Between Ghurba and Umma: Mapping Sudanese Muslim Moralities Across National and Islamic Space

“Muhammad1” is a thoughtful and dedicated youth worker for the local council of a small coastal town in the United Kingdom, where he has been an especially important role model for young refugees from the Horn of Africa, including Sudan and Somalia. Muhammad, a member of Sudan’s dominant Muslim Arab professional class, claimed asylum in the United Kingdom in 1993 along with many other Sudanese.2 After establishing himself professionally, Muhammad applied to the UK Home Office for his wife and four children back in Sudan to join him in the United Kingdom in the late 1990s. Over the next few years, Muhammad experienced a rise in family tension and a deterioration in his marital relationship. “W’Allahi (by God), she was always nagging me,” Muhammad said of his wife—talking back to him, instructing him on his responsibilities, and taking decisions without his approval. In particular, Muhammad mentioned his anger at his wife’s unilateral act of sending money to her own uncle in Sudan without Muhammad’s permission. “This is too much,” he complained. “It is not her right to do this!” Adding to Muhammad’s woes, his tween and teen children were not behaving “properly.” The three girls preferred to wear clothes that were popular with British youth but that did not necessarily meet the ideal of modest dress promoted by many first-generation Muslim Sudanese. The boy braided his hair in the style of his Afro-Caribbean classmates

Concept Note -- Draft

A concept note which gives insight into the mission and operations of the Integration and Belonging Hub

Resisting “Blackness” Muslim Arab Sudanese in the Diaspora

Muslim Arab Sudanese consider light-coloured skin attractive and upper class, but in Egypt and the UK Sudanese refugees and migrants are considered “black”; in each country Sudanese Arab Muslims have developed different strategies to cope with this situation. While Egyptian racial categories demand association with the dominant, light skinned majority, in the UK the Sudanese aspire to neither the white majority nor black identity

Visual Communication and the Digital Turn

I am very excited about the Digital Turn on multiple levels as a way of expressing ideas in visual form and making them more accessible and finding different ways to tell stories. As Joan Didion wrote, “we tell ourselves stories to live,” and I live and breathe that phrase. For this presentation, my aim is to show you the new forms of communication that excite me to no end, and then talk about how our relationship with new media content producers has drastically changed. If you have never heard of SnowFall, an incredibly impressive piece of interactive media that the New York Times produced in 2012, please allow me to show it to you. As you can see, as I am scrolling down all these cool things are happening and you are learning all these amazing things about the mountain. You are reading while somebody is skiing by you. It’s just an extraordinary example of this new kind of technique called “parallax scrolling; and this piece “Snowfall” made such an impact that “snowfall” has become a verb among multimedia news producers, as in ‘shall we “snowfall” this story?’; perhaps now so many people are “snowfalling” now that the technique will soon wear itself out

Gender-related differences in computer-mediated communication and computer-supported collaborative learning

A question associated with the introduction of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is whether all participants profit equally from working in CSCL environments. This article reports on a review study into gender-related differences in participation in CSCL. As many of the processes in CSCL are similar to those in computer-mediated communication (CMC), studies into CMC are also included in the review. Male dominance is found to play a role in many CMC settings. A learning culture with an explicit focus on participation by all students seems to be related to a more gender-balanced participation in CMC, however. A tendency for boys to be more active participants than girls is also present in CSCL environments, but it is less pronounced than in CMC. This may be explained by the fact that participation is explicitly promoted in most CSCL environments. Gender differences in the character of students' contributions are found in both CMC and CSCL. It is concluded that in order to avoid gender-stereotyped participation and communication patterns, it is necessary to explicitly address inclusiveness as an aspect of a collaborative classroom culture. A plea is made for further research into differential participation by students in CSCL, and the effects thereof on cognitive and affective learning outcomes. Research should also focus on the question how classroom cultures can be promoted that support active participation of all students aimed at collaborative knowledge construction. © 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Analytic frameworks for assessing dialogic argumentation in online learning environments

