Tag: Malta

Malta Biennial: Intercultural Dialogue (2024)

Events

Redazione. (13 March 2024). Malta’s first biennial opened under the banner of intercultural dialogue. Finestre sull’Arte.

“The first Malta Biennial…March 13 to May 31, 2024…focuses on themes such as intercultural dialogue, migration, colonial history, the environment, and memory.

In an era marked by global challenges and tensions, the Biennale aims to stand as a beacon of hope, using culture and art as a bridge to a more harmonious and inclusive future. The works on display thus explore crucial themes such as migration, colonial history, the environment and memory, urging the viewer to think critically and participatively about the most pressing issues of our time.

This Biennale is not only meant to be a celebration of contemporary art, but also a statement of intent and a concrete commitment to promoting intercultural dialogue and global solidarity through artistic expression. With its rich history and unique location in the heart of the Mediterranean, Malta has always been an important center of creativity and innovation, a crossroads of cultures and identities that intertwine and mutually enrich each other. Against this backdrop, the Malta Art Biennale aims to reaffirm the crucial role of art in shaping our world in profound and meaningful ways, inviting the public to consider the issues, of urgent relevance, that artists raise through their works.”

CFP EACL 2024: Towards Ethical and Inclusive Conversational AI (Malta)

ConferencesCall for papers: European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Towards Ethical and Inclusive Conversational AI:
Language Attitudes, Linguistic Diversity, and Language Rights, 21-22 March 2024, Malta. Deadline: 18 December 2023.

Conversational language technologies (chatbots, voice assistants, and multimodal conversational interfaces) are becoming increasingly complex and common in everyday life. Various language theories (such as speech act theory, politeness theory, conversation analysis, and interaction theory) have started influencing their development. At the same time, the development of these technologies is often driven by technology-related concerns and tends to overlook users’ needs and socio-cultural contexts. This, combined with the scarcity of human rights regulation of AI, raises concerns about linguistic discrimination, exclusion, surveillance, and security risks. In addition, training data for conversational AI mostly comes from written rather than interaction-based language data sets and often does not include gestural, social, and emotional aspects that are fundamental to human interaction. In the same vein, Sign Language is rarely facilitated. To promote a positive impact of conversational technology on linguistic diversity and inclusion, it is imperative to strike a balance between technological concerns and socially relevant matters.

This workshop to be held at EACL aims at addressing these issues by using a holistic approach that involves dialogue and collaboration among technologists, linguists, policymakers, and communities involved in the development and commissioning of conversational AI systems.

Key Themes:

  • Holistic Approach: Bridging the gap between technology and socio-cultural context.
  • Ethical Development: Addressing concerns of linguistic discrimination, exclusion, surveillance, and security risks.
  • Inclusive Data Sets: Emphasizing the importance of interaction-based language data sets and inclusion of gestural, social, and emotional aspects.

CFP The Provocation of Culture(s) (Malta)

ConferencesCall for Papers: Engaging the Contemporary 2023: The Provocation of Culture(s), 15-17 November 2023, University of Malta, Valletta Campus, Malta. Deadline: 1 May 2023.

Engaging the Contemporary 2023 is the eight edition of a series of annual international conferences organized by the Department of Philosophy at the University of Malta, with the aim of promoting an interdisciplinary approach to a variety of current philosophical debates. This year’s theme – The Provocation of Culture(s) – seeks to examine and bring into discussion the various issues that the question of living in a multi-cultured world brings to the fore. The aim of the conference is to bring together various philosophical traditions into a conversation that furthers our understanding of the provocations of and by culture(s) that beset contemporary times.

SIETAR Europa: Rethinking Interculturalism (Malta and Online)

Conferences

SIETAR Europa Congress:
Re-Thinking Interculturalism,
18 – 21 May 2022, Malta and Online. Deadline: 17 November 2021.

The intercultural field was born out of the 50s and 60s of the previous century. There were a lot of things that were taken for granted in that time that are not anymore: large parts of the global south were still colonized or on the verge of becoming independent; working globally was the privilege of a tiny minority of multinational companies headquartered in western Europe and North America; the iron curtain between the USSR and the West was considered inevitable and forever impenetrable; the oppression of women, people of colour and the LGBTQ community was normality and rarely questioned.

Of course, research into culture from the very beginning always came with the best intentions: if we could just understand each other better, we would find ways to work well with each other.

The intercultural field has grown considerably over the past decades. There are tools, theories, studies and concepts ad infinitum. Nonetheless, we see the deterioration of our natural environment threaten the well-being of people and peace on earth. Deep and old racist and class- based structures cause violence that dominate the headlines almost daily. Far-right populism is on the rise globally, as fundamental freedoms are declining even in places that were thought to be resilient democracies, in Europe and beyond. The recent global pandemic has amplified and clarified many of these systemic issues that were more easily ignored before. It has shown the incredible potential of what humans can achieve, when they work together across and beyond boundaries; it has also shown how we fail when we don’t.

So the question is, has interculturalism failed? Has it fulfilled its promise? Has it even promised the right things? Or, to put it bluntly, does interculturalism need to be replaced, reformed or reshaped to match the challenges this world faces?

CFP Critical Issues in Eastern and Western Philosophy (Nepal)

Critical Issues in Eastern and Western Philosophy
19th December 2016
Nepal Academy Hall, Kathmandu, Nepal

The Department of Philosophy at the Nepal Academy, Kathmandu, Nepal, together with the Department of Philosophy at the University of Malta, Malta are collaborating by organizing a conference at the Nepal Academy on issues that are pertinent to the Eastern and Western philosophical traditions.

Philosophy, as a discipline with its own distinct territory, is undergoing a current revival of interest that is encouraging to practitioners of the subject. The questions that philosophers of both traditions are engaging with appeal, not only to academic professionals, but also to a broader public that thirsts for a greater degree of understanding of issues that are central to their lives.

To this end, a call for papers is being issued for those who are interested in presenting a 20-minute paper (3,000 words max.). Speakers are invited to discuss any theme related to:
Metaphysics
Philosophy of Ethics
Philosophy of Technology
Political Philosophy
Philosophy of Communication
Comparative Philosophy

Those interested in participating are asked to submit an abstract of a paper (c. 300 words) by email to the seminar organizing team. For Nepali contributors the abstract should be sent to Dinesh Raj, while international contributors should send their papers to Claude Mangion by Friday 14th October. Notification on acceptance of papers will be sent by Friday 28th October. The deadline for submission of papers is Friday 2nd December 2016.

CFP Cities as Community Spaces (Malta)

The Valletta 2018 Foundation has launched a series of annual international conferences addressing different aspects related to cultural relations in Europe and the Mediterranean.

Valletta 2018’s annual conference Cities as Community Spaces will be held on the 23rd-25th November 2016. The conference seeks to explore the social dynamics through which space – public, private and virtual– within a city serves as a site of exchange, contestation, and critical reflection between different communities, with a particular reference to the Euro-Mediterranean context and Valletta as European Capital of Culture in 2018.

The conference is driven by five main thematic areas:
*Community Driven Spaces
*Community Contested Spaces
*Developing Creative Spaces
*City Space as an Empowerment Tool
*Online Community Spaces

The Valletta 2018 Foundation is inviting contributions from academics, researchers, artists and practitioners related to any of these themes. The range of papers or posters may cover theoretical and methodological perspectives, practical examples and artistic interpretations of the issues and challenges faced in cities by communities.

Applicants are invited to submit a proposal (abstract) of no more than 250 words by Friday 18th March 2016.

More information, including the full call for papers and posters document is available at the conference website or by contacting the Valletta 2018 Foundation.

 

Save

CFP Cultural Mapping: Debating Cultural Spaces and Places (Malta)

Call for Papers & Posters
Cultural Mapping: Debating Cultural Spaces and Places conference
22nd-23rd October 2015
Malta
Abstracts due Friday, March 27, 2015

The Valletta 2018 Foundation, responsible for implementing the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) project in Valletta and Malta in 2018, will be holding the Second International Conference on Cultural Relations in Europe and the Mediterranean. The conference is titled ‘Cultural Mapping: Debating Spaces and Places’ and will bring together academics and practitioners to exchange experiences and debate cultural mapping practices, as well as to explore practical and conceptual approaches to cultural mapping within a global context (with a particular emphasis on the Euro-Mediterranean context). The conference will seek to develop a better understanding of how various mapping practices are developing over time. The Valletta 2018 Foundation will be collaborating with the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra.

Academics, researchers, artists and PhD students are invited to present papers or posters discussing their work within this field or addressing the conference themes, during the conference. Abstracts (400 words) are to be submitted via email by no later than Friday 27th March 2015. Conference proceedings will be published in due course.

Mediterranean Intercultural Dialogue

“In a unique demonstration of commitment at the highest level to enhance regional cooperation aimed at strengthening bridges between peoples and communities around and across the Mediterranean by promoting intercultural dialogue, countries of this region will come together under the banner of the UN Alliance of Civilisations to discuss and agree on a Regional Strategy on Intercultural Dialogue and Cooperation for the Mediterranean.

Ministers, secretaries of states of foreign affairs and representatives from governments of around 40 countries, as well as representatives of international and regional organisations – such as UNESCO, the International Organisation of Migration (IOM), the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Council of Europe, the European Union, the League of Arab States and the Anna Lindh Foundation – will meet in Valletta today [November 11, 2010] to agree on an Alliance of Civilisations Regional Strategy on Intercultural Dialogue and Cooperation for the Mediterranean and on its action plan.”

For more information, see the original article in the Malta Independent.