Category: Conferences

CFP ICA 2024: Communication & Global Human Rights (Australia)

ConferencesCall for proposals: Theme call for papers: Communication and Global Human Rights, International Communication Association, 22-24 June 2024, Gold Coast, Australia. Deadline: 1 November 2023.

The purpose of this year’s theme, Communication and global human rights is threefold: to take stock of the contributions of communication scholarship to the study of human rights; to foreground current research and practice; and to  outline promising directions for communication studies.

Human rights is a global priority. It is a political and moral language, grounded on the notion that all human beings share universal attributes and deserve recognition and support. It is a normative horizon for making our world more humane and just. It is central to the cosmopolitan imaginary that posits the existence of a moral and political order above nation-states. It is woven into fundamental questions of our times, such as overlapping crises (e.g., climate/environment, health, migration, food insecurity), entrenched global inequalities, armed conflicts, threats to public safety, and social exclusion and hate.

Communication is central to contemporary global human rights in many ways. It is manifest in public debates spurred by the mobilization of “rights” movements as well as political/cultural backlash; efforts to raise public awareness about the significance of rights, especially given continuous violations of human rights and the tragic failure of inter-government institutions, states, and other actors to enforce rights; the evidentiary claims of human rights reporting, based on both standardized and contested communication practices; the use and critique of human rights as a discourse; conflicts over the balance between speech rights with other rights such as privacy and safety; debates over whether human rights is a universalist project embedded in Western principles and globalist projects, or an inspiring political, moral and legal framework sensitive to difference, inclusivity, localization, and reappropriation.

As a research topic, human rights cuts across the vast landscape of communication studies. Several areas of specialization explore theoretical and empirical questions situated at the intersection of communication and human rights: linguistic, historical, legal, epistemological, and political dimensions; rights movements and counter-movements; narrative about rights violation and repair; large-scale persuasion and information campaigns; institutionalization and enforcement of rights in communication and media policies. Altogether, these lines of inquiry lay out wide-ranging research agendas, as well as theoretical and empirical questions and arguments, with significant implications for scholarship, education, and public engagement.

CFP: CCSA Intercultural Interest Group (USA)

Conferences

Call for papers: Intercultural Communication Interest Group, Central States Communication Association, Grand Rapids, MI, USA. Deadline: 7 October 2023.

The Intercultural Communication Interest Group OF CSCA invites submission of competitive individual papers, panel proposals, and creative/interactive sessions. The purpose of ICIG is to promote the scholarship and practice of communication between, among, and within cultural groups. THEY welcome all forms of scholarship and research methodology in addressing this year’s theme: Incoherence: Failure, Futures, and Forgotten Messages.

Within intercultural communication, incoherence is inevitable and often embodied by “the stranger” since strangers can be near in proximity yet far in terms of in-group status. Organizers are excited for submissions that explore how these tensions between farness and nearness, identity dispersion and synthesis, “us” and “them” can be felt, negotiated, and examined across many cultural contexts, for instance, at borderlands, in transnational spaces, in neighborhoods as well as within digital spaces and other forms of mediated communication. The theme of incoherence offers us meaningful space to consider future directions of IC scholarship, mentorship, and curriculum programming. Inviting us to ask (among other possible inquiries):

How is incoherence embodied by being, or interacting with, the stranger, the sojourner, the other? How is incoherence implicated in studies of diaspora, immigration, statelessness, or refugee groups?

How does incoherence open avenues to understand environmental justice and environmental racism?

How does a focus on disjointedness allow us to examine perceptions of hope, place, and safe community within an increasingly diverse and polarized U.S. society?

How does the theme of incoherence apply in addressing what it means to identify as an intercultural scholar today? How can exploring incoherence contribute to (re)building curricula that meet the needs of the next generation of intercultural scholars?

How can incoherence illuminate critical/intersectional paths that complicate static, certain, or transpicuous notions of culture? How does incoherence inform the ways in which people negotiate multiracial identities in an increasingly transnational world?

CFP: 8th Int’l Conference on Multicultural Discourses (South Africa)

Conferences

Call for papers: 8th International Conference on Multicultural Discourses: The Choice/Voice of cooperation in the Post-Pandemic World, 26-28 October, 2023, Cape Town, South Africa. Deadline: 30 August 2023.

The 8th International Conference on Multicultural Discourses, under the auspices of the International Association of Multicultural Discourses, will be co-organised by the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS), the University of the Western Cape (UWC), South Africa, and the School of Contemporary Chinese Discourse Studies, Hangzhou Normal University, China. The theme of this year’s conference is “The Choice/Voice of Cooperation in the Post-pandemic World.” The event will be hosted by the University of the Western Cape at the Life Sciences Auditorium, University of the Western Cape (UWC), Robert Sobukwe Rd, Bellville, Cape Town, South Africa, October 26 – 28, 2023.

