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SEIS Academic Forum Series （No.759）

Forum on Intercultural Studies

Can We Be ‘Good’ at Interculturality?

Speaker: Fred Dervin

Time: 10:00 am-12:00 pm

Date: October 30th, 2020

Venue: Tencent Online Meeting

(Conference code: 390185864, Password: 201030)

Abstract: In this lecture Prof. Dervin will explore the issue of ‘being (potentially) good at interculturality’. What would that entail? First of all, he argues that being ‘good’ at it does not mean that we have some knowledge about a given culture. Second, he offers a critique of the idea of intercultural competence, which often gives the illusion that we can assess students and decide if they are ‘good’ or not at interculturality. Such models of competence focus on the individual and ignore the construction of interculturality between interlocutors. Third, intersectionality is also introduced and critiqued as an alternative way of thinking about interculturality.

About the speaker: Fred Dervin is Professor of Multicultural Education at Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland. Prof. Dervin specializes in intercultural education, the sociology of multiculturalism and student and academic mobility. He has widely published in international journals on identity, the 'intercultural' and mobility/migration (over 100 articles and 50 books). Dervin is one of the most influential scholars and critical voices on intercultural communication education in Europe.