Steven Darian is Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ.
Darian’s Ph.D. is from New York University, in Applied Linguistics. He has used language as his Archimedes fulcrum, to dig into everything from science to religion. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. He has been lucky enough to have had 3 Fulbrights, and has lived, worked, and studied in 9 or 10 countries. He has written a dozen books, both scholarly and popular; the last one being The Wanderer: Travels & Adventures Beyond the Pale. The next, The Heretic’s Book of Death & Laughter: The Role of Religion in Just About Everything, is due out later this year.
Global Storybooks is a free multilingual literacy resource for children and youth worldwide. Read, download, toggle, and listen to a wide variety of illustrated stories from the African Storybook and other open sites. Development continues at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
One of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals is to achieve quality education globally by the year 2030. High illiteracy rates among children are partly due to a lack of appropriate reading materials in languages familiar to children. Research has shown that children learn to read best in their family’s home language, which also establishes a strong foundation for learning any additional languages. The Global Storybooks portal hosts custom sites with multilingual open-licensed books for over 40 countries and regions on five continents. The vision is to help democratize global flows of information and resources, to facilitate language learning — including Indigenous languages — and to promote literacy.
Grant has been involved in international education and training in different capacities since 1991. Originally from Newcastle- Upon-Tyne in the North-East of England, Grant is a long-term expatriate who has lived and worked in France for over 30 years. He was in charge of the International Relations Service of different higher education institutes for 17 years. Since 2000, Grant has focused on the conception, organization and implementation of undergraduate, post-graduate and professional development study and training programmes with an international and intercultural dimension.
Grant is currently in charge of developing the intercultural communication/diversity management track at IÉSEG School of Management. He is vice-president of SIETAR France (Society for Intercultural Training, Education and Research), and a council member of IACCM (International Association of Cross-Cultural Competence and Management). Grant is also a long-standing member of the Global Community Dialogue on Leadership, Diversity and Change (GCD).
In recent years Grant’s focus has moved more from a purely international/intercultural perspective to a more broadly diversity and inclusion perspective which is reflected in his participation in projects aimed at fostering more diversity and inclusion in higher education institutes and in making them zero tolerant of physical and verbal harassment. He is currently involved in an international research project examining the International Student Experience (ISE) as well as two internal IÉSEG projects designed to increase student engagement and inclusion and eradicate verbal and physical harassment. When he is not at work, Grant likes to spend time cultivating his vegetable patch, listening to music, and following his local soccer team, LOSC.
Work for CID:
Grant Douglas has served as a reviewer for French.
PORTAL: A Bridge to Unity. On May 26, 2021, Vilnius (in Lithuania) and Lublin (Poland) became the first two cities to connect through PORTAL. This visual bridge brings people of different cultures together, encouraging them to rethink the feeling and meaning of unity.
PORTAL brings a new approach to unity, especially important in times like these when we are being separated by extremely viral polarizing ideas and narratives. As the author and the initiator of the project, Vilnius-based Benediktas Gylys Foundation says, it’s time to transcend the sense of separation and to become the pioneers of a united planet.
Every day there is less room left for dialogue, empathy, and compassion, for feeling and being united in our home – a tiny spaceship Earth rapidly decaying due to too many of them, and too little of us.
The project is not a simple one-timer; organizers plan to connect the world by dozens of PORTALS in the near future. The aim is to involve communities and encourage a public movement that would create social experiments, unexpected reactions, and most important – the unity of different cultures and its’ people in the long run. Reykjavik (Iceland) and London (UK) are next in line.
Hala Asmina Guta is Associate Professor of Mass Communication at Qatar University, Doha, Qatar.
She holds a PhD in Mass Communication from Ohio University, USA. Prior to Qatar University, she taught at Ohio University and in Saudi Arabia. Her research interests include global and transnational communication, gendered communication, communication for social change; and the intersection of communication, culture, and identity. Her publications and conference presentations include papers on the role of culture in communication, communication role in peace building in societies emerging from conflict, and the role media and other cultural institutions play in social change and the construction of identity.
Selected Publications:
Guta, H. (2020). Periphery of the peripheries: Women in Al Jazeera Arabic news. Journal of Applied Journalism and Media Studies. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/ajms_00032_1
Guta, H. (2020). Sectarian politics online: Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. In M. Karolak & N. Allam (Eds.), Gulf Cooperation Council culture and identities in the new millennium: Resilience, transformation, (re)creation and diffusion (pp. 33-52). Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.
Guta, H. (2019). Al Jazeera: Non-violence and peace journalism. In H. Sadig (Ed.), Al Jazeera in the Gulf and the World: Is it redefining global communication ethics? (pp. 191-220). Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.
Guta, H., & Karolak, M. (2015). Veiling and blogging: Social media as sites of identity negotiation and expression among Saudi women. Journal of International Women’s Studies,16(2), 115-127.
Karolak, M., & Guta, H. (2015). Intercultural communication in the context of Saudi Arab tertiary education. In R. Raddawi (Ed.), Intercultural communication with Arabs: Studies in educational, professional and societal contexts (pp.41-56).New York: Springer.
