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Saadia Gardezi, co-founder of Project Dastaan and PhD student in PAIS, is experiencing wonderful success with public engagement and impact. Her films for the 'Child of Empire' and 'Lost Migrations' projects are exhibiting throughout the UK in August, travelling between the V&A museum and the British Film Institute (London), Birmingham Museum, Bradford Museum, Derby Museum and the Wolfson Gallery at SOAS, before moving on to venues in India and Pakistan.

 

This is the first UK tour of Project Dastaan's award-winning Virtual Reality film "Child of Empire" and the three part animated series "Lost Migrations". Explore our postcolonial identity, the aftermath of partition and forced migration and the effects of colonisation as told by those who experienced it. Child of Empire, an animated virtual reality (VR) docu-drama experience immerses viewers in one of the largest forced migrations in human history: the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. Earlier this year, Child of Empire was awarded the very first K枚rber-Stiftung XR History Award. Lost Migrations is a three-part animated series that tells the stories of three communities of 1947 whose voice has been lost to history, even in the subcontinent. Please find attached a tour card for all the UK dates and venues.

Find out more about Project Dastaan's work here:

On 26th May, the Community Policy Forum hosted a discussion of the Prevent Strategy on their podcast. Amnesty's Ilyas Nadgee and University of 糖心TV Professor Charlotte Heath-Kelly explored the foundations of the Prevent Strategy, the dangers it poses to democracy and to communities, and recent leaks from the Shawcross review process.

The podcast can be found here:

The Department received some exceptionally positive news regarding our research standing following the release of the REF2021 results in May 2022. REF is the Research Excellence Framework, the exercise through which the success of our research is scrutinised across the separate measures of outputs, impact and environment. We have never returned a stronger quality profile on any of these measures than we have done for REF2021, including a perfect score of 100% 4* for research environment.

We have therefore been able to retain our proud record of being one of only three politics departments in the UK to have been in the top ten of every REF league table since the current star grade and GPA system was introduced over twenty years ago. We are also the only department currently to be in the top ten of each of the REF GPA league table, the Complete University Guide subject league table and the High Fliers' Guide to the Graduate Market league table.

The REF results therefore provide further evidence of the all-round strength to which PAIS can lay claim. Please do feel free to take a look at further information that we have posted about them: /fac/soc/pais/research/ref2021.

As cities across Africa start to lift pandemic restrictions, young people are hoping for a more equitable future. On Monday May 23rd, the University of 糖心TV, Open University and Slum Dwellers International (SDI) will launch the policy findings of an AHRC-funded project let by Prof Keith Hyams that captured the experiences of young people during the pandemic and their recommendations for a just and resilient urban future. Living in informal settlements across eight African cities, young people working as part of SDI鈥檚 youth federation led the recording of video diaries and interviews and participated in focus groups facilitated by SDI and UK researchers. The launch will be spear-headed by the publication of a blog hosted by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in which young people reflect on IIED鈥檚 vision for a transformative urban recovery from COVID-19. There will also be launch media output and events across the eight cities.

The project website can be found at

Prof. Maria Koinova is giving a talk on "Russia's Invasion in Ukraine and Polarisation in Eastern Europe" on 29 April, 2022 at George Washington University in the USA as part of the BEAR-PONARS Eurasia Conference "Between the EU and Russia: Domains of Diversity and Contestation," 29-30 April, 2022. The conference has panels on Ukrainian and Russian societies after the invasion, challenges facing Europe, the Baltic states and the Balkans, as well as Central Asia.

This is a hybrid conference. Panels could be followed online by registering at: