News & Events

The inception workshop was the first time many of us were able to meet in person and get to know the fantastic people we will be working with over the next four years. We had interesting conversations about how to define key concepts central to the project for example, who a migrant is; how we are going to engage with the communities with whom we want to work; and how we can ensure that our research is ethical, and our ways of working are equitable.

The workshop provided an opportunity for team members to connect, exchange ideas, and begin developing a shared understanding of key concepts central to the project. Through participatory discussions, group reflections, and practical planning sessions, the team explored how to work across thematic workstreams and geographic contexts to meaningfully engage with questions of health, equity, and justice in the context of migration.

Exploring Key Concepts and Questions
A central feature of the week was a series of deep conceptual discussions, using participatory formats like World Café conversations. These focused on unpacking foundational ideas, including:

• Communities of care and the role of context in shaping therapeutic and mental health practices;
• The limits of singular biomedical models, and the need for more holistic, locally grounded,
  and culturally responsive approaches;
• The importance of participatory research and centering lived experience in knowledge
  production;
• Critical debates around terms like “syndemics,” “precarity,” “gendered violence,” and the shifting language of migration and mobility.

Participants also reflected on how state policies and social structures shape vulnerability and resilience, and discussed how to better account for power, safety, and exclusion in both research and practice.

Building Collaborative Foundations

In addition to conceptual grounding, the workshop allowed each Workstream (WS) to map out early
priorities:

• Workstream 1 focused on literature reviews, data analysis, and stakeholder mapping, laying the foundation for robust cross-country comparisons.
• Workstream 2 began refining methodological approaches and tools for fieldwork, with a strong focus on ethics, lived experience, and context-specific insights.
• Workstream 3 explored how training, engagement, and responsive interventions can shape real-world impact and policy dialogue.

These discussions underscored the need for iterative frameworks, ongoing collaboration, and flexibility in how the project evolves.

Commitments to Ethical, Inclusive Practice

A session on ethics engaged with the Johannesburg Principles on equitable research partnerships, sparking honest reflection on power dynamics, institutional processes, and the importance of care. Team members committed to developing shared authorship guidelines, distress protocols for fieldwork, and ethical practices that prioritize safety, inclusivity, and respect across all research sites.

Strengthening Communication and Collaboration

The team revisited its external communications strategy, reaffirming a commitment to transparency,
community engagement, and public scholarship. Plans include the development of a GEMMS blog, to
which all team members will contribute, and an evolving living archive of project activities and
outputs.

On Wednesday 23 November, we had our first public event. The event, which was hosted by the Institute for Public Health and Wellbeing at the University of Essex, included two great panels and a recorded input by David Miliband, who reminded everyone that “to be a successful humanitarian organisation, you need to be a feminist organisation.”

The first panel was on Decolonizing global health research and praxis and included input from team members Amita Bhide and Pedzisayi Mangezvo, and IAG member Delan Devakumar. The second panel was a high-level policy dialogue on Disrupting the cycle of gendered violence and mental health in migrants in precarious contexts. On this panel we heard from IAG members Santino Severoni (WHO), Kol Wickramage (IOM), Avni Amin (WHO), and B Camminga (Wits), and Carla Ferstman from the University of Essex.

With some of our IAG able to join us in person, we had our first hybrid IAG meeting on Thursday 24
November. Our IAG have a diverse range of skills and expertise and will be providing input as GEMMS
develops and research is undertaken.

The next time we’ll get to all meet in person will be our 2023 meeting in Mumbai! Until then we’ll be starting to undertake our planned research (you can read more about what we’re planning to do under Workstream 1 and Workstream 2) and starting to update this space more regularly with developments.