The call for contributors for this event is now up on the BAAL IC SiG website

https://baalicsig.wordpress.com/

Annual SIG Seminar

Seminar Title:

‘Home, Hospitality and Belonging’.

Dates: Dates: Thursday 18th & Friday 19th May 2017

Location: Nottingham Trent University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Chaucer Building 

Fee: BAAL Members £80.00, non-members £90.00. (No daily rates) Two postgraduate scholarships will be available.

Invited speakers:

Richard Fay – University of Manchester

Montserrat Guibernau – Queen Mary University of London,

This two-day seminar aims to encourage multi- and inter-disciplinary exchanges on the phenomenon of intercultural communication and its relationship with and within Applied Linguistics.

We are now inviting contributions to the seminar from people with interest and experience in researching and using intercultural communication (IC) in diverse ways. We are asking all contributors if they can make data-centred contributions, so any discussion of new research you are undertaking would be particularly welcome. We especially encourage presentations, which explores the seminar theme.

Seminar Theme

Dramatic recent political events mean that the progress made by liberal, critical and ethical discourses on issues of social justice in interracial and intercultural relations has taken a sinister turn. Whilst contemporary studies in language and intercultural communication and politics have been working towards understandings of cultures that foreground the transnational., the blurring of national boundaries and the building of positive ideas of ‘difference’, the unexpected electoral results these last few months – for the UK to leave the European Union, and the new US presidency – have brought to the fore of political life policies that challenge diversity, intercultural communication and social justice. As a result, human rights previously taken for granted, such as the upholding of one’s language, faith and culture have been brought into question within Western ‘liberal’ democracies.

Many British citizens, European citizens and other residents in the West have, overnight, been made anxious about issues of their civic rights and belonging and those of their partners, family members and friends. Some have even been the victims of race motivated crime. Within such uncertain climate, visitors and permanent residents of Western democracies will begin to wonder about what notions of ‘home’, ‘hospitality’ and ‘belonging’, will emerge as political events unfold, whilst fearing for the threat that this may pose to the fabric of society.

As new political developments are putting on the line the dangers of misinterpreting cultural belonging as enforced cultural supremacy, and the implications such understandings have for notions such as home, hospitality and belonging, this seminar hopes to create a space to reflect on the ways in which the field of language and intercultural communication could contribute to addressing such key issues in the contemporary cultural climate.

Registration Available via the Online Store: http://onlinestore.ntu.ac.uk/conferences-events/arts-humanities/conferences/special-interest-group-in-intercultural-communication-annual-sig-seminar