Welcome to the New Frontiers Conference 2025! Kolbrún Þorbjörg Pálsdóttir, Dean, School of Education, University of Iceland will deliver the opening address.

Laura Robson is Professor in the Department of History and the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University. She is a scholar of international and Middle Eastern history, with a special interest in questions of refugeedom, forced migration, and statelessness.

Apart and a Part: New Frontiers in Researching Resettlement Refugees in Iceland In this panel and roundtable, the inter-disciplinary group of eleven scholars associated with the multi-year research program that hosts this conference, will highlight some of the initial results of their ongoing work. After an overview of the scope and ambition of the project, they will describe the methodology, the process, the challenges, the implications and some of the initial insights that they have gained in the last three years. This research and data collection has taken place all of over Iceland including in small, remote villages to the metropolitan region of Reykjavik. The topics that the team has explored includes well-being, inclusion, language acquisition, education, trust, community building, communication, policies, expectation management, the role of volunteers and translators, and the various stages of resettlement. As they reflect on their efforts, success and findings and consider the next steps, they welcome feedback and advice as they prepare further academic work as well as providing policy recommendations for the various stakeholders and practioners in the resettlement process in Iceland.

Gry Paulgaard is Dr.Polit. in Pedagogics and Professor emeritus at the Department of Teacher Education & Pedagogics at UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, Northern Norway, campus Tromsø.

Unfolding Journeys: A Refugee-Led Symposium on Identity and Belonging This symposium brings together resettled refugees from diverse backgrounds to share their lived experiences, insights, challenges, and aspirations for the future. By centering refugee voices, the event aims to foster inclusive dialogue, inform equitable policy development, and promote community empowerment and global solidarity. A representative from the Center for Language and Literacy—an initiative under the City of Reykjavík—will participate in the discussion by presenting insights from their work in supporting language development, literacy, and multicultural engagement. The presentation will highlight the impact of these initiatives as well as the systemic challenges faced in creating inclusive educational environments.

In this roundtable, we invite a dialogue on policies and practices and the way forward regarding matters related to refugees in Iceland. As researchers, we believe it is important that such a large-scale research project as the ESRCI initiative can contribute to future policy development in this field. Likewise, the research team has made an effort to engage in dialogue with policymakers and professionals in the field, so that the research is informed by the realities it seeks to reflect. Participants in the conversation will include advisors from ministries, municipalities and NGOs in Iceland.