Month: January 2016

CFP International Network for Group Research (Helsinki)

International Network for Group Research (INGRoup) Conference
Eleventh Annual Conference – First held in Europe!
14-16 July, 2016 (Preconference workshops July 14)
Radisson Blu Royal Hotel, Helsinki, Finland

Submissions
Must be received by Sunday, February 1, 2016 (23:59:59, Eastern Standard Time). No extensions to the deadline will be granted.

Overview
Societies are dependent on the formation and utilization of groups and teams, making them relevant to countless aspects of life. Accordingly, scholars who study groups can be found across a wide array of disciplines (e.g., anthropology, communication, education, engineering, history, information systems, medicine, nursing, organizational behavior, philosophy, psychology, political science, public health, sociology). The Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research (INGRoup) was created to provide a context for scholars to:
*       Promote communication about groups and teams research across fields and nations
*       Advance understanding about group dynamics through research
*       Advance theory and methods for understanding groups and teams
*       Promote interdisciplinary research

The 11th Annual INGRoup Conference will be held so scholars across disciplines can come together, share information, and learn from one another. The conference program will include paper, poster, symposia, and panel sessions, and a business meeting open to all members so the future of INGRoup can be collectively planned and shaped.

Questions? Contact Program Co-Chair, Ana Passos or Caterina Santos.

 

Key Concepts & Methods in Ethnography, Language & Communication (UK)

Key Concepts and Methods in Ethnography, Language & Communication
4 – 8 July 2016
King’s College, London

If you are researching social processes, institutions, culture or identity, but are unsure about how to analyse the discourse data from your fieldwork, then consider joining this five day research training course.

The programme is designed to help PhD and post-doctoral researchers to navigate the twin perils of over- and under-interpreting discourse data. It introduces a range of key perspectives and tools used to study language and communication ethnographically and it facilitates the study of social practice in a wide range of different settings – education, workplace, recreation, health etc. Initiated with ESRC funding in 2007 and now based in the King’s ESRC Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Centre, this will be our 8th ELC five-day course.

The course will be held at King’s College London from Monday to Friday, and it is taught by an international team from several leading research institutions: Prof Ben Rampton (Director), Dr Jeff Bezemer, Prof Jan Blommaert, Prof Carey Jewitt, Dr Adam Lefstein, Dr Julia Snell.

The deadline for applications is 11 April 2016.  Spaces are limited, so candidates are advised to apply as soon as possible.  Some funding will be available for bursaries.

For more information, click here, or go to: www.kcl.ac.uk, enter ‘Summer course Ethnography Language & Communication’ in the search box, and follow the links.

Institute of Current World Affairs Fellowships

The Institute of Current World Affairs (ICWA) Fellowship Program

An ICWA Fellowship represents a generous investment in the future of a Fellow. The ultimate aim of the ICWA Fellowship program is to cultivate deep expertise in foreign countries and cultures. We achieve this by supporting a Fellow over a two year period, during which she or he carries out an immersive program of self-designed, independent study abroad.

ICWA’s mission is to identify and cultivate rare potential, so we are looking for promise, curiosity, and enthusiasm in our candidates. We consider whether a candidate is ready for the rapid personal growth that the Fellowship makes possible. Candidates with a passion for their project country and who are sufficiently prepared to take advantage of the opportunity we offer, have the best chance of being awarded an ICWA Fellowship. Extensive professional experience in the proposed area is not always necessary; Fellowships are aimed at developing advanced knowledge and professional skills, not awarding research or reporting opportunities to those who already possess them.

Strong candidates generally propose topics for the Fellowship that are compelling. Given our interest in achieving wide geographic distribution over time, we generally are less inclined to select projects in countries where we currently or very recently have had a Fellow. We are naturally drawn to areas of the world and topics that are less well understood and that are relevant to the United States. These could include thematic Fellowships, for example examining questions related to economic development or the environment that could be effectively pursued using the method of our Fellowships. Candidates are encouraged to browse ICWA’s archives to see the kind of projects that the Institute has supported.

