Keele’s Dr Mariangela Palladino presented her research on forced displacement to the House of Commons International Development Committee this week.

Dr Palladino spoke at Parliament’s Mobilising Global Voices event hosted by the UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) about her research project Arts for Advocacy which deployed arts-based methods to facilitate creative engagement with forced migration in Morocco.

Dr Palladino’s Arts for Advocacy research, funded by GCRF and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, focuses on Morocco’s increasingly displaced communities and examines how the positive contribution of the arts, engagement and creative practices can influence opinion and policies.

The Global Challenge Research Fund supports cutting-edge research that addresses the challenges faced by developing countries and enables the AHRC to develop opportunities for the arts and humanities research community.

During her presentation, Dr Mariangela Palladino, a Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial and Cultural Studies at Keele University, said:

“The humanities have a vital role in shaping the ways we respond to forced migration, they enhance our understanding of this phenomenon and can inform policies. In our project, it became clear how the arts can have the transformative potential to challenge stereotypes and facilitate relationships between migrants and citizens.”