Events
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Spring 2026 Public Conversation Series
Held monthly over the semester, these public conversations bring together scholars, artists, and practitioners for cross-disciplinary exchanges to develop and refine understandings of migration and mobility, its histories, and its political stakes.
The Remarque Institute Inaugural Mosse Lecture and an NYU Migration Network Public Conversation:
On Exile: A Conversation
This Public Conversation is presented jointly with the Remarque Institute at NYU.
When: Friday, February 13 — 5:00pm - 6:00pm EST
Where: Remarque Institute — 60 Fifth Avenue, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10011
Who:
Hisham Matar
Hisham Matar spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo and has lived most of his adult life in London. His debut novel, In the Country of Men (2006), was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and The Guardian First Book Award, and won numerous international prizes, including the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and a Commonwealth First Book Award. His second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, was published to great acclaim in 2011. His prize-winning memoir, The Return, was published in 2016 and was the recipient of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Award, the Prix du Livre Etranger Inter & Le Journal du Dimanche, the Rathbones Folio Prize, and The Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize. It was one of The New York Times’ top 10 books of the year. His latest novel, My Friends, was published in 2024 and longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction, and won the 2024 Orwell Prize for political fiction as well as the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Matar’s work has been translated into thirty languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Professor Matar is the founder and principal curator of The Barnard International Artists Series, a forum for considering the world through the works of living artists.
Daniel Mendelsohn
Daniel Mendelsohn is an internationally bestselling author, critic, essayist, and translator. Born in New York City in 1960, he received degrees in Classics from the University of Virginia and Princeton. After completing his PhD he moved to New York City, where he began freelance writing full time; since 1991 he has been a prolific contributor of essays, reviews, and articles to many publications, most frequently The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. He has also been a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure and a columnist for The New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, and New York magazine, where he was the weekly book critic. In February 2019, he was named Editor-at-Large of the New York Review of Books and the Director of the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, a charitable trust that supports writers of nonfiction, essay, and criticism.
Moderated By:
Negar Azimi
Negar Azimi is a writer and editor and occasional curator. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the publishing and curatorial project Bidoun, a former fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, a member of the Beirut-based Arab Image Foundation, and a board member of Artists Space. Her essays, criticism, and reportage have appeared in Artforum, Bookforum, Frieze, Harper’s, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times and elsewhere. She studied biology, politics, and anthropology at Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia. With Pati Hertling she organizes the epistolary series Deadlines and Divine Distractions.
The Health Impacts of Immigration Policy
When: Wednesday, March 25 — 5:30pm - 6:30pm EST
Where: NYU Wagner School of Public Service — Main Event Space; 105 East 17th Street, New York, NY 10003
Who:
Maria Elena de Trinidad Young
Maria Elena de Trinidad Young, PhD, MPH, is an affiliate at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and an assistant professor at UC Merced. Young focuses on the impact of the U.S. immigration system on the health of immigrant populations. Her research examines the relationship between health inequities and factors such as citizenship and legal status and state and local policies. Her current research seeks to understand the various structural, institutional, and individual mechanisms that link policy with health outcomes.
Young was formerly the project director of the NIH-funded Research on Immigrant Health and State Policy (RIGHTS) Study which seeks to understand the experiences of Latino and Asian immigrants in California in the areas of health care, social services, employment, education, and law enforcement and how these experiences have had an impact on their health and access to health care. Young was also the Chancellor’s postdoctoral fellow at UC Merced where she lead a study to examine how media coverage of immigration policy may influence immigrant well-being.
Laura Wherry
Laura Wherry is an Associate Professor at NYU Wagner and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Economics of Health program. During the 2024-2025 academic year, she served as the Senior Economist for health care on the President's Council of Economic Advisers.
Her research focuses on the role of public programs and policies on the health and economic well-being of individuals in the US. She has a particular interest in policies that affect access to health care for women and children in lower income families.
The Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of Immigration Enforcement and Resistance
This Public Conversation is presented jointly with the NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.