REQUIREMENTS
Language Skills
We expect candidates to have the necessary language skills to allow to them to carry out their proposed project. Candidates proposing to go to China, Russia, Indonesia, India, or Brazil, for example, should have proficiency in Chinese, Russian, Bahasa, Hindi (or another relevant language) or Portuguese. It is too costly and time consuming to start from scratch, so we expect enough language proficiency so that candidates are able to function in the local language within a few months of arriving in the country. Exceptions have been made for unusual languages or situations, but these are rare.

Criteria for Consideration
Candidates must be under 36 years of age at the time of the due date for the initial letter of interest.

U.S. citizenship is not a requirement, but candidates must show strong and credible ties to U.S. society. A proposed Fellowship must hold the promise of enriching public life in the United States by enhancing the understanding of foreign countries, cultures, and trends. Public service, social activism or contribution to wider understanding in the United States is our ultimate purpose, out of a belief that the public can benefit from the knowledge and wisdom that our Fellows acquire.

Restrictions
While we expect candidates to design projects of topical interest, Fellowships are not aimed at covering news events. We do not send Fellows into war zones, or places where intense security concerns prevent Fellows from interacting with the local populace.

Fellowships are not scholarships. We do not support degree programs at universities, the writing of books, or research projects aimed at answering specific questions in a particular academic discipline.

Applicants must have excellent written and spoken English language skills and must have completed the current phase of their formal education. We do not accept applications from currently enrolled undergraduate students.

FELLOWSHIP ACTIVITIES
Fellows are required to write monthly newsletters, which are made available through our website to Institute members and other interested parties, including family, friends and professional associates of the Fellows. While the Institute has funded and will continue to fund artists, performers, and others who find various ways to participate in the societies they study, the immediate fruits of the Fellows’ learning are communicated principally through writing. Fellows should be prepared to share their experience with a general, well-educated audience, and not only with specialists in their field. Fellows work closely with the Executive Director, who serves as writing coach, editor, and mentor.

While many Fellows go on to pursue political or social causes at home and abroad, the purpose of a Fellowship is to learn about other societies, not to change them. Fellows are not permitted to engage in overtly political activities during their Fellowship. The Institute does not accept any government funds. Fellows must preserve that independence, in letter and in spirit.

Fellows should not expect to return to the United States during the two years of their Fellowship. ICWA Fellowships are immersive; a vital component of the Fellowship experience is remaining, without interruption, in the area of study for the duration of a Fellowship.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT
The Institute provides full financial support for its Fellows and their immediate families. “Full financial support” does not mean unlimited financial support, and Fellows are expected to live and spend modestly. The Institute provides Fellows with sufficient funding to allow them and their families to live in good health and reasonable comfort and to fulfill the purposes of the Fellowship.

Fellowship Opportunities
Donors’ Fellowship: The generous support received from contributors enables ICWA to appoint a Donors’ Fellows every two years. Topics and areas of study are unrestricted.

Fellows with appropriate topics may receive support from specially endowed funds, including:
John Miller Musser Memorial Forest & Society Fellowships offer people with graduate degrees in forestry or forest-related specialities an opportunity to broaden their understanding of the relationship of forest-resource problems to humans, including policy-makers, environmentalists, farmers, scientists and forest-product industrialists.

John O. Crane Memorial Fellowships provide support for study in East Europe and the Middle East.

APPLICATIONS AND DEADLINES
Those interested in applying for an Institute of Current World Affairs Fellowship should send an initial Letter of Interest and a resume to the Institute via email. (Post is also accepted.)

In your letter of interest, tell us what you would do if you had a two-year, self-designed Fellowship overseas and why you’re the right person to carry it out. There is no fixed length for the letter of interest. Take the space that you need to make a cogent case for yourself. Please indicate your age, as applicants must be under the age of 36 at the time that the letter of interest is due.

