Center for Intercultural Dialogue

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

CITP/MiLab Spring 2016 Doctoral Workshop (Vienna)

The Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton University and the Media Innovation Lab (MiLab) at the University of Vienna are pleased to announce our second annual Doctoral Workshop to be held April 27th to April 29th at the University of Vienna.

The workshop will be led by Nick Feamster, Professor of Computer Science and Acting Director of CITP at Princeton University, and Homero Gil de Zúñiga, who holds the Medienwandel Professorship in the Department of Communication and leads the MiLab at the University of Vienna.

The goal of the workshop is to provide a forum for leading doctoral students to present their late-stage research to experts in the field, receive feedback and advice, and gain exposure to related work in other disciplines. We seek to provide a helpful, interactive experience for students, to highlight the work of rising stars in this area, and to foster interdisciplinary collaboration.

Participants will be selected through a competitive review process. We expect to invite about 8 doctoral students to attend. We will provide support for travel and lodging up to 500 EUR per attendee. Students are encouraged to submit dissertation relevant work; abstracts and shorter proposals will not be accepted.

Research topics should focus on the interplay between information and communication technologies and the social, political, civic, and governmental spheres. We welcome applications from doctoral students doing relevant work in any discipline, including communication studies, computer science, economics, political science, and sociology. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Citizen journalism
• Civic engagement and digital technology
• E-voting security
• Internet governance
• Open government data
• Privacy technologies for democratic ends
• Social media and political expression
• State-sponsored internet freedom programs

Submission process: Please submit your manuscript, along with your CV and full contact information, to Laura Cummings-Abdo and Meike Müller no later than February 7th, 2016.

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Dialogue about Border Crossers

Guest post by Trudy Milburn: Dialogue about Border Crossers.

On November 20th, 2015, on behalf of the Center for International Dialogue, I attended a unique event at the Scandinavia House in Manhattan. The event was entitled “What border have you crossed?” and provided an introduction to a new exhibition opening at the Queens Museum the following day. The speakers were two of the main organizers of the exhibition and of the organization, Bordrs: Chrissie Faniadis and Marcus Haraldsson, both from Sweden.

Bordr Pre-event Audience

Chrissie opened the session by recounting the way their five-person group (including a third member from Sweden, another from Seattle, US and one from Delhi, India) formed a new nonprofit organization year ago at a small, red house with white borders in the south-east of Sweden. They were interested in productive ways to contribute to the growing international dialogue about migrants and borders. In many news accounts, the problem is often one of numbers, such as the millions fleeing from Syria, or hundreds of thousands of refugees entering or trying to enter various countries. Chrissie said that their group’s goal was to “put a face back on the faceless.

After about 15 minutes, Marcus came up and began to involve the approximately 100-member audience, by asking, “Has anyone every crossed a border?” and then followed up with, “has anyone not crossed a border.” Perhaps because this was New York City on a Friday night, the responses were a bit intellectual (suggesting borders were metaphors) and some, a little cheeky (one woman saw no borders in life). Marcus then explained that throughout his journalism career and recent research, that he’s come to view borders as “the atomic particle of all human stories.” Subsequently, their group defines borders quite broadly, comprised of three legs: geographic (space), mental (emotion) and time-bound.

Bordr Projection

The Queens Museum exhibition is based on five different projects throughout the world. Some people were initially lent video cameras in order to tell their own stories, unmediated by a journalist interpretation. With additional digital recordings captured on smart phones and extensive interviews with each participant, they were able to create individual maps illustrating the important border events for each person.

Marcus drew to a close by emphasizing that their goal is to help people realize the connections and commonalities, rather than differences, among all of us who cross very different borders throughout our lives. [One audience member likened this interpretation of borders as to our ability to transcend “inhibitions;” others might call these life-transitions]. The group from Bordrs’ believes that feelings and thoughts are very important to this project and both can lead to much more empathy and understanding than seems to be present today.

Despite criticisms from a couple of audience members during the Q&A, that this is a very serious issue that should not be taken lightly, my interpretation is that the organizers of Bordr are interested in moving beyond the common discourse of blame that includes oppressor and victim dichotomies that are difficult to transcend. Perhaps by focusing on personal border stories, we may feel more compassionate than helpless; we may recognize that even if today we are not crossing a border, we all cross borders at some point in time.

Even if you cannot make it to Queens, NY during their exhibition, then you can still participate by using their new app, which will enable each of us to interact with others by considering smaller, everyday borders in each person’s life. We’re all border crossers, and you can see evidence of this by going to Queens Museum or Bordrs.

Download the entire post as a PDF.

