Organised by DER@Monash and HEDI, this international research symposium seeks to better understand how people from refugee backgrounds navigate digital experiences across different aspects of settlement such as everyday life, learning and employment. Using a strengths-based perspective, the symposium aims to conceptualise and apply the notion of ‘digital empowerment’ in relation to refugee settlement from a range of perspectives and in a number of contexts in order to:

• promote more focused research about this important area of successful settlement
• build a knowledge base for strategic and practical implications for policy makers and educators

The symposium will explore the following questions:

• What are our understandings about “digital empowerment”?
• What forms does digital empowerment take for people from migrant and refugee backgrounds? How can we recognise them?
• How do people become digitally empowered in different contexts? What strategies do they use? What roles do different people play?
• How do culture, language and past experiences with digital technologies shape the processes and outcomes of digital empowerment?
• What are the implications of the concept of digital empowerment for learning programs?

Program

Symposium program