Deadline for submission of abstracts and panel proposals: 30 August, 2023. Notification of acceptance will be sent out not later than 10 September 2023 for the abstracts received before the closing date, the rest will receive feedback as they are received.

CFP CIES 2024: The Power of Protest (USA & Hybrid)

Conferences

Call for Papers: CIES: The Power of Protest, online 6-7 March 2024; onsite 10-14 March 2024, Miami, Florida, USA. Deadline: 24 July 2023.

The Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) 2024 theme is “the power of protest.”

As a community of Comparative and International Education researchers, teachers, activists, programme developers or organisers, how might we engage with, and think generatively about, the histories, curriculum, theories and methodologies, and pedagogies that guide acts of protest?

The power of protest in education lies in the fact that it is, by definition, a public act. Protest allows people facing injustice to generate power through collective action. For many, this kind of protest carries the hope and promise that, to use the slogan of the World Social Forum in 2001, “another world is possible.” It is a declaration that all is not well in the world, and that the status quo must be challenged and changed. Struggles of this kind often situate education as a human right and endeavour to bring about more just and inclusive educational futures. Here too, the wider conditions for learning and working in schools and universities around the world have also been the subject of protests over the years.

CFP: BAICE Early Career Conference 2023 (UK but Online)

ConferencesCall for abstracts: British Association for Comparative and International Education Early Career Conference, UK but online, 5-6 August 2023. Deadline: 3 July 2023.

The call for abstracts is now open for The British Association for Comparative International Education (BAICE). The Student Committee warmly welcomes your submissions to the 2023 Annual Early Career conference, ‘Transformative education as a force for change: reflections and experiences from around the world’. The conference will be held over two days, hosted online via Zoom.

They invite submissions from postgraduate students, researchers and practitioners engaged with education research. The conference offers a dynamic and friendly environment for postgraduate researchers to showcase and discuss their research, even if the research is still in early stages. Attendees will be able to listen to colleagues from different areas of the Education Studies field; those presenting will be able to receive feedback in a diverse, constructive and academically rigorous environment. They welcome innovative and creative submissions on any research topic concerned with ‘Transformative education as a force for change: reflections and experiences from around the world.’

ReDICo: Cosmopolitanism in a Postdigital, Postimigrant Europe, and Beyond (Germany but Online)

ConferencesCosmopolitanism in a Postdigital, Postimigrant Europe, and Beyond, ReDICo, Germany but online, 27 June-7 July 2023.

The second Researching Digital Interculturality
Co-operatively (ReDICo) conference will be on “Cosmopolitanism in a Postdigital, Postmigrant Europe, and Beyond,” combining different themes from the field of digital interculturality. It may indeed be observed that ‘the digital world’ has been gradually intertwining with the material ‘analog world’, to an extent that the differences between these two spheres are no longer really visible (‘postdigitality’). At the same time, differences between ‘migrant’ and ‘indigenous or ‘native’ have also dissolved in modern migrant societies, a phenomenon that gives space to the challenges of an even more ambiguous and complex postmigrant society. Finally, this interplay influences how we, as people, meet each other on an equal footing as citizens of the world and offers new reflections on Cosmopolitanism in a Postdigital, Postmigrant Europe, and Beyond.

You can look forward to ten sessions (90 minutes each) spread over six days, during which 27 scholars from a variety of countries and fields will give short and precise presentations of 15 minutes. There will be extended discussions, reflections, and new contacts. Organizers wish to involve voices from civic society in the academic discourse, and so have invited six representatives and activists from non-governmental institutions to share their perspectives.

Keynote speakers: Professor Gerard Delanty (University of Sussex, on Tuesday, the 27th of June) and Professor Naika Foroutan (DEZIM Berlin, on Wednesday, the 5th of July).

Participation in the online conference, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research, is free. Registration via e-mail.

CFP Global Knowledge Exchange Preconference (South Africa)

ConferencesCall for submission: Global Knowledge Exchange Preconference @ ICA in Africa, Cape Town, South Africa, 15 November 2023. Deadline: 30 June 2023.

The Global Knowledge Exchange Preconference at the 2023 ICA in Africa regional conference in South Africa is designed to facilitate mutually beneficial knowledge exchange without reinforcing systemic inequities in academia. It does so by bringing together emerging and senior scholars both within and outside the African continent into structured conversations with each other about how best to study media and communication in Africa.

Participants will be placed into four-member cohort groups consisting of an emerging scholar based in Africa, an emerging scholar studying Africa from outside the continent, a senior scholar based in Africa, and a senior scholar studying Africa from outside the continent. Cohort groups will be organized around research interests. Cohorts are not expected to engage in collaborative research; rather, the goal is to nurture and develop each member’s own research projects and interests by recognizing the various ways members can learn from each other.

