“Confluence,” hosted by Interdisciplinary Migration Studies Institute, showcased the scope of the institute’s work.  

The Interdisciplinary Migration Studies Institute (IMSI) at the University of Missouri was established to add missing perspectives to the scholarly and public conversation on migration. Over the course of a recent three-day conference, April 24-26, the institute made good on this intent.  

The conference took its name, “Confluence,” from the geographical metaphor of converging riverways as a point of departure for examining key themes and patterns affecting migration to and from Missouri. 

While much of migration study has been through scientific and policy lenses, IMSI brings new insights with a humanities-forward focus — highlighting the human face of migration studies.  

“We focus our attention first on the experiences of migrants themselves,” said Kristin Kopp, the institute’s director, associate professor of German, and affiliated faculty in Black Studies, “together with the experiences of the communities they encounter and interact with.”  

The institute’s more than 50 members are graduate students and faculty members from the Colleges of Arts & Science, Education & Human Development, Health Sciences, and the Missouri School of Journalism. This breadth of scholarship was mirrored in the expertise of the conference’s schedule of speakers and presenters.  

The conference’s two keynote speakers were Walter Johnson and Stephen Aron. Johnson — who grew up in Columbia, Missouri — is the Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Aron is the Calvin and Marilyn Gross Director and President and CEO of the Autry Museum of the American West. 

Other presenters included playwrights, journalists, and filmmakers involved in digitization projects, museum and exhibition work, and photojournalism. The fields of study they represented included history, sociology, demography, and education.  

“We find that we are discovering better answers by working across disciplinary lines,” said Kopp.  

Looking forward to what’s next for IMSI, Kopp said the institute will launch a new undergraduate minor in migration studies, scheduled to launch in fall of 2025.