CurriculumDevelopment
Migrants of the Mediterranean believes that education is at the root of humanizing migration and challenging systems of oppression. Collaborating with educational institutions through work with academics, students, and other stakeholders is a priority for our organization. You can become part of our classroom beyond borders and platform members of the MotM migrant community by incorporating us into your curriculum.
Ways to collaborate
Learning through human stories
Since 2018, MotM has collaborated with universities and international institutions to provide workshops, guest lectures, and learning opportunities for students and scholars. We have worked closely with academics specializing in migration, modern languages, history, and public policy, creating platforms where even members of the MotM migrant community have been able to join us in classrooms and at public events in the U.S. and Europe.
Using our work in the classroom
Our Journey Story Archive and the Open Encounters podcast are primary sources that serve as engaging pedagogical tools. They are the result of testimonies shared upon arrival and beyond. These sources tell the personal stories behind the headlines and statistics. By incorporating them into your curriculum, students can directly connect with the people in our migrant community. How can you make this work for your classroom? Use a particular Journey Story as a case study, for discussion, or craft specific assignments around the content and people you find in the MotM archive.
Migration education in practice
Migrants of the Mediterranean and its community have collaborated with or been a source for universities and diplomatic institutions on a diverse number of projects. Use cases include citations in scholarship and policy reports, live lectures, and more.
Our work and archive can be useful to you too — and in a multitude of ways. Whether you are interested in collecting primary source migration data, having a class or individual contribute to a community service project benefitting MotM, or simply giving learners a concrete way to connect with the global migration issue, the MotM archive and mission can enhance your ways of learning.
If you would like to collaborate with us on a project, course, or other initiative, get in touch with us.
Some key highlights of past collaborations include:
Resources Library developed with the Occidental College 2023 Community Partnership
Live workshop hosted by the Goethe Institut, the national cultural institute of Germany
Citation in UNHCR policy report on the risks of African migration journeys, a joint publication with the IOM and Mixed Migration Centre
Profile of MotM Founder and our work in the book Logistics and Power: Supply Chains from Slavery to Space, by Susan Zieger
More ways to collaborate
Internships
In addition to developing presentations and content that can be implemented into existing curricula, we have partnered with universities to craft structured roles for student internships. Each one is designed on an individual basis, and can also be coordinated to fit department or university reporting and credit hour requirements.
If your department or university is interested in being a partner with MotM for internship opportunities, get in touch.
Current or past collaborators have included:
University of Arizona
University of Chicago
University of Massachusetts, Boston
“Thank you.
May God bless you.”
Saikou (Gambia)
MotM community member since 2025
Resources
Our team stays on top of relevant research and reporting on migration in the past and present. We actively update this page with resources, including full citations to scholarly work and links to news or reports on global migration.
The Migrants of the Mediterranean Resources Library was developed with the support of the 2023 Occidental College Community Partnership.
Baesler, E. James and Judee K. Burgoon, “The Temporal Effects of Story and Statistical Evidence on Belief Change,” Communication Research, Vol. 21 No.5, October 1994: 582-602.
Berg, Olaf, “Capturing Displaced Persons Agency by Modelling Their Life Events,” Historical Social Research, Vol. 45 No. 4, 2020: 263-289.
Birns, Nicholas, “Failing to Be Separate: Race, Land, Concern.” In Contemporary Australian Literature, Sydney University Press, 121-155, December 2015.
Breen-Smyth, Marie, “Suffering, Victims and Survivors in the Northern Ireland Conflict: Definitions, Policies, and Politics.” In Victimhood and Acknowledgement, De Gruyeter, 40-58, 2018.
Bunting, Annie, “Narrating Wartime Enslavement, Forced Marriage, and Modern Slavery,” In Contemporary Slavery, ed. Annie Bunting and Joel Quirk, Cornell University Press, 129-156, 2017.
Castañeda, Esther Claros-Belioz and Xiang Shen, “English Learners (ELs) Have Stories to Tell,” The English Journal, Vol. 107 No. 6, July 2018: 20-25.
Cizek, Katerina, “Storytelling for Advocacy: Conceptualization and Preproduction,” In Video for Change, ed. Sam Gregory, Gillian Caldwell, Ronit Avni and Thomas Harding, Pluto Press, 2005.
Coon, Davic, “Challenging Oppressive Myths: LGBTQ Activism and Storytelling,” In Turning the Page, Rutgers University Press, 2018.
Cottle, Thomas, “Witness to the Story,” Studies in Education, Vol. 10 No. 2, Fall 2013: 143-170.
De Graaf, Anneke et al., “Identification as a Mechanism of Narrative Persuasion,” Communication Research, Vol. 39 No. 6, 2012: 802–823.
Dixon, Renee, “What About Us? Preserving LGBTIQ+ History of Forced Displacement,” The International Journal of Information, Vol. 5 No. 4, Fall 2021: 43-68.
Emde, Katharina, Christoph Klimmt, and Daniela M. Schluetz, “Does Storytelling help Adolescents to Process the News? A comparison of narrative news and the inverted pyramid,” Journalism Studies, Vol. 17 No. 5, 2016: 608-627.
Fernandes, Sujatha, Curated Stories: The Uses and Misuses of Storytelling, Oxford University Press, 2017.
Gamson, William A., “How Storytelling Can Be Empowering,” in Culture in Mind: Toward a Sociology of Culture and Cognition, Routledge, 2002.
Green, Melanie C. et al., “The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol.79 No. 5, 2000: 701-721.
Haile, Semhar. "Voices to Be Heard? Reflections on Refugees, Strategic Invisibility and the Politics of Voice." In Refuge in a Moving World: Tracing Refugee and Migrant Journeys across Disciplines, edited by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh. UCL Press, 2020. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv13xprtw.9.
Hoeken, Hans and Karin M. Fikkers, “Issue-relevant thinking and identification as mechanisms of narrative persuasion,” Poetics 44, 2014: 84-99.
Hoeken, Hans and Jop Sinkeldam, “The Role of Identification and Perception of Just Outcome in Evoking Emotions in Narrative Persuasion,” Journal of Communication, 64, 2014: 935-955.
Jones, Natasha N., and Rebecca Walton. "Using Narratives to Foster Critical Thinking About Diversity and Social Justice." In Key Theoretical Frameworks: Teaching Technical Communication in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Angela M. Haas and Michelle F. Eble, 242-249. University Press of Colorado; Utah State University Press, 2018. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv7tq4mx.16.
Lowndes, Viven, “Narrative and storytelling,” in Evidence-based policy making in the social sciences: Methods that matter by Gerry Stoker and Mark Evans, Bristol University Press; Policy Press, 2016.
McAdams, Dan P. and Kate C. McLean, “Narrative Identity,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2013: 233-238.
Neimeyer, Robert A., “Fostering Posttraumatic Growth: A Narrative Elaboration,” Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2004: 53-59.
Polletta, Francesca, “Characters in Political Storytelling,” Storytelling, Self, Society, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2015: 34-55.
Vogl, Anthea, “Telling Stories from Start to Finish: Exploring the Demand for Narrative in Refugee Testimony,” Griffith Law Review, Vol. 22, No. 1, 2013: 63-86.