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Bio

Nik is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Geography, McGill University, and holds a research affiliation at the University of Rwanda. His current project investigates the spatial and temporal interlinkages between memories of displacement, present day placemaking, and sense of futurity of Congolese refugees living in Gihembe camp, Rwanda. The whole is considered within technical and legal approaches to repatriation and peacebuilding. Separately, he researches and writes on the cultural dimension of forced migration and from a comparative perspective, drawing on his extensive fieldwork in Turkey, the Balkans, Peru, and Canada.

The title of PhD thesis: “From the ‘imagined homeland’ to pathways for cross-border peacebuilding: An ethnographic study with Congolese refugees at Gihembe camp, Rwanda”

List of recent publications

  • Parent, Nicolas, Freier, Luisa Feline, and Dawson, Walker. Forthcoming. “Lost at Sea, Saved by Allah: Religious Coping on a Migrant Journey from Cape Verde to Brazil,” Mental Health, Religion & Culture.
  • Parent, Nicolas. 2020. “From exile to homeland return: Ethnographic mapping to inform peacebuilding from afar,” Stability: International Journal of Security & Development 8, no. 1, art. 7: 1-23.
  • Parent, Nicolas. 2019. “Displacement, return and environmental peacebuilding: Congolese refugees and the potential of ethnographic research,” Tvergastein Interdisciplinary Journal of the Environment, no. 12: 30-37.
  • Freier, Luisa Feline and Parent, Nicolas. 2019. “The Regional Response to the Venezuelan Exodus,” Current History: A Journal of Contemporary World Affairs 118, no. 805: 56-61.
  • Parent, Nicolas. 2018. “Four voices of refugee solidarity along the Balkan Route: An exploratory pilot study on motivations for mobilization,” Migration Letters 15, no. 3: 423-436.
  • Parent, Nicolas. 2018. “Turkish perception of risk vis-a-vis Syrian refugees: An exploratory study of cultural cognition in Izmir, Turkey,” Journal of Identity and Migration Studies 12, no. 1: 2-25.
  • Parent, Nicolas. 2017. “Falling short of protection: Peru’s new migration scheme for Venezuelans,” Forced Migration Review 56 (October): 41-42.
  • Parent, Nicolas. 2016. “Refugees as Peons in Foreign Policy: Turkey, the EU and Reflections of Lasker and Nimzowitsch,” In/Words Magazine and Press 15, no. 3: 99-104.