The preconference schedule will include dedicated time for each group member to discuss and receive detailed feedback on a current or future research project. It will also include presentations and discussions about topics such as how to offer constructive feedback, project development, research collaboration, and geographic disparities in scholarly knowledge production.

CFP South Asia Communication Association @ AEJMC 2023 (USA)

ConferencesCall for papers: South Asia Communication Association @ AEJMC, Washington, DC, 7-10 August 2023. Deadline: 3 June 2023.

Submissions are invited for “Fostering Freedom & Defending Democracy: Media Research on South Asia & Its Diaspora Worldwide,” the 2023 South Asia Communication Association (SACA)’s refereed-research session at the 106th annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), which will be held in Washington DC at the Marriott Marquis Hotel. There will be two interactive research sessions, August 7 and August 9. Organizers invite you to submit your research on media and communication in South Asia or its diaspora worldwide across a wide range of perspectives and approaches.

CFP IALIC 2023 (Cyprus)

ConferencesCall for papers: IALIC: Rethinking intercultural communication beyond verbal language: affect, materiality and embodiment in times of ‘crises,’ European University Cyprus, 1-3 December, 2023. Deadline: 10 June 2023 (extended to 20 June).

The International Association for Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC) is calling for papers on the topic of Rethinking intercultural communication beyond verbal language: Affect, materiality and embodiment in times of ‘crises.’ Western epistemologies have traditionally valued rationality and the verbal above other aspects of discourse and communication. Verbal language has been primarily seen as the key instrument for developing rationality and the cornerstone of human thought. As a result, these ideas have dominated the field of intercultural communication, often silencing alternative visions of intercultural encounters and their semiotic entanglements, beyond the European male sensorium and a human-centred worldview.

However, recent social and political developments call for new ways of understanding social and political phenomena, including intercultural communication. Indeed, in the last few years, public and academic arenas have been inundated by discourses of ‘crises’ and threats forcing us to rethink both the notion of interculturality, as well as communication itself. Energy crises, ongoing wars and the (so-called) refugee crisis, climate change and ecological crises, financial crises, and of course, health crises, such as the covid19 pandemic – to name just a few – bring to the foreground notions such as precarity, marginality, transition and liminality and raise questions such as:

    • What other ways of communicating (or failing to) do discourses and experiences of threat bring about?
    • How are discourses of crisis and threat semiotically constructed and circulated?
    • What is the role of affect/emotions in times of crises and threats, and what new openings do they create in the study of intercultural communication? (e.g. how are they enregistered as part of crises-discourses and what are their communicative dynamics across and beyond languages and cultures?)
    • What kind of subjectivities do crises and threats produce, and how are these embodied (e.g. the embodiment of fear, the “contaminated” body etc.)?
    • What is the role of technology, and more generally, materiality in intercultural communication in times of crises?

All these call attention to a variety of semiotic repertoires and semiotic resources that are not restricted to language and discourse, and which often require working across disciplines. The affective turn, the material turn, and posthumanism in the social sciences and humanities indicate the ongoing efforts to make sense and theorise social reality and communication beyond verbal language. Besides, the increasing use of the notion of (in)securitisation outside the field of security studies is an example of scholarly attempts to capture the ways in which discourses and experiences of threat permeate everyday spaces and interactions, calling for methodological innovation and interdisciplinarity.

Responding to current challenges, and in line with contemporary discursive and academic developments in the social sciences and humanities, this conference aims to foreground different ways of making sense of cultures, languages, social relations and intercultural communication in an anxious and constantly changing world. At the same time, it calls for a critical examination of the notion of ‘crisis’ and its impact on intercultural communication.

ICA Regional Chapters: Indonesia, Nigeria, China, Kenya

ConferencesContractor, Noshir. (11 April 2023). President’s Column: The First Four: Writing a New Chapter in ICA’s International Efforts. International Communication Association Newsletter.

The International Communication Association has just established regional chapters in Indonesia, Nigeria, China, and Kenya. The ICA Indonesia Chapter was inaugurated at Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia on March 7, 2023. The ICA Nigeria Chapter was inaugurated on March 24, 2023, at the University of Port Harcourt. The ICA China Chapter was inaugurated on March 28 in Beijing at an event attended by the Deans and Directors of Communication programs at seven major universities in China, including Peking University, Tsinghua University, University of Science and Technology of China, Renmin University, Zhejiang University, Fudan University, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. And the ICA Kenya Chapter was inaugurated on April 5, 2023, at Daystar University, Nairobi. For details, see the article by ICA President Noshir Contractor.