US-Japan Foundation: Communication & Public Opinion Grants 2024

Grants

Communication and Public Opinion grants, United States – Japan Foundation for 2024. Deadlines: Letter of inquiry: 30 June 2023; Full proposal: 10 August 2023.

The Foundation supports projects that seek to enhance communication and mutual understanding between the American and Japanese people. Technology has evolved, and the institutions and topics of conversation keep changing, but the high value of greater awareness and communication among average citizens, as well as leaders in a variety of fields from these two countries is a constant.

The Foundation will consider communication and public opinion projects that not only raise awareness about Japan in the US and/or US in Japan, but also deal with concrete issues that affect the bilateral relationship (or are faced by the two nations). As foreign policy increasingly is subject to public opinion (and is often influenced by non-governmental actors), there is a need in both countries for increased and more diversified coverage of international news and current events, as well as strong links between certain non-government organizations (NGOs) to enhance bilateral and multilateral cooperation.

In addition, since mutual understanding between American and Japanese society requires deeper cultural knowledge, the Foundation occasionally supports documentary films, performances, exhibitions, and lectures that focus on Japanese/American culture.

A look at recent grant activity will help potential applicants understand the diversity of projects supported under this program. As with all other Foundation Programs, priority is given to projects that can demonstrate originality, broad appeal, enduring impact, excellent management and a well constructed plan for execution and success.

PLURAL+ Youth Video Festival 2023

Film Festivals
#PLURALplus23! call for videos: Youth video festival on migration, diversity, and social inclusion, a UNAOC and IOM initiative. Deadline: 30 June 2022.

PLURAL+ is a youth video festival that encourages and empowers global youth to explore the issues of migration, diversity, social inclusion, and the prevention of xenophobia and to share their creative vision with the world. PLURAL+ is a joint initiative of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) that invites the world’s youth to submit original and creative videos focusing on the themes of migration, diversity and social inclusion. By supporting the distribution of youth-produced media, PLURAL+ recognizes youth as powerful agents of positive social change in a world often characterized by intolerance, and cultural and religious divisions..

Every year, PLURAL+ gives young people around the world the opportunity to express their vision and their creativity through multimedia production. PLURAL+ invites young people of up to 25 years old to submit original and creative short films focusing on the themes of migration, diversity, social inclusion, and the prevention of xenophobia. PLURAL+ video entries are five minutes maximum and can be of any genre (animation, documentary, music video, comedy, etc.) as long as they convey a message that can contribute to making the audience think in constructive ways about the cross-cutting issues of migration, diversity, social inclusion, and the prevention of xenophobia. In addition, videos can be in any language as long as English subtitles are provided.

French Institutes for Advanced Study: Fellowships 2024-25 (France)

Fellowships

Fellowships in 2024-2025, French Institutes for Advanced Study, seven locations in France. Deadline: 6 June 2023.

The French Institutes for Advanced Study Fellowship Programme offers 10-month fellowships in the seven Institutes of Aix-Marseille, Loire Valley (Orléans-Tours), Lyon, Montpellier, Nantes, Paris and Rennes. It welcomes applications from high-level international scholars to develop their innovative research projects in France. For the 2024-2025 academic year, FIAS offers 40 fellowship positions: 4 in Aix-Marseille, 3 in Loire Valley (Orléans-Tours), 10 in Lyon, 3 in Montpellier, 4 in Nantes, 13 in Paris and 3 in Rennes.

The call is open to all disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities (SSH) and all research fields. Research projects in other sciences and in arts that propose a strong interaction and dialogue with the SSH are also eligible. Some host IAS have scientific priorities that need to be taken into full consideration before applying.

The FIAS fellows will be free to organize their research while benefiting from the support and conducive scientific environment offered by the IAS characterised by a multidisciplinary cohort of fellows and by close relation to the local research centres and laboratories.

PHD Studentship: Reframing Postcolonial Discourse in East European Studies (UK)

“Studentships“PHD Studentship in Reframing Postcolonial Discourse in Eastern Europe, Queen Mary University of London and British Library, London, UK. Deadline: 8 May 2023.

Queen Mary University of London and the British Library are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative Doctoral Studentship from 1 October 2023 under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme. This doctoral project seeks to advance postcolonial discourse in East European studies by focusing on the British Library’s unique Belarusian collection, the history of its development during the Cold War, and the collection’s evolution in response to Belarus’ ‘decolonising moment’ as it broke out of the Soviet fold in 1991. This project will be jointly supervised by Dr Natalya Chernyshova (School of History) and Prof Jeremy Hicks (Department of Modern Languages and Cultures) at Queen Mary University of London and by Dr Katie McElvanney, Dr Katya Rogatchevskaia, and Dr Olga Topol at the British Library. The student will spend time with both QMUL and the British Library and will become part of the wider cohort of AHRC CDP funded PhD students across the UK. QMUL and the British Library are keen to encourage applications from the widest range of candidates and particularly welcome those currently underrepresented in doctoral student cohorts.

