New university professor to explore two sides to migration

A near capacity audience of one hundred people will join a free public lecture with the University of the Highlands and Islands new Professor of Sociology and Rural Studies in Inverness on Wednesday 27 November 2019.

Internationally recognised Professor de Lima’s inaugural Professorial lecture titled “We are all migrants” will seek to challenge the current discourses  which portray migrants as either taking jobs  away from locals  or as essential to addressing labour shortages and argues instead for the need to go beyond such binary positions.

With decades of innovative research in highlighting equality and social justice issues across the Highland and Islands and internationally, she describes her recent research focus:

"In the last few years I have been preoccupied with the ways in which international migrants have come to be singled out as ‘the other’ from all the other categories of migrants.

“In my lecture I will draw on my research and that of others, together with my own mobility trajectories to set out alternative ideas  about migration beyond the usual  instrumental views of migrants that we are used to  hearing about in the public domain  by  exploring the ways in which we are all implicated in mobility and migration.”

Dr Brian Boag, Interim Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business said:

“Philomena has made a unique contribution to scholarship and research in this field.  Having worked with her for many years I have seen the enormous contribution she has made to the University of the Highlands and Islands, to the region, and to the higher education sector”.

Professor de Lima has contributed a chapter ‘International Migration: Sustaining Rural Communities’ in the Handbook of International Comparative Rural Policy. Edited by M Vittauri, J Devlin, Pagani M, T Johnson the handbook builds on almost fifteen years of international collaboration between contributors from Europe, North America and Mexico in the International Comparative Rural Policy Studies summer institute, of which the university is a member.

The lecture is being held at Inverness College UHI on Wednesday 27 November from 5.30 – 7.30pm.  Video-conference links may be available in your area for this event. If you wish to enquire about attending, please contact the events team events@uhi.ac.uk