Over the last decade, researchers have developed sophisticated online learning environments to support students engaging in argumentation. This review first considers the range of functionalities incorporated within these online environments. The review then presents five categories of analytic frameworks focusing on (1) formal argumentation structure, (2) normative quality, (3) nature and function of contributions within the dialog, (4) epistemic nature of reasoning, and (5) patterns and trajectories of participant interaction. Example analytic frameworks from each category are presented in detail rich enough to illustrate their nature and structure. This rich detail is intended to facilitate researchers’ identification of possible frameworks to draw upon in developing or adopting analytic methods for their own work. Each framework is applied to a shared segment of student dialog to facilitate this illustration and comparison process. Synthetic discussions of each category consider the frameworks in light of the underlying theoretical perspectives on argumentation, pedagogical goals, and online environmental structures. Ultimately the review underscores the diversity of perspectives represented in this research, the importance of clearly specifying theoretical and environmental commitments throughout the process of developing or adopting an analytic framework, and the role of analytic frameworks in the future development of online learning environments for argumentation

Bridging and breaking silos: Transformational governance of the migration–sustainability nexus

Sustainability and migration are typically treated as discrete policy spheres in inter-national, national, and local fora, separated in governance structures and institutions. This results in policy incoherence that hinders just transitions toward more sustainable societies cognizant of mobile realities. This explorative effort identifies the (dis)connec-tions between policy domains using data collected on how the sustainability–migration nexus is governed in four countries with a special emphasis on urban areas: Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States. Results of 73 interviews show that migration and sustainability actors find it challenging to see how they could be working together and that migrants are rarely conceived of as sustainability actors and/or targeted populations of sustainability policy. Despite the cross- sectoral nature of sustainability, it appears that migration and sustainability are sequestered into silos that hinder collabo-rative actions. Lamenting the existence of silos is not enough to encourage new lines of thinking or practice in how sustainability is governed; therefore, we examine the evidence to ascertain current barriers blocking synergetic governance and the opportunities for change perceived by respondents via three critical elements of transformations toward sustainability: structural, systemic, and enabling conditions. We argue that for sustain-ability transitions to happen, a wider set of societal actors needs to be included from policy intention to action, but that this transformation may require more than policy integration via horizontal coordination. It demands reflexivity and pluralistic pathways that close vertical gaps between national and municipal levels and diminish structural inequalities as they intersect with migration type and status

Collaboration scripts - a conceptual analysis

This article presents a conceptual analysis of collaboration scripts used in face-to-face and computer-mediated collaborative learning. Collaboration scripts are scaffolds that aim to improve collaboration through structuring the interactive processes between two or more learning partners. Collaboration scripts consist of at least five components: (a) learning objectives, (b) type of activities, (c) sequencing, (d) role distribution, and (e) type of representation. These components serve as a basis for comparing prototypical collaboration script approaches for face-to-face vs. computer-mediated learning. As our analysis reveals, collaboration scripts for face-to-face learning often focus on supporting collaborators in engaging in activities that are specifically related to individual knowledge acquisition. Scripts for computer-mediated collaboration are typically concerned with facilitating communicative-coordinative processes that occur among group members. The two lines of research can be consolidated to facilitate the design of collaboration scripts, which both support participation and coordination, as well as induce learning activities closely related to individual knowledge acquisition and metacognition. In addition, research on collaboration scripts needs to consider the learners’ internal collaboration scripts as a further determinant of collaboration behavior. The article closes with the presentation of a conceptual framework incorporating both external and internal collaboration scripts

Making homes in limbo? A conceptual framework

This article aims to conceptualize home and homemaking for people in protracted displacement. The article serves three purposes: to present an overview of the area of inquiry; to develop an analytical framework for understanding home and homemaking for forced migrants in protracted displacement; and to introduce the special issue. It explores how protracted displacement has been defined—from policy definitions to people’s experiences of protractedness, including “waiting” and “the permanence of temporariness.” The article identifies the ambivalence embedded in experiences and practices of homemaking in long-term displacement, demonstrating how static notions of home and displacement might be unsettled. It achieves this through examining relationships between mobility and stasis, the material and symbolic, between the past, present, and future, and multiple places and scales. The article proposes a conceptual framework—a triadic constellation of home—that enables an analysis of home in different contexts of protracted displacement. The framework helps to explore home both as an idea and a practice, distinguishing among three elements: “home” as the dayto-day practices of homemaking, “Home” as representing values, traditions, memories, and feelings of home, and the broader political and historical contexts in which “HOME” is understood in the current global order and embedded in institutions. In conclusion, the article argues that a feminist and dynamic understanding of home-Home-HOME provides a more holistic perspective of making home in protracted displacement that promotes a more extensive and more sophisticated academic work, policies, and practices