Doha International Award for Interfaith Dialogue 2016

Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue is pleased to announce the Third Doha International Award for Interfaith Dialogue, which will take place during the 12th Doha International Conference for Interfaith Dialogue in Doha, from 16th-17th February 2016.

Objectives of Award
1. Enriching and promoting a culture of peaceful coexistence and acceptance among followers of different faiths;
2. Attracting and drawing youth towards building a positive dialogue between the followers of diverse religious traditions;
3. Reinstate and reinforce religious values in addressing the issues and problems of concern to humanity and promoting peaceful coexistence and understanding between different civilizations and faiths.
4. Expand the content of religious dialogue to include all aspects of life that interact with religion.
5. Expand the field interreligious dialogue to include wider circle of researchers, academics and others who are interested in the relationship between religious values and life’s issues.
6. Facilitate and share important scholarly insights, educational experiences and training in areas related to religious dialogue.
7. Encouraging researchers and specialized institutions for fruitful collaboration between them in order to reach new prospects for dialogue such as bringing about new proposals for conflict resolution and peace building.
8. Honor and appreciate prominent, productive and creative persons and organizations for their work in the field of interreligious dialogue.

Award Categories
This year award will be given to:
An Outstanding Organization
The award is restricted to the excellent organizations that are actively engaged in or produced a project concerning Strategies for Protecting Spiritual and Intellectual Freedom and Security in a Society, thus educating community on how to rationally and spiritually confront any sort of extremism therein.
A Prominent Individual
The award is restricted to the distinguished individuals who produced a specific work or project about Strategies for Protecting Spiritual and Intellectual Freedom and Security in a Society, and who are actively tackling extremist views among the members of his or her society while promoting peace and harmony with rational arguments.

Value of Award
The Award value is one hundred thousand US dollars (100,000 USD), in addition to gold medal and certificate provided by DICID.

Deadline
The deadline for accepting nominations for The Third Doha International Award for Interfaith Dialogue 2016, expires on 31.12.2015 at 2:00 pm (Greenwich time)
For additional information, please visit the DICID website.

Beth Bonniwell Haslett Profile

ProfilesBeth Bonniwell Haslett (Ph.D., University of Minnesota) is Professor Emerita in the Department of Communication at the University of Delaware.

Beth HaslettHer research and teaching interests span organizational and intercultural communication. More specifically, her scholarship focuses on issues of face, cross-cultural communication and the social impact of information and communication technologies. Her current research focuses on differences and similarities across Eastern and Western approaches to communication and cognition, and using Goffman’s concept of Face as an approach to communicative competence.

Dr. Haslett has written four books (Communication: Strategic Action in Context; The Organizational Woman, with F.L.Geis and M.R.Carter; Children Communicating, with W. Samter; and Communicating and Organizing in Context.) This last is her most recent book, and it integrates Giddens’ structuration theory with Goffman’s interaction order and develops a new theoretical perspective, the theory of structurational interaction. From this theoretical framework, it is possible to integrate both the macro- and micro-levels of communication as they contribute to social change, institutional change and globalization, particularly in cross-cultural and organizational settings. Both digital and interpersonal forms of communication are integrated within this framework.

She has also served as chairperson of the Language and Social Interaction Division of the National Communication Association. In addition, Dr. Haslett has served on the editorial boards of Human Communication Research, Communication Monographs, Communication Education, Communication Studies, Journal of Family Communication, Communication Quarterly, Journal of Communication, and Western States Journal of Communication, and reviews for other journals. She has published over 40 articles and book chapters, and presented more than 60 papers at national and international conferences.

Work for CID:
Beth Haslett wrote KC74: Face.

The Conflict Conference 2016 (Texas)

Call for submissions: The Conflict Conference 2016

The Conflict Conference (TCC) will hold its 2015 conference at the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) on April 8-9, 2016. TCC is a multidisciplinary annual conference promoting the study of conflict and conflict resolution. We invite Papers, Panel Proposals, and Posters on any relevant topic such as apologies, advocacy, dispute resolution, peace, negotiation, reconciliation, mediation, restorative justice, conflict management, and ethics.

The DEADLINE for submissions is January 24th 2016. Notices of acceptance will be sent no later than February 7th, 2016.