University of Warwick job ad: Center for Applied Linguistics

Professor of Applied Linguistics/English Language & Linguistics
University of Warwick – Centre for Applied Linguistics
Closes: 3rd January 2016

You will be an outstanding academic with significant international experience working in the broad field of applied linguistics, including (but not limited to) areas such as TESOL, English Language & Linguistics, Intercultural Communication, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis, Language Learning and Assessment. You will have an excellent record of recent, high quality publications in top-rated journals and successful experience of applying for research funding. You will be committed to the applied relevance of your research. You will lead the development and implementation of our research strategy, including REF planning, and undertake significant senior management responsibilities as well as some teaching and research supervision.

Informal enquiries: email Professor Helen Spencer-Oatey, Director of the Centre for Applied Linguistics.

Summer Communication Internships in New Zealand

(Northern) Summer Communication Internships in New Zealand

Massey University’s six week summer study abroad program for Communication, Journalism, Media Studies, Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing or related majors is worth 6-8 U.S. semester credits. The two-week National Expedition takes students across New Zealand and then in the following four weeks students are placed in internships where they work on real world problems relevant to their degrees.

National Expedition, June 13 – 25, 2016. Our exploration of Image and Identity will traverse both islands to delve into how successful the brands and images of the tourism industry are at capturing the attention of people new to the country and culture. Students explore New Zealand’s adventure capital, alpine towns and glaciers, historic settlements and the country’s geothermal playground. Students undertake case studies examining the identity of the service-providing organizations and brands they encounter, assessing the company’s image, and identifying how effectively they appear to communicate what they offer. Our academic staff and in-country experts provide an insider’s view of the country, culture, and organizations students canvass as they travel across the country over these two weeks.

Internship, June 26 – July 22, 2016. Interns are placed in a range of organizations across Wellington, the capital city and renowned for its arts and culture, where interns obtain rich insights into the diverse character of Wellington and the nation. The interns’ work over these four weeks will benefit the host and the communities they serve, as well as providing the students with achievements that will bolster their resume when they return home.

Scholarship information, application materials, and an extensive list of FAQs are available online.

Gulf University for Science & Technology job ad (Kuwait)

Mass Communication, Media Law at Gulf University for Science and Technology

The Gulf University for Science and Technology is Kuwait’s first private, American-model university. GUST currently offers programs in Arts and Sciences, and Business—including an MBA.

The Department of Mass Communication and Media at GUST invites applications for a full-time position in the area of Mass Communication, with expertise in media law, beginning in Fall 2016. The successful candidate will hold a Ph.D. in Mass Communication or a related degree and have a demonstrated record of scholarly achievement.

Applicants will have experience teaching a variety of undergraduate mass communication courses. A good candidate will be able to teach (North American/European/Australasian) media law and ethics, with the ability to incorporate comparative perspectives with local and regional Arab media environments. Additional teaching responsibilities could include courses on research methods, media theory, media history, media writing, and global media. Expertise in emerging media or public relations are especially welcome. Further duties include advising students, engaging in scholarship, and providing institutional service.

The Department of Mass Communication and Media offers a B.A. degree with concentrations in public relations and advertising, visual communication, and radio/TV broadcasting. There are approximately 500 majors overall with the largest majority concentrating in PR. The MCM department prides itself on an active and collegial academic environment with a strong commitment to experiential learning. All instruction is in English.

GUST offers generous salaries and an excellent package, including a housing allowance, educational allowances for dependents, medical and dental plans, as well as annual return airfare home. Kuwait is also a tax-free country. Interested applicants are requested to visit our vacancies page and fill out the online form. Then upload supporting documents, including a cover letter, CV, and the names and contact information for at least three references. A confirmation of the submission will be sent immediately.

Review of applications begins in December 2015 and will continue until the position is filled.

CFP IAMCR (Leicester, UK)

Call for Proposals
2016 conference of the International Association for Media and Communications
27 -31 July 2016
Leicester, UK
The deadline to submit abstracts is midnight GMT on 15 February 2016.

Conference theme:
Memory, Commemoration and Communication: Looking Back, Looking Forward

This year’s conference theme seeks to explore the relationship between memory, commemoration and communication. This theme anticipates the 60th anniversary, in 2017, of IAMCR, which has played a strong role in the development of media and communication studies.

Although scholars have long been interested in memory and culture, advancements in technologies are providing new and innovative opportunities to think about how memory is created, preserved, passed on, and archived. Within academia, we have witnessed increased interest in cultural memory studies from media representations of the past to oral history projects – and growing interest in digitizing data leading to the history of everything. Various public bodies are also engaged in this work. In the UK, for example, the BBC launched a Public Space Project in 2011, which saw the corporation link up with various other cultural institutions including libraries, galleries, museums, archives, schools, colleges and universities to make cultural material publicly and freely available to all. The following year, BBC’s Radio 4 launched the Listening Project, which seeks to broadcast intimate conversations on topics such as living with Alzheimers and falling in love, in order to help to build a unique picture of our lives today which will be preserved for future generations. Across the globe, there are numerous examples of oral history projects, associations, and commemorative organisations and websites on topics such as the Holocaust, the Armenian and Rwandan genocides, World Wars One and Two, immigration, oral literature, and popular memory.

As a result, the growing interest in (mediations of) cultural memory provides a timely opportunity not only to look back at which memories are preserved and which forgotten, but also to look forward to how cultural memories might be archived, remembered, (re)produced, storied, erased, modified and re-told across time and space. The theme also opens up space to commemorate IAMCR’s history and contribution to the field of media and communication research.

This year’s conference welcomes paper and panel proposals that engage with the concepts of memory and commemoration, and with the ways the past is (re)mediated, historicised, documented, archived, remembered, forgotten and (re)told. It also welcomes submissions which commemorate IAMCR as an organisation as well as the contributions its members have made over the years. Looking forward, papers might also address where the field is heading. Submissions might also focus on areas such as: memory and colonialism; commemoration of historic events; the reproduction of culture through story-telling; the media’s role in (re)producing cultural narratives and commemorations. We welcome submissions from early career researchers and veteran scholars alike.

Questions asked might include: Why and how do people/cultures/organisations/families share or hide memories? What strategies are used to share memories, either collectively or individually? What role does privilege/inequality play in the creation, sharing, or preserving of memory? How do individuals, groups, or cultures learn memories? How are events remembered, retold, preserved or erased differently in different locations, historic periods, spaces and cultures? How is storytelling conceived of as a form of cultural memory? When looking to the future, what is the relationship between forms of memory and ideas about technologies moving towards the “post-human”? We welcome contributions ranging from the empirical to the theoretical and methodological in focus.

Submission of Abstracts
Each Section and Working Group of IAMCR will issue its own Call for Papers, based on the general thematic outline above. Abstracts should be submitted from 1 December 2015 – 15 February 2016. Both individual and panel submissions are welcome. Early submission is strongly encouraged.

Deadlines
The deadline for submission of abstracts is 15 February 2016. Please note that this deadline will not be extended.

Decisions on acceptance of abstracts will be communicated to applicants by their Section or Working Group Head no later than 8 April 2016.
For those whose abstracts are accepted, full conference papers are to be submitted by 30 June 2016.

Guidelines for Abstracts
Unless otherwise stated by a Section or Working Group, abstracts should be between 300 and 500 words in length.

All abstract submissions must be made via IAMCR’s Open Conference System. There are to be no email submissions of abstracts addressed to any Section or Working Group Head.

It is expected that for the most part, only one (1) abstract will be submitted per person. However, under no circumstances should there be more than two (2) abstracts bearing the name of the same author either individually or as part of any group of authors. Please note also that the same abstract or another version with minor variations in title or content must not be submitted to more than one Section or Working Group. Such submissions will be deemed to be in breach of the conference guidelines and will be rejected by the OCS system, by the relevant Head or by the Conference Programme Reviewer. Authors submitting them risk being removed entirely from the conference programme.

Technical guidelines, if any, are defined by the individual Sections and Working Groups. If you have questions, consult the Section or Working Group’s specific CfP or contact the head of the Section and Working Group that interests you.

Criteria for Evaluation
Submitted abstracts will generally be evaluated on the basis of:
1. theoretical contribution
2. methods
3. quality of writing
4. literature review
5. relevance of the submission to the work of the Section or Working Group
6. originality and/or significance

University of York job ad: Linguistics

Lecturer in Linguistics
Department: Language and Linguistic Science
University of York – Heslington Campus
Apply by: January 8, 2016

The Department of Language and Linguistic Science is seeking to appoint a new Lecturer in Linguistics with a specialism in interaction. You will have a track record of high quality research in interactional linguistics or conversation analysis, possibly involving multimodality, with a thorough understanding of the linguistic organisation of interaction. You will contribute to teaching in interaction and pragmatics, as well as on the English Language and Linguistics programme. The post offers the opportunity to join and work with members of an interdisciplinary research centre whose main focus is interaction.

Informal enquiries about the post can be made to Dr Richard Ogden, Department of Language & Linguistic Science.

Apply now

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