Project Overview: Slavonic and Eastern European collections at the British Library are one of its strengths. However, despite the diversity of the collections, the British Library co-supervisors have identified postcolonial research and its application to curatorial practices as a priority approach to these collections, likely to reveal many meaningful gaps and contested interpretations. The project will explore the British Library’s Belarusian resources, i.e., resources relating to Belarus and its diasporas, as a case study through which to develop an analytical framework that could be subsequently applied by future scholars and information professionals to the entire Slavonic and East European collection. The project will investigate how the establishment of independent Belarus in 1991 affected the British Library’s policy and approach towards collecting, describing, and interpreting its Belarusian material. The challenges here are many, from navigating the politically charged waters of choosing the right spelling for transcription in the resources’ metadata to finding ways of bringing into dialogue two parallel depositories of Belarusian culture: Soviet-based and diaspora-based, the latter represented by the considerable collection of material at the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library in London. The research will seek to identify what further work needs to be undertaken to lead the decolonisation of discourse on Belarus and will develop recommendations on how such work can be carried out.

UNESCO Futures of Education Update

“UNESCO”

Negotiating the Future of Education: The UNESCO’s Futures of Education-initiative and the OECD’s Future of Education and Skills 2030-initiative, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.

Researchers at Humboldt University (Germany) are studying the entire process of the UNESCO Futures of Education initiative, and they contacted CID to learn more about our involvement in that project. They were interested in our participation for 2 reasons: our focus group was uncommonly diverse, and we proposed a 10th point of action, rather than just discussing the 9 points that the draft proposal outlined. We suggested that

Learning to live together requires intercultural dialogue

and produced a poster showing the relationship between their 9 ideas and our 10th.

Here are further details about the research project:

“In the project “Negotiating the Futures of Education”, we want to analyse how visions of the future of education are negotiated and contested, looking at how narratives about the future of education are constructed by UNESCO and OECD in two currently running projects, Futures of education (UNESCO) and Future of education and skills 2030 (OECD). Our main focus is on understanding the micropolitical “backstage” processes involved in constructing these narratives. We are particularly interested in whether and how formerly marginalized voices and groups are integrated in the process and whether and in which ways these challenge reigning “orthodoxies” in the liberal education script. The project employs a qualitative approach, relying particularly on ethnographic methods, narrative and discourse analysis.”

When the report appears, this post will be updated to include a link.

NOTE: The Center for Intercultural Dialogue held three focus groups as part of the information gathering stage of the Futures of Education project, preparing what we learned as a report for UNESCO, in 2021. A few months later they requested concrete examples from around the world, and we prepared an addendum.

Villanova U: Facilitator of Intergroup Dialogue (USA)

“Job

Facilitator of Intergroup Dialogue Program, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA. Deadline: open until filled, posted 4 April 2023.

The Facilitator of Intergroup Dialogue reports to the Directors of Intergroup Dialogue and is primarily responsible for facilitating sustained dialogue for-credit courses involving topics on identity, justice and inclusion. This position is responsible for generating, collecting, organizing, and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data to assess the Intergroup Dialogue Center. This position effectively implements methods to assess the dialogue program and increase performance across all levels of the program.

U of the Arts London: Intercultural Communication Trainer (UK)

“Job

Intercultural Communication Trainer, University of the Arts, London, UK. Deadline: 8 May 2023.

This is an exciting opportunity within the Language Centre at University of the Arts London to innovate and develop the intercultural and communication training, support and resources provided for staff and students participating in Online at UAL. Around half of UAL’s students join us from outside the UK and the Language Centre provides language and intercultural skills for staff and students across the University, adapting its services in response to changes in the academic portfolio and needs of the community. Online at UAL is a significant current development that will provide courses of study through online only modes. The support will be varied in form, with asynchronous digital resources featuring alongside workshops, consultations and working-party collaborations.

As Intercultural Communication Trainer, you will work alongside course academic teams to create strategies for working with complex, sensitive, or controversial themes with diverse and dispersed cohorts and review and evaluate the effect and impact of support provided. As this is a new role within the existing Intercultural Communication Training Programme, and Online at UAL is in early stages of development, the size, shape and scope of this role will evolve.

Repair Cafes: Sustainability, Community, Intercultural Dialogue

Applied ICD

Repair Cafés, started in Amsterdam in 2009, now exist around the world, in over 2500 locations.

 

The explicit focus of a repair café is the circular economy (ensuring that objects are repaired rather than turned into trash). At the same time, such efforts build community among those who participate, introducing neighbors who might never have met otherwise. And the result is intercultural dialogue, as evidenced by the offer of a PHD Studentship to study “‘Repair Cafes’ as a way to build translocal networks and communities” at the University for the Creative Arts in the UK.

UNESCO Silk Roads Youth Research Grant 2023

“UNESCO”
Silk Roads Youth Research Grant, UNESCO, Paris, France. Deadline: 31 May 2023.

UNESCO calls on young women and men under the age of 35 to apply for the 2023 Silk Roads Youth Research Grant. The grant aims to mobilize young researchers for further study of the Silk Roads shared heritage. Twelve grants of US$10,000 will be awarded per research project.

The research needs to address specific issues relating to:

  • the shared heritage and plural identities developed along the Silk Roads,
    its internal diversity,
  • its potential in contemporary societies for creativity, intercultural dialogue, social cohesion, regional and international cooperation, and
  • ultimately sustainable peace and development.

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.