・PAPER PROPOSALS must include the author’s name and institutional affiliation, the title of the paper, and an abstract of no more than 150 words for the program. In addition, proposals must include a 600-word extended abstract without personal information. Abstracts should be based on research that is clearly in progress (if not yet completed), with a well-formulated research question, and with a good description of the types of data used (if the work is empirical) and of the approach.

・PANEL PROPOSALS must include a maximum 150-word abstract for the program, names, titles, and abstracts for each participant.

・POSTERS must include the author’s name and institutional affiliation, the title of the paper, and an abstract of no more than 150 words.

A clear description of a research design may be acceptable, as this can lead to useful discussions in the early stages of a project. Documents must be attached to an email as a Word (.doc or .docx) or PDF document.

TCC welcomes submissions from students. Please indicate student status in all paper proposals. Please send all proposals to TCC via email.

Conference events will be held on Friday, April 8th and Saturday, April 9th 2016 on the UT-Austin campus. A registration fee of USD $75.00 (two Austin artisan lunches, coffee, and refreshments included) is required.

Media and Communication Visiting Fellowship, University of Canterbury (New Zealand)

Media and Communication Visiting Fellowship
University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Application Deadline: December 20, 2015

The University of Canterbury invites applications for a 5-week Visiting Fellowship available any time from mid February to mid June 2016 (the first semester of the New Zealand academic year).  The fellow is expected to offer a number of research seminars to staff/students and meet graduate research students to provide general advice and feedback. The ideal candidate will be a senior or mid-career scholar, possibly on sabbatical over this period.

The fellowship covers the cost of a return flight to New Zealand, accommodation and a per diem that should cover additional living costs for the 5-week period. The fellow is provided with an office in the department for conducting their own research, a computer and access to the university library. They are also free to travel during this period to see the many wonders of New Zealand, which will be in Summer and Autumn.

The Media and Communication department at the University of Canterbury is a research-led department with strengths in a number of areas. The University of Canterbury is committed to promoting a world-class learning environment through research and teaching excellence, and has a vision statement of “People Prepared to Make a Difference.”  The fellow will have the opportunity to work alongside members of a diverse academic community and enrich their professional and personal
development.

To apply, please send a cover letter and CV to Dr. Babak Bahador.

CFP Chapters on Immigration Rhetoric

Clarke Rountree (University of Alabama in Huntsville) and Jouni Tilli (University of Jyväskylä, Finland) are seeking American and International scholars to contribute to a book project on immigration rhetoric. The book will focus on the rhetoric of immigration (and anti-immigration) surrounding the refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the would-be ISIS Caliphate. We want to authors for chapters that analyze the rhetoric of immigration in Europe and the United States. In particular, we’d like scholars who could write chapters on the United States, Germany, Hungary, France, Great Britain, Turkey, the European Union, and other select countries. A final chapter will offer a comparative analysis that draws upon these individual chapters.

We want each chapter to provide basic background on the political system of the country and its immigration history and policy to frame an analysis of discourse from the government and significant political players on the current immigration crisis. We want to consider how immigrants are constructed (e.g., as victims, as security risks) and what issues are tied to immigration rhetoric, such as economic, cultural, social, political, religious, humanitarian, and security issues.

We hope to recruit authors who can complete 8,000-12,000-word draft essays by the end of summer 2016.

Interested scholars should contact Clarke Rountree.

Intercultural Communication (Europe and the Islamic World) Study Abroad in France and Spain

Intercultural Communication (Europe and the Islamic World) Study Abroad in France and Spain
2 weeks: July 31 to August 13, 2016

The Department of Communication Studies at Kansas State University announces its 2016 summer seminar in France and Spain and invites applications from undergraduate and graduate students across the United States.

Admission is competitive; deadline for application is February 1, 2016.
Students may contact program director, Professor Soumia Bardhan

This 2-week summer program on culture and communication is designed for undergraduate and graduate students interested in an academic and intercultural experience in a foreign culture. The goal of this course is to enhance student intercultural competence and an understanding of the long-term intercultural interaction/ relationship between Western cultures and Islam.

