Research Colloquium: Silenced Voices: Diversity and Social Justice in Higher Education Call for Papers (invited scholars)

29-30 January 2015, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Conveners: Frans Kamsteeg (VUA/Organization Sciences, Amsterdam, Netherlands), André Keet (UFS, IRSJ, South Africa), and Charles Alexander (UCLA, Los Angeles, US).

Background

It is acknowledged, globally, that higher education institutions are complex organisations, with complicated systems and surfaces on which the intricate social dynamics amongst a growing body of heterogeneous peoples, knowledges and experiences, and between people and structures are played out. This heterogeneity is, at one and the same time the energy of and condition for the academic project, and, the major challenge to which universities have to respond. Nevertheless, universities have been hesitant in taking up this challenge, and tend to convert it into diversity management discourses, thus effectively silencing diversity. Working against this trend, the colloquium wants to contribute to critical studies on diversity in higher education that pursue  insightful, innovative, interpretive schemes on which bases more socially just academic policies and practices can emerge.

  

Comparison and interdisciplinary approach

This colloquium  will explore how scholars from various disciplines engage in studying the patterns of silenced voices that dovetails with a range of discriminatory categories, and differences. These studies may focus on curriculum, pedagogy, communication, organization and institutional culture.  We welcome contributions from engaged scholars who support comparative and interdisciplinary approach to share the results of their work, the way they disseminate their views and make them available to both the scientific and the broader community. The organizers – researchers from UFS, VUA, and UCLA – have joined forces in studying diversity in settings as different from one another as the Netherlands, South Africa and the USA.

Themes and proposals

We invite abstracts of no more than 400 words on one of the following themes:

1. Institutional culture

2. Students’ experiences.

3. Diversity strategies, policies and practices.

4. Inclusion and exclusion: HEIs as communities.

5. Transformation and human rights.

7. Situated identities: students, scholars, managers.

8. Researchers’ responsibilities

9. Teaching-learning and research

10. Migration studies

However, we also welcome contributions in other themes not mentioned here. Contributions may be theoretical, methodological, empirical and/or policy driven.

Organization and Outcomes

The colloquium is a co-effort between VU, Amsterdam, UFS, Bloemfontein, and UCLA, Los Angeles. It will be held at the VUA campus, Amsterdam, in cooperation with VUA Diversity Desk (Wim Haan).

The outcomes of the colloquium will be:

·       Sharing of and engagement with research papers

·       Peer collaboration and collaborative learning

·         An increased awareness of contemporary themes in diversity in higher education.

·       Special edition (journal) and/or edited compilation (book)

Deadline

Please submit your abstract ASAP (preferably before 1.12.2014) to: keeta@ufs.ac.za, frans.kamsteeg@vu.nl and CAlexander@college.ucla.edu

Keynote speakers at the Colloquium will be:

Melissa Steyn

Professor of Critical Diversity Studies

Wits Centre for Diversity Studies (WiCDS)

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

M. Belinda Tucker

Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

Vice Provost, Institute of American Cultures

University of California, Los Angeles

Karen van Oudenhoven-v.d. Zee

Professor of Intercultural Competence

Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences

VU University Amsterdam