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PolMig Newsletter December 2025

Three men standing in front of a newspaper stand reading the daily papers.
© Helga Dickow

Dear readers,

Time flies in our attempt to push boundaries of knowledge production. The PolMig project started a year ago and the whole team six months ago. In this second newsletter, we inform you on what has been keeping us busy these last few months. 
First meeting with our advisory board

We are lucky enough to be guided in our project by an extraordinary advisory board made up of eight academic, activist and practitioner experts, mostly based in Africa.

We held our inaugural annual meeting with them in October, updating them on our progress and discussing our extensive research ethics considerations with them. Their advice was thoughtful, urging us to really think about the migrants we will talk to – intersectionally, conceptually and including those that may want to remain hidden. They encouraged us to further reflect on what addressing epistemic justice means for us. We look forward to gaining more insights from them in the years to come.

Meet our full advisory board here
three participants performing a scene in front of a book shelf
Participatory Research Methods Workshop

We just held a two-day workshop on participatory research methods, which left us feeling invigorated and full of energy for the task ahead.

We were inspired by contributions from Melis Çin, Mariangela Palladino, Viviana García Pinzón and Jan Grill on their use of arts-based methods in Uganda, Morocco and Colombia respectively. In addition, Duduzile Ndlovu guided as through how we can reimagine research through poetry. The icing on the cake was training in the “Theatre of the Oppressed” research method from one of the leading experts in the field Taísa Oliveira and her Porto-based theatre group Uma Pausa Teatral. We figured out some ways ahead for our own research and jointly reflected on the benefits of participatory research methods, not least through their offering of new perspectives but also the dignity and agency such methods offers for research participants.

Read about our workshop here
Researcher in black and white image.
Introducing Edwin Mutyenyoka

So that you can get to know us better, in each newsletter one of the PolMig team members will introduce themselves and answer a short survey.

A warm hello! I'm Edwin, a proud Zimbabwean-German with an academic journey that has taken me from a Bachelor's and Master's in Development Studies in South Africa to a PhD on Migration and Social Protection at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) in Osnabrück, Germany. These experiences have solidified my (claimed) identity as a global citizen, making my work on the PolMig project partly personal. In the PolMig we problematize the politicization of processes of belonging and push for epistemic justice, something that often feels aligned with my own path. I am humbled to work with colleagues who are not just motivated researchers, but, importantly, wonderful human beings as well. 

Question Time​:

  1. Early bird or night owl? Night Owl
  2. Fieldwork or deskwork? Deskwork after fieldwork
  3. Clean desk or organized chaos? Organized chaos
  4. One tab open or 47 and counting? 47 open and counting...
  5. “Let’s try it” or “Let’s plan it”? Somewhere in the middle

I look forward to our shared journey and we hope you will follow along for updates!

Please reach out with any comments, ideas and reflections to polmig [at] abi.uni-freiburg.de. We look forward to hearing from you.

Warm regards,

The PolMig Team (Franzisca Zanker with Jamila Hamidu, Constantin Herburger, Edwin Mutyenyoka & Sophia Stille)