Selected Fellows are expected to depart for their Fellowship within six months of their selection.

This is a competitive process. The strongest applicants will be invited to submit a more detailed application.

Deadlines
To be considered for the June 2016 Fellowship appointment, letters of Interest are due on March 1, 2016.

Applications are not considered on a rolling basis.

We are unable to respond to all inquiries, but will certainly answer those that fit our Fellowship requirements.

Email: apply@icwa.org

For applications via post: 
Institute of Current World Affairs
1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Suite 615
Washington, DC 20036

Lauren Mackenzie Profile

ProfilesDr. Lauren Mackenzie is Professor of Military Cross-Cultural Competence at the Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning (CAOCL), Marine Corps University, Quantico, VA.

Lauren Mackenzie

She also currently serves as the Marine Corps University faculty council president as well as an adjunct Professor of Military/Emergency Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. She conducts research relating to cross-cultural competence, oversees culture-related curriculum development and outcomes assessment, and delivers communication and culture lectures across the Professional Military Education spectrum, to include the Marine Corps Command & Staff College, War College, Expeditionary Warfighting School, and the College of Enlisted Military Education. Recently, she was invited to provide “Intercultural Communication” presentations at the Women, Peace & Security annual conference, the FBI Academy, the U.S. Naval War College and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, among others. From 2009-2014, Dr. Mackenzie served as Associate Professor of Cross-Cultural Communication at the U. S. Air Force Culture and Language Center where she taught resident electives at the Air Command & Staff College and designed and delivered the “Introduction to Cross-Cultural Communication” on-line course, completed by over 1,000 Airmen annually.

Dr. Mackenzie earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Massachusetts and has taught intercultural competence courses throughout the Department of Defense over the past ten years. Prior to working for the Department of Defense, she taught a variety of intercultural and interpersonal communication courses at the University of Massachusetts, the State University of New York Potsdam, and Columbus State University, among others. Dr. Mackenzie’s most recent publications are devoted to best practices in military on-line culture learning and assessment, with recent entries in the International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication and the Handbook of Communication Training. She is also the co-author with Dr. Kerry Fosher of the Culture General Guidebook for Military Professionals.

Selected Publications:

Mackenzie, L. & Post, K. (2019). Relationship repair strategies for the military professional: The impact of cultural differences on expectations and applications. Marine Corps University Journal, 10(1), 128-141.

Mackenzie, L. & Tenzek, K. (2018). Cultural variation in end-of-life conversations: Using Cultural Discourse Analysis as a tool to analyze case studies designed for professional military education. In M. Scollo & T. Milburn (Eds.), Engaging and transforming global communication through Cultural Discourse Analysis (pp. 91-110). Teaneck, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press.

Steen, S., Mackenzie, L. & Buechner, B. (2018). Incorporating cosmopolitan communication into diverse teaching and training contexts:  Considerations from our work with military students and veterans. In D. Becker & J.D. Wallace (Eds.), Handbook of communication training: A best practices framework for assessing and developing competence (pp. 401-413). New York: Routledge.

Mackenzie, L. & Miller, J. (2017). Military cross-cultural competence. In Y. Y. Kim & K. McKay-Semmler (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication. Wiley Blackwell.

Mackenzie, L. & Wallace, M. (2015). Intentional design: Using iterative modification to enhance online learning for professional cohorts. In T. Milburn (Ed.), Communicating user experience: Applying local strategies research to digital media design (pp. 155-182). Lanham, MD: Lexington.

Mackenzie, L. (2014). Strategic enablers: How intercultural communication skills advance micro-level international security. Journal of Culture, Language & International Security, 1(1), 85-96.

Mackenzie, L., & Wallace, M. (2014). Cross-cultural communication contributions to professional military education: A distance learning case study. In R. Greene-Sands & A. Greene-Sands (Eds.), Cross-cultural competence for a 21st century military. Lanham, MD: Lexington.

Mackenzie, L., Fogarty, P., & Khachadoorian, A. (2013). A model for military online culture education: Key findings and best practices. EDUCAUSE Review. 48(4).

Areas of Interest:
Military Cross-Cultural Competence, Communication of Respect , On-line Military Culture Education, Intercultural Situational Judgment Tests

Work for CID:
Lauren Mackenzie wrote the guest post, Military Cross-Cultural Competence.

World Congress of Applied Linguistics (Brazil)

The 18th World Congress of Applied Linguistics invites proposals for presentations that are related to policy, research, theory and practice in any area of Applied Linguistics. Proposals may be for individual papers, posters, symposia or workshops (see below for information about submissions).

Theme: Innovation and Epistemological Challenges in Applied Linguistics.

Deadline for submissions: March 31 st, 2016.

Plenary speakers:
– Aneta Pavlenko (Temple University)
– Ben Rampton (King’s College London)
– Lorenza Mondada (University of Basel)
– Luiz Paulo da Moita Lopes (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro)
– Marilda Cavalcanti (Universidade de Campinas)
– Mary Bucholtz (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Host AILA affiliate: Association of Applied Linguistics of Brazil (ALAB)

From Monday 18 January 2016 all proposals should be submitted via the AILA 2017 website.

Detailed call for papers

Multi/Cross-Cultural Education in Need of Paradigmatic Change

Guest PostsMulti/Cross-Cultural Education in Need of Paradigmatic Change
Guest post by Zvi Bekerman, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

As an educational anthropologist, I have been involved, for many years now, in the study of inter/cross-cultural encounters. At first doing ethnographic research on, rather short educational cross-cultural encounters, and for the last fourteen years following the activities of the integrated, bilingual Palestinian-Arab and Jewish schools in Israel. After so many years of continuous research I would have expected to have more clarity about the potential of these educational efforts to sooth conflict, yet I stay ambivalent. My ambivalence and, at times, my doubts have little to do with the qualities of those involved in the educational initiatives – teachers, principals, parents, students, supervisors and more. Any dissatisfaction I may sense has little to do with the quality of individual teachers or students and much to do with the quality of the systems we all cooperatively build for these educational initiatives to inhabit. This is not to say that these initiatives, as any other educational contexts might not benefit from a more critical approach to their implemented practices and their sustaining theories, it is just to make sure we understand that what could be considered unsuccessful practices are many times adaptive moves to local and global systemic circumstances we collectively create and sustain.

In this short note I want to point at some paradigmatic issues, which I believe if not dealt with, might stand in the way of allowing educational cross-cultural or multicultural efforts to contribute, even in a small way, to the improvement of relations among communities in conflict. These paradigmatic issues have to with the failure of multi/cross-cultural education to account for the primacy of national and psychologized educational perspectives in their theoretical analyses while failing to recognize the connection between their essentialist approach to identity and culture and their larger sociopolitical context, the nation-state. Theoretically I’m aligned with what has recently come to be identified as the ‘ontological turn’ in philosophy and the social sciences (Escobar, 2007; Kivinen & Piiroinen, 2004; Paleček & Risjord, 2013; van Dijk & Withagen, 2014), encouraging a move from the epistemological to the ontological.

The move starts by restoring the concept of identity/culture to its historical sources, thus de-essentializing it. It then points at the nation state as the definite product of modernity; a modernity that has produced a distinct social form, radically different from that of the traditional order of the past. This modernity is characterized by very specific forms of territoriality and surveillance capabilities that monopolize effective control over social relations across definite time-space distances and over the means of violence. The nation state can be viewed as a political socio-economic phenomenon that seeks to exercise its control over the populations comprising it by establishing a culture which is at once homogeneous, anonymous (all the members of the polity, irrespective of their personal sub-group affiliations, are called upon to uphold this culture) and universally literate (all members share the culture the state has canonized). Reflecting modern psychologized epistemologies upon which it builds its power, the nation state creates a direct and unobstructed relationship between itself and all its ‘individual’ citizens: not tribe, ethnic group, family or church is allowed to stand between the citizen and the State.

These moves produce new meanings which are then developed into a methodology – cultural analysis – that is to say the gaining of skills on how to read/describe the world through careful observation and recording of practical activity, which in turn allows for a shift from the individual or the socializing group as the crucial analytic unit for (educational) analysis to the processes and mechanisms of producing cultural contexts through social interaction. Finally, the process leads to a new articulation of major policy issues related no longer to identity/culture and its components (individual, texts, etc), but to the analysis of particular identities/cultures and how these are produced/constructed in the particular context of particular societies.

Looking at the world in this way, seriously and critically, means being open to finding new criteria through which to name categories and their phenomena. The process could be liberating in that it could bring about the understanding that identity/culture are not necessarily the right criteria through which to describe the world, its inhabitants and events; not that they do not necessarily exist or are only hegemonic constructs, but that though they are legitimate, they need not result in individual suffering.

When these elements are not accounted for in multi/cross-cultural educational efforts, they risk consolidating that same reality they intended to overcome. Multi/cross-cultural education is in urgent need of reviewing its paradigmatic foundations while problematizing the political structures which sustain the conflicts it tries to overcome.

We should not expect multi/cross-cultural educational initiatives to be able to offer solutions to longstanding and bloody conflicts that are rooted in very material unequal allocation of resources. Unfortunately, many times societies/governments find it easier to support such initiatives rather than work hard towards structural change. In my recent book, The Promise of Integrated, Multicultural, and Bilingual Education: Inclusive Palestinian-Arab and Jewish Schools in Israel (Oxford University Press, 2016), those interested will find the above arguments developed and expanded.

References

Escobar, A. (2007). The ‘ontological turn’ in social theory. A commentary on ‘Human geography without scale’, by Sallie Marston, John Paul Jones II and Keith Woodward. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 32(1), 106-111.

Kivinen, O., & Piiroinen, T. (2004). The relevance of ontological commitments in social sciences: Realist and pragmatist viewpoints. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 34(3), 231-248.

Paleček, M., & Risjord, M. (2013). Relativism and the ontological turn within anthropology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 43(1), 3-23.

van Dijk, L., & Withagen, R. (2014). The horizontal worldview: A Wittgensteinian attitude towards scientific psychology. Theory & Psychology, 24(1), 3-18.

Download the entire post as a PDF.

Third Annual Conference on the History of Recent Social Science (London)

Third Annual Conference on the History of Recent Social Science (HISRESS)
London School of Economics and Political Science
3-4 June 2016

This two-day conference will bring together researchers working on the history of post-World War II social science. It will provide a forum for the latest research on the cross-disciplinary history of the post-war social sciences, including but not limited to anthropology, economics, psychology, political science, and sociology as well as related fields like area studies, communication studies, history, international relations, law and linguistics. We are especially eager to receive submissions that treat themes, topics, and events that span the history of individual disciplines.

The conference aims to build upon the recent emergence of work and conversation on cross-disciplinary themes in the postwar history of the social sciences. A number of monographs, edited collections, special journal issues, and gatherings at the École normale supérieure de Cachan, Duke University, the London School of Economics, New York University, the University of Toronto and elsewhere testify to a growing interest in the developments spanning the social sciences in the early, late, and post-Cold War periods. Most history of social science scholarship, however, remains focused on the 19th and early 20th centuries, and attuned to the histories of individual disciplines. Though each of the major social science fields now has a community of disciplinary historians, research explicitly concerned with cross-disciplinary topics remains comparatively rare. The purpose of the conference is to further encourage the limited but fruitful cross-disciplinary conversations of recent years.

