The final event of the Towards innovative mixed-methods approaches to studying living multiculture in small cities seminar series, organized by Stef De Sabbata, Katy Bennett, Matteo Dutto, Maarten Loopmans, and Giorgia Mascaro, and funded by the USF Seminar Series Awards, will be held in Prato from September 9th to 11th, 2024.

The event aims to put into practice the discussions from the preliminary online workshops and facilitate collaboration in the design of papers, grant applications, and future collaborations. Join us to explore diverse cultures through mixed-methods approaches, gain new insights, exchange ideas, and connect with like-minded individuals in an enriching and collaborative experience.

ABOUT THE EVENT

The workshop aims to foster collaboration across different research practices by engaging participants in mixed-methods training, group work and knowledge exchange, focusing on collaborative project development rather than on traditional research paper presentations.

Over the course of three days, you will have a chance to contribute to interactive discussions on topics such as everyday multiculture and governance; the role of scale in conceptualizing and analyzing everyday multiculture; and the emotions and imaginaries of territory, time, and public spaces. Participants will engage in collaborative group sessions on mixed-method approaches to fieldwork, ethics considerations in mixed-methods research, and strategies for funding mixed-methods studies on everyday multiculture.

ABOUT THE SEMINAR SERIES

In a new era of global migration, diverse forms of urban mobility, migration settlement, and resettlement have contributed to the reshaping of national populations and localities, paving the way for new encounters, exchanges, and tensions (Neal et al. 2017). In this context, cities are not only the terrain on which these entangled relationships unfold, but these relationships shape them. Indeed, studies on multiculture demand a new focus on place and space because they are vital to understanding how multicultural social relations are enacted and lived.

Informed by the recent postcolonial turn in urban studies that calls for a decentralisation of urban theory (Robinson 2006) and embracing a comparative case study approach (Robinson 2016), this seminar series will bring together academics, early career researchers and practitioners in thinking and learning about mixed-methods research practices (Bennett and De Sabbata 2023) for understanding and describing heterogeneous formations of multiculture across different local contexts: Leicester (UK), Prato (Italy) and Antwerp (Belgium). We aim to explore how a range of diverse historical and material processes have led Leicester, Prato and Antwerp to variously develop the status of “the multicultural” city in their respective countries. We will explore what “multicultural” means in the three different contexts, using geo-spatial, geo-political and cultural lenses to interrogate processes taking place.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This workshop is supported by a Seminar Series Award from the Urban Studies Foundation, grant reference: USF-SSA-230312.

Free Workshop: Mixed-Methods Approaches to Studying Living Multiculture