Dispersion Podcast

The Zoryan Institute is excited to share that the fourth episode of Season 3 of Dispersion Podcast is available now!

In this episode, guests explore their relationship with their own identity in relation to their home state. What sets their experience apart from other guests, is that their homelands are not officially recognized as independent states. We explore how this fight for independence and recognition has shaped guests into who they are today, and why they may have a different relationship with their homeland than other Diaspora groups.

Available on all your favourite streaming platforms!

Dispersion Podcast Episode 3 Should I Stay or Should I Go is live! This episode features a discussion that explores the push and pull factors of immigration in the lives of our guests as well as the notion of brain drain. This week Journals - University of Toronto Press is featuring two articles to learn more about related topics! 👇

Cultural Proximity or Cultural Distance? Selecting Media Content among Turkish Diasporic Audiences in Germany by Miriam Berg

Bloody Diaspora Theory for the Twenty-First Century: African and Asian Heritage Migrants Return by Melissa Tandiwe Myambo

Links below!

https://utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/diaspora.20.3.005

https://utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/diaspora.20.2.001

The Zoryan Institute is excited to share that the third episode of Season 3 of Dispersion Podcast is available now!

This episode explores the push and pull factors of immigration in the lives of our guests as well as the notion of brain drain. Joining us for this episode are Azadeh Dastmalchi and Ifrah Arif. Dastmalchi is the CEO and Co-Founder of VitalTracer, a medical startup that designs smart wearable medical devices. Arif currently works as a Senior Policy and Program Advisor at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

Listen to the episode through the link below or all your favourite streaming platforms!

https://zoryaninstitute.org/dispersion/dispersion-season-3/

Dispersion Episode 2 Expectations of Motherhood: You can't just leave it at the airport is live! This episode features a discussion about motherhood and diaspora. This week Journals - University of Toronto Press is featuring two articles to learn more about related topics! 👇

Mobile Motherhood: Armenian Women’s Labor Migration in the Post-Soviet Period by Armine Ishkanian.

“Is This My Mother’s Grave?”: Genocide and Diaspora in Atom Egoyan’s Family Viewing by Lisa Siraganian.

https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/diaspora.11.3.383
https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/diaspora.6.2.127

The Zoryan Institute is excited to share that the second episode of Season 3 of Dispersion Podcast is available now!

Our latest episode, Expectations of Motherhood: You can't just leave it at the airport, explores the diverse experiences of motherhood in Canada’s Diaspora communities. It navigates the nuances and realities of immigrant women, their experiences, their journeys in Canada, as well as the vital role that mothers play in shaping identities and culture for the next generation. Joining us for this episode are Dr. Jacqueline Getfield and Sharon Findlay, both mothers with lived and professional experience of diasporic motherhood.

Listen to the episode through the link below or all your favourite streaming platforms!

https://zoryaninstitute.org/dispersion/dispersion-season-3/

Dispersion Season 3’s first episode, Everybody Loves Chocolate is live! This episode features a discussion about the small town diaspora experience. This week Journals - University of Toronto Press is featuring an article that is to learn more about this experience.

Zhongping Chen's article Building the Chinese Diaspora across Canada: Chinese Diasporic Discourse and the Case of Peterborough, Ontario focuses on the previously neglected the diasporic phenomenon as manifested in towns and small cities. A major purpose of his essay is to fill the gap in the diasporic scholarship concerning small, localized communities by examining Chinese migration and networks around Peterborough, Ontario.

Read here: https://utpjournals.press/doi/10.3138/diaspora.13.2-3.185
Listen to Dispersion here: www.zoryaninstitute.org/dispersion

Now Live - Dispersion Season 3! The Zoryan Institute is excited to share that the first episode of Season 3 of the Dispersion is available now! This episode, title Everybody Loves Chocolate, explores what it looks like to find connections in one's hostland in the cozy confines of a small town. What brings that unmistakable sense of home in such places, and how do these communities and the diasporas within them, make their mark on the towns they’ve adopted? Sharing his experiences with us is Tareq Hadhad, Owner/Founder of Peace by Chocolate and a Syrian Refugee in Small Town Nova Scotia.

