International Centre for Intercultural Studies

Director: Professor Zhu Hua 
Deputy Director: Professor John O’Regan

The centre promotes intellectually rigorous, practically relevant and interdisciplinary intercultural studies that advance understanding of the role of culture in society, education and communication and inform intercultural practices and policies.

About us

Aims

The centre aims to:

• Push new frontiers of the field of Intercultural Studies through interdisciplinary collaboration and methodological innovations.
• Promote a critical approach to understanding the role of culture in society, education and communication.
• Develop a critical mass of inquiry in researching and teaching culture, and in particular, foreground the research strand of language learning /language use and intercultural communication.
• Develop international networks through affiliated learned societies, joint projects, seminars, networking activities, conferences, student exchanges and programme partnerships.
• Upscale lessons and rich insights gathered from our language education and intercultural education and disseminate good practices through research projects, briefings and engagement activities. 
• Engage with and influence national and international language-in-education policy and debates on intercultural collaboration and exchange. 

Background

The centre was originally founded as the Centre for Multicultural Education by the late Professor Jagdish Gundara in 1979. Its focus on intercultural education and the study of diversity, equity and social justice remains as one of the key strands of the current activities of the centre.

Our links

UNESCO (United Nations Educational Social and Cultural Organisation)

In 2000 UNESCO invited Professor Gundara to take up the title of UNESCO Chair in Intercultural Studies and Teacher Education. In 2012 UNESCO renewed Professor Gundara’s tenure of the UNESCO Chair for a further five years until 2017. An interview with Professor Jagdish Gundara is available at the UNESCO archives. 

International Association for Intercultural Education (IAIE)

The IAIE is a worldwide network of professionals working in the field of intercultural studies and intercultural education. In 2013 the Secretary General of the International Association for Intercultural Education (IAIE), Dr Leslie Bash, brought the Headquarters of the IAIE into the International Centre for Intercultural Studies (ICIS) at IOE.

Through dialogue with sister networks with national or regional remits and located in other parts of the world such as: National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) in the USA, the Korean Association for Multicultural Education (KAME), and other national and regional networks in the field such as Interkultura, the IAIE has become a co-operative hub across the world of networks in the field.

This enables the IAIE and the ICIS in IOE to disseminate effectively to teacher education and development programmes in almost all countries of the world the principles and practices of quality practices in intercultural studies.

Our staff

Director: Professor Zhu Hua 
Deputy Director: Professor John O’Regan

Core members

• Souad Boumechaal
• Verna Brandford
• Emma Brooks
• Katharine Carruthers
• Silvia Colaiacomo
• David Wei Dai
• Fotini Diamantidaki
• Giuliana Ferri
• Karen Hanrahan
• Aine McAllister
• John O’Regan
• Matt Schofield
• Camilla Smith
• Victor Wu
• Wei Jin
• Xiaoming Zhu 
• Zhu Hua

Affiliated members

• Abdul Aziz Bin Arsyad 
• Leslie Bash
• Jeff Bezemer
• Andrea Chai
• Jorge Diaz-Cintas
• Tinghe Jin
• Terri Kim 
• Phan Le Ha
• Li Wei
• Miguel Pérez-Milans
• Panagiotis Rentzelas
• Andrea Revesz
• Cristina Ros i Solé
• Hugh Starkey
• Xiruo Tang
• Ruanni Tupas
• Wang Yibei
• Tony Young

Our activities

Research

Some examples of new and current research agendas include: 

• What is culture? Who talks about culture and for what purpose? How are cultural differences socially or discursively constructed?
• What do ‘cross-cultural’, ‘intercultural’ and ‘transcultural’ mean? What implications do these different paradigms have for policy and practice?
• What do globalisation, migration, changing geopolitics and the Covid pandemic mean for Intercultural Studies?
• What role does culture have in language learning and developing learners’ outlook and identity?
• What role does language and intercultural learning and understanding have in equalising opportunities for individuals of diverse backgrounds across their lifespan and for marginalised groups?
• What role do intercultural learning and global citizenship play in language education and education in general? How are these concepts contested? What opportunities do they present in the post-Covid world?
• What roles do symbolic power, institutional power, corporate power, economic power, political power, the power of monolingual ideologies, and capitalist governmentality play in intercultural communication and intercultural practices?
• How can Intercultural Studies contribute to the decolonisation agenda in education and society?
• What are the perks and perils of intercultural encounters mediated through digital technology (e.g., Zoom, Twitter, Facebook, online blogs)?
• How do language, identity and culture interact and impact on each other?
• What methodological innovations does interculturality bring to Intercultural Studies?

Seminars

Upcoming events

20 November 2024, 5:00 pm–6:00 pm

• Assessing interactional competence: Book launch

Past events

• Using Conversation Analysis in the development of an AI clinical assistant
• Making a difference: Understanding the role of culture in education and society
• Intercultural Communication: From binary models to personality indices
• A study to advance gender equality in Higher Education in India

If you are interested in learning more about our events, sign up to our mailing list.

In conversation with

In conversation with is an event series hosted by the International Centre for Intercultural Studies in which eminent scholars, researchers and practitioners engage in open conversations with a member of the Centre and audiences about intercultural studies and practice.

Events in the series

21 February 2024, 4 - 5:30pm

• Neo-essentialism and epistemic inequality: Critical perspectives in intercultural communication

05 December 2023, 11:30 am - 12:30pm

• Interactional competence in intercultural communication

11 May 2023, 4 - 5pm

• In conversation with Dr Jennifer Eddy

Project and partnerships

• Towards a vision statement for Languages and Culture
• National Consortium for Languages Education (NCLE)

Programmes

• Intercultural Communication MA

Blogs

On the IOE Student Blog:

• Intercultural studies’ role in the quest for a place to belong

Contact us

International Centre for Intercultural Studies
Department of Culture, Communication and Media
IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society
University College London
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL