Ecole d' été: Identity and interculturality: research methods

[Fred Dervin]

Cher-es collègues,

Vous trouverez ci-dessous un appel à communications pour une école d'été
sur le thème identité et interculturalité: méthodes de recherche. L'école
aura lieu au Danemark en juillet 2011 et se fera en anglais.

Merci de faire circuler!
Bien cordialement
Fred Dervin


*** FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT ***

Call for papers
International Doctoral Summer School
Identity and Interculturality: Research Methods

To be held at Roskilde University, Denmark on 4-8 July 2011

Invited guests
•	Michael Byram, (Professor Emeritus, School of Education, University of
Durham),
•	Claire Kramsch (University of California at Berkeley, USA),
•	Alex Gillespie (University of Stirling, Scotland)
•	Mike Baynham (University of Leeds, England).

The event is convened by Fred Dervin (University of Turku, Finland) and
Karen Risager (Roskilde University, Denmark). It is initiated by the
international research network Cultnet and is hosted by the doctoral
programme Intercultural Studies at Roskilde University.

Aims and Target Group of the Summer School
The aims of the Roskilde International Summer School are threefold:
•	to help students grasp and critically engage with the notions of
identity and interculturality and see how they are related
•	to get to know various research methods that can help students to work
within cultural and social complexity
•	to discuss their own research topics and to get to test various research
tools that can help them to move on in/improve their research
The Summer School is meant to be transdisciplinary, and the target group
is PhD students from all disciplinary backgrounds who are especially
interested in methodologies related to this field of study.

Thematic Areas
Discussions at the Summer School are to be organised in four thematic areas:
Education: identity and interculturality in education and learning
Migration: identity and interculturality in migration and other kinds of
mobility
Literature: identity and interculturality in literary representation and
literary practice
Technologies: identity and interculturality developed via digital
technologies and media

Identity and Interculturality
The concept of identity is one of the pivotal concepts of our times – but
also one of the most controversial. It has been theorized from many
different disciplinary angles in the humanities and the social sciences,
and has been a central concept in the interdisciplinary field of Cultural
Studies. It covers a richness of perspectives such as identity and
experience, identity and the body, identity and politics, identity and
recognition, etc., and a wide range of sociocultural parametres have been
explored: identity and gender, age, profession, nationality, ethnicity,
race, language, religion, class, etc. In today’s research there seems to
be an agreement on the fact that identity doesn’t exist in itself but that
it is constructed and thus not a given.
	Interculturality has come to be an umbrella term for a view of the world
that foregrounds complexity of meaning production and identity
construction at both micro and macro levels. Here as well, the terms are
legio to express these phenomena: cultural diversity, transculturality,
cultural complexity, cultural hybridity, etc. Researchers now emphasize
that these shouldn’t be used interchangeably as they are not synonymous.
This means that researchers must position themselves clearly within the
terminology.
		The study of identity and interculturality is also the study of a whole
array of social problems and power-issues like dominance, inequality,
subalternity, exclusion/inclusion, minority/majority, othering,
marginalization, discrimination, essentialization, ethnicism, racism,
linguicism, culturalism – and their consequences for the subject, both
the dominated and the dominator.

Focus on Research Methods
In the vast and fertile field of studies on identity and interculturality
the focus will be on research methods. For novice researchers the issue of
researching complexity is very challenging. They often work within
postmodern, post-structuralist or deconstructivist paradigms, which have
questioned solid understandings of basic concepts such as identity,
subjectivity and culture. But they may find it hard to identify analytical
tools that can allow working within complexity, plurality and instability.
	The focus will primarily be on qualitative methods, such as ethnographic
studies, conversation analysis, dialogical studies, discourse and
narrative studies, biographical studies, action research, as well as
triangulations of these. However, we do not want to treat the
qualitative/quantitative divide too absolutely. In some research projects
on identities it may be highly relevant to supplement or contextualize by
means of quantitative methods.
	In methodological reflections, the language aspect is often important,
both in the sense that much of the research process is indeed discursive,
and in the sense that all people involved in research, including
informants, speak one or more languages, and choose to communicate in one
or more language(s), perhaps mediated by an interpreter. In research on
interculturality, in particular, the question of what languages are
spoken and by whom, may be highly relevant, as the choice of languages is
neither culturally nor politically neutral.

Working Methods
The Summer School will be composed of:
•	lectures by experts + discussants
•	parallel workshops on the above-mentioned four thematic areas. In the
workshops students will present their work and get feedback from the
experts
•	roundtables on specific issues related to methodology

Applying for the Summer School
The Summer School is open to anyone registered in a PhD programme in any
country and in any discipline related to the field of study in question.
Prospective participants should send an application including the
following information:
•	contact details
•	institution and year registered
•	name of supervisor
•	current situation and estimated date of completion of thesis
•	thesis title
•	abstract (<300 words + bibliography) describing the paper that will be
presented at the Summer School
•	thematic area (education, migration, literature, technologies)

Duration of paper is 30 min. The working language of the Summer School is
English.

Please send your application to secretary Tinna Kryger:  tkryger at ruc.dk

Deadline for submission of abstract: Monday 28 February 2011
Answers to applicants: Thursday 17 March 2011
Deadline for submission of full papers (4000 words): Monday 30 May 2011
Deadline for essays after Summer School (1000 words): Monday 15 August 2011

ECTS and Assessment
Participation in the Summer School equals 8 ECTS. The assessment comprizes
project excerpt focusing on methodology (= the above-mentioned full paper)
(33%), presentation and discussion (33%), and an essay containing further
reflections on methodology based on the Summer School (33%).

Participation Fee
50 EUR (the fee covers lunches and coffee breaks). Travel costs and
accommodation are the participants’ responsibility. Information regarding
accommodation will be sent to participants.

For further information and / or to register, please contact Tinna Kryger:
tkryger at ruc.dk

See also the website of the Summer School:
http://magenta.ruc.dk/cuid/uddannelser/phd_interkulturelle_studier/summer_school_2011/





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