Far from home: migration, artefacts and the imagination in Young Adult fiction

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This creative-critical research project will look at the ways displaced individuals (and specifically young adults) use artefacts to assert imaginative and emotional control over their experiences of migration.The creative project will be a historical YA novel centring on the experiences of verdingkinder in 1930s Switzerland and particularly on the relationship between three displaced children and the artefact they steal. The critical element will make a detailed examination of migratory YA fiction and consider the ways in which refugees (and the children of diaspora communities) relate to objects, using them to process emotion and forge new social connections.Drawing on extensive experience in children's educational settings (including schools, museums and refugee camps in Gaza and elsewhere), the whole project will explore a range of imaginative responses to artefacts and how these shape conversations around identity, trauma, migration and artefact repatriation.