In this panel discussion, the three scholar in migration studies are going to talk about recent developements in transnational migration, the effects of the current international situation, old and new theoretical concepts to describe social mobility as well as personal experience in transnational empirical research.
The distinguished scholar Biao XIANG is currently the director of the Max Planck Institute for Anthropology in Halle, Germany. His master's thesis 《跨越边界的社区》 at Peking University on 'Zhejiang Village' in Beijing attracted some attention. The English translation of the book was published in 2005 under the title Transcending Boundaries. Zhejiangcun: The Story of a Migrant Village in Beijing published by Brill. In 2018, the book was reissued as a contemporary classic. His Book The Self as Method sold over 160.00 copies.
His work has been translated into Japanese, French, Korean, Spanish, and Italian. Since September 2021, Biao Xiang has headed the department of “Anthropology of Economic Experimentation” at the Max Planck Institute for Ethnological Research. Numerous lectures and talks by and with Biao Xiang are also available online.
Bani Gill holds the position of a Jun. Prof. for Urban Futures of the Global South at the Institute of Sociology, University of Tübingen. She has worked as a researcher at the University of Copenhagen and the Oxford University. Her research on transnational migration between Africa and India has been published in prestigious international journals.
Boris Nieswand is Director of the Institute of Sociologie at the University of Tübingen. He studied sociology in Bielefeld and earned his doctorate in ethnology in Halle/Saale. He worked, among others, at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle/Saale) and at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (Göttingen). Boris Nieswand's research focuses on migration and diversity, urban conviviality, and morality. His research perspectives can be characterized as reflexive and are normally based on an ethnographic approach.
