Author: Center for Intercultural Dialogue

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

UNESCO: Multiple Positions (Multiple Countries)

“JobMultiple positions, UNESCO, based in multiple countries. Deadline: 31 October 2023.

UNESCO is currently advertising multiple positions, not only in France but around the world:

Education Programme Specialists are responsible for programme and project work, advice, research and knowledge management, networking, partnerships and resource mobilization for the Education Programme of the UNESCO Office in that country.

 

CFP Comparative Law and Language Journal (Italy)

“Publication

Call for Papers for Comparative Law and Language Journal. Deadline: 4 November 2023, abstract only.

Online peer-reviewed academic journal Comparative Law and Language (CLL) is dedicated to giving scholars a forum to increase interest in and scientific debate on the relationship between law and language in and within various national and supranational legal systems from a comparative perspective. Due to the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary nature of the journal, contributions from linguists and academics in any other relevant subject of the social sciences are also invited.

The fields of comparative law and language are intricately intertwined, and numerous studies have already concentrated on this vast area of study. In this regard, they encourage papers on micro and macro comparison studies, viewed via the prism of language, also considering the linguistic nature of the legal occurrences, as well as how language influences and shapes the society legal framework.

The current call for papers welcomes essays from both experienced academics in the field of the journal’s general theme as well as from younger researchers.

They are particularly interested in the following topics:

  • Comparative law; History and legal language; Language and legal rhetoric; Language and philosophy of law.
  • Legal language; Legal translation; Legal linguistics; Law and non-linguistic signs; Legal special vocabulary; Regulation of language use.
  • Language rights; Minority languages and the law; Regulation of linguistic diversity and linguistic minorities.
  • Bilingual and multilingual legal systems; Language and legal interpretation; Vagueness in language and in law; Language legislative drafting; Language and drafting of contracts; Multilingual legal drafting; Multilingualism practices in the courtroom.
  • Environmental law and the transition to sustainability in comparative and linguistic perspective.
  • AI, language, and legal comparison; Natural language and artificial language.

The languages accepted are English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, and those accessible to Editorial Board members.

 

Dialogue for Intercultural Understanding

“Book Notes

Maine, F., &  Vrikki, M. (Eds.). (2021). Dialogue for intercultural understanding: Placing cultural literacy at the heart of learning. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature.

Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program (so available as open access), this book looks potentially relevant to CID followers.

This book is a result of an extensive, ambitious and wide-ranging pan-European project focusing on the development of children and young people’s cultural literacy and what it means to be European in the twenty-first century, prioritizing intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding.

It includes the following chapters, among others:

  • Intercultural Education for the Twenty-First Century: A Comparative Review of Research by Chrysi Rapanta and Susana Trovão

  • Social Responsibility Through the Lens of an Agenda
    for Cultural Literacy Learning: Analyses of National EducationPolicyDocumentation by Sandra Kaire ̇, Lilija Duobliene ̇, and Irena Zaleskiene ̇

  • Explorations of Linkages Between Intercultural Dialogue, Art, and Empathy by Tuuli Lähdesmäki and Aino-Kaisa Koistinen

  • Using Wordless Picturebooks as Stimuli for Dialogic
    Engagement by Fiona Maine and Beci McCaughran

  • Creative Ways to Approach the Theme of Cultural
    Diversity in Wordless Picturebooks Through Visual Reading and Thinking by Marina Rodosthenous-Balafa, Maria Chatzianastasi, and Agni Stylianou-Georgiou

  • Dialogue on Ethics, Ethics of Dialogue: Microgenetic Analysis of Students’ Moral Thinking by Talli Cedar, Michael J. Baker, Lucas M. Bietti, Françoise Détienne, Erez Nir, Gabriel Pallarès, and Baruch B. Schwarz

  • Engaging Teachers in Dialogic Teaching as a Way to Promote Cultural Literacy Learning: A Reflection on Teacher ProfessionalDevelopment by Riikka Hofmann, Maria Vrikki, and Maria Evagorou

  • Educating Cultural Literacy with Open Educational
    Resources: Opportunities and Obstacles of Digital Teacher Collaborations by Elisabeth Mayweg-Paus and Maria Zimmermann

Bowling Green State U: Institute for the Study of Culture & Society Research Associates

Professional OpportunitiesInstitute for the Study of Culture and Society Research Associate, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, USA. Deadline: rolling.

The ICS Research Associate position is meant to provide meaningful opportunities to independent scholars and allow them access to institutional knowledge, university databases, and other opportunities to continue and advance their work. Adjunct faculty, visiting scholars, and independent scholars may apply for these courtesy appointments with ICS. Recipients will serve in this position for one semester, with potential to continue for one academic year. ICS is committed to increasing opportunities for scholars from BIPOC, disabled, first-generation, and other minoritized backgrounds. They strongly encourage scholars from underrepresented or marginalized communities to apply for this position.

This is a “courtesy appointment” meaning it is unpaid. In exchange for a campus email, office, and library privileges (but not salary), research associates are expected to participate actively in the campus community.

RiceBreaker for ICD

Intercultural Pedagogy

Spry, Amber D. (2023). The #RiceBreaker: Facilitating intercultural dialogues in the classroom by engaging shared experiences. Journal of Political Science Education, 19(2), 195-204.

Amber Spry has invented a very cute icebreaker using discussion of how different students in a class cook rice in order to spark intercultural dialogues. It should be a good starting point for other instructors.

The activity asks students to answer a straightforward question: “how does your family or your culture cook rice?” By using the example of a simple ingredient found across the globe, the activity demonstrates how students can hold different perspectives on the same topic based on their own experiences, and models for the class how to approach conversation throughout the semester when perspectives on a given topic may vary. This activity provides an example of how a classroom icebreaker can be used in a way that facilitates dialogue, promotes participation, and models intellectual respect.

Her starting point is Political Science, but it seems likely to work for those in other disciplines as well. For example, it has already been adapted for the foreign language classroom by Sahai Couso Díaz on Language Panda.

If you prefer to listen to a podcast, Spry has been interviewed on the topic for radio station KCRW: Using a ‘ricebreaker’ to start a conversation about cultural identity.

Hughes & Bartesaghi Guest Post: Disability as Intercultural Dialogue

Guest Posts
Disability as Intercultural Dialogue. Guest post by Jessica M. F. Hughes & Mariaelena Bartesaghi.

Ethnomethodologist Carolyn Baker argues that culture is not a pre-made context for action to unfold, but rather an ongoing moral order of categories and categorization, where locally produced categories become “locked into place” (2000, p. 99). This is how we understand—and are able to talk about—disability in terms of culture, as an assemblage of voices, bodies and actions within a contingent and shifting social order(ing). Just as Bakhtin (1986) tells us that there is no first speaker, but rather language as coordination over time and amidst utterances in relation, disability can only mean in terms of what we are able to (co)produce it as meaning. In our book, Disability in dialogue (Hughes & Bartesaghi) contributors set out on empirical projects designed to trouble the categories of disability within several cultural frames: geographical settings, diagnostic accounts, political action, crisis events, and everyday occurrences.

Inasmuch as disability is a culture, an ordering of relations and identity projects, of what is and might be possible, of what is historically entrenched and institutionally regulated, then disability is also an intercultural doing. This is the case not merely in the exchanges between a culture of able bodiedness to which disability owes its constitution, but between the multiple and diverse identity positions of those who are incumbent within the culture of disability. These exchanges are dialogic through and through, for they always mirror, borrow, and often oppose each other. In Shotter’s words (2015), these dialogues are occasions for attunement (p. 8) and intercultural betweenness.

Analyzing disability discourses means appreciating dialogic tensions, the centripetal and centrifugal forces at work, the constant interplay between dialogue and monologue. And it means listening to the diverse voices that, as Bakhtin remarked, are everywhere and always in relation.

Download the entire guest post as a PDF.

Hong Kong Polytechnic U: Several Positions (Hong Kong)

“Job2 Positions at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. Deadline: Varies by position.

  1. Assistant Professor in Area Studies and Intercultural Communication. Deadline: 2 January 2024.

The Department of English and Communication is now inviting applications for the position of Assistant Professor. Priority will be given to applicants whose research expertise and teaching experience are within the Department’s key research areas, especially on the intersection between culture, language, and professional workplaces. Other areas of specialisation such as Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, and Mixed-Methods Research will also be strongly considered. Experience in teaching languages such as Spanish, French, or German, and European Studies will be a plus.

2. Professor / Associate Professor / Assistant Professor in Bilingualism and Communication. Deadline: 7 November 2023.

The Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies now seeks to strengthen its impact in Bilingualism and Communication as a broadly defined interdisciplinary area of academic studies, in keeping with the latest theoretical frameworks in Corporate Communication that are informed by exemplary business practices in associated industries worldwide. They aspire to develop academic leadership and groom young researchers to excel in Bilingual Corporate Communication (BCC), where “bilingual” is construed as not only distinct varieties of Chinese and English and the associated cultures specific to the local communities, but also other regional languages and cultures (e.g., Japanese and Korean, among others).

 

Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool U: Global Citizenship Education (China)

“JobFaculty position in Global Citizenship Education (all ranks), Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China. Deadline: 28 February 2024.

In 2006 Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) was created by the University of Liverpool and Xi’an Jiaotong University – a top ten university in China. Offering a unique international education experience, XJTLU brings together excellent research practice and expertise from both institutions and gives students the skills and knowledge they need to secure careers in a global marketplace. With a focus on innovative learning and teaching, and research, XJTLU draws on the strengths of its parent universities, and plays a pivotal role in facilitating access to China for UK and other institutional partners. At same time, XJTLU is exploring future education by blending the educational theory, best practice and culture from west and east.

The Academy of Future Education of XJTLU is an educational innovation ecosystem that focuses on research, exploration, support, and dissemination of philosophy and best practices for future education. The core mission of the Academy is to impact education innovation and reform in China and beyond through a variety of projects and programmes, based on fundamental approaches in educational innovation and systemic development designed to contribute to the future of education. The Academy supports individuals and institutions at all levels, including all the K-15 schools as well as vocational education and higher education institutions. Learning Institute for Future Excellence, as a university-level learning platform in the Academy of Future Education, is dedicated to the promotion and development of lifelong learning at XJTLU and in the wider community, as a response to opportunities and challenges of the future world.

ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES:

  • Design/deliver Year 1 project-based module of the Global Citizenship and Research-led learning;
  • Design/deliver modules/activities of sustainable development education/entrepreneurship education/digital literacy education/social responsibility education/intercultural competence education;
  • Promote the innovative practices of learning and teaching via technologies such as AI, big data, etc.;
  • Conduct professional practices that contribute to students’ transition, transformation, and transferring of learning mode and skills;
  • Participate in the design and deliver of projects and activities of LIFE, including credit and non-credit modules, workshops, and seminars at both UG and PG levels;
  • Support projects and activities of LIFE according to the planning of the department and work with other team members actively and professionally;
  • Work closely with students to explore innovative practices for learning and teaching;
  • Supervise Master’s students for their thesis writing;
  • Provide academic advising to students.

Mojuba! Dance Collective & ICD (USA)

Applied ICD

McKeown, Nora. (14 August 2023). Mojuba! Dance Collective creates space for dancing and healing. Spectrum News.

This is not just something for me or for us, or the people who are in the company, but this can really be a move of the community to help us to have that intercultural dialogue, to help us to find ways to tell our own stories.

-Errin Weaver

“In 2019, Errin Weaver started Mojuba! Dance Collective for choreographers in Cleveland to explore the African Diaspora through movement and healing . . . The collective has been well-received by the community, prompting intercultural conversations. It also provides a space for Black choreographers to feel validated in their experiences and heal through dance.”

Film Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue

Intercultural Pedagogy

Glotov, S. (2023). Film literacy and intercultural dialogue: Focus on cultural representation. (Doctoral dissertation, Tampere University, Finland).

In his dissertation, Sergei Glotov links “film literacy with intercultural education that can support open and respectful intercultural dialogue between people of different cultural backgrounds…intercultural film literacy education is introduced as the link between film literacy and intercultural education…Overall, the research advocates for looking closely at the messages of cultural representation we receive from audio-visual media and being critical and reflective about them, by studying how these messages are created and broadcasted, as well as challenging them through intercultural dialogue and the actual experiences of other people.” It seems likely this would be useful to those teaching about intercultural dialogue, especially those who use films in the classroom.