Standing Committee

DIVCULT aims to better understand the relevance of arts and culture in the theoretical and policy debates about immigrant incorporation and diversity in Europe and beyond. Over the last years, artistic activities have found increasing interest among migration researchers because they prove to be a means of moving beyond ethnic differences towards narratives of identity and belonging that are more apt to capture the current post-migrant reality in many cities and countries.

We intend to cover a wide range of artistic and cultural activities in our analyses ranging from music, literature, cinema and theatre to sports, fashion, clothing, design and food.

The idea is to jointly work on the following dimensions: 

• Theoretical and conceptual issues
• Methodologies
• Relevance and social impact

These dimensions constitute the general framework in which the researchers involved can initiate joint research activities, organise workshops and conferences and prepare publications.

DIVCULT builds on previous work carried out in the IMISCOE Standing Committee on Popular Art, Diversity and Cultural Policies in Post-Migration Urban Settings (POPADIVCIT) founded in 2010. POPADIVCIT focussed on the political and institutional framework of immigrant artistic activities, the social relations between all actors involved as well as on their impact in particular in terms of political participation and mobilisation. The work has resulted in several special issues of journals.  

For further information on DIVCULT activities, you can contact Elsa Mescoli (Assistant Coordinator) at the following address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The application document describing the aims and functioning of our Standing Committe is available default here (210 KB) .

The current DIVCULT PhD representative (2022-2024) is Joanna Jurkiewicz (Technische Universität Darmstadt, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.). An overview of the role of the DIVCULT PhD representative is available pdf here (88 KB) .

Names of coordinators

Marco Martiniello

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Wiebke Sievers

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Executive board members (beside the coordinators)

Elsa Mescoli

CEDEM - FaSS, ULiege, Belgium

Joanna Jurkiewicz

Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany

alessandra venturini

University of Turin, Jean Monnet Chair in European Migration Studies, Italy

Berndt Clavier