When: Thursday, April 16 — 5:30 - 6:30pm EST
Where: NYU Wagner School of Public Service — Main Event Space; 105 East 17th street, New York, NY 10003
Who:
rafa esparza
rafa esparza (b. 1981, Los Angeles; lives and works in Los Angeles) received a BA from University of California, Los Angeles (2011). Selected solo and two-person exhibitions have been held at Americas Society, New York (2025); Artists Space, New York (2023); MASS MoCA, North Adams (2019); ArtPace, San Antonio (2018); and Ballroom Marfa (2017). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2025, 2017); Prospect.6, New Orleans (2024); Blaffer Art Museum, Houston (2024); Oakland Museum of California (2024); Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2023); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2023); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2021); Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson (2022); Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston (2020); San Diego Art Institute (2019); and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016). esparza is a recipient of Pérez Prize (2022), Latinx Arts Fellowship, Mellon Foundation (2021), Lucas Artist Fellowship (2020), Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2017), Art Matters Foundation Grant (2014), and California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2014). esparza has participated in residencies at Artpace San Antonio (2018) and Wanlass Artist in Residence, OXY ARTS, Los Angeles (2016).
esparza’s work is in the collections of Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; AltaMed Art Collection, Los Angeles; Dallas Museum of Art; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Kadist Art Foundation; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Mohn Art Collective: Hammer, LACMA, MOCA (MAC3); Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; San Jose Museum of Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Vincent Price Art Museum, Monterey Park; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Cassils
Cassils (Los Angeles, NY) is a Canadian transgender artist who makes their own body the material and protagonist of their performances.
Cassils' art contemplates the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle, and empowerment. For Cassils, performance is a form of social sculpture: Drawing from the idea that bodies are formed in relation to forces of power and social expectations, Cassils' work investigates historical contexts to examine the present moment.
Gayatri Gopinath
Gayatri Gopinath is a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University and the author of Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2018) and Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Duke University Press, 2005). Gayatri is the Director of the Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality.
Spring 2026 Speaker Series
During the Spring semester, the NYU Migration network offers NYU faculty an opportunity to workshop their research with other university faculty and students as a part of the speaker series. These casual lunchtime gatherings are an opportunity for scholars to share their migration and mobility projects, and for their colleagues to learn about their emergent work.
Note: Please RSVP. A light lunch will be provided.
January Speaker Series
When: January 28, 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST
Where: NYU Wagner (105 E 17th St), Conference Room - 302
Who:
Isabella Trombetta, the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, and Ellen Noonan, History and Archives and Public History Program, presenting with project colleagues, Sibylle Fischer, Spanish and Portuguese, and Bryan Zehngut-Willits, History.
Isabella Trombetta’s work focuses on migration in the Central Mediterranean and how international maritime law and humanitarian law affect border shaping in the high seas. Ellen Noonan, Sibylle Fischer, and Brian Zehngul Willits will discuss their archival search project, Migrant and the State, which focuses on historical migrant records held by the U.S. National Archives (NARA) gathered in what are known as A-files (formerly Alien Files). A-files are in essence portfolios that are generated by the state for migrants, immigrants, or refugees who enter the U.S. and in the process come into contact with border control agencies.
February Speaker Series
When: February 25 — 12:00pm - 1:00pm EST
Where: NYU Wagner (105 E 17th St), Conference Room - 302
Who:
Stella Yi, Population Health, NYU Langone and, Madison LeCroy, Population Health, NYU Langone.
Stella Yi will discuss her work with the Harvest Share project and their emphasis on equitable implementation. She will focus on implications for Chinese and Mexican populations, the relationship with local farms, and the impact on diet. Madison LeCroy will present on Harvest Share’s "sprouts" focused diet for the East Flatbush Afro-Caribbean community and on the Chinatown whole grains project.
March Speaker Series
When: March 25 —9:30am - 10:30am EST
Where: Zoom
Who: TBD.
April Speaker Series
When: April 29 — 12:00pm - 1:00pm EST
Where: NYU Wagner (105 E 17th St), Conference Room - 302
Who: TBD.
Graduate Student Workshop
This daylong event is designed to allow NYU graduate students and recent graduates to connect with one another, learn about each other’s work, and receive mentorship/guidance in professional development from faculty.
Applications for this event have closed. The event is only open to selected applicants.
When: Friday, March 6 — 9:30am - 5:00pm EST
Where: NYU Wagner School of Public Service — 2nd floor; 105 East 17th St, New York, NY 10003
Who: Hosted by the NYU Migration Network.
Spring 2026 Student Film Screening: Short Films on Migration by Emerging Artists and Scholars
Recipients of the NYU Migration Network Graduate Summer Research Grant are invited each year to work with an undergraduate Tisch documentary film student to turn their research into a short-film format. At the screening, the paired students present their work, showing the short films and offering a short discussion of their collaboration.
When: Friday, March 6 — 5:30pm - 7:00pm EST
Where: NYU Wagner School of Public Service — Main Event Space; 105 East 17th Street, New York, NY 10003
Who: Hosted by the NYU Migration Network in collaboration with NYU Tisch.