CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Beyond and besides language/s: Intercultural communication and creative practice
Special Issue of Language and Intercultural Communication
Guest Editors:
Lou Harvey, University of Leeds
Gameli Tordzro, University of Glasgow
This special issue explores the relationship between creative practice and the teaching, research and understanding of communication in intercultural settings. In recent years an emerging body of intercultural work engaging arts-based methodology has problematised the role of language in communicating, knowing and being (e.g. Bradley et al. 2018; Frimberger et al. 2018; Harvey, McCormick and Vanden 2019), its relationships with other modes of communication and other human and non-human actors (Thurlow 2016; Pennycook 2018), and analysed artistic research and production processes as communication (Andrews et al. 2020; Harvey 2018, 2020; Tordzro 2018, 2019). This research has engaged innovatively and productively with ongoing and urgent concerns in the field relating to de-essentialising (MacDonald and O’Regan 2013; Ferri 2018; MacDonald 2019); decolonising (Phipps 2013, 2019); and research methodology, relationships and ethics (Holliday and MacDonald 2019; Bradley and Harvey 2019). This special issue invites contributors to consider the role of communication in relation to creative practice in intercultural settings (broadly defined), to further engage with these concerns at the levels of ontology and epistemology, and to consider the implications for social justice and knowledge democracy.
Aims of the special issue
The special issue will consider how creative practice in intercultural settings can contribute to more complex understandings of communication; how these can de-essentialise and decolonise research and practice in the field; and how to do so in methodologically responsive, responsible and ethical ways. The issue will ask:
How does intercultural work engaging with creative practice
- account for communication, voice, and learning beyond and besides language/s theoretically, methodologically and analytically?
- destabilise recognised boundaries, binaries, and modes of difference?
- engage with questions of (onto-)epistemology, ethics, justice, and knowledge democracy?
Contributions
We invite contributions about research and practice working with creative modes in intercultural settings which address any or all of the above questions. In particular, we aim to engage less-heard voices and knowledges in intercultural research, from contributors from the Global South and beyond the academy. To this end, we are flexible about length, focus, and mode of contributions, which may be empirical, theoretical or methodological in focus, and/or practice-led, co-produced, engaged, and collaborative research written with practitioners, partners and participants. Potential contributors are invited to contact us with their idea before submission.
Timeline
Please send abstracts of up to 500 words to the editors, Lou Harvey L.T.Harvey@leeds.ac.uk, and Gameli Tordzro meligkt@googlemail.com, by 4 May 2020.
The provisional timeline is then as follows:
Submission acceptance notification: 31 May 2020
Deadline for first full draft: 31 January 2021
Deadline for final draft: 30 June 2021
Date of publication: Autumn 2021
Contributions should be no more than 8000 words in total (including references and appendices).
Please feel free to circulate this call around your networks.
About the editors
Lou Harvey is an education researcher specialising in learning at the intersection of language and the arts, particularly in intercultural, public engagement and post-conflict contexts. She has led and worked on several projects engaging with intercultural education and the arts in the UK and South Africa funded by SRHE, AHRC, HEFCE and GCRF. Lou is co-founder and co-convenor of the AILA Creative Inquiry and Applied Linguistics Research Network, and leads the international AHRC Research Network Communicating the Unsayable: Learning at the Intersection of Language and the Arts. She has collaborated with arts practitioners and third-sector organisations and has produced several publications on intercultural learning and creative practice.
Gameli Tordzro is a multi-arts professional and scholar. His research focuses on Creative Arts and Translating Cultures looking at arts as language in migration. His practice research features in the AHRC funded Researching Multilingually at The Borders of the Body, law and The State. (RM Borders), and the UKRI GCRF South-South Migration Inequality and Development Hub (MiDEQ). Tordzro has worked and developed several projects in Ghana, Denmark and the UK as an educator, broadcaster, Composer and Theatre director. In 2015 he was nominated and won the Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland. (Music and Sound Category) for his work on Kai Fischer’s theatre production ‘Last Dream On Earth’. He is the founder and composer/director of Ha Orchestra (www.haorchestra.org) and the editor in chief of the international Poetry network AdinkraLinks Network (www.adinkralinks.net) and the Adinkra Series. He has also directed and produced several research documentary films.
