Keynote speakers

We are delighted to announce the three keynote speakers for this year’s conference: Professor Michaela Benson, Dr Giovanni Bettini, and Dr Sophie Cranston.

Professor Michaela Benson

Michaela Benson is Professor in Public Sociology at Lancaster University and Chief Executive of the Sociological Review Foundation. Her current research focuses on migration, citizenship and the UK’s borders after Brexit and how this relates to longer histories of racialised immigration controls. This research has been supported by funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and British Academy. In addition to her academic publications, she hosts and produces Who do we think we are? the podcast debunking taken for granted understandings of migration and citizenship in Britain today.  

Provisional title:

Migration and the making of ‘Global Britain’: state-making, statecraft in and through the migration-citizenship regime after Brexit

 

Dr Giovanni Bettini

Giovanni Bettini – Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University – has been investigating how environmental change – in its planetary but uneven character, and entangled with a series of contemporary ‘crises’ and historical legacies – is generating new spaces, modes of governance, subjectivities and forms of resistance. He has published extensively on the links between climate change and human mobility. Giovanni coordinates the Leverhulme Trust-funded project Digital Climate Futures: a decolonial and justice perspective on digitalised climate change adaptation, which explores the role of the digital in reshaping adaptation, resilience and justice. He also serves as Associate Director for the Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe) at Lancaster University.  

Provisional Title:

Towards climate nomadism? Displacement, (im)mobilization and escape in the face of planetary crises

 

Dr Sophie Cranston

Sophie Cranston is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Loughborough University, where she has worked for 10 years after completing her PhD at the University of Edinburgh. Her central research concern is unravelling the ways through which migrations are categorised, produced and experienced, especially amongst groups considered to be privileged. She has published numerous papers on the expatriate and international student as categories of mobility, the migration industries and their role in shaping mobilities and their categories, and how privilege manifests itself through migration. Her research has been funded amongst others, by the ESRC, other UK government funds and the RGS-IBG. Sophie is actively involved with the Population Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society with Institute of British Geographers, including as chair between 2021 and 2023. She is an editorial board member for Global Networks and Population, Space and Place.

Provisional Title:

Categorising the Overseas Student: Settlement, Residence and Immigration