This paper is the first part of a more extended project titled “Migration Studies at Oxford: Beginnings, Institutional Development and Proliferation”, with at least two more papers planned. Here, we identify the development of migration studies at the university from the 1960s to the 1990s and discuss the contributions of five early individual scholars involved in the field. Institutional support for the field was absent, so embryonic initiatives stemmed from below. They came, notably, from a cohort of students and visiting researchers from the Middle East and Africa who were pressing for more systematic academic recognition of their interest in refugees, a call answered by an early pioneer in refugee studies, Barbara Harrell-Bond. Promoting the broader study of migration was initially undertaken in a loosely organized dining group, the Odyssey Club, which the present authors convened. These initiatives were not to bear fruit until after the late 1990s, a period that will be addressed in subsequent papers.
About the authors
Robin Cohen is professor emeritus of development studies and senior research fellow at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. He writes on migration, Diasporas, creolization, globalization and islands and has held academic appointments in South Africa, Nigeria, the Caribbean, the USA and the UK. His books include Global Diasporas: An Introduction (2023) and Migration: The Movement of Humankind from Prehistory to the Present (2019).
Nick Van Hear is an emeritus fellow of St Cross College and the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford. He works on forced migration, conflict, development, diaspora, transnationalism, and related issues. He has field experience in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, North America, and Europe. His books include New Diasporas (1998) and The Migration-Development Nexus (2003, with Nina Nyberg Sorensen).