This year’s edition of the migration studies summer school took place at our faculty from August 31 to September 6. The event was organized by the Geographical Migration Centre in cooperation with the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Partners included the UN Information Centre in Prague, UNHCR, and the Jan Masaryk Foundation in Geneva.
Around sixty students from more than twenty countries worldwide had the unique opportunity to attend lectures by prominent experts covering various aspects of international migration. On the first day of the program, Irena Vojáčková-Sollorano—a former IOM Deputy Director General and former head of UN missions in locations including Turkey, Iraq, and Belgrade—gave a presentation.
On Tuesday, participants heard a lecture titled “Data in Migration” by Koko Warner, former Director of the IOM Global Data Institute and current head of the International Climate Observatory at the University of Pennsylvania. The following day featured two guest speakers from IOM headquarters in Geneva, including Elisabeth Warn, Head of the Labour Mobility Division, who brings over twenty years of experience managing labor migration projects worldwide. He was joined by research expert Pablo Rojas Coppari, Head of the Research Unit, who presented the *World Migration Report*—the most comprehensive overview of the migration situation and trends.
Representing the academic sphere was Professor Russell King, Professor Emeritus at the University of Sussex; he has studied migration as a global phenomenon for nearly four decades and is a co-author of the book *Exploding the Migration Myths*.
On Thursday, September 3, there was a unique opportunity to discuss the challenges associated with the refugee crisis with Jean-Nicolas Beuze, the UNHCR Representative to the European Union.
A demographer’s perspective on migration was provided by Professor Tomáš Sobotka, Head of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital in Vienna.
Eric Opoku Ware—whose organization in Ghana focuses on preventing irregular migration—presented the perspective from Africa.
Sociologists Michal Vašečka (Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts) and Salim Murad (New York University Prague) addressed the key issue of integration.
Global challenges linked to migration, including climate change, were the subject of a presentation by Michal Broža, Head of the UN Information Centre.
Bohdan Rajčinec, Chairman of the European Congress of Ukrainians, outlined the current challenges facing the Ukrainian diaspora in the wake of the wave of forced displacement caused by the war.
The Geographical Migration Centre was represented by Dušan Drbohlav, Eva Janská, and Josef Novotný. The final program and further information are available at https://migrationschoolprague.com/.
Migration experts from around the world gathered for the latest edition of the summer school
