September 17–20, 2020 | Held online from Barcelona, Spain
Welcome to The Barcelona Conference on Arts, Media & Culture held in partnership with the University of Barcelona, Spain.
IAFOR is very excited to be returning to the vibrant city of Barcelona, and continuing our relationship with the University. Barcelona is one of Europe’s most diverse and exciting cities, that has long been at the intersection of different cultures, religions, languages and peoples. Its rich intellectual and artistic traditions have made the city the home to writers, visionaries, artists and dissidents of all backgrounds. It continues to be a place where ideas and ideologies jostle for position, conservatism and change, a place of questioning and subversion; high, low, popular culture and counterculture. As a city it has embraced difference and been forced to embrace difference like few others, and its long history and its present attest to, and contextualise questions of independence, globalisation and belonging, as issues driven by regionalism, nationalism and ethnocentrism play out in the city’s political arenas.
Barcelona is therefore an excellent venue to explore the IAFOR2020 conference theme of “Embracing Difference”, and this conference, held alongside a parallel event in Education, will invite scholars, academics and practitioners to come together from around the world to exchange ideas and invite research collaborations that will be all the richer for exploring, embracing and celebrating our differences.
Inspiring Global Research Collaborations
IAFOR's unique global platform facilitates discussion around specific subject areas, with the goal of generating new knowledge and understanding, forging and expanding new international, intercultural and interdisciplinary research networks and partnerships. We have no doubt that BAMC2020 will offer a remarkable opportunity for the sharing of research and best practice and for the meeting of people and ideas.
Dr Susan Ballyn
University of Barcelona, Spain Dr Katy Campbell
University of Alberta, Canada Dr Leandro Loyola
De La Salle University, Philippines Dr Leonardo Munalim
Philippine Women's University, Philippines Dr Grace Okechukwu
Federal College of Education (Technical), Umunze, Nigeria Dr Elena Polyudova
Defense Language Institute, United States
Reviewers
Dr Victoria Baker
Frontier Nursing University, United States Dr Ingrid Bartels
Han University of Applied Sciences (UAS), Netherlands Dr Zinka Bejtic
American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates Professor José Carneiro
University of Porto, Portugal Dr Jude Emelifeonwu
University of Brighton, United Kingdom Dr Harumi Kashiwagi
Kobe University, Japan Dr Breda McTaggart
Institute of Technology, Ireland Dr Eliana Penedos-Santiago
Id+ / University of Porto, Portugal Dr Birgit Phillips
University Graz and Burgenland University of Applied Sciences, Austria Dr Luis Pires
University Rey Juan Carlos, Spain Professor Nagayuki Saito
International Professional University Of Technology in Tokyo, Japan Dr Yildirim Uysal
Bursa Uludag University, Turkey
Dr Isabel Alonso-Breto obtained her PhD from the University of Barcelona in 2003, where she is currently a Senior Lecturer. A scholar in the area of Postcolonial Studies, she has worked on authors of Caribbean, Canadian, Indian and South-African origin, while her present research focusses on literature and life writing by Sri Lankan authors, mostly of the diaspora. A visiting scholar in recent years at the Universities of Toronto (Canada) and Marburg (Germany), Dr Alonso-Breto has been the guest editor of several issues of academic journals such as Coolabah and Indialogs, and is the general editor of the miscellaneous journal Blue Gum. Also interested in the social role of creative writing and translation, she has several pieces to her credit in this regard. Lately she has translated into Spanish the anthology Siembra solo Palabras, by Sri Lankan Tamil poet Cheran, published in 2019. Dr Alonso-Breto is a member of Ratnakara, a research group devoted to the study of the literatures and cultures of the Indian Ocean, and the Vice-Director of the Centre for Australian and Transnational Studies at the University of Barcelona.
Interview Session (2021) | Brexit, Borders and the Gibraltarian Voice: a Conversation With M.G.Sanchez
Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio is a researcher, writer, editor and curator working across different disciplines, territories and cultures. He holds an International PhD in “Art History, Theory and Criticism” from the University of Barcelona. He is currently teaching in different Universities and academic programmes: he is coordinator of the Postgraduate course on International Cultural Cooperation at the University of Barcelona and faculty member and core advisor at Transart Institute (NY-Berlin-Liverpool).
His current lines of investigation involve the subjects of intercultural processes, participation, collaboration, travelling, globalization and mobility in contemporary arts and cultural policies, art in public space and the cultural cooperation between different world regions. As an art critic, editor and independent curator he collaborates with international organisations and institutions and writes extensively for several international magazines. He co-authored publications such as “Art in Context. Learning from the field”, “Art and Mobility, “Walking Art / Walking Aesthetics”, among others, and curated projects and exhibitions like “Utopian Tomorrow”, “The Artist and the Stone”, “Minus Ego”, “Cyclic Journey” and several solo shows with international artists. He collaborated as Editorial contributor at Culture360 – Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF); was Managing Editor at ELSE – Transart Institute, and is co-founder of the Platform for Contemporary Art and Thought, InterArtive.
Stephen Copland studied at the National Art School, Sydney (1969-1972), in 1988 he was awarded a Graduate Diploma in Education (University of Technology Sydney) and a Masters of Fine Art, University of New South Wales (1995). In 2013 he completed a Doctorate of Creative Arts from Wollongong University.
His Migration Series 1992-2002, a project of international exhibitions earned him a Commendation Award from the Consulate General of Lebanon (1999). He is the recipient of a Migration Heritage Grant, an International Programs Grant – NSW Ministry for the Arts, a Vermont Studio Center Grant and was awarded in 2011 the Moya Dyring Studio, Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris AGNSW.
He is the founder of the Migration as Art Museum, an archive of visual ethnography developed over two decades that explores forms of identity, place and migration. Copland has developed innovative programs of migration and heritage education with an emphasis on the study of works of art that engages with interdisciplinary, philosophical and ethical discourse.
In 2016 Copland was invited to present a paper about the museum at ICOM 24th General Conference/Museums and Cultural Landscapes/Milano, Italy.
The artist was selected for the Juror’s Choice at Art Venice Biennale 1V San Marco Salizada Malipiero Venice, and Liquid Rooms—The Labyrinth Palazzo Ca’ Zanardi, Venice . 2017.
More recently Copland 2018 presented a paper at EASA Biennial Conference “Nationalism Old and New: Europe, Australia and their Others” He also exhibited in the exhibition “Otherings” Curated by Fiona Fell and Jaume de Cordoba, University of Barcelona.
Following this the artist conducted a 3-day workshop in conjunction with his Migration as Art Museum at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts, Turin Italy. The Academy of Turin is one of the oldest in Italy. In recent years the Albertina Academy has been transformed and renewed, promoting countless didactic and cultural activities.
In 2019 Copland accepted an invitation to attend the Diaspora in Action conference (https://www.lde-leb.com/) and exhibit artworks from his The Migration Series (1992-2002) at the amazing Diaspora Museum, Batroun (http://www.al-mohajer.com/social.php?id=29&lng=en). Recently his video work "Drifting through Data" was selected for exhibition at the 2nd Biennale of Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. Alita/Byblos, Lebanon.
Dr Nuria Fuentes-Peláez is a Professor at the Faculty of Education at the University of Barcelona. Currently, she is teaching and researching in the Department of Research Methods and Diagnosis in Education. Her teaching is mainly in the degree of Social Education and in the Master on social and educative interventions where she is the Coordinator of the Master´s Thesis.
She is the head of the research group GRISIJ (Socio Research Group Interventions in Children and Youth). She is a member of various scientific associations and international networks (AIFREF, AIDIPE, APFEL, Foster Care Research Network). Her research is related to child protection, children's welfare systems and family education, especially with regard to foster care and adoption, and mainly using action research orientation. Her research interest has led her to address different issues such as kinship and non-kinship foster care, birth-family interventions, child participation, resilience and socio-educational training and support programs (design, implementation and evaluation).
She has led and participated in several research projects and notably three projects in which she is currently involved: “Keys for the articulation of socio-educational group programs in the foster care and family reunification processes”, funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of Spain, “The perspective of foster carers and fostered children to face the challenges of foster care” funded by the The Catalan Government and supported by the La Caixa Foundation, and “Growing in Family Today” funded by the European Union. Publications include contributions in various educational and support programs (addressed to foster care and adoptive families, as well as families in vulnerable situations, biological families), book chapters and scientific articles.
Donald E. Hall is Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering at the University of Rochester, USA. Prior to moving to Rochester, he was Dean of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University, USA. Dean Hall has published widely in the fields of British Studies, Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, and Professional Studies. Over the course of his career, he served as Jackson Distinguished Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English (and previously Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages) at West Virginia University. Before that, he was Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge, where he taught for 13 years. He is a recipient of the University Distinguished Teaching Award at CSUN, was a visiting professor at the National University of Rwanda, was Lansdowne Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria (Canada), was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, and was Fulbright Specialist at the University of Helsinki. He has also taught in Sweden, Romania, Hungary, and China. He served on numerous panels and committees for the Modern Language Association (MLA), including the Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, and the Convention Program Committee. In 2012, he served as national President of the Association of Departments of English. From 2013-2017, he served on the Executive Council of the MLA.
His current and forthcoming work examines issues such as professional responsibility and academic community-building, the dialogics of social change and activist intellectualism, and the Victorian (and our continuing) interest in the deployment of instrumental agency over our social, vocational, and sexual selves. Among his many books and editions are the influential faculty development guides, The Academic Self and The Academic Community, both published by Ohio State University Press. Subjectivities and Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies were both published by Routledge Press. Most recently he and Annamarie Jagose, of the University of Auckland, co-edited a volume titled The Routledge Queer Studies Reader. Though he is a full-time administrator, he continues to lecture worldwide on the value of a liberal arts education and the need for nurturing global competencies in students and interdisciplinary dialogue in and beyond the classroom.
Professor Donald E. Hall is a Vice-President of IAFOR. He is Chair of the Arts, Humanities, Media & Culture division of the International Academic Advisory Board.
Emilienne Malfatto
Documentary Photographer
Biography
Emilienne Malfatto is an independent documentary photographer. She focuses on post-conflict and social issues, especially in Iraq, developing long-term projects that allow her to have depth and closeness with her subjects.
She studied in France and Colombia and graduated from Sciences Po Paris. She then joined Agence France Presse (AFP) and worked in France and in the Middle East. In early 2015 she moved to northern Iraq as a freelancer. She now works mostly in Iraq, with occasional reporting in Latin America and elsewhere.
Emilienne's work has been exhibited internationally and featured by The Washington Post, The New York Times’ Lens blog, UNESCO, MSF and Le Monde, among others.
Novelist, playwright and poet Gloria Montero grew up in a family of Spanish immigrants in Australia’s North Queensland. After studies in theatre and music, she began to work in radio and theatre, and then moved to Canada where she continued her career as an actress, singer, writer, broadcaster, scriptwriter and TV interviewer.
Co-founder of the Centre for Spanish-Speaking Peoples in Toronto (1972), she served as its Director until 1976. Following the success of her oral history The Immigrants (1973) she was invited to act as Consultant on Immigrant Women to the Multicultural Department of the Secretary of State, Government of Canada.
She organised the international conferences "Amnistia" (1970) and "Solidaridad" (1974) in Toronto to support and make known the democratic Spain that was developing in the last years of the Franco dictatorship, and in 1976 at Bethune College, York University, "Spain 1936-76: The Social and Cultural Aftermath of the Spanish Civil War".
With her husband, filmmaker David Fulton, she set up Montero-Fulton Productions to produce documentary films on social, cultural and ecological themes. Their film, Crisis in the Rain, on the effects of acid rain, won the Gold Camera Award American Film Festival 1982. Montero was consultant-interviewer on Dreams and Nightmares (A-O Productions, California) about Spain under Franco, a film that won international awards in Florence, Moscow, Leipzig and at the American Film Festival 1975.
Among her many radio documentaries for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation are: The Music of Spain – a series of 18 hours which presented Spanish music within a social and historical framework; Segovia: the man and his music — a 2-hour special (Signature); Women and the Law (Ideas); Foreign Aid: Hand-out or Rip-Off (Ideas).
Since 1978 Montero has been living in Barcelona, where she has continued to write and publish novels such as The Villa Marini, All Those Wars and Punto de Fuga. Her poem Les Cambres was printed with a portfolio of prints by artist Kouji Ochiai (Contratalla 1983). A cycle of prose poems, Letters to Janez Somewhere in Ex-Yugoslavia, provided the basis for collaboration with painter Pere Salinas in a highly successful exhibition at Barcelona's Galería Eude (1995).
She won the 2003 NH Premio de Relato for Ménage à Trois, the first time the Prize was awarded for a short story in English.
Well known among her theatre work is the award-winning Frida K., which has toured Canada, played New York and Mexico and has been mounted in productions in Spain, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden and Latvia.
Baden Offord holds the Dr Haruhisa Handa Chair of Human Rights, is a Research Professor in Cultural Studies and Human Rights, and is Director of the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University. An internationally recognized specialist in human rights, sexuality, culture and education, he works across Australian, Cultural and Asian Studies. His work includes the co-authored book Inside Australian Culture: Legacies of Enlightenment Values (Anthem, London: 2015); Towards Inanition: Diminishing the Humanities, Communications and Arts at Our Peril (2020) and "Beyond our Nuclear Engagement: love, nuclear pain and the whole damn thing." Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 22 (3): 17-25. (2017). He is an Adjunct Professor at Southern Cross University, and has previously been a Visiting Professor at the University of Barcelona and also Chair (Visiting Professor) in Australian Studies in the Centre for Pacific and American Studies at the University of Tokyo.
Professor Offord is a member of IAFOR’s Academic Governing Board. He is Chair of the Cultural & Area Studies section of the International Academic Advisory Board.
Dr Cornelis Martin Renes graduated from the University of Barcelona with a BA in 2001, an MA in 2006 and PhD in 2010. He joined the English and German Philology staff in 2001. His main teaching areas have been English poetry from the Renaissance to contemporary times, and postcolonial studies with a special emphasis on the Asia-Pacific area and Australia in particular. He wrote his thesis on indigenous Australian literature and identity formation. He co-directs the Australian Studies Centre at the university, which was recognised as an official University of Barcelona Centre in 2000. Since the 2000s his main area of research has been indigenous Australian literature, and more recently he has become a member of a research project, POCRIF, which looks at postcolonial crime fiction and is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education. He currently holds the positions of Adjunct Lecturer, Co-Director of the Australian Studies Centre at the University of Barcelona, and Member of the EASA (European Association for Studies of Australia) Board. He maintains steady contact with Australian academia through visiting fellowships.
John Ryan is an independent scholar and educator. From 2011-2019 he was Head Teacher English in New South Wales Secondary Education and currently works for Western Australia Distance Education. He has published widely in the fields of cultural studies, social justice and education, and in 2018 he was a visiting fellow at the Centre for Australian and Transnational Studies, University of Barcelona. John’s interdisciplinary research focuses on connecting critical and creative pedagogy and cultural theory to matters of marginalization, inclusion and diversity.
From the dizzying heights of what Malcolm Gladwell calls the magic moment when an element crosses a threshold and takes hold causing everything to change, the message is clear. Just last year, in an international IAFOR conference in Tokyo considering how we might reclaim the future we assumed the answer to the apocryphal “Knock, Knock, Who's There?” to be someone warning us we had only a short time left to make the necessary changes to combat global warming, Artificial Intelligence, biological change, gender problems or whatever other catastrophe to our way of living. Now, a year later, having witnessed a continent in flames, thousands of animal species destroyed and seen gender and racist messages brought to a head, we have been stopped in our tracks by a virulent pandemic. As governments decreed the confinement and lockdown deemed necessary to confront the lethal virus, each one of us has been forced to question the most private aspects of ourselves and our fears. Epidemiologists proffer contrasting theories of how the virus will evolve, conspiracy advocates paint dire pictures that offer no solution and entire countries attempt to balance the immediate problems of public health and the economy. Statistics enumerate the schools closed, companies forced out of business, theatres, cinemas, museums closed tight, millions out of work. To keep safe we're told to keep our distance, wear masks, protect ourselves from each other. We feel abandoned. We wonder where the future has gone. Although some scientists continue to insist there's still a chance to make a change, the apocryphal voice answering our knock has now made it clear. We've run out of time, even to celebrate and embrace the differences that have inevitably made our collectives richer and more diverse. We must now recognise ourselves and each other for what we are – human creatures made up of energy, much more similar than different despite skin colours, ethnicity or even gender... interdependent with the flora and fauna of the planet and even, cosmophysicists assure us, with the elements of our universe. The universal consciousness implied is hardly new but was already known by Greco-Roman philosophers. Accepting this proven interrelation makes it easier to understand how every action – in the way we deal with each other, in our work, in what we write and teach, as consumers and citizens – has an impact on our world. Enough of us consciously making an ethical impact might well be our only hope for a conceivable future we are able to live with. But TIME'S UP... If we are going to make a change, we must do it now.
Utopia Depends on a U-turn: Intertextuality, New Writing and Educating for Diversity
Keynote Presentation: John Ryan
This paper explores the question: when we bring literature to life through acts of reading, are we merely imagining that connections exist between the two domains: life and reading? Existentialists have ascribed human life to be a swirling state of incoherence, a mash-up of fragments, random and raw, scratchings on stone and occasional flashes of fire in the deadwind of existence.
