Public Programs
Since 1965, the IHRC has organized conferences, workshops, and public programs to promote research, teaching, and public conversation around immigration, race, and ethnicity in the United States.
Featured Past Events
This panel brought together adoption scholars Kim Park Nelson, Kit Myers and Eleana Kim, as well as adoptee rights legal expert Gregory Luce, to discuss how federal immigration policy impacts transnational adoptees and shapes their national, cultural, and familial belonging. View the Adoptee Deportee event.
This event featured Elliott Young, Professor of History at Lewis & Clark College, and focused on his book, Forever Prisoners: How the United States Made the World's Largest Immigrant Detention System. He was joined by Director of the Detainee Rights Clinic (UMN Law School) Linus Chan and IHRC Director Erika Lee. View the Immigrant Detention event.
The Immigration History Research Center and the International Rescue Committee celebrated the launch of award-winning author Kao Kalia Yang's book Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir (Metropolitan Books, 2020.) View the book launch.
Dara Lind, one of the nation's leading immigration reporters from ProPublica in Washington, DC, was joined by the IHRC and journalist Ibrahim Hirsi to discuss immigration news reporting during the 2020 election year. This event was moderated by Ibrahim Hirsi and IHRC Director Erika Lee. View Covering Immigration in an Election Year.
Conversation with Author Maddalena Marinari about her book Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization Against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882-1965. View the Global REM Series: Maddalena Marinari event.
Organized in partnership with the Jean Nickolaus Trettor Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies, this event featured a special screening of LGBT Immigrant Digital Stories. View the LGBT Immigrant Stories event.
Professor Cawo Abdi (Sociology, UMN) discussed her path-breaking research that compares Somali experiences in the US, South Africa, and the UAE. Her work illuminates the opportunities and disadvantages Somalis face in each of these locations. View Somali Voices in Minnesota and the Diaspora.
This event included Megan Marsnik, the author of Under Ground, a historical novel set on the Iron Range during the tumultuous strike of 1916, told through the perspective of a strong young Slovenian immigrant woman and Peter Rachleff, Professor Emeritus, Macalester College and Executive Director of the East Side Freedom Library. View Minnesota's Immigrant Roots: Connecting Immigrant Histories to Contemporary Communities.