Studying at CRER

The Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations (CRER) is Britain's leading academic centre for the study of issues concerning migration, racism and ethnic relations. CRER encourages and co-ordinates multi-disciplinary research in the field; employs researchers to undertake fundamental and applied research; offers teaching and supervision to postgraduate students and provides hospitality for visiting scholars and European Commission funded research fellows. The Centre is recognised as an approved department for the award of ESRC research competition studentships and as a Marie Curie Training Site on Ethnic Relations, Immigration and Refugees. The Centre offers an excellent range of resources for its students including computing facilities and help towards research or conference expenses. Students also enjoy access to the Ethnicity and Migration Collections which is the country's premier academic collection on race and ethnic relations.

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  New Area for PhD Programme

  

Professor John Oucho

The recent appointment of Professor John O. Oucho as holder of Marie Curie Chair in CRER has given a significant boost to the Centre and the University of Warwick in the study of international migration. He is determined to spearhead research, training and networking on an African international migration in the context of Euro-African relations thereby innovating on the current practice of doing so mainly from either perspective. He is a world-renowned scholar of both voluntary and forced forms of internal and international migration, experienced on various African countries having worked in universities in his native home of Kenya for over two decades, Ghana for three years and Botswana for eight years, and as United Nations expert in South Africa for one year. He has written extensively on migration in Eastern and Southern Africa, was for four years in the network of the Southern African Migration Project and is aspiring to improve work in the Greater Horn of Africa. His widely read university texts based in extensive research include Urban Migrants and Rural development in Kenya (1996) and Undercurrents of Ethnic Conflict in Kenya (2002) as well as journal articles and numerous conference papers.

• Specialist mentoring

John Oucho has a special responsibility to advise and mentor PhD students in the School and CRER throughout the duration of their PhD.

• New research and PhD area

In the next three years, Professor Oucho will mentor researchers and tutor new PhD students in the following research themes.

Year 1: Participation of Africa's Brain Drain, Migrant Associations, Migrant-Stayer Networks and Diaspora in Africa's Development.

Year 2: Changing Gender Relations and Roles among Africa's Brain Drain and Diaspora.

Year 3: NEPAD-United Kingdom and French Partnerships in Managing Africa's Brain Gain and Diaspora for Euro-African Interdependent Development.

The basic premise of this new PhD area is to provide training to European and African researchers, personnel in public and private sectors as well as NGOs and civil society activists working on emigration, immigration and Diasporas. Through research, will be addressed substantive issues in the migration-development nexus; open a window for interpreting implications of Africa's brain drain and diaspora for development in individual African countries and in mutually agreed upon relations between African and European countries; and equip students for the writing of theses or research reports.

This will enable students to understand and appreciate development perspectives of contemporary African immigration to Europe and its implications for as well as prospects of changing African-European relations. Students will either undertake original research or analyse secondary data to prepare their theses on topics approved by selected multi-disciplinary teams of researchers, and will be required to make presentations in seminars/ conferences, ultimately leading to their choices of research topics on which to prepare theses. All student research will address issues pertaining to the three sub-themes that have already been explained. To strengthen their research capability, PhD students will attend a research methodology course offered by lecturers in CRER, School of Health and Social Studies and other departments of the University of Warwick.

• Summer School

CRER will be running a Summer School on International Migration and Development from 2008. This programme will be facilitated by the staff or CRER, as well as from the wider University of Warwick, the European CRER network and other CRER networks to be initiated. Participants of the Summer School will be European and African PhD students, young researchers and practitioners with an ambition to cut out careers in research; the course will enable them to forge links among themselves for future activities and will permit exchanges, cross-fertilisation between research and practice, thereby informing policy and helping to develop appropriate programmes.

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Doctoral Training Programme

All students registered for degrees by research in the Centre are expected to complete the doctoral training programme provided by the highly rated Sociology department. The majority of full-time students will be expected to complete the programme in their first year, whereas part-time students normally complete it in their first two years. Each course in the programme takes the form of a seminar with active participation from students. The aim is a lively, supportive seminar in which students feel challenged and inspired to share their different experiences. Modules are as follows:

• Research process and design
  
• Connecting qualitative and quantitative
• methods and analysis
  
• Exploring contemporary qualitative methodologies
  
• Quantitative analysis: measures and models
  
• Philosophy of social science

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Examples of Recent Theses Completed at CRER

Bilingualism in the Pakistani Diaspora.

Black Identity

Bosnian Refugee Resettlement.

Educational Inequalities of South Asians in Birmingham.

Ethnic Minorities and Refugees: Mobilisation and Group Strategies in Interaction with Majority Society in Europe.

Human Rights and Minorities.

Identity and Communication

Lost Generation or Future Peace-Builders: The Effects of Political Violence on Youth

Refugee Housing Policy and Refugee Settlement in England and France

Refugees in Europe and the Concept of Successful Integration

Representing Blackness: Move, the Media and The City of Philadelphia

The EU and the Muslim Minority

The Experiences of Muslim Policy Officers: An Examination of Processes of Categorisation and Self-Identification in English Constabularies

Understanding Turkish Educational Underachievement in Belgium and Britain: A Sociological Account

Unfinished Business - The Development of Racial(ised) Identity in People of Mixed Parentage.

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Conferences, Seminars, Workshops

Research students are able to attend the CRER Open Seminar series and other events which are announced each term. See Events. In the Spring Term there is a PhD workshop where students will present their research.

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Postgraduate Admissions Tutor: Dr Wolfgang Markham.

Each student will be assigned a named supervisor for the duration of their research degree.

For further information, please explore the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations' entry in the University's Graduate School Prospectus or contact Caroline Oakman, Graduate School of Race and Ethnic Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL. Tel: +44 (0)24 7652 2980, Fax: +44 (0)24 7652 4324.