When one becomes a folklorist, it is often accompanied by a desire to show the world how important traditional arts and culture are for understanding people. Still, it is often hard to translate that knowledge to policymakers to make institutional change.
Dr. Lisa Gilman, one of the faculty members of the George Mason University’s Folklore Program, is no stranger to public facing folklore work, but even she admits that the work she is currently doing is unlike anything that she has done before. Dr. Gilman is currently a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, affiliated with the Refugee and Forced Displacement Initiative (RAFDI). The Wilson Center is a non-partisan think tank dedicated to research that provides insight into global issues that can inform policies in the United States. RAFDI, according to their website, “provides evidence-based analyses that translate research findings... [that] aims to expand the space for new perspectives, constructive dialogue, and sustainable solutions to inform policies that will improve the future for the displaced people.”
Over the course of her career, much of Dr. Gilman’s work has centered around the arts, conflict, war, and migration as shown through her published books such as The Dance of Politics: Gender, Performance, and Democratization in Malawi (2009), My Music, My War: The Listening Habits of U.S. Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (2016), and Africa Every Day: Fun, Leisure, and Expressivity on the Continent (co-editor 2019). Dr. Gilman has also had her hand in exploring these interests in several public folklore projects including the film Grounds for Resistance: Stories of War, Sacrifice, and Good Coffee and the Dzaleka Art Project, a website dedicated to documenting and showcasing visual and performing arts and artists living in Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi.
Her latest project, “My Culture, My Survival: Arts Initiatives by Refugees for Refugees” is several years in the making. It all started soon after Dr. Gilman moved to the Washington DC area in 2017. She had heard about the Tumaini Festival, an arts festival that takes place annually in a refugee camp in Malawi. Then in 2019, Dr. Gilman was invited to be a visiting professor at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul Türkiye. While there, Dr. Arzu Öztürkmen, the folklorist colleague who had invited her, suggested that she should do research in Türkiye. Dr. Gilman was hesitant because she didn’t know much about Türkiye. However, Dr. Öztürkmen encouraged her by saying that she should do something. Eventually, another of Dr. Gilman’s colleagues, Dr. Meltem Türköz, introduced her to Alaa Alkhatib, a Syrian oud player. Alaa took Dr. Gilman to a restaurant that he was collaborating with that was run by a Palestinian family. At the time, the restaurant was creating events using food, music, and visual arts as a way to unite people from across the Middle East living in Türkiye. Thinking about this restaurant run by people living in exile and what she knew about the festival in the refugee camp in Malawi, Dr. Gilman had an epiphany for a project. She decided to do research with the goal of writing a book and public facing pieces that would focus on examples of refugees in different parts of the world using arts and culture to do something positive for themselves, their communities, and their host countries.
Dr. Gilman interviewing a Syrian musician in Türkiye.
The project formally started in November 2021 when Dr. Gilman went to Malawi to attend the Tumaini Festival. She later received a grant from George Mason University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences to support additional research. In 2022, Dr. Gilman was able to charge ahead with fieldwork, meeting with Uyghurs in France, Syrians in Türkiye, people from Burundi, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo in Malawi; and some students who are refugees at George Mason University. In 2023, Dr. Gilman applied for grants to support the completion of her project. She received a Council of American Overseas Research Grant from the United States State Department to finish the research. The Wilson Center fellowship, in turn, allows Dr. Gilman to complete her manuscript, write public facing work, and contribute to RADFI’s mission.
Dr. Gilman states that the purpose of her project is to educate people about the human beings who are refugees. All too often, refugees are portrayed as criminals or drains on the economy of their host countries. Or, if they aren’t presented as villains, they can only be victims. However, as Dr. Gilman emphasized, people who are refugees can mean anybody who was forcibly displaced, and “refugee” refers to a lot of very different situations that people face. Yet oftentimes when it comes to policy surrounding refugees, as Dr. Gilman pointed out, refugees’ arts and cultures, and avenues to practice them, need to be better examined. Dr. Gilman commented:
“If people don't have a way to practice their culture and their art, then they lose their soul, their way to express themselves, the way to identify, the way to process trauma, the way to connect to home, the way to connect with each other, the way to connect to people who are different. If you take that out, you can give people all the healthcare, all the safety, all the education you want, and they're not going to survive.”
Bringing this perspective to the Wilson Center is what makes Dr. Gilman’s work, background, and viewpoint valuable as she completes her fellowship bumping shoulders with judges, political scientists, activists, journalists, and economists from all over the world. When asked what will come out of her relationship with the Wilson Center, she states that the Wilson Center has a culture of maintaining continuous relations. She believes that through this network will come more opportunities for folklorists to both collaborate and continue to do outward facing work.
The thing that Dr. Gilman hopes people will take away from her work is how fundamental arts and culture are to the human experience, especially when one is forcibly displaced and loses their security across identity, home, safety, economics, and so on. She aims to offer counter-narratives to the often stereotypical portrayals that are positive, as she said because “ these are human beings, they are displaced. Any of us could be displaced at any minute. And they bring the skills, the creativity, the humanity, the love, the joy, all of these things they bring with them wherever they go.”
"My Culture, My Survival Arts: Initiatives by Refugees for Refugees" will become available in the near future. In the meantime, you can read some more of Dr. Gilman’s work at the Wilson Center here:
Article on the Dzaleka Art Project
Article on displaced Syrians in Türkiye
Dr. Gilman also wrote an article on the YOLO art center for displaced Syrians in Türkiye for the Smithsonian Folklife Magazine.
You can also check out the Dzaleka Art Project here: https://www.dzalekaartproject.com/
Article by Stephanie Aitken
December 03, 2024