A panel discussion, “Somali Diaspora: Refugees, States and the Politics of Belonging,” will take place on Thursday, Feb. 24, at 4:15 p.m., in the Red Pit, KJ Building. The panel will include Giovanna Zaldini, a Somalian immigrant advocate; Hamilton College Professor of Government Stephen Orvis; and Rima Berns McGown of the Center for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. The discussion is free and open to the public.
Born in Somalia, Zaldini traveled to Italy in the l970s to escape dictatorship and study anthropology and geography at the University of Turin. Although she could never return to live in Somalia, she has maintained an active relationship with her country through members of the Somali Diaspora. She is co-creator of the first Intercultural Center for Immigrant Women in Italy, Alma Mater of Torino (Turin). This organization for women of diverse cultural origins, supported by Italian women, promotes interculturality as a cultural and economic resource.
Zaldini was instrumental in the creation of a now widely accepted professional category of cultural mediators.
Rima Berns-McGown, born in South Africa of a mixed background, is a Canadian scholar and writer whose work explores the spaces between peoples and cultures. She teaches diaspora studies with the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies and the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto, and is managing editor of International Journal, the Canadian academic quarterly of international politics, and chair of outreach for the Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs.
Berns-McGown holds a master's in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University’s Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C., and a Ph.D. in international politics from The University of Wales at Aberystwyth, United Kingdom. Her first book, Muslims in the Diaspora: The Somali Communities of London and Toronto, explored the renegotiation of identity and religion that Somali refugees undertook in the first years after moving into the West.
Her more recent publications include book chapters and articles based on further interviews with Somali women, on political culture, and on questions of diasporic identity and the dynamics between diasporic communities and the wider society. Her current research focuses on interviews with Somali-Canadians in their early 20s -- born in Somalia but schooled and socialized in Canada -- on questions of identity and belonging.
Professor Orvis studies comparative politics with an emphasis on Africa. His articles on rural development in Kenya and African democratization have appeared in African Studies Review, Studies in Comparative International Development, Journal of Asian and African Studies and Africa Today. Orvis is the author of The Agrarian Question in Kenya (University Presses of Florida). He served as an international election observer in Kenya's transitional elections to democratic rule and led 11 Hamilton students on the Kenya Field School in 2000 and 2004. Orvis is writing a textbook on comparative politics for Congressional Quarterly Press.
The panel is sponsored by the Irwin Chair Fund with the support of the Women’s Studies Department, the Department of Africana Studies, the Office of the President and Chief Diversity Officer, and the Institute for Global Africana Studies.
