People

ACH

Black South West Network

Eastside Community Trust

Voscur

Jon Fox

Jon is the lead on the project.  He comes to the project from a background on nationalism, racism, and immigration – some of the many things that cause problems for integration.  This has also helped him see how some of these same barriers to integration are also all too often wrapped up in integration discourse and policy.  As a relative newcomer to Bristol (arriving in 2004 from Los Angeles), Jon has had occasion to witness first-hand (and professionally) some of these pitfalls of integration.  His friends and colleagues in local communities and local government across Bristol have inspired him to think collectively about making integration a force for positive change in the city. That’s what this project is about:  to develop a local, bottom-up and inclusive approach to integration for, with, and by Bristol.

Bridget Anderson

Bridget Anderson is Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol. Her interests include citizenship, nationalism and immigration enforcement (including ‘trafficking’). Although now an academic, after her undergraduate degree Bridget worked with undocumented migrant domestic workers, and she has worked closely with migrants’ organisations, trades unions and legal practitioners at local, national and international level. This contributes to her scepticism about ‘integration’ which often stigmatises ‘migrants’ and BAME people. She sees this project as an opportunity to learn from the ways that differently excluded people – low waged, disabled, migrant – resist exclusion, and to see how to make connections between them.

David Manley

David is leading the spatial work package. He has a background working on urban problems and trying to understand how the place in which you live impacts your experiences and achievements. He also has a long standing research interest in segregation and exploring how cities develop and what leads to segregation between communities. He has spent a large amount of his work time recently trying to understand how these questions play out in different national contexts beyond the UK, specifically in The Netherlands and Sweden, but also looking at Japan and the US. In the context of this project he is looking forward to unpacking some of the issues related to his work more locally in and around Bristol.

Therese O’Toole

Therese O’Toole is Reader in Sociology at the University of Bristol and a member of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship, where she works on governance and political and civic engagement among minority ethnic and religious groups. She led a major ESRC/AHRC study of Muslim Participation in Contemporary Governance that examined the impact of the Prevent agenda on state-Muslim engagement in the UK at the national level and in 3 local case-study areas: Birmingham, Leicester and Tower Hamlets, and an AHRC Connected Communities study of the local implementation of Prevent and its impact on Muslim civic engagement in Bristol. Recent publications include: Countering Extremism in British Schools? The Truth about the Birmingham Trojan Horse Affair, ‘Governing Through Prevent: Regulation and Contested Practice in State-Muslim Engagement’ and ‘Acts and Practices of Citizenship: Muslim Women’s Activism in the UK’.

Natalie Hyacinth

Natalie Hyacinth is a Senior Research Associate on the project. Her interest in integration connects with her research on the music and sound of diasporic cultures, particularly music that emerges from underground electronic scenes. Bristol is the ideal setting for these interests, being a city with a rich and varied musical heritage that produced several innovative bass music genres in the 1990s, such as trip hop, drum & bass and jungle. The ways in which music is practiced in the city, such as its unique ability to unite, but also to marginalise, are some of the themes that Natalie is interested in exploring in relation to integration. As a newcomer to Bristol, Natalie is looking forward to exploring these topics in the forms of participatory research and social justice.

Lindsay Carter

Lindsay helps with the administration of the project. She has a background in academic research, with a PhD in Music and Film, and is interested in the role of art and culture in practices and experiences of integration. Whilst working towards her PhD Lindsay worked in Bristol Central Library where she learned lots about Bristol and Bristolians from the everyday interactions and exchanges that she experienced with people from across the city. This experience taught her much about the benefits of integration as well as some of the barriers faced. Lindsay sees this project as an opportunity to learn more about local, community-led practices of integration in Bristol and to work collaboratively with organisations across the city.

Ying Wang

Ying Wang is a Research Associate on the project. She has a background in urban geography and her interest in integration connects with her research on the social and spatial process of social mix and social segregation. As a newcomer to Bristol (and the UK), integration becomes part of Ying’s daily life – both ordinary life and academic life. Ying has observed and experienced how different groups of people (not just migrants and BAME people) are trying to get along with each other and get involved in their communities and their cities. Ying sees this project as an opportunity to explore existing and develop new ways of integration that happen interactively in our everyday life – globally and in the local context of Bristol.