Guta, H. (2010). Mass media and peace-building in Sudan. In C. Nwokeafor & K. Langmia (Eds.), Media and technology in emerging African democracies (pp. 155-176). Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Guta, H. (2009). The politicization of the education system: Implications for peace in Sudan. Africa Media Review, 17(1&2), 77-94.
Work for CID:
Hala Asmina Guta has served as a reviewer for Arabic.
Call for proposals: In Other Words (IOW), an online dictionary of contextualized keywords that focuses on how words (re)produce different forms of Otherness.
There is a recent increase of online dictionaries. So, what is IOW’s specificity?
The first is precisely its focus: how does a specific word, in a specific context, (re)produce Otherness? And how can discriminating narratives be contested, destablized, subverted?
The second is its structure: the discussion of the keywords is highly interdisciplinary, critical, and creative, using different elements from different fields – visual arts, literature, videos, media texts, etc.
The third is its addresses: the dictionary does not speak to academics only, but it is a resource to be used for free to favor discussions and appropriations in/by different educational and social contexts.
The fourth is its co-construction: it is a collaborative, ongoing project that welcomes the participation of scholars, teachers, practitioners, professionals, educators, activists, artists, individuals from different various fields, formations and experiences.
We invite you to have a tour of IOW dictionary. Submissions are welcome and peer-reviewed year round. For further info, please contact the Editorial Board. Looking forward to receiving your proposals!
Constance Mbassi Manga earned her Ph.D. from Lancaster University, UK, and wrote her thesis on Camfranglais in use by diasporic Cameroonians living in Western cities, from a sociolinguistic and ethnographic perspective.
Photo credit: Ewane Nja Kwa
A French native of Cameroonian origin, she was raised multilingual and has been working in the field of language for 30+ years, in various capacities (from working as a freelance translator and interpreter, then heading her own translation agency, and later as a Team Lead/an Account Director in Marketing Communications). Moreover, she spent her childhood in a highly multilingual country (Cameroon, where over 250 languages are spoken), speaking 4 languages (2 African languages, English, French) from birth, learning a 5th (German) from the age of 10. She has always been fascinated by language practices and by the unique and powerful link that people draw between the language(s) they speak and who they are.
In terms of academic study, she was introduced to the study of multilingualism and sociolinguistics during her Masters at Kings College London; her Masters thesis focused on ‘Language Practices of Francophone Cameroonians in London.’ Since that time, she has been interested in language practices of non-European background adults in diasporic contexts, and how these tie in with ideologies of language, home and ‘belonging’.
Selected Publications:
Mbassi Manga, C. (2025). Language, home and belonging in migratory contexts: The case of Camfranglais. London: Routledge. (To be published June 10th, 2025)
Mbassi Manga, C. (2019). A case study of Camfranglais in superdiverse contexts: France, the UK and the USA. In R. Siebetcheu & S. Machetti (Eds.), Le camfranglais dans le monde global Contextes migratoires et perspectives sociolinguistiques (175-191). Paris, France: L’Harmattan.
Work for CID:
Constance Mbassi Manga is the author of KC108: Superdiversity, has translated that into French, translated KC23: Afrocentricity into French, and also has served as a reviewer for French.
Peace Direct has launched a new course for people wanting to learn more about peacebuilding. The course is available online and is free until the end of August during the test phase. The course is self paced, and takes on average between two hours and two weeks to complete. The course can be used by peacebuilders or anyone working in conflict situations, as a practical toolkit for peacebuilding. It is relevant to people working in fields such as: human rights, development, democracy, healing and environmental sustainability as well as other areas of work related to peace. Upon completion, participants should have a greater knowledge of the practical skills and techniques required to resolve conflict and build peace successfully at a local level.
The course consists of eight modules:
Perspectives and values
Self-awareness and learning
Influencing through relationships: conflict and power
Violence, peace and healing
Participative conflict analysis
Strategy and nonviolence
Exploring options from ourselves to building a movement
This event is part of the Hub for Education & Language Diversity (HELD) summer school, July 21-23, 2021, but is open to everyone.
What is the relationship between identity, digital storytelling and linguistic citizenship? Due to advances in digital technology, there are new relations of power at micro and macro levels, and digital literacy has become essential in “claiming the right to speak.” As language learners navigate these changing times, they need to negotiate new identities, investments, and imagined futures.
In this presentation, Dr Bonny Norton demonstrates that while there are social structures that may constrain a language learner’s linguistic citizenship, digital stories in multiple languages can help these learners claim the right to be heard. Drawing on her recent research on digital storytelling in both wealthy and poorly resourced communities worldwide, she discusses how freely available digital stories in multiple languages can harness the linguistic capital of language learners in homes and schools, with exciting implications for the promotion of linguistic citizenship in communities worldwide.
Dr. Suzie Suriam Wordorfa was born in mainland France. Her roots are in Martinique, in the Caribbean. She studied French Literature, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics in Paris before getting her Ph.D. in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Montreal.
She has taught French/Francophone Language and Culture mostly at the college level for over 20 years. She lives in California with her family and chairs the French Department of a premium language institute.
Work for CID:
Suzie Suriam Wordofa translated KC33: Moral Conflict into French. She also has served as a reviewer for French.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 