Tag: intercultural dialogue

Who needs Intercultural Dialogues?

On October 27, 2012, I gave a talk entitled “Who needs intercultural dialogues?” as part of the Conferência Ouvindo o Outro: sobre o diálogo entre culturas [Conference on Listening to the Other: About Dialogue between Cultures], held prior to the avant premiere of the play Sots l’Ombra d’un Bell Arbre [Under the Shadow of a Leafy Tree]: The future is unwritten at the Centro Cultural Carregal do Sal, Portugal. This is a reinterpretation of Ramón Llull‘s play from the 13th century, The Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men staged by Project Llull.

Project Llull poster

This was a co-production of Teatro de Cerca (Barcelona), Propositário Azul (Lisbon), Companhia Voadora (Santiago de Compostela), and Nicho Associação Cultural (Viseu, Portugal). Helena Tornero is the Spanish playwright who wrote the theatrical adaptation, Graeme Pulleyn is the British director, and Cristóvão Cunha is the Portuguese executive producer and international coordinator who invited me to participate in this wonderful collaboration.

Project Llull conference

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Grant $ for international travel

Micro Grants for Intercultural Dialogue

The National Communication Association allocated $5000 to be distributed as micro grants for intercultural dialogue through the Center for Intercultural Dialogue.

These micro grants are intended to support either or both of the two types of activities described in the mission of the Center: study of intercultural dialogues by Communication scholars, and/or participation in intercultural dialogue through academic interactions between Communication scholars based in different countries, or different linguistic and cultural regions. These grants are sufficient to provide seed funding only: no more than $1000 maximum can be awarded to any one individual. The goal is to encourage international, intercultural, interlingual collaborative research by giving enough funding to offset the cost of airfare only, while providing opportunity (and cause) for matching grants from universities.

If you already have lots of international connections, this grant is not for you – obviously you don’t need it. But if you are at a small college, or if you are a new scholar, and have not yet established significant international connections related to research, you are the intended audience for this competition. If you have been reading publications by an international scholar on a topic of potential relevance to your own research, consider a short trip to discuss ways to collaborate on a future project. If you do not know who has been doing relevant work, check the sources you’ve been reading lately, ask your colleagues, and/or think about who you know from graduate school or who you met (or heard present) recently at a conference. Find someone with similar interests who takes a different stance by virtue of being based in a different cultural context.

The intention is to support the development of new intercultural, professional connections. Thus continuing collaborations are ineligible. Those based in the US are expected to propose travel outside the country. International scholars currently living outside their country of origin are asked to establish a new affiliation in a different region rather than proposing a return to their homeland. We recognize that much interesting work can be done within a country between cultural groups, however this grant program focuses on connecting researchers who are not yet connected, across cultural regions that are typically disconnected. This rationale of cross-cultural connection must be explicit in the project description.

Applicants will need to describe their project, provide a brief resume, a short note from their department chair documenting their current status, and one from the host scholar expressing interest in holding conversations related to research. The initial deadline for review of proposals is November 15, 2012. If funds remain after the initial set of grants are awarded, March 15, 2013 will be the second deadline.

CID Grant Application NCA2012

December 18, 2012 UPDATE: The micro grants for intercultural dialogue have now been awarded, and all funding is being distributed as a result of the first round of applications, so there will not be a second round. See here for the results.

CFP Dialogue Facilitator training

Interested in becoming an INGO Dialogue Facilitator?

“Tensions between humans, intolerance and racism have never been as strong whilst the social and political actors continue to develop devices that would bring together the communities. The Conference of INGOs has postulated that the appropriate valuation of different cultures, languages and especially the acceptance of others for them to accept us in turn had to be learned to be effective.

The Dialogue Toolkit, which is the fruit of experience, field observation and discussion, was born of this principle and enables a plausible dialogue strategy. It involves training Facilitators of Dialogue, who, in turn, will train as many relays able to facilitate dialogue between cultures.

