Thomas Hylland Eriksen (University of Oslo) gave the keynote speech at The Impact of Diasporas event on 17 September 2015 at the Royal Geographical Society, London. A modified version of his speech is now published as an IMI working paper.
'Culture seen as a commons: Osmosis, crossroads and the paradoxes of identity' was presented alongside contributions from two major research projects, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the Oxford Diasporas Programme and The Impact of Diasporas on the Making of Britain (University of Leicester). This keynote lecture was the final component of a day of presentations from researchers from both programmes which linked the projects through themes of ‘home and away’, ‘lost and found’, ‘coming and going’ and ‘remembering and forgetting’. In it, Hylland Eriksen reflects on diversity, creolisation, the politics of difference and questions of social identity.