Marco Distinto, an Open University Business School PhD graduate, marked the beginning of Refugee Week 2021 by discussing his PhD research, which looks at the human stories behind the 2015 refugee crisis in Italy.
As a migrant from the South of Italy, Marco wanted to challenge current ideological discourses around migration by sharing the real stories of migrants and the people who support them.
His thesis ‘Refugee reception centres and the integration of the migrant: an exploratory study of discourses and practices of not-for-profit organizations working to support refugees in Italy’, was supervised by Dr Cinzia Priola, Dr Alexandra Bristow and former OU academic Professor Peter Bloom. Marco passed his PhD viva with no corrections on 21 October 2020.
You can listen to Marco talking about his research in more detail below.