University of Missouri Black Migrations Symposium

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The Department of Black Studies and Department of Statistics at the University of Missouri, Columbia, will host a Symposium entitled "Black Migrations" on February 7-8, 2019. This symposium topic was chosen to coincide with the theme of the 2019 Black History month. Migration has played a central role in the histories of Africans and their descendants. For some, migration was entirely voluntary while others were forced to move due to violence, political destabilization, ecological degradation, or other upheavals. Black migrations have also resulted in more diverse and stratified interracial populations that have reshaped the societies of the receiving areas. In more recent periods, scholars have begun exploring the impact out-migration and return migration have had on the development and stability of various majority black societies. In addition, scholars, students, and activists have been examining the relation between relocation and conceptualizations of blackness. This two-day symposium will examine black migrations to include relocations within and beyond the US. Symposium organizers will seek papers from scholars and students that discuss various periods and streams of migration that have shaped the histories and contemporary realities of African people and their descendants. An important aspect of this conference is that it will also bring together academic statisticians and geographers who are working on the modeling of migrations and related problems (e.g., population flows). This is a unique opportunity to link the STEM discipline of Statistics with an important and timely topic that has not traditionally made use of advanced statistical methodology. That is, Statistics has a long history of considering models for demographic population change (e.g., flow models) but there is little cross-disciplinary interaction between statisticians and researchers who have focused on Black Migration. This may be the first such symposium that seeks to bring these groups together. Thus, an important goal of the symposium is to encourage the interchange and mutual understanding of research ideas in statistics, geography, and black migrations, and to give motivation and direction to further research progress, particularly for young researchers, in a manner not ordinarily possible at other meetings. The meeting will be primarily pitched towards graduate students and early career researchers. Symposium details can be found at https://blackstudies.missouri.edu/feature/2019-black-migrations-symposium.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.