Researching Digital Interculturality Co-operatively – Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Call for papers: Cosmopolitanism in a Postdigital, Postmigrant Europe, and Beyond, Researching Digital Interculturality Co-operatively, Germany but Online, 26 June-7 July 2023. Abstract Deadline: 31 January 2023.

The idea of cosmopolitanism remains multifaceted and fit for purpose. It may be seen, for example, as a philosophical concept, or viewed as a theoretical and empirical tool used to describe and understand contemporary society, culture and interculturality. But cultural theory and empirical research have not remained stagnant, and a number of recent ideas have been proered as further theoretical and empirical tools. These include the concepts of postdigitality and postmigrancy. The “post” in these terms does not denote an end (of digitality or migration), but the transformation of a society indissolubly interwoven with digitality and migration. Similarly, the term postmigration implies that the structures of society have been fundamentally altered by migratory processes; supposedly clear dichotomies of “migrant” /“native” or “assimilated” /“segregated” become dissolved, while established distributions of resources and power structures have increasingly been called into question and become renegotiated. Indeed, the mere fact of continuously shaping a (post)migrant society and of being immersed in super-diversity with cultural and linguistic implications needs to be accepted. Thus, the new theoretical and empirical postmigrant and postdigital realities call for new perspectives on the concept of cosmopolitanism and adjoining concepts, such as Europeanism. These ideas, though very applicable to European societies and lifeworlds, are not limited to Europe but are found and may be investigated in a variety of contexts.

Call for papers: Lifewide Learning: Transformations and New Connections in Postdigital Societies, Researching Digital Interculturality Co-0peratively (ReDICo), University of Jena, Germany and Hybrid, 29 June-1 July, 2022. NOTE: Deadline for presentation has passed, but program is available on their website, if you wish to attend.

Digitalization has rapidly transformed the planet. Technological d developments continuously open up a myriad of new possibilities in daily human experience. Indeed, the Internet has penetrated material reality to such an extent that it is now, often, impossible in many contexts to disentangle the material from the virtual. In this “postdigital” (Cramer2014; Knox2019) scenario, the digital and the material intertwine and the intersubjectivity of lifeworlds develop, thus, relatively freely in a hybrid space. The encounter with ‘newness’ becomes indeed potentially accessible at the touch of a button 24/7, and learning becomes a lifewide experience, covering a myriad of new digital and potentially global contexts, beyond the local. New connections with other people and their artifacts are continuously occurring. These new connections foster learning processes which lead to personal and cultural transformations; the ground upon which new connections develop.

In this conference organizers aim to share theoretical models; results of empirical research developed in a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields; as well as best practices which allow us to understand how lifewide learning unfolds in postdigital societies, and indeed what its implications may be. Contributions may be in English or German.