Conference Program

This paper contributes to current debates on creative and emancipatory research with migrants and refugees by consolidating an approach we term biographical creative methods (Massari et al. 2026; Gatta et al. 2026): a methodological framework that brings life-history inquiry into dialogue with creative coproduction across visual, performative and multimodal practices. Developed across several interrelated projects, this approach foregrounds reflexivity, co-agency and the collective re-elaboration of experience, challenging extractivist logics often embedded in research in this field. Within this broader programme, the paper discusses MEMODIAS – Memory Practices of the Afghan and Somali Diasporas in the USA and Italy (2022–2025), a HorizonMSCA project which convened participatory workshops with members of Afghan and Somali diasporas to work with biographical trajectories and with individual and collective memories related to conflict, exile, settlement in the receiving countries, and return. Designed explicitly as alternatives to data-extraction settings, these encounters opened up spaces to record present conditions and experiences, surface diverse perspectives and articulate future-oriented aspirations. The workshops enabled the coproduction of situated knowledge that could sustain incremental shifts in understanding relational dynamics and possibilities for both participants and researchers, while enhancing reflexivity for everyone involved.

Through practices of spatialisation, materialisation and multimodal composition, participants co‑assembled a provisional “city of diasporic memories”: a shared environment of objects, narratives and soundscapes that externalises memories and aspirations, lowers linguistic barriers, and fosters inter‑diasporic recognition and solidarity (Creet & Kitzmann 2010; Lacroix & Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2013; Lim & Rosenhaft 2021) without reducing experiences into single stories.

Building on these insights, we present an evolving, codesigned guide that translates the workshop architecture and facilitation strategies into adaptable modules for educational settings and diaspora‑led initiatives. Presenting the guide at this developmental stage is an invitation to gather feedback and practitioner insights to refine its scope, ethics‑of‑care safeguards, language mediation and accessibility strategies, and reflexive prompts for both facilitators and participants.

Conceptually, the contribution clarifies how biographical creative methods recast the researcher-participant relation as a shared inquiry oriented to meaningful forms of change. Practically, it outlines how research routines can be translated into educational pathways that broaden expressive repertoires, redistribute authorship in the framing of questions and relevance, sustain inter-diasporic educational work, and strengthen reflexive practice in contexts marked by mobility, displacement and inequality.