Listen to the episode through the link or all your favourite streaming platforms!
https://zoryaninstitute.org/dispersion-season-3/

Stay tuned, new episodes released every Monday!

World Singing Day encourages people around the globe to sing. The day is meant to foster unity, harmony, and strong connections through a common experience of singing. Zoryan Institute’s podcast Dispersion features an episode titled Connecting Cultures Through Choir. In this episode, Lili and Marta have a conversation about passing on their Latin American and Ukrainian heritages to their communities through their work with the Vancouver Latin American Cultural Centre Society and the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium. This episode reveals how communities share and preserve culture through informal and formal education, and the creative ways that Diasporas have stayed connected to each other and to their homelands through the COVID-19 pandemic. Lili Vieira de Carvalho speaks to her Latin American choir that sings popular and traditional songs of Latin America in Portuguese and in Spanish. She speaks about sharing songs and cherished conversations in this space. Singing is a beautiful way to express yourself and share culture! Sing your heart out today and listen to Connecting Culture Through Choir. Link below!

https://zoryaninstitute.org/dispersion/season-1/

On the occasion of Jewish Heritage Month, join us in exploring the complexities of Jewish identity with the thought-provoking episode from the Dispersion podcast, ‘Dinner Conversations with Fluid Identities.' Click on the link to listen today!

https://zoryaninstitute.org/dispersion/season-2/

March 15th marks the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. In Season 2, Episode 3 of the Dispersion podcast, Prof. Dilmurat Mahmut speaks to his experience as a Uyghur now living in Canada, and research interests on Muslim identity in the West, religion, education, violent extremism, and immigrant/refugee integration in Canada and beyond. Graduate students can also learn more about the persecution of Uyghurs in China by applying to the 2023 Genocide and Human Rights Studies Program.

Visit link our website to listen here: https://zoryaninstitute.org/dispersion/season-2/

Dispersion Season 2’s fifth and final episode, One Word: Boundaries is live! This episode features a discussion about gender and diaspora. This week Journals - University of Toronto Press is featuring two articles that are to learn more about Diasporic and LGBT issues.

Susan Koshy’s article The Geography of Female Subjectivity: Ethnicity, Gender, and Diaspora examines the negotiations involved in the insertion of female subjectivity into the cultural space of “America” by focusing on the way Mukherjee’s fictions appropriate and interrogate the narratives of assimilation and feminism that provide paradigmatic texts of gender, as well as of ethnic and racial identity, in the United States and Canada.

Tamar Shirinian’s article Diasporas’ Q***r Archives: Honing the Mundane, the Personal, and the Sensorial Toward Unruly Methodological Visions explores the aesthetic practices of q***r diaspora pointing to alternative sensorial regimes.

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We are excited to share that the fifth and final episode of Season 2 of Dispersion is available now! This episode, titled, One Word: Boundaries features Ilaneet Goren, social worker by trade and educator by heart, and Aida Gregorian, lawyer, independent researcher, human rights defender, and proponent of intersectional and Indigenous based feminist activism. In this episode, Ilaneet and Aida discuss the complexities of navigating their gender and sexual identities in different diasporic spaces. They dive into the challenges of acknowledging gender norms in diverse social spaces while not being prescriptive, the tensions surrounding feminism, and the importance of maintaining boundaries in different settings.

Listen to the episode through here www.zoryaninstitute.org/dispersion or all your favourite streaming platforms!

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Dispersion Episode 4 Our Identities Don’t End at the City Limits is live! This episode features a discussion about Indigeneity and diaspora. This week Journals - University of Toronto Press is featuring two articles to learn more about related topics!

José Itzigsohn’s paper Andean Transnational Merchants: An Indigenous Community in Globalization reviews two articles: Andean Entrepreneurs: Otavalo Merchants and Musicians in the Global Arena & Transnational Peasants: Migrations, Networks, and Ethnicity in Andean Ecuador. It discusses first, the possibilities and paths open to community economic prosperity under contemporary forms of globalization; and, second, the question of identity and community solidarity in conditions of population dispersion.

William Safran’s paper Comparing Diasporas: A Review Essay is aimed at addressing a need for distinguishing between diasporas and Indigenous or immigrant minorities amongst scholars.

Episode 4 of the Dispersion Podcast is now available!

“Our Identities Don’t End at the City Limits” explores the intersection of Indigeneity and Diaspora. Jean-Paul and Sacha discuss the complexities they face navigating their Indigenous identities while living in urban spaces, as well as tensions between Indigenous relationships with the land and the dialogue of ownership in Diaspora Studies.

These related articles from Diaspora are free to read for one month with episode 4 of Dispersion:

“Andean Transnational Merchants: An Indigenous Community in Globalization” by José Itzigsohn explores how the Indigenous community of Otavalo in Northern Ecuador adapt and integrate into the contemporary global economy: https://bit.ly/DISP-g

“Comparing Diasporas: A Review Essay” by William Safran considers the need to distinguish between diasporas and Indigenous minorities with reference to French scholars Gérard Chaliand and Jean-Pierre Rageau: https://bit.ly/DISP-h

Listen to Episode 4 now: https://bit.ly/DISP2

We are excited to share that the fourth episode of Season 2 of Dispersion is available now! This episode, titled, Our Identities Don’t End at the City Limits features Dr. Jean-Paul Restoule and Sacha DeWolfe. Dr. Jean-Paul Restoule is Professor and Chair of the Department of Indigenous Education at University of Victoria and he is Anishinabe from Dokis First Nation in Ontario. Dr. Sacha DeWolfe is an assistant professor at Mount Allison University working with the Canadian Studies Department and is a Mi’kmaq woman. In this episode, Jean-Paul and Sacha have a candid conversation about their Indigenous identities as they relate to land and place, and the complexities they face in navigating their identities while living in urban spaces. This episode explores tensions between Indigenous ways of knowing and relationships with the land, and the ownership words utilized in Diaspora Studies.

Listen to the episode through the link in our bio or all your favourite streaming platforms!

We are excited to share that the third episode of Season 2 of Dispersion is available now! This episode, titled, Dinner Conversations and Fluid Identities features Dr. Randal F. Schnoor, a sociologist teaching Religious Studies and Jewish Studies at York University and Dr. Dilmurat Mahmut is a research associate and a course lecturer in the Faculty of Education, McGill University. In this episode Randal and Dilmurat discuss the inseparable nature of their cultural and religious identities, and how histories of persecution based on religion have contributed to a strong sense of peoplehood within their religious diaspora communities. This episode explores fluid and intersecting identities, and cross generational education.

Listen to the episode through all your favourite streaming platforms!


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Dispersion Episode 2 Conflict, Cultural Preservation, and Coalescing Identities is live! This episode features a discussion about war, conflict, and diaspora.

Anuppiriya Sriskandarajah is featured on the podcast as well as this weeks promotion. Her article Demonstrating Identities: Multiculturalism, Citizenship, and Tamil Canadian Identities looks at political demonstrations that occurred throughout 2008 and 2009 in Toronto, and explores popular understandings of diasporic identities within a Canadian multiculturalism framework.

Daphne Winland’s article Between Two Wars: Generational Responses of Toronto Croats to Homeland Independence explores the impact of varied migration trajectories and settlement experiences on the ways in which diaspora Croats have engaged with the homeland and with each other.

We are excited to share that the second episode of Season 2 of Dispersion is available now! This episode, titled, Conflict, Cultural Preservation, and Coalescing Identities features Anastasia Leshchyshyn a PhD Student at McGill University in the Department of Political Science and Anu Sriskandarajah an assistant professor in the Child, Childhood, and Youth Program at York University. In this episode, Anu and Anastasia explore how conflicts in the homeland influence community cohesion and mobilization, and cultural preservation in diaspora. They discuss how conflicts in their respective homelands influenced their own career trajectories, and generational differences in how those living in diaspora interact with events taking place in the homeland.

Listen to the episode on our website here: https://zoryaninstitute.org/dispersion/ or all your favourite streaming platforms!

Stay tuned, new episodes released every Monday!

Dispersion’s first episode of Season 2 Why Can't We All Just Eat Hummus and Get Along? is live and reaching a large audience already! This episode features a discussion about food, diaspora and identity.

With each episode release of Dispersion, Journals - University of Toronto Press will be making select papers from Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies .

Johan Fischer's article Feeding Secularism: Consuming Halal among the Malays in London dives into some complex issues discussing how Malay diasporic groups consume and negotiate halal in the interfaces between powerful Malaysian state discourses, the secular state and Islamic organizations in Britain, and the commercialization of halal.

James C. McCann's article A Response: Doro Fänta: Creativity vs. Adaptation in the Ethiopian Diaspora invokes the common dish doro fänta (“substitute chicken stew”), as a metaphor for cultural and economic change since the Ethiopian revolution began and concludes with a case study of Ethiopian cooking and cuisine.

Now Live - Dispersion Season 2!

We are thrilled to share that the first episode of Season 2 of Dispersion is available now! This episode, titled, Why Can't We All Just Eat Hummus And Get Along? features award winning producer of CBC Radio One and host of food podcast, Unforked, Samira Mohyeddin and PhD Candidate and histories of food specialist, Shayan Lallani as they discuss how food contributes to their own identity formation and cultural connection. This episode also explores community building, multiculturalism, racism, and cultural erasure and assimilation as they relate to food.

Listen to the episode on our website here www.zoryaninstitute.org/dispersion or any of your favourite streaming platforms!

Stay tuned, new episodes released every Monday!

Season 2 of Dispersion Podcast coming to your favourite podcast platforms on January 16, 2023!

Host: Jen Haddow
Guests: University of Victoria, Mount Allison University, Randal F. Schnoor York University, International Support for Uyghurs McGill University, Shayan Lallani Ottawa University, Samira Mohyeddin CBC Radio: The Current, Ilaneet Goren Humber College, , Anastasia Leshchyshyn HREC - Education Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Anu Sriskandarajah York University

“Was I Canadian enough? Was I Armenian enough? Was I North African enough? How do I situate myself within these paradigms? And as I got older, I understood that I didn't have to make a specific choice. This concept of identity and being part of a diaspora especially, is fluid, and that attachment to identity grows and evolves as we as individuals grow and evolve.”

Dispersion Podcast Season 2 launches on January 16, 2023!

In this new season of Dispersion from the Zoryan Institute, host Jennifer Haddow engages in intimate conversations with diverse Diasporic Canadians about identity, home, and belonging. Episode topics include food and diaspora, religious diasporas, gendered diaspora experiences, and more.

Each week, we will share the new episode and links to related articles in Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, which will be with each episode!

Subscribe to Dispersion on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music -- click here to listen to a teaser of Season 2: https://bit.ly/DISP1

Canada marks Islamic History Month in October.

In a recent recording for season 2 of Dispersion, Uyghur Canadian Dilmurat Mahmut discussed how moving to Canada has provided him and many other Uyghur Canadians with the opportunity to explore their Muslim identities and practice Islamic faith after being oppressed in their homeland to their religion.

Throughout October, we celebrate the many contributions of Muslim Canadians to all aspects of Canadian society, and fight against racism, Islamophobia, and discrimination by increasing our understanding of the diverse experiences and cultures of Muslim Canadians across the country.

Today is Canada's second National Day for Truth and Reconciliation - a day to commemorate the Survivors of the residential school system, as well as the children who never came home. Today we also acknowledge the families, and communities who continue to experience the intergenerational impacts of this horrific system, and their resilience and strength in the face of historical and ongoing injustices and oppression perpetuated by colonialism and its legacies in Canada.

Today and every day, the Zoryan Institute is committed to raising awareness about the experiences of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and engaging in actions and educational endeavours that will further the country's progress towards reconciliation with the Indigenous Peoples who have resided on and cared for this land for thousands of years.

Stay tuned for our upcoming episode on Indigeneity and Diaspora (coming late fall 2022)!

On Multiculturalism Day in Canada, we celebrate the diverse and vibrant cultures within Canada.

In early 2022, the Zoryan Institute launched the Dispersion Podcast to analyze and celebrate both the diverse and common experiences of diasporas living away from, and returning to, their homeland.

In Episode 6 of Dispersion, Lili eloquently discussed the ways in which multiculturalism enriches Canadian society.

Visit https://zoryaninstitute.org/dispersion/ to listen today, and stay tuned for more information on Season 2 in the coming months!