Tag: Sustainable Development

Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani: Cultural Diplomacy & ICD

Guest PostsCultural Diplomacy, Intercultural Dialogue, and Sustainable Development: A View of the Cultural Diplomacy Potential of the City of Islamabad. Guest post by Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani.

Cultural diplomacy based on intercultural dialogue creates trust by assuring the equality of all partners engaging in communication.

After concluding my PhD on intercultural dialogue between Muslim and Western countries (with a focus on the foreign cultural policies of Iran and Germany), I experienced one of the most attractive career opportunities of my life. Specifically, I started to work as a researcher (at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute) and a teacher (at the School of Politics and International Relations, Qauid-i-Azam University) in the fields of development and international relations in Pakistan.

Development as a discipline brought new light to my understanding about culture. I learned about the significance of “sustainable” development and its 17 goals (SDGs). In terms of a definition, I learned that it means development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, often called the Brundtland Report). Sustainable development thus requires change through culture. That piqued my curiosity as to why despite all attempts of the UN state members and international organizations like the World Bank still culture, which must be taken as a driving engine of integration of nations to serious change, is neglected and has not yet gotten the attention it deserves. Culture, even rhetorically, is just not a part of the SDGs’ list. Yet it needs to be.

Download the complete essay as a PDF.

Artistic and other Creative Practices as Drivers for Urban Resilience (Portugal)

Artistic and other Creative Practices as Drivers for Urban Resilience
September 5 to 7, 2016
Museu Municipal de Espinho, Portugal

Thematic area(s) of the course
Artistic and creative practices, urban resilience, urban sustainability

Course description
Urban sustainable development requires enhancing urban resilience. In this Summer School, we look at resilience as a space for translocal bottom-up learning, emerging artistic-cultural-ecological approaches or as a ‘Space of Possibilities’. Resilience for us is openness, possibility, emergence, creation, non-structuration, art, praxis, mutual learning and doing . . . It is not a 10-point governmental program to be implemented (e.g., early warning, knowledge transfer, etc.).

Several key characteristics of resilience (redundancy, diversity, learning modes, and self-organization) can potentially be fostered in urban neighborhoods through creative practices entangling natural and cultural resources and processes such as “ecological art” and “social practice” interventions, “urban gardening” projects, autonomous social-cultural centers fighting against gentrification, and artivist actions that question unsustainable city planning and societal behaviours. However, how far does the potential of such practices reach? When and how do they scale up to wider urban institutions as drivers of transformations, fostering systemic innovations? What limits and challenges do they encounter? How far do they foster urban resilience towards sustainability as a transformative search process of fundamental change, or are they coopted into neoliberal urban development? What recurrent processes and structures can be observed across different contexts? And how can we learn from these in order to support transformative processes?

The summer school, conceived as an extended workshop, will explore comparative insights across different urban initiatives and projects. We invite researchers, artists, and practitioners to address together several sets of questions and reflect on their empirical research, previous project experiences, and expertise from different cities. Insights emerging from the workshop will inform, and be informed by, the ongoing international comparative research project/network “Culturizing Sustainable Cities: Catalyzing translocal learning and advancement of emerging artistic-cultural environmental approaches”, initiated by the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and the transdisciplinary research project “The City as Space of Possibility” at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany. In addition, insights from the summer school will be disseminated through Cultura21, an international network of cultural practitioners, researchers, and others (e.g., cultural policymakers) who are focused on advancing cultures of sustainability.

Participants
Researchers (multidisciplinary), graduate students and post-docs, artists, and practitioners working with community-based artistic and sustainability/resilience initiatives

During the pre-registration process, applicants are asked to submit [HERE] a brief statement on the relevant project(s)/initiative(s) with which they are involved, and why they want to attend the summer school. These statements will be reviewed as part of the participant selection process. Deadline: Sunday, May 1, 2016. All applicants will be notified of selection process results by Monday, May 16, 2016.

Researchers responsible
Nancy Duxbury (CES) and Sacha Kagan (Leuphana University Lüneburg)

Core Team
Nathalie Blanc, Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), France
Hans Dieleman, Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México, Mexico; Cultura21
Nancy Duxbury, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra
David Haley, Manchester Metropolitan University, England
Verena Holz, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany
Sacha Kagan, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany; ESA RN2; Cultura21

Registration
Earlybird rate (by May 31): € 150
Late rate from June 1: € 165
Fee includes: Summer School registration and materials | Welcome BBQ or dinner on Sept 5 | Lunch on Sept 6 and 7 | Breaks (5)
Accommodation and dinner on Sept. 6 at own cost.

Maximum number of registrations: 25 | Minimum number of registrations: 20

Getting to Espinho
Espinho can be easily reached by train from Porto – Campanhã station. Details of train schedules and prices.

Summer school organized by Centre for Social Studies (CES) at the University of Coimbra, in collaboration with the ESA (European Sociological Association) Research Network Sociology of the Arts and its 9th Midterm Conference being held in Porto September 8-10, 2016. The insights generated at the summer school will be shared in a workshop at the Midterm Conference.

Scientific projects relating to the course
“Culturizing Sustainable Cities: Catalyzing Translocal Learning and Advancement of emerging Artistic-cultural Environmental Approaches” – Nancy Duxbury, CES
“The City as Space of Possibility” – Volker Kirchberg, Ute Stoltenberg, Ursula Weisenfeld, and Sacha Kagan, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany

This is a self-funded, non-profit Summer School

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CFP: Ebenezer Soola Conference on Communication (Nigeria)

3rd  EBENEZER SOOLA CONFERENCE ON COMMUNICATION

The conveners of the 3rd Ebenezer Soola Conference on Communication hereby invites abstracts and full papers from all academics and professionals in all fields of media and communication for presentation and discussion at the conference. Papers should however be based on the conference theme and sub-themes.

Theme:  COMMUNICATION, CHANGE MANAGEMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Date: September 27th – 30th, 2016.
Venue:  Conference Centre, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.

The Problem: Change is the only thing that is constant in life. Nigeria, and indeed, the whole world are witnessing rapid changes in all spheres of life. The challenge facing humanity today is how these changes are managed. Change management has been defined as the application of the set of tools, processes, skills and principles for managing the people’s side of change to achieve the required outcomes of the change project or initiative. How do we combine communication with these tools, processes, skills and principles to achieve and sustain positive changes in our society? This is the problem that this conference seeks to engage.

Sub-Themes:
–       Communication, Change Management and People-Centred Development
–       Communication, Change Management and Transformation
–       Communication, Change Management and Government Reportage of its activities
–       Communication, Change Management and Corporate Reporting Culture
–       Communication, Change Management and Social Responsibility
–       Communication, Change Management and Gender Rights
–       Communication, Change and Risk Management in the Oil and Gas Sector
–       Change Management and the Broadcast Media
–       Change Management and the Print Media
–       Change Management and the Social Media
–       Change Management and the New Media of Communication
–       Change Management and the Traditional Media of Communication
–       Change Management and Political Communication
–       Change Management and Journalism
–       Change Management and Development Communication
–       Change Management and Sustainable Development
–       Communication, Social Fairness and Democratic Legitimacy
–       Communication, Conflict and Institutional Change
–       Communication, Community and Common Destiny

Arrival: Tuesday, September 27th 2016.
Conference days: Wednesday 28th – Thursday 29th, September 2016
Departure: Friday, 30th September 2016

Paper Submission Guidelines:
–       Abstracts should not be more than 200 words, typed single spaced with 12 points regular Times New Roman.
–       Abstracts should have title, name of author(s) and full contact details: institution, postal address, personal email address and telephone numbers.
–       Full papers should not be more than 20 pages A4, typed 1.5 spacing with 12 points regular Times New Roman using the APA style of referencing.
–       The first page of the paper should indicate the title, name of author(s), and full contact details: institution, postal address, personal email address and telephone numbers. All other pages of the paper must not feature any of these details.
–       Abstracts and full papers should be sent as an MS Word attachment to the conference email address: soolaconference@yahoo.com

Abstract Submission Deadline – 1st August 2016
Full Paper Submission Deadline – 1st September 2016

Publications
–         Papers that pass the process of blind, peer-review of journals shall be published in two reputable international journals, namely, the Journal of Communication and Media Research and the Journal of Communication and Language Arts.
–         Other papers will be published in a well-edited book. (Note: not a book of readings, but a thematic, educational and instructional book.)

For further information please contact:
Dr. Eserinune McCarty Mojaye
Secretary, Conveners Committee

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