The aims of the Roskilde International Summer School are threefold: 1. to help students grasp and critically engage with the notions of identity and interculturality and see how they are related; 2. to get to know various research methods that can help students to work within cultural and social complexity; 3. 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.

*** 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@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@ruc.dk

See also the website of the Summer School:

http://magenta.ruc.dk/cuid/uddannelser/phd_interkulturelle_studier/summer_school_2011/