Category: Events

Dialogue award for Eco Peace

“ECOPEACE Friends of the Earth Middle East, an organisation jointly established by environmentalists from Palestine, Jordan and Israel and member of Friends of the Earth International, will on Friday 3 December receive the 2010 Anna Lindh Foundation Euro-Mediterranean Dialogue Award, at a ceremony to be held in Brussels.

Taking place this year on the theme of ‘Intercultural Dialogue for Ecological Sustainability’, the Dialogue Award is unique in the fact that it is bestowed and voted upon by members of the Anna Lindh Foundation’s region-wide Network of 3,000 civil society organisations working across the 43 countries of the Union for the Mediterranean.

The ceremony will be followed by a debate on the theme “Can Intercultural Dialogue Prepare Social Change to Address the Ecological Challenge.”

ECOPEACE Friends of the Earth Middle East is a civil society organization, conducting trans-boundary research projects and promoting cross border dialogue for ecological sustainability in the region, a fair share of natural resources of the Jordan Valley, and a just peace.”

For further details, see the original announcement on the European Neighborhood and Partnership Instrument [ENPI] site.

Book of Travels

“In partnership with the British Council Maslaha has built an online exhibition about the constant mix of conversations that have occurred between Islamic people, cultures, societies and Europe. Maslaha is a new web-based organisation closely linked to the Young Foundation in London which aims to provide a greater understanding of Islam and its practices for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. In mid-June 2010, the online version has been launched at www.thebookoftravels.org.

To make things even more interesting, Maslaha also built a physical exhibition which was on display in mid-May 2010 at Bethnal Green Library in East London.

The theme of this exhibition is travel – both of individuals and also ideas across time and geographical boundaries. In particular, the project focuses on a 17th century Turkish traveller, Evliya Çelebi, who wrote extensively of his travels to Europe and North Africa in his book, Seyahatnâme: Book of Travels. This exhibition aims to capture the sense of curiousity that drives exploration, and the human desire to investigate and learn more about different cultures and experiences.

Read Book of Travels: How the Ottomans shaped London, Raheel Mohammed’s introduction to the exhibition at the BBC London website.”

For more information, go to the British Council’s description of the project.

Literature Seminar

“The “Our Shared Europe” literature seminar is the British Council’s first event specifically aimed at exploring Muslim European interaction through contemporary literature, as part of the wider project of the same name. Adopting the well-established concept and format of the “Walberberg Seminar on Contemporary Literature from the UK”, colleagues from the British Council Berlin office have organised this exciting three-days seminar entitled “Faultlines, Fictions and Futures”. Chaired by writer Ahdaf Soueif and gathering writers Inaam Kachachi, Jamal Mahjoub and Robin Yassin-Kassab, the seminar will explore the writers’ work, their people, their times and their hometowns, and give the opportunity to a wide range of participants coming from the UK, Germany, Malta, the Netherlands, Serbia, Slovenia, Portugal, Turkey, France, Greece and Belgium, to interact and share ideas.”

For details and interviews with these authors, held Nov 12-14, 2010 in Berlin, see the original blog.

International Opportunities: NCA mini-conference

“International Opportunities for Scholars in Communication and Related Disciplines”

Report of a mini-conference held as part of the
National Communication Association Conference,
November 2010, San Francisco, United States

Report prepared by Grant Hannis
Convenor and chair of the mini-conference
(g.d.hannis@massey.ac.nz)

“Over recent years, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of universities outside the US offering Communication and Journalism courses. This growth has taken place, for instance, in the Middle East, South East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South America and Canada. Such internationalization presents opportunities for US Communication scholars to seek funding to teach and conduct research in other countries and for foreign Communication scholars to do likewise in the US.

A mini-conference on this topic was held on November 14-16, 2010, as part of the National Communication Association conference in San Francisco. The mini-conference invited contributions from scholars who had worked in foreign countries—including the benefits they derived from the experience, any pitfalls to avoid, and what advice they would offer others. The mini-conference also invited contributions from those who fund such travel.

The mini-conference was convened by Grant Hannis, the head of journalism as Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand. Dr Hannis spent the second half of 2010 as a Fulbright Senior Scholar, teaching and conducting research at San Francisco State University.

Six presenters spoke at the mini-conference and answered questions from the floor. This report summarizes the presentations, incorporating the presenters’ responses to questions. All the presenters are happy to be contacted, should you have further questions.”

Report of the NCA Mini-conference

A slideshow with photos of the 6 presenters follows.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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