Last month the Director of the Sussex Centre for Migration Research (SCMR), Professor Paul Statham, flew to Singapore to give a public lecture at the Asian Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and to meet colleagues from NUS with regard to developing research partnerships.
And throughout the month of January members of the Sussex-Mahidol Migration Partnership (SMMP) are holding a series of meetings in Bangkok to advance research and capacity building collaborations between Sussex and Mahidol University in Thailand.
The SCMR team – Professor Statham, Dr Sarah Scuzzarello and Professor Ron Skeldon – met with colleagues from the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) at Mahidol and the Mahidol Migration Center (MMC) to discuss current joint activities and put in place a programme to advance and extend the SMMP in 2016.
The SMMP team discussed recently submitted and draft research proposals, including
- one to the Newton Advanced Fellowship scheme on Thai partnerships with Westerners and how they shape life chances, social relationships and development
- and another to the British Academy by Dr Scuzzarello on British and Swedish retirement migration to Thailand.
In addition, a proposal by Pattraporn Chuenglertsiri from the IPSR to conduct doctoral studies at Sussex on opportunities and challenges facing Thai-British families in the UK was discussed and submitted.
Plans were laid for a visit by the Mahidol team to Sussex in March, for a workshop to plan future research bids on Europe-South East Asia migration and extend the international network. Teams from the NUS Singapore, Humboldt University in Berlin and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) will also attend this workshop.
In addition, colleagues from the IPSR will attend the third international SCMR-JEMS Conference at Sussex and the Sussex Graduate Migration Conference in March.
Finally, Chalermpol Chamchan and Kanchana Tangchonlatip from the IPSR met the Sussex team to plan a two-year double Masters degree in Migration between Sussex and Mahidol.
The SMMP was established as a partnership between the SCMR and the IPSR in 2015, following the award of an International Partnership and Research Network grant from Sussex.
The SMMP aims to establish a network infrastructure for collaborative research, researcher exchanges and postgraduate teaching on migration between Europe and South East Asia.
Anyone from Sussex who wishes to join and engage in this collaboration is welcome to do so; please contact Dr Scuzzarello at s.scuzzarello@sussex.ac.uk.