This call to become a “facilitator” goes to civil society actors engaged in community life to enable intercultural dialogue. The training will provide the keys to the understanding and use of this Dialogue Toolkit. Participants of this course will then conduct such dialogues and will also share this approach with local NGOs.

If you are experienced and interested in this introduction workshop, please complete the on-line questionnaire (follow the link) and return it as soon as possible. After reviewing the record, subject to availability, if you are selected for this first training session, we will tell you the practical aspects.”

Original post from http://www.dialoguetoolkit.net/news/2012/08/interested-in-becoming-an-ingo-dialogue-facilitator/

Center Interreligious/Intercultural Dialogue job ad

The King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue is a new international organization being established in Vienna to promote dialogue between religions and cultures, thus fostering understanding and cooperation, promoting justice, peace and reconciliation, and counteracting the abuse of religion as a means to justify oppression, violence and conflict.

The Center is seeking to appoint the following key members of its Senior Management Team, to be based in Vienna:
*Director of Programs
*Director of Research
*Director of Communications & PR
*Director of Human Resources

Candidates will combine functional competence with relevant experience, preferably in the area of interreligious and intercultural dialogue. The right candidates will be strategic, collaborative, culturally sensitive, convincing communicators, hands-on and display a passion for the organization’s mission. Candidates will need to be fluent in English and preferably at least one other official UN language. Compensation for all positions will be equivalent to United Nations D-1 salary level.

Applications must be submitted no later than 15 September 2012 to:
C/o Dr. Markus Schwarz
markus.schwarz at ezi.net
Egon Zehnder
International Bauernmarkt 2
A-1010 Vienna, Austria

UNCAOC intercultural dialogue games

The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Wants to Foster Innovation through Apps and Games Promoting Intercultural Dialogue

The UNAOC launches Create UNAOC 2012, a global competition organized with MIT Education Arcade and Learning Games Network; International Partners include Global Voices, Fundazione Mondo Digitale, Voice of America, ICT for Peace, John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, Doha Centre for Media Freedom, among others 

NEW YORK, New York, 26 July 2012 — the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, the MIT Education Arcade, and Learning Games Network today launched Create UNAOC 2012, an international competition for app and game developers to produce apps and mobile games that enable new avenues for intercultural dialogue.

The aim of the project is to identify opportunities through innovative tools that promote intercultural dialogue, drawing on unique cultural resources and experiences of developers around the world. Five finalist apps and games will be selected by an international jury, awarded funds for producers to refine their creations and played by delegates of the 5th Annual UNAOC Forum in Vienna, Austria, 27-28 February 2013. The global competition will accept submissions through the end of November 2012.

“Successful intercultural dialogue is essential to help us navigate the unprecedented challenges of the 21st Century world,” said Marc Scheuer, Director of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.  “Apps and games afford powerful new tools and experiences to explore the dynamic and challenging processes that enable individuals and groups with different cultural backgrounds to engage in an open and respectful exchange of views, to share experiences and to develop a better understanding of each others’ aspirations and better practices of living together.  We are eager to see what young and new developers can contribute to the global conversation.”

The UNAOC and its organizing partners want to encourage developers to think of ways that new apps and games can be used to support such pursuits as gender equality, youth development, migrant integration, religious pluralism, better understanding among individuals of different cultural and religious backgrounds, biased media representation of cultures and religions, and education.
Apps and games submitted will be reviewed by an international jury and measured on whether: (1)  potential users would be given a novel experience to creatively and thoughtfully share perspectives on intercultural and global issues; (2)  how content and commentary relate to historical or current events, as well as (3) how the apps and games provide new perspectives that support intercultural dialogue.
Registration and Submission Requirements
Developers may register to participate in the competition between 27 July and 30 November 2012 at http://www.CreateUNAOC.org.  Developers may register as an individual or as a team with a maximum of eight (8) collaborators. Registrants must be 13 years of age or older.  A video walk-through (i.e., screen capture) or PowerPoint/Keynote presentation of a working app or game alpha or beta prototype built in HTML5 should be submitted for competition by 30 November 2012.  Note: Developers are not required to submit actual working apps/games on authorized development devices to the UNAOC.
Five (5) apps/games in HTML5 will be selected as finalists by 3 January 2013.  Developers will be notified and awarded $5,000 (US) per app to complete development of a fully functional app/game by 15 February 2013.  Apps/games will be played and rated by participants during the 2013 UNAOC Forum in Vienna, Austria (27-28 February 2013).  A Grand Prize will be awarded.  All apps/games submitted to the challenge competition will be featured on the website before and after the Forum in Vienna.
“We are excited by the global network of creative and technical professionals, scholars, NGOs, media companies, and others, who have come together to inform and promote the Create UNAOC Challenge,” said Jordi Torrent, UNAOC Media Literacy and Education Project Manager.  “As we explore new ways to engage citizens of the world in the UNAOC’s charter work, our jurors and partners help to expand our understanding of new media and reach young people and producers who are pursuing exciting new projects that can be used to effectively support intercultural dialogue.”
International Jury and Outreach Partners
Create UNAOC jurors include: Deborah Bergamini, Member, Council of Europe (Italy), Jan Keulen, General Director, Doha Centre for Media Freedom (Qatar), Sanjana Hattotuwa, Senior Researcher, Centre for Policy Alternatives (Sri Lanka), Eric Klopfer, Professor, MIT (United States), Solana Larsen, Managing Editor, Global Voices (Switzerland), Anthony Lilley, Chief Executive Officer, Magic Lantern (United Kingdom), Alfonso Molina, Fundazione Mondo Digitale (Italy), Savita Nair, Professor, Furman University (United States), Wu Heping, Dean, College of International Exchanges, Northwest Normal University (China).
Initial outreach partners include:
Global Voices (Netherlands), Fundazione Mondo Digitale (Italy), Voice of America (United States), ICT for Peace (Switzerland), John Lennon Educational Tour Bus (United States), Doha Centre for Media Freedom (Qatar).
Media Contact:
Learning Games Network
The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) aims to improve understanding and cooperative relations among nations and peoples across cultures and religions. It also helps to counter the forces that fuel polarization and extremism. The UNAOC was established in 2005, at the initiative of the Governments of Spain and Turkey, under the auspices of the United Nations.  A High-level Group of experts was formed by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan to explore the roots of polarization between societies and cultures today, and to recommend a practical programme of action to address this issue. The Report of the High-level Group provided analysis and put forward practical recommendations that form the basis for the implementation plan of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.  On 26 April 2007, former President of Portugal, Jorge Sampaio, was appointed as the High Representative for the UNAOC by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to lead the implementation phase of the Alliance. The UNAOC Secretariat, which is based in New York, works with a global network of partners with States, international and regional organizations, civil society groups, foundations, and the private sector to improve cross-cultural relations between diverse nations and communities. It also works at the grassroots level, promoting innovative projects that build trust, reconciliation and mutual respect.  The Alliance works in four program areas to support such projects: youth, media, education, and migration. 
 
The MIT Education Arcade explores games that promote learning through authentic and engaging play. The program’s research and development projects focus both on the learning that naturally occurs in popular commercial games, and on the design of games that more vigorously address the educational needs of players. Our mission is to demonstrate the social, cultural, and educational potentials of videogames by initiating new game development projects, coordinating interdisciplinary research efforts, and informing public conversations about the broader and sometimes unexpected uses of this emerging art form in education. MIT Education Arcade projects have touched on mathematics, science, history, literacy, and language learning, and have been tailored to a wide range of ages. They have been designed for personal computers, handheld devices and on-line delivery.
 
Learning Games Network
The Learning Games Network, a non-profit spin-off of the MIT Education Arcade and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Games+Learning+Society Program with studios in Cambridge, MA and Madison, WI, bridges the gap between research and practice in game-based education and is committed to the development and distribution of games informed by research in the learning sciences, creative design, and technical innovation.  

