An interview with Barbara Covarrubias Venegas, university lecturer and president of SIETAR Austria What started your interest in intercultural issues? My interest began when, as a student in Austria, I went to Chile for a semester. By then I’d already spent a year studying in Milan and a summer working in Barcelona, but somehow those […]
What started your interest in intercultural issues? The experiences of my early childhood were those of being the cultural “other.” Upon the partition of India in 1947, my parents migrated from their province (which is now in Pakistan) to South India. Not sharing the same regional language or customs as my peers from South India […]
This was the theme of the talk Linda Vignac, President of SIETAR France, and I recently gave at the University of Bourgogne’s ‘Career Opportunities in the Intercultural Sector’ seminar. The audience were participants in the Master of Arts in Intercultural Management program, plus their course leader Alex Frame; interculturalist George Simons; other presenters, including Dr […]
Most of us work, play and communicate with people from many different places, age groups, family backgrounds, schools, jobs, etc. Does this diversity make you curious? It should! Curiosity is the first step towards accepting other people’s views, experiences, preferences etc. But it is not sufficient. The issue at stake is in fact efficiency, not […]
When I started my Masters in Intercultural Communications, I learnt that I would also be able to use my journalistic skills in the intercultural field. At that time, I wasn’t sure how I would do this, but as the course progressed and I started qualitative interviews for my master thesis, I found the answer. The […]
Egypt, the most populous Arab country in a region undergoing violent upheaval, is facing major challenges on multiple levels. Egypt is “a country at war with itself”, says the Guardian review of “Clash,” the opening film at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. As brutal as it sounds, this statement rings absolutely true. Observing Egyptian society […]
As cross-cultural trainers, one of the hardest things we do is provide our clients with useful guidelines to Swiss culture and behavior without peddling mere stereotypes. Clare O’Dea’s new book, The Naked Swiss: A Nation behind Ten Myths, achieves the same difficult balance. Using a set of clichés as a jumping-off point, O’Dea examines political […]
German interculturalist Sven Dinklage, who has lived in Brazil since 1998, noticed that intercultural sensitivity could be improved in the society as a whole, perhaps most importantly in the country’s hotel and tourism sector. Brazil’s tourism professionals are highly motivated and good willed, always ready to offer a generous smile to tourists. But their lack […]
Located in Bienne, cinfo (www.cinfo.ch) is the center for information, counseling, and education for professionals planning to start a career or already active in the sector of international humanitarian aid, development cooperation, promotion of human rights and peace-building. We support our organizations and our individual customers by providing them with relevant information, tailor-made services in […]
How do you teach a group of students a language, from scratch, when they don’t share a common tongue with you or each other, and they come from vastly different parts of the world? For many migrants to Switzerland, learning the local language is essential in order to integrate, find work, and make new lives […]
