Annual Conference Talk: Expert Knowledge on Migration in the Public Arena: How to Get Your Message Through?

On November 20 and 21st 2018, the Annual Conference “Knowledge and Society in Times of Upheaval” of the Forum Transregionale Studien and the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland took place in Berlin. It was jointly convened by Andreas Eckert (HU Berlin/Forum Transregionale Studien), Simone Lässig (GHI Washington) and Franz Waldenberger (DIJ Tokyo) and funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF).

During the Conference, Leo Lucassen (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam) presented the paper “Expert Knowledge on Migration in the Public Arena: How to Get Your Message Through?”. In this talk, Leo Lucassen shared his experience as a public intellectual in the public and political debate on migration, integration and refugees in the Netherlands in the past 5 years. He addressed the following questions: What are the dos and dont’s of expert knowledge and advice? How to evade counterproductive media frames? But also: how can media engagement bring about a positive feedback loop, strengthen fundamental research and deepen scientific insights?

Leo Lucassen (1959) is the Director of Research of the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam and professor of Global Labour and Migration History at the University of Leiden. Among his publications are “The Immigrant Threat: Old and New Migrants in Western Europe since 1850” (Urbana and Chicago: UIP, 2005); (as co-editor) “The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities in Europe. From the 17th Century to the Present” (New York: CUP, 2011); (co-editor) “Globalising Migration History: the Eurasian Experience” (Leiden: Brill, 2014) and (co-author) “Vijf Eeuwen Migratie: een verhaal van winnaars en verliezers” (Amsterdam 2018) . More recently he published on global migration and the refugee crisis in the Journal of Global History (2016), Social Science History (2017), the International Review of Social History (IRSH) (2017) and Ethnic and Racial Studies (2018).