Submissions are welcome in areas such as:
– The uptake of social science concepts and figures in wider intellectual and popular discourses
– Comparative institutional histories of departments and programs
– Border disputes and boundary work between disciplines as well as academic cultures
– Themes and concepts developed in the history and sociology of natural and physical science, reconceptualized for the social science context
– Professional and applied training programs and schools, and the quasi-disciplinary fields (like business administration) that typically housed them
– The role of social science in post-colonial state-building governance
– Social science adaptations to the changing media landscape
– The role and prominence of disciplinary memory in a comparative context

The two-day conference, hosted by the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics, will be organized as a series of one-hour, single-paper sessions attended by all participants. Ample time will be set aside for intellectual exchange between presenters and attendees, as all participants are expected to read pre-circulated papers in advance.

Proposals should contain no more than 1000 words, indicating the originality of the paper. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is 15 February 2016. Final notification will be given in late February after proposals have been reviewed. Completed papers will be expected by 15 May 2016.

The organizing committee consists of Craig Calhoun (London School of Economics), Jamie Cohen-Cole (George Washington University), Philippe Fontaine (École normale supérieure de Cachan), and Jeff Pooley (Muhlenberg College).

All proposals and requests for information should be submitted via email.

Ariane de Rothschild Fellowship 2016

The Ariane de Rothschild Fellowship represents a unique experience for social entrepreneurs, social leaders, those who practice innovative business for good, from a Jewish /Muslim cultural background (others are welcome as well) and have an interest in cross-cultural dialogue. This is an amazing opportunity to spend about 2 weeks at the University of Cambridge in the UK to network and work on your project with other social entrepreneurs.

Aspire to be an AdR Fellow if you believe you have within you the moral strength and character to lead; and understand that being a leader surpasses personal ambition, it is also service, requiring the will, humility and generosity of spirit to inspire fellow human beings. Aspire to be an AdR Fellow if you believe in reconciliation, peace and the power of business to effect prosperity among all human beings, who should share equal opportunities in this world.

Deadline for applications: Friday, March 18th 2016, 12:00AM (EST New York)

Application guidelines:
1-If you have applied using the electronic form system from previous year please note that the system has been updated and you will thus have to create a new username and password to be able to enter the form.
2-If you face any issues and require a pdf form for application please email.

The AdR Fellowship represents a unique experience for social entrepreneurs, social leaders and those who practice mindful business, from a Jewish /Muslim cultural background (others are welcome as well) who have an interest in cross-cultural dialogue.This is an amazing opportunity to spend about 2 weeks at the University of Cambridge in the UK to network and work on your project with other social entrepreneurs, all expenses paid.

About the Fellowship
Years ago the minds behind the AdR Fellowship recognized three things: One, that there is an urgent need to bring innovation to the field of cross-cultural dialogue; two that a business mindset can be of great value to build tangible impact; and three that there is an exciting opportunity to better expose social entrepreneurs to the knowledge and analytical frameworks offered by social sciences. “Distinct fields such as dialogue and entrepreneurship cannot afford to exist in isolated ivory towers” says Ariane de Rothschild. The continuing disconnect between social sciences and business prevents the emergence of sustainable solutions to tackle the world’s most pressing problems. How can you design solutions for a problem if you lack an understanding of the historical and political context of the people you are trying to help? And how can you do good without going broke? “When blended together, business, academic scholarship and empathy provide an extraordinary force for change” adds Firoz Ladak, CEO of the Edmond de Rothschild Foundations.

Thus since 2009, the AdR Fellows through this unique design thinking model have engaged with a wide range of thinkers and practionners from universities such as Columbia, Cambridge, the University of Montreal, the School of Oriental and African Studies, the London School of Economics and Cornell.

This is what the AdR Fellowship is about: harnessing the entrepreneurial drive of mainly Jewish and Muslim social entrepreneurs to build sustainable impact and at the same time develop a new brand of dialogue and leadership.

The AdR Fellowship is:
Instrumental: in providing the tools that allow the AdR Fellows to think ‘outside the box’ – using their analytical skills to unravel the real issues behind the challenges they face and applying a multidisciplinary approach to design solutions for their projects.
Conceptual: in contributing to the understanding of global issues, reframing debates and understanding history, politics and business theory.
Transformative: through capacity-building and personal development.

Annenberg-Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute 2016 (UK)

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS:
2016 ANNENBERG-OXFORD MEDIA POLICY SUMMER INSTITUTE

The Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania and the  Programme for Comparative Media Law and Policy at the University of Oxford (PCMLP) are pleased to invite applications to the 18th annual Annenberg-Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute, to be held from Monday, June 27 to Friday, July 8, 2016 at the University of Oxford.

For seventeen years, the Institute has brought together top early career communications scholars, media lawyers and regulators, internet governance experts, and freedom of expression and human rights activists from countries around the world to discuss the effects of technology and policy from a global and multidisciplinary perspective. The Summer Institute provides participants with an intensive two week interdisciplinary curriculum that combines expert instruction from media policymakers and scholars with hands-on activities such as stakeholder mapping, policy analysis, group case studies, and participant presentations.

The 2016 Annenberg-Oxford Summer Institute seeks applicants whose research or work is related to the relationship between international media laws and national jurisdictions, online censorship and surveillance, the role of the media in political change and conflict, strategic communications and propaganda, online extremism and social media, and global internet governance processes. Applications are welcomed from students studying communications, sociology, political science, international relations, area studies, anthropology, information studies, and  related disciplines. Practitioners working in
media, law, policy, regulation, and technology are also encouraged to apply.

Preparing, motivating, and supporting students and practitioners who aspire to pursue a career in media policy, the Annenberg-Oxford Institute endeavors to broaden and expand the pool of talented young scholars engaged in media studies and to connect these individuals to elite scholars and practitioners from around the world. The Institute’s alumni are a vibrant group who continue to engage in the program, collaborate through network ties, and have become leaders at the top national and international nonprofits, advocacy organizations, government agencies, corporations, and academic institutions. Recent past Institutes have included participants from India, Kenya, Brazil, the Philippines, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, China, Italy, Israel, Colombia, Iran, Myanmar, South Sudan, and Nigeria.

The application for the 2016 Summer Institute is now open and can be found here. The deadline for all applications is Monday April 4, 2016 at 5:00 PM EST. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis before the deadline, so please submit as soon as possible.

Several partial scholarships are available to top applicants. For more information about the program and the application, please see our FAQ page.

PhD Studentship at University of Aberswyth (Wales)

PhD studentship at Aberystwyth: Education, Indigenous Languages and Identity

This 3-year ESRC funded PhD studentship will examine the relationship between education, indigenous languages and identity among young people in two contrasting countries (one European, the other non-European).

The PhD candidate will be expected to undertake fieldwork in these two countries and there is funding to support this activity. The project will be supervised by Professor Rhys Jones (Geography and Earth Sciences) and Dr Elin Royles (International Politics) (both at Aberystwyth University). The studentship forms part of a larger ESRC project on civil society, which is examining the link between statutory and non-statutory education, indigenous languages and youth identity in Scotland and Wales.

As well as providing a broader comparative context for the project, the role of the studentship will be to assess whether there are any significant lessons that can be learnt from the international cases examined in the thesis for Wales and Scotland with regard to the potential role to be played by the statutory and non-statutory education sectors in shaping different kinds of civic and linguistic identity in Scotland and Wales.

Applicants must complete and submit a covering letter and CV; an Aberystwyth University PhD application form; a 1,000 word research proposal outlining: the research question(s) to be addressed; the case studies to be examined (countries, empirical themes to be addressed etc); the methods employed; the contribution that the PhD will make to the broader research project; academic references; academic transcripts (where applicable).

While the PhD studentship will be based at Aberystwyth University, the successful candidate will also be able to benefit from the input of the other members of the project team (Professor Lindsay Paterson and Dr Fiona O’Hanlon, both at Edinburgh University), as well as the research networks and broader support mechanisms provided by the ESRC-funded WISERD Civil Society Research Centre. For further information, click here.

Closing date: Friday 30th January 2016.