Previous Seminars & Activities

January 28, 10 a.m. - 12 noon

Tsitsi Chataika, Department of Educational Foundations, University of Zimbabwe

Title: Capitalising on Lessons Learnt from the COVID-19 Crisis: Increasing Access to Education to Learners with Disabilities in Africa

COVID-19 has disrupted education systems on a global scale, creating unexpected challenges. Approximately 1.6 billion children around the world have been unable to attend school due to COVID-19 lockdowns, with schools required to make rapid adjustments in the move to online teaching and learning. As African countries worked toward managing learning continuity, learners with disabilities seemed to have been further marginalised. However, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have presented a unique opportunity to re-think emergency planning for accessible and inclusive education. This presentation examines the challenges faced by learners with disabilities in accessing education during COVID-19 induced lockdown in Africa. It also proffers strategies that can be adopted to make education more disability inclusive.

Chair: Maria Bäcke, CCD, Jönköping University

Zoom:

February 18, 2 - 4 p.m. (NB: NEW DATE!)

Ted Schatzki, Department of Philosophy, University of Kentucky

Title: The Trajectories of a Life

This presentation combines a phenomenological account of life trajectories with a practice theory approach to the social contexts in which life trajectories occur to illuminate key features of the phenomena studied by life course research. The discussion construes life trajectories, not as the events and transitions that make up the progress of life in specific life domains, but as central dimensions of a life qua continually unfolding entity. It subjects three types of trajectories so construed to analysis: space-time paths, successions of actions, and past-future arcs. It then explores the contextualization of such trajectories in constellations of social practices. The presentation concludes by situating life and its trajectories in the causal order of society and reflecting on the advantages of using theories of practices in this context.

Zoom:

March 17 (2-4 p.m.)

Humanistic Forum

Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Professor of Philosophy at Södertörns Högskola

Title: Att tänka i skisser (in Swedish)

Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback pratar om relationen mellan filosofi och konst. Hur är begreppet och bilden förbundna med varandra och hur förhåller sig tänkandet - bildens och begreppets - till verkligheten?

Zoom:

March 25 (10 a.m. - 12 noon)

Anamik Saha, Media, Communication, and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths University of London

Title: Rethinking ‘Diversity’ in the cultural industries
While the ‘diversity’ paradigm is shaping policy across public and public sectors in Western contexts, it is particularly pronounced in the creative and cultural industries. In the UK, such industries have long been aware of, to paraphrase former BBC Director General Greg Dyke, their hideous whiteness. As a consequence, a plethora of initiatives have been launched to improve the racial and ethnic composition of the cultural workforce. Yet such initiatives are having little impact on the representation of racially minoritised groups, whether on- or off-screen. In this paper, drawing from my research into the experiences of Black, Asian and racialised people who work in British cultural industries, I highlight the limitations of diversity policies. But rather than a case of such policies/initiatives not working, I argue that diversity as a discourse - that is, a form of power/knowledge - is the means through which existing social hierarchies (and racial inequalities) remain intact.

Chair: Maria Bäcke, CCD, Jönköping University

Zoom:

March 30 (10 a.m. - 12 noon)

CCD international seminar series

Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza, Professor of Language Education at the University of São Paulo, Brazil

Title: Navigating difference in language, literature and literacy

This seminar will focus on difference as a construct of self and how a non-understanding of this can lead to a perception of difference as an external characteristic only of others. The seminar will focus on how ‘difference’ in dealing with others can be better understood as 'gaps' in one’s knowledge which need to be navigated. Examples from language, literature and literacy will be discussed.

Besides Language Education Professor Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza's research interests lie in language and educational policy and politics, literacy, literary theory and interculturality. His recent publications include ‘De-universalizing the Decolonial’ (in Gragoatá 2021) and 'Glocal Languages and Critical Intercultural Awareness: The South Answers Back' (Routledge 2019). He currently co-coordinates the bi-national (Brazil-South África) research group Rethinking Multilingualism and Being Human.

References:

Cusicanqui, S. (2019) Ch'ixinakax Utxiwa: On practices and discourses of decolonization.

Jullien, F. (2021) There is no such thing as cultural identity.

Nascimento, G. & Windle, J. (2021) The Unmarked Whiteness of Brazilian Linguistics: From Black-as-Theme to Black-as-Life.

Souza, L.M.T.M (2002) A Case among Cases, A World among Worlds: The Ecology of Writing among the Kashinawa in Brazil.

April 1 (1-3 p.m.)

DoIT seminar series

Lynn Mario de Souza, Professor of Language Education at the University of São Paulo, Brazil

Title: Learning from the Anaconda: rethinking sameness, difference, and other-than-humanity

Place: Riksteatern, Hallunda, and digitally

Languages: English, Swedish sign language interpretation

Programme

13.00 Presentation of DoIT and inspirator Lynn Mario de Souza

13.15-14 This DoIT meeting looks at ways of seeing the world from non-western/non-northern/non-mainstream ie from alternative perspectives. More specifically this DoIT meeting will focus on indigenous cultures that consider diversity as the essence of life.

