The Community, Identity and Displacement Research Network (CIDRN) is a public intellectual space where research activities are encouraged and promoted. This broad network aims to draw together and foster scholarly investigation of new diasporas and changing meanings of displacement and identity. It is an intellectual space where new questions about indigeneity, racism, refugees, sense of place, social inclusion, social justice, transnationalism and xenophobia can be raised, debated and discussed.

Research activities associated with the CIDRN will cover a range of disciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives. The network will also explore and enable new theoretical and methodological interventions around issues of identity, displacement and community in a global and local context.

Given that this network is concerned with the social and political dynamics of a sense of place, we are particularly interested in work focusing on Melbourne’s West. This locality, with its rich history of migration and diversity provides an important site for the investigation of displacement, identity, community and change and the interaction between the local and global.