Skip to content | Change text size
 

International Metropolis Conference bound for Melbourne

20 October 2004

Monash has won a bid to co-host the 11th International Metropolis Conference -- the world's largest conference on international migration -- in September 2007.

From left: Dr Howard Duncan, executive head, International Metropolis Project, with Professor John Nieuwenhuysen, director of the Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements.

The Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements (MISGM) at Clayton campus and the Australian Multicultural Foundation led the project, in conjunction with the Melbourne Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Victorian Government and the City of Melbourne.

It is the first time the conference will be held outside North America and Europe. Around 500 delegates are expected to attend.

Project coordinator and MISGM director Professor John Nieuwenhuysen said the yet-to-be named conference would focus on diversity in Australian society, with an emphasis on migration and movement of people in the Asia-Pacific region.

"Australia was successful because it is seen as a portal to Asia and the Pacific by the 21-nation group," he said.

"Melbourne, with its outstanding conference facilities and as an extremely diverse society (some 45 per cent of residents are either born overseas or are children of overseas-born parents) was considered an ideal setting for the conference."

Professor Nieuwenhuysen said Monash would be a centre of scholarship and leadership, with a number of publications expected to stream from the university.

The International Metropolis Project was established in 1991. Membership comprises research, policy and non-governmental organisations, representing a wide range of policy and academic interests. Project members seek to work collaboratively on issues of immigration and integration to better manage the challenges and opportunities that immigration presents.

This year's conference was held in Geneva, Switzerland, from 27 September to 1 October. The 2005 conference will be held in Toronto, Canada and the 2006 conference in Lisbon, Portugal.