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In this course, culture will be studied through four levels. These levels correspond to communications scholar Bernard Saint-Jacques’s conception of culture: (1) High culture- the achievements of society in terms of the most esteemed forms of literature, art, music; (2) Culture as behavior- the ways people agree to behave, act, and respond; (3) Culture as ways of thinking-modes of perception, beliefs and values, shaped by history, society, media, religion, politics, etc; and (4) Culture as language. Through an in-depth review of intercultural theories and concepts, and competence development activities, the course will focus on the ways in which culture and language – and more broadly communication – are linked; it will help students gain a greater understanding of when and why communicative misunderstandings occur and how to overcome them; and it will allow students to appreciate communicative differences resulting from cultural dissimilarities and recognize that interacting with people from different backgrounds brings opportunities for growth.

In addition, the course will focus on the history, evolution, and manifestation of Islam in Al-Andalus (south Spain) and the intercultural interactions between Western and Islamic cultures, as well as Christianity, Judaism, Islam in Spain and France. It will illustrate the enormous influence Islam exerted on these countries through art, religion, history, and politics. The program will also focus on the debates concerning the Muslim population in Europe, covering concepts of religion and secularism, immigration, human rights, feminism, religion and fundamentalism, and modernity.

The academic component will consist of a series of briefings from the faculty leader and other leading academic, literary and political personalities and experts on the European relationship with the Islamic World. Participants will attend daily lectures and meetings with the program director and other scholars/ experts in the fields of intercultural communication, politics, art history, history, religion, law, gender studies, linguistics, and actively engage in numerous formal and informal intercultural discussions and interactions with ordinary citizens. Study sites include: France (Paris, Aix-en-Provence, and Marseille) and Spain (Seville, Granada, Madrid, and Córdoba).

To access program description, eligibility, itinerary, tuition and associated investment, application deadlines and for more information on this academic and intercultural experience, visit Kansas State University’s Study Abroad Office.

CFP: How to Analyze Authority and Power in Interaction (Japan)

The Language and Social Interaction and Organizational Communication divisions of the International Communication Association present How to analyze authority and power in interaction
A preconference to the 2016 meeting of the International Communication Association
July 9, 2016, 9am to 5pm
Fukuoka Sea Hawk Hotel, Japan
Organized by Nicolas Bencherki, Frédérik Matte and François Cooren

Rationale
Historically, studies on language and social interaction have often been criticized for their alleged incapacity to deal with questions of power, coercion and domination (Cooren, 2007). By exclusively focusing on what people do in interactional scenes, LSI scholars have indeed been accused of being ill equipped to address and analyze what makes the interactions they study possible (Reed, 2010). In response, macro-sociologists and critical scholars keep reaffirming the key role that structures, ideologies and power relationships play in the constitution of interactions. However, they rarely analyze conversations or dialogues per se, which means that interaction studies seem often immune to this kind of consideration.

For the past twenty years, however, a growing movement of scholars has decided to go beyond the sterile opposition between agency and structure by openly analyzing everything that happens to make a difference in a given interaction (Bartesaghi, 2009, 2014, Bencherki and Cooren, 2011; Benoit-Barné and Cooren, 2009; Castor and Cooren, 2006; Chiang, 2015; Cooren and Matte, 2010; Taylor and Van Every, 2011, 2014). Instead of exclusively focusing on what people do, these scholars have also taken into account other forms of agency or authorship that seem to make a difference through people’s turns of talk.

How to participate
For this preconference, we would like to encourage scholars to submit papers that explicitly (1) deal with questions of power/authority and (2) illustrate their approach by studying the detail of the interaction that organizers selected. In other words, each participant is invited to shed his or her own original light on the same common interaction.

Any kind of perspective – Conversation Analysis (Pomerantz & Fehr, 1997; Sacks & Jefferson, 1992; Sanders, 2005), Actor Network Theory (ANT) (Latour, 1986; Law, 1991), CCO (Communicative Constitution of Organization) (Benoit-Barné & Cooren, 2009; Bourgoin & Bencherki, 2015; Taylor & Van Every, 2014), Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2013; Fairclough & Wodak, 1997; van Dijk, 1993), ethnography of communication (Carbaugh & Boromisza-Habashi, 2015; Hymes, 1964; Kalou & Sadler-Smith, 2015), etc. – is welcome as long as these two requirements are met.

This preconference could be of interest to Language and Social Interaction and Organizational Communication scholars, but representatives of other divisions are, of course, also welcome.

Submit a 500-word abstracts including an analysis outline on the preconference website by 18 January.

Responses will be sent by 15 February.

The interaction: “Under whose authority?”
Kim Davis denies marriage licenses to LGBT couples. You may have heard of Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky, county clerk who has defied court orders in her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She has gained quite a bit of fame, either as a hero to conservative supporters, or on the contrary in a very negative way among same-sex marriage supporters and within the LGTB community. We propose, as a common empirical material to our discussions, that participants to the preconference use their own analytical approach to analyze the following news excerpt (we apologize any advertisement that may appear at the beginning of the video). You can download the excerpt’s full transcript.

What sense would you make of this excerpt? What does the theoretical or analytical approach that you adopt reveal about what went on in Kim Davis’ office on that day? What may other perspectives be missing or leaving aside? What makes a difference, or what should we take into account, in order to explain the situation we are witnessing in the video? Is this video even enough to make any sense at all of the events? Let us know!

In addition to briefly presenting a theoretical and analytical framework, your abstract should also include a few elements or an outline of an analysis of the excerpt. Show us how this excerpt may be studied differently thanks to the concepts, tools or lenses that your framework provides.

References

Bartesaghi, M. (2009). How the therapist does authority: Six strategies for substituting client accounts in the session. Communication & Medicine, 6(1), 15-25.

Bartesaghi, M. (2014). Coordination: Examining Weather as a “Matter of Concern.” Communication Studies, 65(5), 535-557. http://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2014.957337

Bencherki, N., & Cooren, F. (2011). To have or not to be: the possessive constitution of organization. Human Relations, 64(12), 1579-1607. http://doi.org/10.1177/0018726711424227

Benoit-Barné, C., & Cooren, F. (2009). The Accomplishment of Authority Through Presentification: How Authority Is Distributed Among and Negotiated by Organizational Members. Management Communication Quarterly, 23(1), 5-31. http://doi.org/10.1177/0893318909335414

Bourgoin, A., & Bencherki, N. (2015). The performance of authority in organizations. Presented at the European Group for Organization Studies, Athens, Greece.

Carbaugh, D., & Boromisza-Habashi, D. (2015). Ethnography of Communication. In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118611463.wbielsi119/abstract

Castor, T., & Cooren, F. (2006). Organizations as Hybrid forms of Life: The Implications of the Selection of Agency in Problem Formulation. Management Communication Quarterly, 19(4), 570-600. http://doi.org/10.1177/0893318905284764

Chiang, S.-Y. (2015). Power and Discourse. In K. Tracy, C. Ilie, & T. Sandel (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118611463.wbielsi149/abstract

Cooren, F. (Ed.). (2007). Interacting and organizing: analyses of a management meeting. Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Cooren, F., & Matte, F. (2010). For a constitutive pragmatics: Obama, Médecins Sans Frontières and the measuring stick. Pragmatics and Society, 1(1), 9-31. http://doi.org/10.1075/ps.1.1.02coo

Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. Routledge.

Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical discourse analysis. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction (pp. 258-284). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hymes, D. (1964). Introduction: Toward Ethnographies of Communication. American Anthropologist, 66(6), 1-34. http://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1964.66.suppl_3.02a00010

Kalou, Z., & Sadler-Smith, E. (2015). Using Ethnography of Communication in Organizational Research. Organizational Research Methods, 18(4), 629.

Latour, B. (1986). The Powers of Association. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, action and belief: a new sociology of knowledge? (pp. 264-280). London: Routledge.

Law, J. (1991). A Sociology of monsters: essays on power, technology, and domination. New York: Routledge.

Pomerantz, A., & Fehr, B. J. (1997). Conversation Analysis: An Approach to the Study of Social Action as Sense Making Practices. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction (pp. 64-91). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Reed, M. (2010). Is Communication Constitutive of Organization? Management Communication Quarterly, 24(1), 151-157. http://doi.org/10.1177/0893318909351583

Sacks, H., & Jefferson, G. (1992). Lectures on conversation. Oxford, UK?; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.

Sanders, R. E. (2005). Preface to section II: Conversation analysis. In K. L. Fitch & R. E. Sanders (Eds.), Handbook of language and social interaction (pp. 67-70). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Retrieved from http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0420/2004016806.html

Taylor, J. R., & Van Every, E. J. (2011). The situated organization: Studies in the pragmatics of communication research. New York, NY: Routledge.

