Welcome to our inaugural Global and Area Perspectives Symposium! This new annual event features diverse regional perspectives on key global challenges.
Our inaugural 2025 theme is Language, Culture, and Conflict.
November 7-8, 2025
John D. Ciorciari
Dean, Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies
Friday, November 1
3:00 - 4:00 pm — Keynote Address by Tariq Roland Riebl, Norwegian Refugee Council
4:10 - 5:25 pm — Panel 1: Youth Migration and Politics in the Global South
5:30 - 6:30 pm — Reception in the HLS Atrium
Saturday, November 2
8:30 - 9:30 am — Coffee & pastries outside Shreve Auditorium
9:30 - 10:45 am — Panel 2: Migration and Institutional Design: Lessons from East Asia
11:00 am - 12:15 pm — Panel 3: From Asylum to Bedlam? Migration, Refugees and the Future of the European Union
12:15 pm — Lunch served in the HLS Atrium
12:45 - 2:00 pm — Graduate Student Poster Session in the HLS Atrium
2:00 - 3:15 pm — Panel 4: Empowering Displaced Communities through Language and Culture
3:15 pm — Closing Remarks
Sponsors: Center for the Study of Global Change, Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center, African Studies Program
Tariq Riebl is the Global Programme Strategy and Innovation Director at the Norwegian Refugee Council. He is an experienced Humanitarian Response Director, having worked on conflicts, natural disasters, and epidemics in more than fifteen countries around the world since 2006 for the United Nations, the International Rescue Committee, Oxfam, and Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
His work has covered many of the largest crises of the past years, including the Yemen civil war, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the Ebola outbreaks in West Africa and DR Congo, and the droughts of the Horn of Africa and West Africa, amongst others.
Besides his operational work, he has been an outspoken advocate on a range of humanitarian policy issues, both through public lobbying and silent diplomacy.
This panel will examine youth migration in Latin America and Africa, and will address the roles that leadership plays in the decisions that young people make to undertake migration, both intra- and inter-nationally. How does local, national, and international leadership create drivers of migration, and how might leadership create opportunities for young people to pursue their dreams closer to their homes?
Watch Panel 1
This panel will examine how institutional design affects migrant access and experiences in three East Asian cases: those of Japan, South Korea, and China/Taiwan. Panelists will discuss guest worker schemes in Japan, asylum rules in South Korea, and restrictions in mobility across Chinese provinces, which have contributed to foreseeable and unanticipated challenges for migrants and surrounding populations in all three locales.
Watch Panel 2
This panel will examine challenges to the EU’s migration system in an era of large-scale migration from Syria, Ukraine, Africa, and elsewhere. It will discuss the wide array of approaches to welcoming, integrating, granting status to or rebuffing migrants that has emerged across EU member states. It will explore real and perceived threats to European security and cohesion, as well as nationalist politics and fear mongering, and the effects these have had on European politics and policy.
Watch Panel 3
This panel will examine how universities, local governments, and civil society institutions are working to preserve linguistic and cultural diversity within refugee communities. Speakers will focus on the case of Chin refugee communities in Indiana, as well as efforts elsewhere to ensure the continued vitality of languages and cultures that refugees transport around the world.
Watch Panel 4Sponsors: African Studies Program, Tobias Center for Innovation in International Development
Senior Lecturer, Hamilton Lugar School African Studies Program, Indiana University (read bio)
Director, Hamilton Lugar School Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies; Head Coordinator, Global Indigenous Studies Network; Professor, School of Education, Indiana University (read bio)
Associate Professor, School of Social Work; Adjunct Professor, Africana Studies, Indiana University Indianapolis (read bio)
Marxe Endowed Chair of International Affairs, Baruch College Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, City University of New York (read bio)
Sponsors: East Asian Studies Center
Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies, Indiana University (read bio)
Assistant Professor of Japanese Politics and Society, Hamilton Lugar School Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Indiana University (read bio)
Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of Korean Politics and Society, Hamilton Lugar School Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Indiana University (read bio)
Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of California Irvine (read bio)
Sponsors: Institute for European Studies, African Studies Program, Robert F. Byrnes Russian & East European Institute
Director of the Polish Studies Center; Jean Monnet Chair of European Security Studies; Professor of Practice, Hamilton Lugar School Department of International Studies and Department of Political Science, Indiana University (read bio)
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park (read bio)
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Indiana University (read bio)
Mertie Buckman Chair and Distinguished Professor of International Studies, Rhodes College (read bio)
Sponsors: Southeast Asian and ASEAN Studies, Dhar India Studies Program, East Asian Studies Center
Director of Hamilton Lugar School Southeast Asian Studies and ASEAN Studies, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Indiana University (read bio)
Associate Professor of Linguistics, IU; Director, Chin Languages Research Project (read bio)
Associate Professor, Folklore and Ethnomusicology; Interim Director, Arts & Humanities; Director, Traditional Arts Indiana, Indiana University (read bio)
Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics, Boise State University (read bio)
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics, California State University at Fullerton (read bio)
Dee Degner
PhD candidate, School of Education, IUB
Poster Title: English Learners Thriving and Surviving in Rural Schools
Michelle Medved
PhD candidate, School of Education, IUB
Poster Title: Constructing Home: A Thematic Analysis of Poems Written by Refugees
Eden Melles
PhD candidate, Political science, Northwestern University
Poster Title: African diaspora and migration
Sui Par
PhD candidate, School of Education, IUB
Poster Title: Migration and Cultural Continuity
Irene Routté
PhD candidate, Social Work, University of Michigan
Poster Title: Youth Engagement Frameworks, Refugee Led Organizations and Youth Councils: A Social Work Practice Based Case Study
Nahid Sharifi
PhD candidate, School of Education, IUB
Poster Title: From Displacement to Empowerment: Challenges and Support for Afghan Refugees Post-2021 in the United States (A Case Study of Afghan Refugees in Bloomington, Indiana).
Dillon Smith, James C. Wamsley, Grayson Ziegler, Amalia Robinson, Amanda Bohnert, Em Em, Sui Hnem Par, Van Nei Par, Elly Hnem, Neel Naam, and Hannah Hunt
IU Linguistics, Chin Languages Research Project
Poster Title: The Indianapolis Chin Community Language Survey
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