Museums and Intercultural Dialogue

A very nice article by Eva Zimmerhof on museums as forums for intercultural dialogue has just been posted online by the Goethe Institute.

It begins: “In future the traditional national museums to be found in Europe are to open multidimensional perspectives on the history and culture of both the individual countries and on Europe as a whole. To implement this new approach the European Union has initiated a program called “Eurovision – Museums Exhibiting Europe” (EMEE). This is an interview with the project’s coordinator, Prof. Dr. Susanne Popp.”

Ethnography of Comm conference 2012

The “Ethnography of Communication: Ways Forward” conference was held June 10-14, 2012, at Creighton University, in Omaha, Nebraska. Dr. Jay Leighter was the conference organizer, together with Dr. Donal Carbaugh; the National Communication Association sponsored the event as one of its summer conferences (along with funding from several parts of Creighton University).

I presented a paper co-authored with Dr. Patricia Lambert, of the Institut Français de l’Éducation in Lyon, entitled “A Prophet Abroad? The Impact of Hymes’ Notion of Communicative Competence in France and French-speaking Switzerland.” In addition, I was invited to participate in two roundtable discussions, one on “Ethnography of Communication Theory and Methodology: Taking Stock and Ways Forward” and the other “Ways Forward: Institutes, Centers, and Affiliations.” In the latter, I was invited to present a description of this Center, which resulted in many new “likes” to the Center’s facebook page.

Many of those participating in the conference are included in the following photo (though certainly several critical people are missing, including Dr. Gerry Philipsen and Dr. Donal Carbaugh).

One of the pleasures of the conference for me was the presence of so many of those involved in the NCA Summer Conference on Intercultural Dialogue, held in Istanbul in 2009, which led to the creation of this Center. This included several from the organizing committee (Drs. Tamar Katriel, Donal Carbaugh, Kristine Fitch Muñoz, and Saskia Witteborn), one of the guest speakers (Lisa Rudnick) and several of the participants (Drs. Todd Sandel, Chuck Braithwaite, Evelyn Ho, Eric Morgan, and Tabitha Hart). Another was catching up with Dr. Susan Poulsen, who organized “Ways of Speaking, Ways of Knowing: Ethnography of Communication” in Portland in 1992, the predecessor conference to this one in terms of topic. Other joys of the week included having time to connect with people I had not seen in a long time, previously only had met through correspondence, or students of my colleagues who I did not know at all.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

case studies intercultural dialogue CFP

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
CASE STUDIES IN INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE
To be edited by
Nazan Haydari & Prue Holmes

We invite submissions for an edited volume on the topic of intercultural dialogue contracted with Kendall Hunt Publishing Company. The growing interest to the concept of intercultural dialogue highlights recognition of the intercultural character of all dialogue processes as they are embedded in and transcend national, political, economic, cultural, religious and historical contexts. It also acknowledges how closely normative assumptions about dialogue are implicated in intercultural communication practices.

The volume aims to make a contribution to the field through the diversity of conceptual and methodological approaches, inclusion of various cultures, contexts and examples, and through the contribution of a diverse number of authors. It draws on cases of intercultural communication in which there is dialogue, conflict or misunderstanding, and presents approaches, theories, and analytical tools that can be used to productively understand and/or resolve the issues presented in the particular examples. The collection approaches case studies as both a way to theorize intercultural dialogue, and as a teaching/learning tool. By defining the concept of “case” more broadly as a real life situation—from a well-defined situation taking place at a certain time and place (e.g. conversations, meetings, classroom settings) to series of events, forms of representation, or organizational structures—the collection aims to cover a range of examples from different cultural contexts. The case studies are structured around the idea that intercultural dialogue is an important component of everyday life, and which is practiced at various levels—from interpersonal communication to media, education, business settings, legal work, action in civil society, and national policy construction, etc. The cases are expected to demonstrate the complexity in the dynamics of intercultural communication, culture, everyday, and identity, and emphasize the building of dialogue at individual, interpersonal, group, and institutional levels. Submissions may address a broad range of issues, including class struggles, international journalism, artistic expressions, interpersonal and workplace conflict, media, education, migration, new media technologies, NGOs working on conflict resolution or in conflict-torn areas, popular culture, race and ethnicity, sexuality, religious diversity, social movements, transnational feminist practices, youth cultures, and war.