Taylor, J. R., & Van Every, E. J. (2014). When Organization Fails: Why Authority Matters. New York, NY: Routledge.

van Dijk, T. A. (1993). Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis. Discourse & Society, 4(2), 249-283. http://doi.org/10.1177/0957926593004002006

Chinese University of Hong Kong job ad

THE CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
School of Journalism and Communication
Assistant/Associate Professor

Tenure-track, beginning August 2016
Applicants should have (i) a PhD degree in communication or a related field (by the time reporting for duty); (ii) strong commitment to excellence in teaching and research; and (iii) a track record of research and publication.

The appointee will teach courses in journalism and communication, particularly data journalism, big data studies and social network analysis.

Appointment will normally be made on contract basis for up to three years initially commencing August 2016, which, subject to mutual agreement, may lead to longer-term appointment or substantiation later.

Applications will be accepted until the post is filled.
To apply, click here

Postdoctoral Researcher (Germany)

Postdoctoral Researcher
Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum – The Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict
Closes: 31st December 2015

Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) is one of Germany’s leading research universities. Our Research School is an international college for structured doctoral and post-doctoral research in the life sciences, natural sciences, engineering, the humanities and social sciences.

The Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (Institut für Friedenssicherungsrecht und Humanitäres Völkerrecht, IFHV) is an interdisciplinary central research institute at RUB. With its longstanding focus on and expertise in international law, the institute fosters research and teaching in the field of Humanitarian Studies, with participation from the faculties of Law, Social Science, Geosciences and Medicine.

The IFHV seeks to appoint a Postdoctoral Researcher (payment according to TV-L E 13) for a full-time (39.83 hours per week) fixed term position (3 years, extension possible). The successful applicant would commence the appointment on 1 March 2016 or as soon as possible after that date.

You will work for an institute with many national and international partners. Your primary task will be to conduct research in International Law, especially Humanitarian Law and adjoining fields. In addition, you will be responsible for our peer-reviewed journal in International Humanitarian Law Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (JILPAC).

Your field of responsibility includes:
• Research in the area of International Law, especially Humanitarian Law and Refugee Law as well as related fields;
• Third party research fundraising and implementation of international research projects;
• Academic management of the peer-reviewed journal Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (JILPAC);
• Teaching (4 hours per week), in particular in the NOHA Master.

Your profile:
• A doctoral degree (or equivalent) in International Law or adjoining disciplines;
• Ability to attract competitive independent third-party research funding;
• Capacity and experience in organising and coordinating academic conferences and workshops;
• Experience and capacity in cooperation and networking with (international) external partners in practice and academia;
• Capacity for multidisciplinary and collaborative research;
• Experience in research management and academic administration is an asset;
• Capacity to teach and publish in English;
• Developed written and verbal English communication skills, good German knowledge;
• Intercultural experience and/or background in humanitarian action is preferred.

RUB is an equal-opportunity employer, and seeks to enhance a fair gender distribution in all job categories and at all levels. RUB welcomes applications from female applicants and persons with a disability.

To apply, applicants must provide a complete set of application documents (letter of motivation, curriculum vitae and a list of publications, and the names and contact details of three referees) by 31 December 2015 via email (PDF/one document). Institut für Friedenssicherungsrecht und Humanitäres Völkerrecht (IFHV), Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Prof. Dr. Pierre Thielbörger, Managing Director, Massenbergstraße 9 B, 44787 Bochum, Germany.

For further questions concerning the Institute or the advertisement, please contact Prof. Dr. Pierre Thielbörger or Katharina Behmer, or access our website.

8th Conference on Intercultural Communication (Wuhan, China)

Professor SHAN Bo graciously invited me to participate in the 8th Conference on Intercultural Communication, held at Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, November 20-22, 2015. Since I was unable to get to China this fall, I videotaped my paper, and sent that instead. The title is “The Influence of National Character Studies on Intercultural Communication: Moving Beyond Past Assumptions to Current Complexities.” For others who did not get to Wuhan, I’ve uploaded it to the Center for Intercultural Dialogue’s YouTube site.

My thanks to Xinya Liu, the Conference secretary, for all of her help with logistics, to Dave Adams at Royal Roads University for recording the video, and to Jingya Yang, one of my graduate students while I was at Royal Roads University, for uploading the video to a site accessible within China.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue