Local Cultures – Global Spaces
Abstract
In an increasingly global and mobile world, universities adopt different paths to meeting the challenges of internationalisation and accommodating increasingly diverse populations, and intercultural encounters and strategies for managing difference take on local patterns and specificities. In this context, higher education institutions are simultaneously both global and local spaces, open to intensifying international flows of people and knowledge, while locally rooted and nationally accountable. Our interest is in how these two spheres meet and interrelate, what intercultural opportunities and experiences, challenges and obstacles emerge. For while the expansion of higher education to include diverse populations promises to lead the way to greater intercultural inclusivity and social equity, challenges for institutions remain, notably in understanding and managing their diversities for the benefit of all. On the understanding that these challenges are experienced in different ways in different (institutional and geographical) contexts, we have focused our attention on three higher education institutions – in Brazil and Portugal – and three contexts of intercultural encounter. Using interviews and focus groups to map the specificities of the interculturality experienced by students in distinct higher education contexts, we hope to shed light on the interplay between factors such as nationality, ethnicity, and language, and the importance of learning spaces and other spaces of encounter, in the development of intercultural exchange and dialogue.
Gillian Moreira is Assistant Professor at the Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Aveiro (UA), Portugal. She holds a PhD in Culture and teaches in the areas of English and (Inter)cultural Studies. A full member of the Research Centre for Languages Literatures and Cultures (CLLC-UA), and coordinator of the project Globalization and Identities, her research interests focus on: interculturality and identity, globalisation and mobility, internationalisation and Higher Education.
Susana Abrantes is Professor of Anthropology in undergraduate and graduate courses in Humanities and Anthropology at Ceará, Brazil, Master and PhD in Social Anthropology at National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (PPGAS-MN-UFRJ), Brazil.
Célia Zeri Oliveira is an adjunct professor of Portuguese teaching and learning at the Institute of Communication and Arts at the Federal University of Para. Her research includes teacher training and professional development, literacies and multiliteracies, interculturality, and the training of readers from a historical-cultural perspective. She holds a master’s degree in Applied Linguistics and a PhD in Language and Culture from the University of Aveiro/Portugal. She has also completed a post-doctoral internship at the Coimbra University, Faculty of Arts. She currently coordinates the research group “Literacies, identities, and diversities” (UFPA/CNPq).
Anabela V. Simões is Associate Professor at the University of Aveiro (UA), where she teaches Languages for Specific Purposes and Intercultural Communication. Currently, she is the Coordinator of the Languages Scientific Division at the School of Technology and Management, UA. She holds a PhD in Culture Studies and is a full member of the Research Centre for Languages, Literatures and Cultures (UA). Her main research interests lie in the fields of language teaching & learning, intercultural communication and key competences development.