There are writers, artists and filmmakers who have made this ontological emptiness their subject. Some have made retellings of these stories their subject: Lucino Visconti’s film of Camus’ The Stranger and (more recently) Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation come to mind. Others have organised the raw material of everyday life into narratives to generate sense and meaning in the service of their work. They have made a literary ‘place’, rich with meaning take shape out of the utterly messy resource of lived experience. Perhaps it is this lack of purity in the relationship between life and literature that has prompted N. K. Jemisin to refer to ‘mere tolerance’ and ‘that grudging pittance of respect that is diversity’ in her recent collection of stories, How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? In Jemisin’s short story The Ones Who Stay and Fight (her response to Ursula LeGuin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas), the citizens of Um-Helat ‘are not naïve believers in good intentions as the solution to all ills.’ Words, written words, are not enough. To fight is to create a society that consciously faces, ‘without flinching’ as author Toni Morrison puts it, its own poisons; its tribalism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, greed, cruelty, anger and the excuse that any of these is natural.
Sessions titled "Writers in Conversation" belong to a long established format both in journalism, broadcasting and academia. The time allowed for the conversation allows both the writer in question and the interviewer to range over a wide selection of topics thus creating a good profile of both personalities.
In this session Isabel Alonso will be talking to writer Gloria Montero. Gloria Montero has a long trajectory as a writer of fiction, drama and poetry along with essays. Her most famous work is, of course, the play Frida K. Isabel Alonso has long been active in creative writing studies and is also a writer herself. Both have known each other for a long time and so we will be able to sit in on a wide ranging and fascinating conversation between the two. Prepare your arm-chairs!
Discussants:
Isabel Alonso-Breto, University of Barcelona, Spain
Gloria Montero, Novelist, Playwright & Poet, Spain
The Relevance of the Humanities and Arts in Uncertain Times
Keynote Presentation: Baden Offord
The humanities, arts and cultural studies have the potential to make us literate. They enable the human mind to contextualise and discover language(s) to connect lived experience with the wider social, cultural, scientific, economic, psychological and political worlds. In fact, the humanities and arts are more than enabling; they enrich and are essential to all our relations. But in these troubled times of pervasive and dominant pathologies of scientific, corporate, capitalist, militaristic and technocratic rationality, the humanities are being defunded, rejected and marginalized. Nothing could be more perilous at this pivotal time in the world. Global warming, the Covid-19 pandemic, a China–United States cold war, Black Lives Matter, a Great Depression 2020, displaced and dispossessed people, and rising suicide rates are just some of the immediate realities that can only be unflinchingly and qualitatively understood, questioned and critiqued through the humanities, arts and cultural studies.
In my presentation, I will argue that it is through studying the humanities that there exists the opportunity and imperative to self-examine, to become equipped to understand and investigate the challenging moral and ethical issues of our times. The humanities provide the creative, ludic and critical intellectual space to engage with the complexities of being. They offer windows into other ways of knowing and ways of being; they provide the tools for cultural encounters with difference; and they shake up realities to make them apposite. I will argue that such things are learned through the energies and efforts of philosophy, history, literature, religion, art, music, media, cultural studies and language — and we ignore them at our own peril. Now, as we witness the eruption of the Black Lives Matter movement reverberating and resonating around the planet, we can observe the power of how lived experience, in this case derived from the historical and contemporary effects of colonialism, slavery and the subjugation of people based on race, upends the status quo and calls into question the very conditions in which we live, and to what extent we are complicit through our privilege and/or ignorance. Such questions are only possible through critical thinking, dissent and protest, seen in the ground and vitality of the humanities, arts and cultural studies. Nothing could be more relevant in uncertain and troubled times.
Panel Presentation: Emilienne Malfatto, Stephen Copland, Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio & Martin Renes
This plenary round table brings together three Western professionals from related yet different backgrounds: art history and theory; visual and media art; and documentary and art photography respectively. This multidisciplinary arts plenary was proposed upon Emilienne Malfatto’s reception of the IAFOR Documentary Photography Award for her 2019 photo-journalistic project on Iraqi children, which comments on the discursive regimes of gender, race, class, and religion that inform the contact between East and West, the old Imperial Metropole and its margins, the European Self and non-European Other. These were eloquently addressed in Edward Said’s postcolonial writings on the academic practice and material effects of Orientalism, which offered a deconstructive, post-structuralist critique of Western identity and allowed for its reconstruction in terms of cultural diversity. