Research Value of Expat Experiences Spotlighted at US Conference

The Director of The Expatriate Archive Centre (EAC), Kristine Racina will be one of the presenters at the Families in Global Transition conference in Washington DC from 21-23 March. She will highlight the importance of documenting the expat experiences and will invite participants to think about the challenges of the new digital era.

This year's conference has the theme The Global Family Redefined and is the only US-based event where representatives of the corporate, diplomatic, academia, the arts, military and missionary sectors meet to share cross-cultural coping strategies.

In her talk The Only Permanent Thing is Change, But Do We Document it Appropriately? Ms Racina will introduce the archive, its history, collections, examples of researches done and the latest projects. The aim of the EAC is to create a research facility and they are eager to gather new materials that would give a better and broader picture of the unique world of global transition and what it does to the global families.

FIGT, which was formed in 1997 by the Association of International Women in Indianapolis, advises on career employee retention, personal and corporate/organisational financial losses, educational balance, working spouses, elder care responsibilities and adjustment challenges for so-called third culture kids.

FIGT and the EAC had similar roots and both have grown into the impressive organisations that they are today. The EAC today holds a wide variety of materials in many different languages documenting expatriate life, including more than 100 private collections.

For more information on the conference and to register see http://www.figt.org/