Author: Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, the Director of the Center for Intercultural Dialogue, manages this website.

East-West Center Summer Institute 2025: Contemporary Asias (USA)

Events

Summer Institute: Contemporary Asias, East-West Center, Honolulu, HI, USA, 9 June-4 July 2025. Deadline: 5 March 2025.

Contemporary Asias: Pluralities Beyond Areas is a 4-week Institute for college and university teachers on the East-West Center campus in Honolulu by the Asian Studies Development Program. This multidisciplinary program will explore recent changes in the production, structuring, and sharing of knowledge about Asian cultures and societies, and how these changes might foster knowledge communities that are more collaborative, responsive, and attuned to the pluralities of Asian experiences. Combining methodological reflections on area studies with context-rich engagement with key dimensions of societal and cultural transformation in contemporary Asia, the Institute will support diversity-focused teaching and learning and next-generation digital humanities.

European Alternatives: Speak Out: Empowering Youth for Change (Webinar)

EventsSpeak Out: Empowering Youth for Change, European Alternatives and Erasmus Student Network, February-March 2025 webinars.

European Alternatives and Erasmus Student Network are launching a series of four open webinars designed to train and inspire young change-makers. These sessions will provide valuable insights into tackling pressing issues such as underrepresentation, leveraging local and EU-level action, analyzing policies and stakeholders, and crafting impactful messages for recruitment and advocacy.

The webinars will cover the following topics:

Discrimination and How to Act Against It
🗓️ Tuesday, 18th February 2025 | 🕕 6:00–7:30 PM CET
Building Bridges: Activating Levers of Influence
🗓️ Tuesday, 25th February 2025 | 🕕 6:00–7:30 PM CET
Advocate! Plan Your Campaign
🗓️ Tuesday, 4th March 2025 | 🕕 6:00–7:30 PM CET
Build Your Power Base
🗓️ Tuesday, 11th March 2025 | 🕕 6:00–7:30 PM CET

ICD Exercise #4: Implicit Bias Awareness

ICD Exercises

The next ICD Exercise is now available. Ifeoma Onyebuchi, Stellina Ibrahim, and Favour Ilolo have written about implicit bias awareness. 

This exercise is designed to help participants identify and reflect on their implicit biases, understand how these biases influence their thoughts, actions, and interactions, and develop strategies to mitigate their impact. Through personal reflection, group discussions, and collaborative strategy development, participants will deepen their awareness of implicit bias and enhance their ability to engage in more inclusive and mindful communication in diverse settings.

Implicit bias refers to the unconscious attitudes, stereotypes, or preferences we hold about certain groups of people based on their race, gender, age, appearance, or other characteristics. These biases are automatic and often operate without our awareness, influencing our perceptions, decisions, and behaviors in ways that may not align with our conscious beliefs or values. Recognizing implicit bias involves becoming aware of these hidden prejudices and understanding how they can affect interactions in professional and personal contexts.

As with prior publications, ICD Exercises are available as free PDFs; just click on the thumbnail to download.

Onyebuchi, I., Ibrahim, S., & Ilolo, F. (2025). Implicit bias awareness. Intercultural Dialogue Exercises, 4. Available from: https://centerforinterculturaldialogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/icd-ex-4-onyebuchi-et-al-1.pdf

If you have an exercise you’ve used that works, and you would like to share it, please submit it. All authors will be asked to answer the same set of questions, and to make the exercises available for others to use, thus these are being published with a Creative Commons license (as is the case for all CID publications). If you are new to CID, please provide a brief resume. This opportunity is open to masters students and above, on the assumption that some familiarity with academic conventions generally, and discussion of intercultural dialogue specifically, are useful.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz
Director Center for Intercultural Dialogue

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Catawba College: Director of International Studies (USA)

“JobDirector of International Studies, Catawba College, Salisbury, NC, USA. Deadline: 22 April 2025.

The Director of the Glenn and Addie Ketner Center for International Studies provides strategic guidance and expertise to advance Catawba College’s commitment to global education. This position plays a key role in shaping and expanding the College’s portfolio of international study opportunities while ensuring comprehensive, equity-minded support for international students on campus.

The Director oversees the design and delivery of academically rigorous and culturally immersive international programs, including short-term faculty-led trips, semester-long exchanges, and language immersion opportunities. The Director also collaborates closely with faculty, staff, and external partners to ensure that international education initiatives align with Catawba’s mission of holistic student development and academic excellence.

By developing innovative programs and creating a welcoming, supportive environment for international students, the Director fosters global citizenship and prepares all Catawba students to thrive in an interconnected world.

U College Dublin: Ad Astra Fellow – Lecturer / Assistant Professor in International Law & Global Justice (Ireland)

“JobAd Astra Fellow – Lecturer / Assistant Professor in International Law and Global Justice, University College Dublin, Ireland. Deadline: 21 February 2025.

The UCD Sutherland School of Law wishes to appoint an Ad Astra Fellow in International Law and Global Justice (ILGJ). The Fellow will have demonstrated expertise in public international law and diverse global justice theories. The post holder will contribute to team teaching across public international law subjects, as well as developing theoretically-informed courses in their field of expertise in ILGJ. The post holder’s own specialist subfield should complement and expand the School’s teaching and research in international law. The Fellow’s research agenda should align with advancing sustainability and equity through critical and interdisciplinary inquiry into contemporary global justice challenges. Expertise on international criminal justice, climate justice, border justice, racial justice or any other cognate field is welcome.

The Fellow’s role also involves developing academic community and convening. The Fellow will be supported to expand engagement across schools in UCD, as well as with key external stakeholders in ILGJ. The Fellow’s role will include supporting the development of UCD as a centre of excellence for International Law and Global Justice, with a convening and policy engagement role.

Promoting Intercultural Dialogue Onstage (Czech Republic)

Applied ICDToday is the First Day of the Rest of My Life, Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Prague, Czech Republic.

 

Through a theater play, LWF Prague supports the integration of people with a migration background into Czech Society.

“Memories and personal stories are among the few things that refugees and migrants can carry with them wherever they go. The LWF office in Prague, Czech Republic, encouraged people with different cultural backgrounds and locals to share their stories in a theatre play, to connect and foster integration. The first edition premiered in November 2024.

Based on true stories of foreigners and Czechs living in Prague, the play examines the universal challenges of love, friendship, fear, and tough life choices. The amateur actors brought questions from their everyday experience to the play: How can I navigate societal stereotypes about single motherhood while considering what’s best for me and my baby? Will my girlfriend’s mother accept me, or will she always think I’m using marriage for a residence permit? Where can I get help for domestic violence if I don’t speak the local language? Will the authorities trust me, or will I face deportation? These are just some of the real-life situations explored in Today is the First Day of the Rest of My Life, a play that premiered at Vinohrady Theater D21 in Prague.”

U Edinburgh IASH: Heritage Collections Research Fellowships (UK)

FellowshipsHeritage Collections Research Fellowships, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, UK. Deadline: 25 April 2025.

Applications are invited for Heritage Collections Research Fellowships (previously known as Library Fellowships) from postdoctoral scholars in any area of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, to carry out research based on any of the Heritage Collections held at the University of Edinburgh in 2025-26.

The University’s collections include archives, manuscripts, rare books, art, musical instruments and other museum collections representing four centuries of collecting, and occupying 100km of shelving. They are managed by a multi-disciplinary team of curators within the Centre for Research Collections (CRC). The collections offer almost limitless possibilities for research across a wide range of scholarly disciplines. The Fellowships offer privileged access to the collections and curatorial team, enabling forms of collections-based research which are difficult to accomplish through ordinary reading room services. The Fellows are expected to be correspondingly engaged with the CRC, contributing to projects or events as appropriate.

They particularly welcome applications linked to the themes of the Institute Project on Decoloniality which took place at IASH from 2021 to 2024. Among other areas, this would include:

Identities and Inequalities

The CRC collections offer a range of objects and materials which explore or illustrate the intertwined concepts of identity and inequality. There is significant research potential not only in collection material and objects, but also in the records connected to the infrastructures and individuals related to the collections’ histories.

International Connections: Focus on Africa

There is a wealth of material within the collections which either originates in Africa, or records relationships between Scotland and Africa. It offers huge research potential, but much of it has been little explored.

CFP Book Chapters on Rhetoric & Communication of Travel

“Publication

Call for book chapters on Rhetoric and Communication of Travel. Deadline: 16 May 2025.

Co-editors: Margaret M. Mullan (East Stroudsburg University) and Jenna M. Lo Castro (Point Park University).

Travel and communication are themes that has not been extensively explored by communication scholars. Intercultural scholars have studied travel as encounter but a broader exploration of travel and communication has not been studied in depth. Travel has been extensively studied as it relates to tourism, hospitality, and marketing studies. Philosophers have also explored the meaning of travel and experiences while travelling. Travel includes countless dimensions: vacationing, embodied communication, movement, encountering other cultures, experiencing difference, etc. This topic continues to gain social and cultural currency, as well as in various relevant industries. Paradigmatic shifts such as in how and where people work in a post-pandemic world, Gen Z’s demand for a better work-life balance, and surges in “digital nomad” visas are just a few indicators of why this area of study demands attention. We seek to bring the study of travel alongside our study of communication. The many approaches to reflecting on communication can be brought to bear on the specific context and content of travel.

This call for book chapter proposals invites contributors to examine travel and communication using a variety of approaches: including rhetorical studies, philosophical inquiry, narrative, critical, dialogic, semiotic, global, cross-cultural, and media studies. Editors welcome theoretical and practical approaches to the subject.

This edited volume will explore multiple dimensions of how travel and communication intersect, interact and inform each other. We communicate about travel as lived experience, as performative expressions, for monetizing purposes, for personal reflection, etc.

ReDICo 2025: Digital Pasts and Futures: Internet Histories, Digital Interculturality and Reimagining Digitality (Germany but Online)

ConferencesDigital Pasts and Futures: Internet Histories, Digital Interculturality and Reimagining Digitality, ReDICo, Germany but online, 23-24 June 2025. Deadline for abstract: 28 February 2025.

Digital Pasts and Futures: Internet Histories, Digital Interculturality and Reimagining Digitality – The Fourth ReDICo Conference Online, 23-24 June 2025. In this conference organizers would like to bring together scholars who engage with internet histories, digital futures and digital interculturality so as to initiate a discussion regarding the reimagining of digitality, not least its relationship to interculturality. They are, thus, interested in wide and interdisciplinary approaches that go beyond the presentism that often marks media and communication studies, while also engaging with alternative visions of how digitality can be construed, not least from an intercultural perspective.

It is intended that a selection of the papers presented will be published following a peer review process in book form, funding pending, with the transcript Publishing House in the Series “Studies in Digital Interculturality”. The conference is without fees, completely online and is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). Keynote speakers that have already been confirmed include Prof. Valérie Schafer (University of Luxembourg), Associate Prof. Helle Strandgaard Jensen (Aarhus University), Prof. Ethan Zuckerman (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) and Prof. Ramesh Srinivasan (University of California, Los Angeles).

Tomide Oloruntobi Profile

Profiles

Tomide Oloruntobi is Assistant Professor of intercultural and intergroup communication at Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University.

Tomide OloruntobiWith an award-winning interdisciplinary background, Tomide examines globalization, cultural politics of taste, platformization, and political economy in postcolonial Nigerian visual cultures. His interdisciplinary works are widely published on topics such as identity, cross-cultural adaptation, embodiment, mis- and disinformation, intergroup communication, and global Black group vitality. His current research focuses on the narrative and perceptual shifts informed by the mainstreaming of African media products, specifically Afrobeats, and their implications for global Black relationalities.

Publications include:

Oloruntobi, T. (2022). Revisiting cross-cultural adaptation: An embodied approach. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 16(4), 283–299.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2022.2120207

Oloruntobi, T. (2023). “The battle is the Lord’s”: Social media, faith-based organizations, and the challenge of Covid-19/vaccine misinformation in Nigeria. In B. M. Calafell & S. Eguchi (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of ethnicity, race, and communication (pp. 424-437). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367748586-40

Oloruntobi, T. (2023). On intersections of power and vulnerability: A critique of Nollywood, heteropatriarchy, and ideologies of motherhood. Howard Journal of Communications, 35(3), 294–310.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10646175.2023.2264232

Oommen, D., & Oloruntobi, T. (2024). (Dis)connecting with the USA: How African international students relate with diverse communities and adapt to the United States. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2024.2430517

Work for CID:

Tomide Oloruntobi has served as a reviewer for Yoruba translations.