

On an exceedingly hot Friday in June, colleagues from near and far gathered together in the Charles Carter Building at ����APP���� for CeMoRe’s Summer Symposium:  a regular fixture in the CeMoRe diary for several years now.

With a new director — Jen Southern�� – at the helm, this was originally conceived as an ‘in house’ event: an opportunity to reach out to�� colleagues whose work may speak to mobilities research, either directly or indirectly�� (hence the decision to simply title the event�� ‘Making Connections’).�� Given Jen’s own interests, the CfP nevertheless indicated a particular interest in creativity /�� mobile methods and the ‘more-than-human’: suggestions which was taken up in several of the papers (see website for a full list of abstracts and speaker bios).

 As it turned out, the Symposium evolved into a much larger — and decidedly extra-mural — event than we had originally intended  owing to the coincidence  of several visitors to the Centre at this time. Jason Finch ( Abo Akademi, Turku, Finland) was here as a Visiting Scholar; Kate Moles (Cardiff) had been examining a mobilities-related PhD in Sociology the previous day;  and Lucia Quaquarelli and Adrien Frenay (Paris Nanterre, France) were in Lancaster as  invited guests following CeMoRe’s reciprocal participation in a CRPM seminar in Paris  last November.

These visitors were given the opportunity to present longer-form papers at the start of the afternoon (although Kate Moles regrettably had to withdraw at the last minute due to illness) and — as ever — it was inspiring to hear about mobilities research (and mobilities communities) elsewhere in the world.

The rest of the afternoon was divided into  two ‘7 x 5’ panels (i.e., 14 speakers speaking for 5 minutes each), which one of our online participants likened to speed-dating!  In the time-honoured tradition of  CeMoRe’s  lunchtime ‘stand-up’ sessions initiated by  former director, Monika Buscher, speakers were strictly bound to the five-minute rule courtesy of a squawking cockerel alarm on Jen Southern’s phone. This  resulted in an exhilarating showcase of contemporary mobilities-related research from across multiple disciplines, and with variable agendas. I did, nevertheless, spot a  recurrent concern with the power of discourse and the imagination to  shape our mobility futures —  for better and  for worse.  Although this event was not recorded, the abstracts and bios are archived on the CeMoRe website which means that readers can share in our quick-fire ‘festival of ideas’ (and contact the speakers) if they so wish.

Many thanks to everyone who participated in this  event — both in-person and online — and especially those (aside from the visitors mentioned above) who made the effort to travel to Lancaster for this memorable day.  In these exceedingly challenging times for Higher Education in the UK,  it was heartening to see colleagues still finding the time to engage in the research and creative practice that they love and taking  inspiration from the mobilities paradigm.

Lynne Pearce

CeMoRe Co-Director (Humanities)

On 25th May 2023, CeMoRe was delighted to host Dr Sharon Wilson at an in-person event on ����APP���� campus. Dr Wilson discussed her recent work that aims to “put flesh on the boneyard” in a way that highlights how tourist bodies become targets of inscription by moving through infrastructure that commits ‘Slow violence’. During her talk, Dr Wilson asked, how do these affective spaces reinforce prevailing ideologies and relations of power? How might the affective homology between bodies and the past reframe the social and somatic fields of understanding? By moving through and beside the aesthetics of the ‘dead’ planes in their potential as “relational entities”, I suggest they do not “rest in peace” but instead “come alive” in a performance that unfolds into the landscape as a phantasmagoria of military power.

The session drove critical conversations around everyday militaries and how mobilities research can be used to reveal them.

A special thank you to Dr Sharon Wilson for her fascinating talk and to all attendees for their comments and discussion.

To watch the whole presentation and discussion please follow this link:

Edited by Luis Eduardo Pérez Murcia and Sara Bonfanti

Bringing together the voices of nine individuals from an archive of over two hundred in-depth interviews with transnational migrants and refugees across five European countries, , a new book edited by Luis Eduardo Pérez Murcia and Sara Bonfanti, critically engages with how home is experienced by those who move among changing social and cultural constraints. Highly conscious of the political strength of their voices, migrants and asylum seekers speak out loud to the authors, as this volume seeks to challenge the narrative that these people are ‘out of place’ or cannot claim their right to belong. Read the following extract from the introduction:

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Reviews said

Through a series of richly etched and complex life stories of mobility, displacement and home, the book offers a captivating and insightful journey into migrants’ search for home on the move negotiating roots and routes, and the struggles and challenges they face in doing so both in the public and domestic arena, including around practices of food preparation and sharing.

Nando Sigona, Professor of International Migration and Displacement, University of Birmingham, UK.

This is an ambitious exploration of the struggles and journeys of ‘home’ as it is sought for and experienced by migrants and refugees settling in Europe. The volume impresses with its conceptual scrutiny and width of multiple disciplinarity that together highlight the migrants’ diverse meanings and experiences of home or the lack of it, and how these are traversed on the move. 

The authors’ commitment to ethnographic longitudinal studies and individual biographies brings us close up to concrete life stories and life as it is lived travelling from place to place, thus challenging and extending our knowledge, understanding, empathy, senses and tastes of homes left behind, homes in the making, and homes aspired for – all so much useful for making our communities open for the homes of everyone.

Anne S. Grønseth, Professor in Social Anthropology, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, NO

This unique and highly original contribution to the study of migration and homemaking builds on the long-term and collaborative research of an interdisciplinary team of sociologists, anthropologists and development researchers. With remarkable attention to ethnographic detail, the book engages with the moving life stories of nine diverse migrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America now living in Europe. 

What makes this volume particularly compelling is how it weaves together sophisticated theorizing of home and migration with the lived, felt and narrated experiences of making home under often very difficult conditions. The volume strongly enriches our understanding of how searching, struggling and sustaining to belong is located in the precarious idea of home.

Julia Pauli, Professor in Cultural Anthropology, University of Hamburg, DE

Finding Home in Europe: Chronicles of Global Migrants is a feast of stories and analysis, carefully curated in relation to the authors’ two kinds of intended reader: academic social scientists and the public at large. 

Skilfully using a combination of oral history and ethnography, each of the nine main chapters is woven around the life story of one of the two hundred people who participated in a large-scale, four-year research project investigating searches for and struggles over home. The chapters are distinct from each other,  each illuminating a specific theme. Impressively, they are at the same time scholarly and highly readable, evidencing long periods of thinking and analysis, as well as collaboration between chapter author and life story narrator (some of whom double as photographer/illustrator). 

This is an ambitious book and a rewarding read. The editors’ substantial Introduction locates the work at the intersection of several academic disciplines, and enticingly sets up the chronicles that follow as lying between fact and fiction. Three subsequent reviews serve to introduce each of the three main sections of the book, the last of which explores the sensuous worlds of food and cooking and their relations to home. While in many ways a beautiful book, the academic authors and their collaborating oral history narrators are not romantic. 

Finding Home in Europe: Chronicles of Global Migrants is simultaneously both a book of individual stories and a critical analysis of how structural inequalities, including class, racisms and patriarchy and the legacies of European colonialism both shape and are occasionally subverted by the lives chronicled in its pages.

Ben Rogaly, Professor of Human Geography, University of Sussex, UK

Until 8 April 2023 Berghahn offers a 50% discount on orders of the hardback for personal use placed directly via , using the code PERE8508.

20th ANNIVERSARY (2003-2023)

Programme of Events

**F E B R U A R Y   U P D A T E **

Academic year 2022-3 marks the twentieth anniversary of Lancaster’s Centre for Mobilities Research which was founded by John Urry and Mimi Sheller in 2003. The current CeMoRe team would like to celebrate this special occasion by reaching out to friends and colleagues around the world who have been on the mobilities journey with us in the hope that we can meet with you – virtually or in person – at some point over the coming year.

To this end, we share below our continuing programme of events for 2023 and we would like to thank everyone who has attended our events that have taken place thus far. The programme of events culminates in a strand dedicated to the CeMoRe Anniversary at 2023’s Annual T2M Conference. 

We will be hosting an exhibition and in-person event at ����APP���� to run alongside the main conference taking place at Konkuk University in Seoul (South Korea). The hybrid format of the conference will also facilitate the participation of groups and individuals from around the world who would prefer to join us remotely.  We will be writing to colleagues who we believe may be interested in this opportunity soon.

In the meantime, we would be delighted to welcome colleagues based in the UK to the Lancaster-based events listed below as well the online workshops and seminars.

10^th March, 1.00-2.30pm (British Standard Time): CeMoRe Spring Webinar (Online)

Dr Stephanie Sodero (Climate Change and Health, Manchester University) 

‘UNDER THE WEATHER: REIMAGINING MOBILITY IN THE CLIMATE CRISIS’ 

 At this online event Stephanie Sodero will be talking about her new book, ‘Under the Weather: Reimagining Mobility in the Climate Crisis’, with discussants Monika Buscher and Mimi Sheller. There will also be an opportunity to participate in the discussion and ask questions.

Follow this link for more information and to .

12^th May: Art Mobilities Webinar (Online) 4.00-5.30pm BST

Dr Jen Southern (����APP����) and Kaya Barry. 

Details to be confirmed at a later date, please refer to our website and mailing list for upcoming information. 

25^th May:  CeMoRe Summer Seminar with Dr Sharon Wilson (����APP���� / in-person) 4.00-6.00pm BST (Room to be confirmed).

Dr Sharon Wilson (Northumbria University and Mobilities Futures Research Network)

PUTTING “FLESH ON THE BONEYARD”; EVERYDAY MILITARIES AND MUSEUM, A MOBILITIES PERSPECTIVE.

This is an in-person event, exact location on campus to be confirmed closer to the date. For more information and to register for the event please .

17^th July 2023:  CeMoRe 20th Anniversary Colloquium (����APP���� / in-person and online) 

This event will incorporate presentations from CeMoRe’s past and present directors, a PGR/ECR workshop/masterclass (with competitive travel bursaries for up to four students) and Mimi Sheller’s 20th Anniversary Lecture:

‘MOBILITY JUSTICE AND CLIMATE REPARATIONS: REFLECTING ON 20 YEARS OF MOBILITIES RESEARCH’

Eventbrite registration (online and in-person) will be advertised via the CeMoRe website and mailing list in the near future together with details of PGR/ECR funding for the workshop.

Early expressions of interest are also welcome: please contact us at cemore@lancaster.ac.uk  

October 25-28th 2023:  Annual T2M Conference (Seoul, South Korea and ����APP���� / in-person and online)

CONFERENCE THEME: MOBILITY, AESTHETICS AND ETHICS

A conference strand will be dedicated to CeMoRe’s 20th anniversary at this year’s T2M conference and we will be reaching out to colleagues around the world in the hope of putting together a series of online panels. In the meantime, if you would like to propose your own panel please contact us at  cemore@lancaster.ac.uk.

 To coincide with the conference, Jen Southern will be curating an online international exhibition – ‘ROCKY FUTURES’  (see link following for details) – and at least two in-person / live-stream panels relating to the exhibition will take place at ����APP����.

CeMoRe is also happy to host in-person / live-stream panels convened by UK/European conference participants, with ����APP����  functioning as a European hub for those unable to travel to South Korea. 

26^th October 2023: Annual John Urry Lecture (����APP����/ in-person)

Alice Mah (Professor of Sociology and Head of Department, University of Warwick). 

Full details and registration to be confirmed at a later date. 

To be kept up to date on future events and activity at CeMoRe please view our website. 

CeMoRe Website:  /cemore. 

If you are not already signed up the CeMoRe mailing list and would like to be kept updated, please email cemore@lancaster.ac.uk to be added to the list. 

If you have any other queries please contact:

Lynne Pearce (Co-Director Humanities and Acting Director): L.Pearce@lancaster.ac.uk

Harriet Phipps (CeMoRe Administrator): cemore@lancaster.ac.uk

The talk had an excellent audience with interesting discussion led by Dr Luciana Barbosa and Dr Yvonne Reddick.

Thank you to all attendees and special thanks to Dr Andrew Baldwin for his fascinating talk; to Dr Giovanni Bettini for chairing the discussion and to our discussants Dr Luciana Barbosa and Dr Yvonne Reddick for their through provoking comments and questions.

If you missed the webinar or would like to watch it again please click the link below the recording of the event:

Ana P. Gutiérrez Garza��

Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews��

Monday 2nd December 2019��

����APP���� Bowland North SR05, 14.00-16.00��

In homes and brothels around the world, migrant women are selling a unique commodity: care. In this talk, Dr Gutiérrez will introduce some of the main ideas in her recently published study, Care for Sale (OUP). The book provides an in-depth ethnography of a group of middle-class women from Latin America who exchange care and intimacy for money, while working as domestic and sex workers in London. Illuminating the complexities of care work, the talk considers how women’s experience of migration and intimate labour is one of rupture that both enables and forces them to gradually reconstitute themselves, in their host cities, as people quite distinct from their “normal” selves back home. It will explore some of the factors that contribute to migrant women choosing either domestic or sex work, including their concerns about money and morality. Moving away from a narrow focus on migration and labour to look instead at the creation and (re)creation of persons; and at how people fashion themselves and cultivate difference, inequality, or commonality as part of their self-making projects, the book shows migrants not only as economic actors, but also as individuals involved in an intimate process that constantly modifies their sense of morality and personhood.��

Ana P. Gutiérrez Garza received her PhD in Anthropology from the London School of Economics in 2014, upon which the book is based. She has also done research on cooperation and inequality in Oklahoma with Hispanic migrant families. From 2015 to 2018 she was part of the ESRC-funded project ‘An Ethnography of Advice: Between Market, Society and the Declining Welfare State’, which analysed the place of advice within the rapid dismantling of the Spanish welfare state.��

Dr Melissa Fernandez Arrigoitia (Lecturer in Urban Futures, Sociology Department) will Chair the event and lead the discussion, and Dr Michael Lambert (Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities, Sociology Department) will be a respondent.��

We would welcome all those in the department and the university who have researched in the field or who have an interest in this areas, to come along and contribute to the conversation. So please be prepared to join in and contribute to what we hope to be a lively discussion.��

The event is free, but unfortunately places are limited. If you would like to come, please confirm your attendance by contacting Michael Lambert (Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities) via m.lambert3@lancaster.ac.uk.��

“The Anthropocene epoch,” as Claire Colebrook describes it, “appears to mark as radical a shift in species awareness as Darwinian evolution effected for the nineteenth century” (Colebrook 2017). The recent outpouring of ontological speculation on the Anthropocene across the humanities and social sciences certainly testifies to such a radical shift. Dipesh Chakrabarty’s insights about the Anthropocene are emblematic (Chakrabarty 2009). The Anthropocene, he argues, marks not only the moment in which the human, Anthropos, becomes fully expressed in the Earth System, but also, paradoxically, the moment in which we lose our ability to grasp what it means to be human. The Anthropocene is scary business. One of the aims of this special issue of Mobilities on ‘Anthropocene Mobilities’ is to add to this speculative moment by positioning ‘mobility’ as a key term of reference for thinking with, through and against, the Anthropocene as either a philosophical problem, a political concept, a material condition, or an epoch of deep time ….

: Shifting the Debate Edited by Christiane Froehlich (GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies), Andrew Baldwin (Durham University) and Delf Rothe (University of Hamburg)

by Sam Suliman (Griffith University), Carol Farbotko (Griffith University), Taukiei Kitara (independent), Celia McMichael (University of Melbourne), Karen McNamara (University of Queensland), Hedda Ransan-Cooper (Australian National University) and Fanny Thornton (University of Canberra)

Indigenous Mobility Traditions, Colonialism and the Anthropocene by Kyle Whyte (Michigan State University), Julia Gibson (Queen’s University, Ontario) and Jared Talley (Michigan State University)

by Ethemcan Turhan (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) and Marco Amiero (KTH Royal Institute of Technology0

by Stefanie Fishel (University of Alabama)

And Yet It Moves! (Climate) Migration as Symptom in the Anthropocene by Giovanni Bettini (����APP����)

Forum 1: The Environmental Privilege of Borders in the Anthropocene ��by Lisa Sun-Hee Park (University of California, Santa Barbara) and David Pellow (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Forum 2: The migrant climate: resilience, adaptation and the ontopolitics of mobility in the Anthropocene by David Chandler (University of Westminster)

Forum 3: Migrant Climate in the Kinocene by Thomas Nail (University of Denver)

Forum 4: by Stephanie Wakefield (Florida International University)