What Does Decolonial Feminist Research on Migration Look Like?

Date: 29th January, 2026

Time: 5.00pm – 6.00pm

Venue: Online via MS Teams

Meeting ID: 373 295 669 393 15

Passcode: kQ34Fz9K

Workshop Description:
What happens when we centre migrant women’s voices not as subjects of research, but as producers of knowledge?

This interactive workshop introduces decolonial feminist approaches that challenge Eurocentric and patriarchal ways of studying migration. Drawing on feminist epistemologies, intersectional theory, and decolonial thought, we will rethink how we know, whose experiences count, and what counts as evidence.

Using examples from research with Turkish and Kurdish women in Hackney, we explore how memory, labour, and belonging become acts of resistance and theory-making. The session also introduces creative participatory methods, including critical cartography, go-along interviews, and counter-mapping, to demonstrate how research can become a more democratic and co-produced process.

Participants will have the opportunity to experiment with visual and spatial storytelling, reconsidering what a “map” can do as both a research tool and a political act. Combining theory, method, and reflection, this workshop provides a critical starting point for reimagining research ethics, positionality, and collaboration beyond extractive models.

About Dr Feride Kumbasar

Dr Feride Kumbasar is a Borderlines Resident Fellow, feminist migration scholar and community researcher whose work bridges academia, activism, and creative practice. She completed her TECHNE- and AHRC funded PhD in Cultural Studies at the University of Roehampton (2024), titled Migrant Women Negotiating Border, Work, and Space: Turkish and Kurdish Women in Hackney, 1980–2018. Her research investigates the intersections of migration, gender, labour, and urban change, using participatory and decolonial methodologies such as oral history, go[1]along interviews, and community mapping.

Feride’s forthcoming monograph, under provisional acceptance for Manchester University Press’s Women on the Move series, develops this research further to examine counter cartographies of migrant women’s agency. Alongside her academic work, she has held leadership roles in women’s and refugee organisations and curated the exhibition Hidden Voices: The Making of Hackney (2022). Her work foregrounds collaborative knowledge production and feminist approaches to belonging, care, and spatial justice.

Grants and awards

• TECHNE & AHRC Doctoral Studentship (2018–2024)
• TECHNE/AHRC COVID Interruption Fund (2023)
• University of Roehampton Research Fund (2024)
• Newington Green Meeting House Award (2023)