Migrations Program
New Study Advances Acoustic Monitoring of Endangered Whale
A Cornell-led research team has developed an innovative method to estimate North Atlantic right whale numbers using underwater microphones and machine learning (ML), potentially offering a safer and more cost-effective way to monitor this critically endangered species.
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Meet the Director Q&A
Ellen Lust Leads Einaudi as New Director
The Einaudi Center is poised to make a difference on today’s new and emerging global problems.
The key is the Einaudi community’s energy for collaboration, says Middle East specialist Ellen Lust.
Lust joined the Einaudi Center in January as director and John S. Knight Professor of International Studies. Her research examines the role of social institutions and local authorities in governance, particularly in Southwest Asia and North Africa.
"There are a lot of things we don't control. What we do control is how we work together, how we reinforce each other, how we combine forces."
She is also a professor in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy and Department of Government (College of Arts and Sciences) and University of Gothenburg Department of Political Science and the Governance and Local Development Institute’s founder and director.
On this page: Read and listen as Ellen Lust explains how the Einaudi Center is convening experts, preparing to respond rapidly to global problems, and creating opportunities for students.
A Conversation with Ellen Lust
How can the Einaudi Center contribute right now?
If you think about the issues of nationalism, climate change, threats to humanitarian aid—a lot of the things that are foremost on our minds these days are affecting not only the U.S. They really are very global. And at the same time as they’re global threats and interests, the forms they take and the abilities to address them differ a lot across different regions and across different peoples and places.
Einaudi brings people who have deep knowledge in different regions together—to highlight challenges that might be faced in one place or solutions that might have been found in one place—to help us to understand possibilities elsewhere.
What are your plans to support collaboration across the university?
I think it's worth thinking not only about how we address the issues we know exist. We also need to be ready to address issues that emerge in the future. In 2018 you never would have expected COVID to be on the table. What we want to be able to do is respond quickly to new issues and problems that emerge.
We want to facilitate and advance the work of faculty. We’re going to create an infrastructure that allows people to come together relatively quickly—to address new and emerging problems as researchers become aware of them.
Is there a place for researchers who work internationally but aren’t regional specialists?
Not everybody engaged in a project has to be an area specialist, but combining area knowledge with some of the disciplinary and other types of international work can, I think, enrich everybody.
To bring researchers together, I'm planning to create seed grant programs that encourage cross-regional work, as well as work across the different colleges and Cornell Global Hubs.
How can students get involved?
On a nuts-and-bolts level, Einaudi offers many opportunities aimed at helping students gain the language skills and other knowledge and expertise they need to be able to move forward and make an impact on the world.
From my own student experience: I did an MA in modern Middle Eastern studies at the University of Michigan. I would go to a seminar, and it would sort of create an “a-ha moment.” I’d realize that some of the assumptions I was making in the work I was doing didn't necessarily make sense. Einaudi has a lot of programming that provides students the opportunities to get those a-ha moments. Another thing we do is give students a sense of community.
What would you say to students considering international experiences?
My advice to students is to go!
The Laidlaw program at Einaudi is nicely structured to allow students to get experience abroad. There are a lot of ways students can get those first experiences—which both show why it's so exciting to be abroad and just the numbers of things you can learn—and give them confidence to do it again in the future.
What do you find special about Einaudi?
There is a real energy to the community engaged in Einaudi—and I would like to see that community expand! It gives me a lot of hope at a time when we recognize that there are increasing constraints at the national level. There are increasing constraints at the Cornell level. There are a lot of things we don't control.
What we do control is how we work together, how we reinforce each other, how we combine forces. And I think Einaudi is very, very well poised to make a difference in that respect.
Learn more about Ellen Lust's new edited volume, Decentralization, Local Governance, and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa, featured in World in Focus Briefs.
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One-Stop Bird Flu Resource Center Fills Information Gaps
A new online Avian Flu Resource Center provides reliable and accessible information for members of the general public, farmers, wildlife professionals, state and public health agency partners, and veterinarians.
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New York Dairy Farms Prepare for Increased Immigration Enforcement
Richard Stup, Migrations
Richard Stup, senior extension associate, explains how dairy farms prepare for increased immigration enforcement.
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From Where We Stand
March 18, 2025
2:30 pm
Uris Hall, G08
Film Screening of "From Where We Stand" and discussion with Lucy Kaye and Adrian Favell
Lucy Kaye's one hour documentary and deep dive into the life and times of residents of three post industrial towns in the North of England is at once moving, visually haunting, and (in parts) disturbingly raw. It is part of a 4 year project run at the University of Leeds which took a sociological look at political disaffection -- and issues of austerity, deprivation, race and nation -- in the North of England after Brexit and during COVID.
