IFSA (Institute for Study Abroad) is looking for an individual to administer core parts of IFSA study abroad programmes in London and throughout England and Wales. This position is physically based in the IFSA London Centre, working with students and faculty for both student support and program delivery. Responsibilities include supporting academic management of programmes, including the course registration process, appreciative advising, and student learning plan consultations.
IFSA, a US-based nonprofit organization, creates global learning environments to help students gather the critical perspectives, knowledge, and skills essential for future success. IFSA delivers study abroad options in 19 countries and 48 cities around the globe.
Research on intercultural communication identifies professional work with clients, customers, volunteers and teams as areas of intervention for which the discipline’s scientific findings are of immediate relevance and for which the field can develop constructive concepts of application. Forms of counselling, training and further education in which a responsible approach to interculturality plays a role can be found in numerous and very different professional and social contexts, such as human resources development, health and social services, communication with public authorities, business communication and legal counselling and legal communication.
These professional fields of activity, accompanied by paradigm shifts in cultural theory, have undergone a radical transformation in dealing with interculturality and reorganised themselves in an entirely new way. Sensitisation of the role of postcolonial power imbalances in empirical research practice and the effects of othering and epistemic violence have stimulated new methodological approaches in research and have also led to new and different places and forms of working with clients, customers, volunteers, and teams.
In the scheduled issue, articles may be published in English, German, French and Spanish as well as in more than one of these languages. The editorial team is therefore accepting abstracts in any of these languages; follow the links to see the full call for submissions in each language.
Building on interdisciplinarity, Interculture Journal is designed to foster and advance theoretical and practical findings in the area of intercultural research. Interculture Journal publishes papers by researchers and practitioners addressing questions and issues arising from different cultures living and working together. In line with its online format, Interculture Journal is devoted to the idea of open information ex- change. All volumes can be downloaded for free (just click on the journal name, above).
Dreaming of Wordsis a documentary film about Njattyela Sreedharan, a fourth standard [grade] drop-out, who compiled a dictionary connecting four major Dravidian languages in India.
Travelling across four states and doing extensive research, he spent twenty five years making the multilingual dictionary. This unique dictionary offers a comparative study of Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. Dreaming of Words traces Sreedharan’s life, work, love for languages and the struggles to get the dictionary published. The film also explores the linguistic and cultural diversity in India.
Dreaming of Words had its world premiere at the International Mother Language Day Celebrations 2021 organized by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and the Ministry of Education (India) in partnership with UNESCO. It was an official selection at the DC South Asian Film Festival, RapidLion Film Festival and Micheaux Film Festival. It won the Kerala State Television Award for Best Educational Documentary. It has been screened at the annual convention of the Modern Language Association and the annual conference of the Linguistic Society of America in January 2022.
The film was directed and produced by Nandan. For further information about him and/or the film, find him on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
Application is open for the scholarship for an expatriate Estonian visiting professor. The scholarship fund aims to make sure that renowned researchers and teaching staff of Estonian descent who work in other countries can take part in the activities of the University of Tartu at least for one year or, as an exception, for one semester. The amount of the scholarship is 50,000 euros for one academic year. It is very important for the university that the visiting professor is ready to be physically present in Tartu; this is one of the main selection criteria.
The scholarship may be applied for by a researcher or teaching staff member of Estonian descent who works at a university or research institution outside Estonia. The application is open until 1 October. Applicants are expected to submit an electronic application with all the required supporting materials on the home page of the University of Tartu Foundation.
Intercultural Yoga is provocative conversation, hosted by Robin Kelley, associate chief diversity officer, and created by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, at Gonzaga University. Yoga means “union” and is a practice to sustain mental and physical harmony with one’s cultural context. In these conversations, host and guests provide an opportunity to breathe into new spaces of knowing, related to the intercultural encounter of “the Other.”
I was curious, given all the current attention being paid to Dall-E and Dall-E Mini, and Craiyon, to see what any of these would come up with if I input concepts related to intercultural dialogue.
Dall-E mini intercultural dialogueCraiyon Intercultural DialogueCraiyon intercultural competenceCraiyon multiculturalismCraiyon dialogue
Obviously, the very first term I input was intercultural dialogue. You receive 9 images for any text, and most of them were blurred and distorted beyond much use. But I’m attaching the images both Dall-E Mini and Craiyon created. Interestingly, related terms, such as multiculturalism or intercultural competence, look much the same: a group of evidently diverse people – but never two individuals.
Whereas dialogue looks quite different – just speech bubbles. And many of the images created at my request, such as that for peacebuilding, were quite useless (nearly all of the designs for that simply showed a badly distorted vision of the UN logo, for example).
I thought others might find it interesting to see what the results looked like. Clearly, given that these AI programs simply search the internet for relevant text and images, we all need to be posting more content for it to discover that includes both descriptions and visual depictions that come closer to what we think it should find.
For those who are not yet familiar with these programs, Dall-E is a tool to turn words into images using AI, but it is in beta and not yet publicly available. Dall-E mini is the less competent but publicly available version. And that has already morphed into Craiyon. All of them work by looking to see what images are attached to words across the internet, and then editing those images into something new. Apparently, so long as you credit the source, the images are yours to use and post.
If others try any of these systems and obtain interesting results, send them along in an email, and I’ll create a later post to showcase them.
The School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work (SSESW) at Queen’s University Belfast, is currently seeking to appoint an exceptional candidate to the post of Lecturer in TESOL & Applied Linguistics.
The successful applicant will undertake research relevant to Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and Applied Linguistics in line with the school’s research strategy, to teach at postgraduate level, undertake scholarly activity and to contribute to the school’s administration/outreach activity, in the subject area of (TESOL) and Applied Linguistics and particularly in relation to the School’s TESOL, Language Education, and Applied Linguistics courses.
Nazarbayev University was launched in 2010 as a premier national and regional flagship research university, partnering with some of the most internationally recognized names in higher education. The Graduate School of Education (GSE) was launched in 2013 with partners at the University of Cambridge and the University of Pennsylvania. Due to expansion, GSE invites applications for Full Professors, Associate Professors and Assistant Professors for faculty positions beginning in January 2023. They are filling positions at open rank in the area of Multilingual Education.
Essential Qualifications, Skills and Experience:
PhD in an appropriate discipline from an accredited and recognized international university (ABD at time of application will be considered, but PhD must be in hand at the time of appointment, and current PhD holders will be given priority);
A demonstrated record of research and publications appropriate to rank;
Teaching experience at the university level (experience in postgraduate programs will be given a priority);
Experience in developing new courses and program curricula;
Experience and readiness to supervise Master’s and Ph.D. student thesis research
Excellent intercultural communication and collaboration skills;
Commitment to maintaining a collegial and inclusive work environment;
Commitment to making a difference through education to the School, University and wider society.
Responsibilities include teaching, research, and school service. The University offers opportunities for research support. All positions are for a three-year term with the possibility of renewal.
Inter-city grants 2022, Intercultural Cities, Council of Europe. (No deadline; this is an announcement of what has already been awarded.)
“For the third time the Intercultural Cities programme has launched the inter-city grants’ scheme for member cities of the international and national networks. The grants aim to support local innovative projects and methodologies promoting equality, the diversity advantage, and meaningful intercultural interactions in diverse societies. As in the past years, projects involving joint actions of cities have been prioritised with the view to enable peer learning, cross-border or national cooperation across local authorities. The projects aim to test solutions and strategies which can be applied widely across the ICC network in common areas of concern.”
The projects should be of interest to anyone attempting to coordinate activities at a city level, but across city (or country) boundaries.
The Intercultural cities programme (ICC) is sponsored by the Council of Europe; it supports cities in reviewing their policies through an intercultural lens and developing comprehensive intercultural strategies to help them manage diversity positively and realise the diversity advantage.
The GLOCAL AFALA 2022 theme, “Linguistic Landscapes, Cultural Climates,” “Mazingira Ya Lugha, Hali Ya Hewa Ya Kitamaduni,” well symbolizes the complexity of the complex set of inter-subjective identities throughout African urban and suburban centres. These increasingly complex climates become a highly fertile ground for Linguistic Anthropological scholarly attention, while scholars can draw from a range of peripheral yet pertinent fields to inform work on these geographical and cultural localities.
The GLOCAL AFALA 2022 thus invites work which addresses the complexity of African Linguistic Landscapes and their Cultural Climates. Papers and posters should acknowledge and describe processes of Linguistic complexity at these cultural centres, that is, of African regions, and by those working in African regions.
Sr. Programmes Manager for England and Wales, Institute for Study Abroad, London, UK. Deadline: 15 August 2022.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 