14-14.45 Joint reflection

14.45-15.15 Conclusion and information about the GoPar conference: https://ju.se/ccd/gopar2022

Lynn Mario T.M. de Souza is full professor of English at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. His recent publications include: Glocal Languages and Critical Intercultural Awareness (2019, co-edited with M. Guilherme), ‘Decolonial Pedagogies’ (2019 Multilingual Margins), ‘De-universalizing the Decolonial’ (2021 with A. Duboc, Gragoatá).

Lynn Mario is a member of the editorial committees of the International journals Diaspora, Indigenous and Minority Education and Visual Communication. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Centre for Multilingualism, Oslo University, Norway and CCD’s third national research school CuEEd-LL at Jönköping University, Sweden. He is Co-Coordinator of the International Project: Think Tank: Rethinking Multilingualism and being Human, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town.

April 27-29, 2022

Conference

The 2022 GoPar Conference

Going beyond binary thinking: Dialogues for participation, communication and equity in contemporary societies

Between 27-29 April 2022 Jönköping University in Sweden will host the GoPar conference, an international event that aims to bring together academics and professional actors across sectors from across the world and Sweden to dialogue on issues of participation, communication and equity in contemporary societies. The Communication, Culture and Diversity (CCD) research environment (www.ju.se/ccd) and the Participation and Inclusion Think-Tank DoIT (www.ju.se/ccd/doit) are the organizers of the GoPar conference. The event will take place online, and will consist of workshops, panel discussions and keynote presentations.

More information can be found here: GoPar Conference website

May 3, 11 - 12 p.m.

11 a.m.-12 noon. Karin Ingeson, HLK

Zoom link:

May 5, 13 -14 p.m.

1-2 p.m. Stina-Karin Skillermark, HLK

Artikelutkastet Äldre litterära verk som litteraturserier. Om att skapa och omskapa mening med utgångspunkt i Lysistrate och En herrgårdssägensom skickas ut av susanne.smithberger@ju.se på begäran.

Zoom link:

May 5-6

Workshop

1st Exploratory Workshop on Ethics and Values in Educational Data-Driven Practices

Venue: VIA University College, Århus, Denmark

The project “Ethics and Values in educational data-driven practices: Conceptual, Methodological and Pragmatic Explorations” funded by the Swedish Vetenskapsrådet aims to explore useful concepts, methods, and interventions for researching ethics and values in data-driven education. It will consist of a blend of keynote presentations, paper presentations, and discussions among participants.

We have singled out a range of concepts that will be central for exploring ethics and values in educational data-driven practices. These are – but are not limited to: practices, care, imaginaries/imagination, aesthetics, and Bildung. The overall research question guiding the workshop is: Which concepts and notions support nuanced discussions about values reflected in emerging educational sociotechnical imaginaries?

More information: https://sites.google.com/view/1stexploratoryworkshop/home?authuser=0

May 20, 1 - 3 p.m. 

Peter De Costa, Department of Linguistics, Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages, Michigan State University (MSU)

Title: Unpacking Profit and Pride in EMI Higher Education: How Universities Manage this Precarious Balancing Act

In a neoliberal era marked by a global expansion of higher education, many Western based universities aggressively opened EMI satellite campuses in Asia and the Middle East. Inspired by profit and the need to chase the foreign tuition dollar, such expansionary efforts have met with different degrees of success. However, as world economic growth starts to recede and nationalist sentiments rise, we have witnessed a curtailing, and in some cases withdrawal, of these transnational endeavours. Adopting an ecological approach (Han, De Costa & Cui, 2019) to better understand this educational phenomenon, I investigate how English monolingual biases and an emergent interest and pride in local languages within several countries that have hosted joint venture foreign campuses have been negotiated. Specifically, I explore the ways in which different social actors – students, faculty and administrators – engage in complex identity work that often results in individuals being sorted and sieved according to the various levels of capital that they possess. These actors’ strategic policy and pedagogical decisions will also be unpacked against mounting internal pressures by governments to raise the standards of local universities in the face of stiff global university ranking competition.

Biography: Peter I. De Costa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics, Languages & Cultures and the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. His research areas include emotions, identity, ideology and ethics in educational linguistics. He also studies social (in)justice issues. He is the co-editor of TESOL Quarterly and the First Vice-President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL).

Please contact Susannne Smithberger (susanne.smithberger@ju.se) for reading.

Chair: Maria Bäcke, CCD, Jönköping University

May 30, 2 - 5 p.m.

Title: Short Presentations and Invitation to Dialogue

This internal seminar series event is aimed at all CCD members – new and old – to come and talk about research interests and listen to what other members are doing. The hybrid event will be both in English and in Swedish.