Article

EPISODE 2 of Dispersion Season 2 is NOW LIVE!

23 Jan 2023

Conflict, Cultural Preservation, and Coalescing Identities

The Zoryan Institute is pleased to announce that Dispersion Season 2, Episode 2: Conflict, Cultural Preservation, and Coalescing Identities with Guests Anastasia Leshchyshyn & Anuppiriya Sriskandarajah is NOW LIVE on all of your favourite podcast platforms!

In this episode, Anu and Anastasia explore how conflicts in the homeland influence community cohesion and mobilization, and cultural preservation in the diaspora. They discuss how conflicts in their respective homelands of Sri Lanka and Ukraine influenced their own career trajectories, and touch on some of the generational differences in how their diaspora communities  interact with events taking place in their homeland.

“The height of the genocide really mobilized the community to galvanize around the idea of a Tamil identity, and I think it strengthened it…”
– Anuppiriya Sriskandarajah

“I have always known an independent Ukraine, and my general ‘political awakening’ corresponded with the Orange Revolution in 2004″.
– Anastasia Leshchyshyn

Anastasia Leshchyshyn:
Anastasia Leshchyshyn is a PhD Student at McGill University in the Department of Political Science. She holds an MA in European and Russian Affairs (Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto) and a BA in History, Political Science, and Classical Civilization (University of Toronto). Her research interests include ongoing political and institutional reform processes in Ukraine, with a notable interest in the judicial sector. She was formerly a Research Associate at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (University of Alberta), in the division dedicated to the study of the Holodomor, the man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine of 1932-33.

Anuppiriya Sriskandarajah:
Anuppiriya Sriskandarajah is an assistant professor in the Child, Childhood, and Youth Program at York University. Her area of research includes transnationalism, youth belonging, youth digital activism, race and space, and girlhood studies. She was recently awarded (as co-investigator) a SSHRC Connections grant for a digital film project “Motion | Stop | Motion: Self-Imaging Racialized Girlhoods in the Time of COVID-19”.

The Dispersion podcast brings diverse Diasporic Canadians together to engage in conversations centered around identity, home, and belonging. This is done with the aim of challenging stereotypes and discrimination, and promoting tolerance and understanding.
Season two has more engaging conversations to come! Stay tuned to hear our Diaspora Canadian guests discuss their identities and experiences as they relate to religion, gender, and their conflict and as Indigenous peoples in Canada. New episodes of Dispersion will be released every Monday at 12:00 pm EST on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Acast, and Google Podcasts.

Interested in learning more about Diaspora and Conflict? For each episode of Dispersion released over the coming weeks, University of Toronto Press Journals will be making related academic papers from the Institute’s journal, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies free to read. This week, read more about how diasporas relate and form identities and relationships with their culture and homeland with conflict by reading the articles below.

Demonstrating Identities: Multiculturalism, Citizenship, and Tamil Canadian Identities by Anuppiriya Sriskandarajah

Between Two Wars: Generational Responses of Toronto Croats to Homeland Independence by Daphne Winland

Visit here for more information about Dispersion, and follow the podcast on Instagram and Facebook for updates!

Back to Articles