Amanda P. Alencar will be a guest speaker for the UNU-MERIT and its School of Governance (Maastricht University) on Wednesday, January 18th, 2017, on her current research "Refugee Integration and Social Media: A Local and Experiential Perspective" (see the link: http://www.merit.unu.edu/events/event-abstract/?id=1631).
Dr. Alencar will address the refugee crisis and the rapid development of creative technology and social media applications to tackle the problem of refugee integration in many European countries. Through a qualitative study with 18 refugees from Syria, Eritrea and Afghanistan she investigated the uses and purposes of social media associated to the different areas of refugee integration in the Netherlands. Building on the results of this study, she demonstrates a theoretical model for analysing refugee integration through social media. Furthermore, Amanda will give a guest seminar on the Methods Course for the Erasmus Mundus students at ASCoR (University of Amsterdam) on January 31, in which she will discuss her experiences of doing focus group interviews and coding data in the context of media and migration research.