With a direct and spontaneous approach, filmmaker Lucy Kaye creates intimate portraits of diverse individuals in three post-industrial northern English towns. Through the stories of people connected by place, the film explores our relationship with where we’ve come from, what we’ve left behind and where we live. Amongst the people we meet are Bini, a former asylum seeker from Eritrea trying to root himself in Middlesbrough; Stella, a Polish woman stuck in the UK after a relationship breakdown, making a life for herself and her daughter; and Yan, a former power station worker enveloped in nostalgia for the past. We also get to know Yubi, a Pakistani immigrant mourning the passing of his father in Wakefield; and Lisa, another Halifax resident determined to make sure the voices of her community are heard. In pared-back verité style that deploys music and lingering shots of the landscapes that define these lives, From Where We Stand offers the people portrayed time and space to express how they feel about their lives and their towns.
Background:
From Where We Stand is made in collaboration with the Northern Exposure research project at the University of Leeds. Adrian Favell, is Director of the Radical Humanities Laboratory at University College Cork and is PI of the Northern Exposure Project at University of Leeds. The research explores notions of identity, place and disaffection in post-industrial towns in the North of England after Brexit. More information can be found here: https://northernexposure.leeds.ac.uk/.
https://fromwherewestand.co.uk/
Host
Institute for European Studies
Cosponsors
Sociology
Migrations
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Institute for European Studies
Migrations Program
The Orders and Borders of Global Inequality: Rethinking Migration and Mobilities in the Era of Neoliberalism and Beyond
March 17, 2025
4:30 pm
Uris Hall, G08
In a world of massive inequalities between nations, and where citizenship at birth is the biggest determining factor of anyone's life chances, migration and international mobility are often seen as dramatic mechanisms of change. Yet strict borders and hierarchies between nations persist. The recently initiated five year ERC Advanced Grant project, MIGMOBS - The Orders and Border of Global Inequality: Migration and Mobilities in Late Capitalism (2024-28) investigates how and why global inequalities are reproduced through the shifting classification of mobile populations. In opening a new vision by seeing "international migration" as only a narrow and symbolically overcharged slice in a continuum of "mobilities", both human and non-human, it effects a paradigm shift in conventional migration studies, in both theoretical and operational terms. Building a global database with case studies across 23 sending and receiving countries, MIGMOBS charts how nation-states have preserved power through the era of neoliberalism by selectively opening and closing channels of mobility: making immigration and asylum the obsessive target of sovereign control while rendering invisible and fluid the mass mobilities of tourism, students, business and commuter travel. For more information, contact the PI, Adrian Favell (adrian.favell@ucc.ie), or see: https://www.ucc.ie/en/migmobs
Adrian Favell is Professor of Social and Political Theory and Director of the Radical Humanities Laboratory, University College Cork. He directed the Bauman Institute at the University of Leeds, and was also Professor at Sciences Po, Paris, Aarhus University and UCLA. He is the author of various works on migration, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism and cities, notably a recent book with Polity Press (2022) The Integration Nation: Immigration and Colonial Power in Liberal Democracies. He directs the ERC AdG Project MIGMOBS - The Orders and Border of Global Inequality: Migration and Mobilities in Late Capitalism (2024-28) . Website: www.adrianfavell.com
Host
Institute for European Studies
Cosponsors
Migrations Program, part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and the Mellon Foundation’s Just Futures Initiative
Comparative Muslim Societies Program
Sociology
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Institute for European Studies
Migrations Program
Transdisciplinary Project Aims to Prevent the Next Pandemic
Raina Plowright, Migrations
Most pandemics in the past century were sparked by a pathogen jumping from animals to humans. This moment of zoonotic spillover is the focus of a multidisciplinary team of researchers led by Raina Plowright, the Rudolf J. and Katharine L. Steffen Professor in the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Public and Ecosystem Health.
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What Does USAID's Demise Mean for Western Allies?
Rachel Beatty Riedl, IAD/Migrations
“Undercutting long-established relationships … weakens America's diplomacy and ability to compete with other global powers,” past Einaudi Center director Rachel Beatty Riedl told CBC News.
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Central New York Sheriffs Commit to State Law on Immigration While Exploring Other Tools
Estelle McKee, Migrations
Estelle McKee, clinical professor of law, explains why a federal warrant is not a binding order.
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Will El Salvador’s Prisons House Trump’s Deportees?
Gustavo Flores-Macías, LACS
Gustavo Flores-Macías (A&S, Brooks School) says the announcement is a public relations win for President Trump because it may dissuade undocumented migration.