Third Annual REALM Meeting Takes Place in Abu Dhabi

The leaders of Realm

This past weekend brought about the third annual meeting for INCITE’S Research & Empirical Analysis of Labor Migration (REALM) project. The meetings, previously convened in March and November of 2017, involve all Principle Investigators (PIs) who receive funding through REALM, and serve as a vital component of this ambitious research initiative. By uniting researchers from a diversity of disciplines and institutions, these conversations are crucial to enabling collaboration and comparison across REALM’s network of projects.   

Over the course of the two-day gathering on NYU Abu Dhabi’s campus, PIs shared project updates, initial findings and research experiences. Highlights included Bilesha Weeraratne discussing her work with the Sri Lankan Ministry of Labor to shape more transparent recruitment processes; Caroline Oselia sharing fieldnotes from her recent fieldwork in Kerala, India; and Daniel Karell demonstrating the mobile-based app he used to survey respondents in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

“It’s been rewarding to see PIs develop collaborations with each other over the years. A demographer working in Bangladesh can draw on the insights of an anthropologist working in Kerala; the Sudanese government can reshape its data system by working with researchers in the Philippines. REALM structures a truly interdisciplinary, international exchange.“
- Peter Bearman, Principal Investigator

A final REALM meeting is anticipated for June 2020, at which point REALM PIs will be prepared to share the final findings from their project.