Please send an extended abstract of 1000 words by November 21st to both nazan.haydari@yahoo.com and p.m.holmes@durham.ac.uk . Selected abstracts will be notified by November 30th and full papers (of 5000 words including notes and references) will be due 15th of March 2012.

Dialogue in Cross-cultural Perspective

“Dialogue” is what Anna Wierzbicka (2006) has called a key cultural term. It is pervasive in its use, rich in its meanings, and dense in the morality for conduct its use brings with it. We can hear calls for dialogue in multiple academic and public discourses. Over the past few years, conferences have asked us to reflect upon dialogue, or to engage in it, especially with the phrase, “Intercultural Dialogue.” The European Union has declared our time as a time for “Intercultural Dialogue.” As a result, “dialogue” has become prevalent, prominent, and potent in its meanings, and in its declaration of a preferred form for the conduct of communicative action. Who, indeed, would be against “dialogue”?

In the United States, we have been asked to engage in a Dialogue on Race, on Education, and indeed about what it is to be “an American.” In spheres of activity where peoples are brought together, we are asked to reflect upon “dialogue” and the ways, including new ways of thinking about it, of engaging in it, especially with those different from or in conflict with us. We believe such pleas and calls for dialogue are important to heed. Yet also, we have discovered that each can bring with it very specific ideas about what this form of communication is. This project has been led by Donal Carbaugh (Massachusetts, USA) and has involved participants from several different languages and countries including Xinmei Ge (China), David Boromisza-Habashi (Hungarian), Elena Khatskevich Nuciforo (Russian), Saila Poutiainen (Finland), Makato Saito (Japan), Dong-shin Shin (Korea), among others. We  found that “dialogue” is of course valued as a type of social action, yet the type of action being valued varies by the goals being targeted, by implicit rules for conduct, by what was deemed proper as its tone, mode, and interactional structure. Different moral qualities are brought into play when pleas are made to “Come and Engage in a Dialogue.” Because of this, especially when people speak from different cultural circumstances, and different languages, one plea for “dialogue” may not match another, with strained relations, confusion, misapprehension, misattribution of intent and so on resulting. Equally difficult are circumstances when people are speaking the same language, increasingly English, but use that language differently all the while believing they are saying a similar thing.

This has led us to ask: what exactly is being targeted as people call for Dialogue? What form of social interaction is being requested? What motives for, and meanings of such action are at play? Our work has taken a look at several linguistic clusters related to “dialgoue” in order to ask: Is there something like “dialogue” in each, as a cultural concept and as a form of practice? The research explores each as an expressive system-in-use by examining both the relevant terms relating to dialogue in these languages and the practices referenced with those terms. Some preliminary findings are that these cultural discourses, considered together, reveal a wide variety of possibilities that are active when “dialogue” is being advocated, mentioned, and translated. Our latest publication is in the special issue of the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication on Dialogue co-edited by colleagues Prue Holmes (Durham, UK) and Shiv Ganesh (Waikato, NZ).

(Submitted by Donal Carbaugh)

Museums for ICD

UNESCO launches the network of Museums for Intercultural Dialogue

The role of museums as messengers of peace and intercultural understanding cannot be overemphasised, as they stand as major attractions in our globalised world where millions of people travel for the discovery of other cultures.

UNESCO launches an appeal to the international museum community to join its network by contributing to the enrichment of its new on-line virtual museum for intercultural dialogue where invaluable objects and new narratives can be consulted, for the enjoyment of the public and a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of historical actors, since the early times to present.

UNESCO Museums for Intercultural Dialogue EN | FR | AR

Inauguration of the pilot exhibition in Egypt and Syria (link)

World Heritage site museums project (link)

Contact: Nao Hayashi Denis