Decolonizing Visual Methods with Displaced and Refugee Youth

Decolonizing Visual Methods with Displaced and Refugee Youth: This workshop unpacks visual methods and filmmaking strategies with vulnerable groups, such as displaced and refugee youth. How can our methods take into account social sciences’ colonial legacy in our respective disciplines and fieldsites? What kinds of learnings, challenges, and productive tensions come out of local collaborations, and how can they contribute to decolonial representations of displacement?

Presented by Natalie Nesvaderani in partnership with the School of Social Sciences and the Vitalities Lab.

Natalie Nesvaderani is a PhD Candidate of Visual Anthropology at Cornell University. She is currently a Newcombe Doctoral Fellow for her research on the ethical dimensions of humanitarianism and advocacy work with Afghan refugee youth in Iran. Through community-based collaborations with Iranian NGOs, cultural centers, and displaced youth, her work disrupts mainstream narratives about migration. She organizes with Ethnocine, an ethnographic filmmaking collective committed to pushing the boundaries of documentary film through intersectional feminist and decolonial practice. She is a co-producer for the podcast and pop-up event series, Bad Feminists Making Films, spotlighting intimate discussions with feminist filmmakers. Before starting her PhD, she was awarded a Fulbright to work as a legal advisor to unaccompanied refugee children in Cairo, Egypt.

Natalie is the recipient of a UNSW International Doctoral Practicum Fund scholarship.