MANIFESTO
STORM is a participatory research, educational, and museum initiative that confronts one of Europe’s most pressing and transformative realities: migration.
Born from the collaboration among four universities across the CIVIS European University Alliance—Sapienza Università di Roma, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and University of Bucharest—this project reimagines the university as a living laboratory, a space of encounter, and a crucible for civic transformation.
Within the CIVIS framework, STORM contributes to the construction of a shared European cultural heritage grounded not in abstract values, but in lived experiences, memories, and stories shaped by mobility. Europe is approached not as a fixed political or geographical entity, but as a space historically and continuously produced through encounters, crossings, and migrations.
Our conviction: migration is not an emergency to manage but a constitutive force of European history. The cultural heritage we produce—stories, voices, objects, images, digital traces—forms an archive of migration memory that serves as a space of recognition and belonging.
STORM aims to build a digital and physical archive dedicated to contemporary migration to Europe, through the collection of personal narratives, life stories, and oral histories. These stories are accompanied by a selection of everyday objects, carried, used or kept through the migratory journey.
The project is designed for migrants and their descendants, offering a place to encounter their own histories, reconnect with fragmented roots, and transmit memory across generations; and for wider European societies, by providing tools to dismantle exclusionary narratives and to foster a shared understanding of migration as a generative social process.
STORM approach rests on the belief that memory is not neutral. Remembering is an act of agency, and preserving stories becomes a form of resistance against silencing, injustice, marginalization, and erasure. By recognizing migration as a foundational dimension of Europe’s past and present, the project aims to challenge and transform dominant, exclusionary narratives. STORM is ultimately not only a project about migration, it represents a collective memory-making effort, where remembrance becomes an act of peace.
STORM methodology is founded on the co-production of knowledge, rather than extraction of information. Thus, the collection of stories constitutes a participatory process. All the content produced is designed as encounters and dialogues between subjects who carry a migratory background, allowing memory to emerge as a collective construction rather than a resource to be taken.
Stories of Migrants (STORM)–Extended version
STORM is a research and educational initiative funded by the CIVIS Alliance, Europe’s Civic University Alliance — a consortium of 11 European universities that collaborate to promote transnational cooperation in higher education, research, and civic engagement. CIVIS aims to foster inclusive, sustainable and interdisciplinary academic activities across its member institutions, advancing mobility, cultural exchange, and knowledge creation across Europe and North Africa.
Academic Partners
Liliana Dumitrache — University of Bucharest
Liliana Suárez — Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Project vision
The Stories of Migrants project begins with a simple yet urgent question: how can we build a European cultural identity that recognizes migration not as an emergency, but as its very heartbeat? Where populism sees a threat, STORM sees cultural heritage. Where others frame migration as a crisis, we see continuity. The project develops on a fundamental premise: memory is a powerful tool for social transformation. By gathering and safeguarding the memories, objects, and stories of migrants from the past 35 years, the project challenges reductive narratives with a living archive that gives these scattered fragments a pulse. Rooted in the Faro Convention’s principles, STORM recognizes that cultural heritage belongs not to institutions or nations, but to people—especially those whose stories have been systematically excluded. What migrants carry, leave behind, and regenerate upon arrival becomes the foundation for both digital repositories and physical memory spaces—museums, libraries, community archives—designed to normalize migration’s presence in Europe.
The collaborative network
STORM thrives on a dynamic collaboration, bringing together those who approach migration differently, from academic research to a direct experience. Across four countries, academic institutions partner with grassroots organizations, cultural venues open their doors to migrant voices, and communities—both established and newly arrived—co-create the archive. This is not a top-down project but a horizontal network where knowledge flows in multiple directions.
Methodology: from listening to legacy
STORM follows a clear pathway that transforms individual experiences into collective memory:
Listen → Collect → Narrate → Share → Preserve
STORM is a research and educational initiative funded by the CIVIS Alliance, Europe’s Civic University Alliance (https://civis.eu/en) — a consortium of 11 European universities that collaborate to promote transnational cooperation in higher education, research, and civic engagement. CIVIS aims to foster inclusive, sustainable and interdisciplinary academic activities across its member institutions, advancing mobility, cultural exchange, and knowledge creation across Europe and North Africa.
Academic Partners
Liliana Dumitrache — University of Bucharest
Liliana Suárez — Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Project vision
The Stories of Migrants project begins with a simple yet urgent question: how can we build a European cultural identity that recognizes migration not as an emergency, but as its very heartbeat? Where populism sees a threat, STORM sees cultural heritage. Where others frame migration as a crisis, we see continuity. The project develops on a fundamental premise: memory is a powerful tool for social transformation. By gathering and safeguarding the memories, objects, and stories of migrants from the past 35 years, the project challenges reductive narratives with a living archive that gives these scattered fragments a pulse. Rooted in the Faro Convention’s principles, STORM recognizes that cultural heritage belongs not to institutions or nations, but to people—especially those whose stories have been systematically excluded. What migrants carry, leave behind, and regenerate upon arrival becomes the foundation for both digital repositories and physical memory spaces—museums, libraries, community archives—designed to normalize migration’s presence in Europe.
The collaborative network
STORM thrives on a dynamic collaboration, bringing together those who approach migration differently, from academic research to a direct experience. Across four countries, academic institutions partner with grassroots organizations, cultural venues open their doors to migrant voices, and communities—both established and newly arrived—co-create the archive. This is not a top-down project but a horizontal network where knowledge flows in multiple directions.
Methodology: from listening to legacy
STORM follows a clear pathway that transforms individual experiences into collective memory:
Listen → Collect → Narrate → Share → Preserve
The project adopts a qualitative and narrative-based methodology focused on the collection of personal narratives, life stories, and oral histories related to migration. These narratives are collected by migrants themselves, who play an active role not only as narrators but also as curators of migratory memories. This participatory approach is grounded in a bottom-up process of memory construction, aiming to valorize lived experiences, situated knowledge, and community-based perspectives that are often marginalized in institutional or top-down accounts of migration.
The stories are structured according to an analytical model articulated around three key stages of the migratory experience — departure, route, and arrival, reflected by the same geography of the Partners’ network — which together reflect the main phases of a migratory journey. This framework allows for a systematic yet flexible exploration of migrants’ lived experiences, capturing motivations, expectations, challenges, and transformations across different stages of mobility.
By foregrounding first-person accounts and participatory knowledge production, the methodology emphasizes subjective meanings, memories, and interpretations, while also enabling comparative analysis across individual trajectories and geographical contexts.
Where this happens
STORM activities unfold in spaces both institutional and communal: partner universities host academic workshops and research initiatives; high schools integrate migration narratives into curricula; cultural centers (cinemas, museums, libraries, town halls) stage public events; religious centers facilitate interfaith dialogues; NGO offices coordinate community engagement.
This diversity of venues signals that migration is not an academic topic—it is woven into the fabric of civic life.
Scalability and Project Beneficiaries
STORM is not conceived as a one-time intervention but as a replicable and adaptable model, capable of being implemented across European countries — and beyond—wherever migratory journeys intersect with local communities. The project’s impact extends through collaborations with:
• Third sector organizations active in migration and cultural integration
• Artists and cultural workers in museums, theaters, and community centers
• Religious communities engaged in interfaith dialogue and migrant reception
• Migrant cultural associations preserving specific heritage traditions
• Media professionals shaping public narratives about migration
• Local government administrators implementing integration policies
While hundreds of individuals participate directly, the project’s true beneficiaries—European citizens and migrants whose understanding of shared identity is transformed—number in the thousands. Though impossible to quantify precisely, they are central to STORM’s purpose and long-term impact.
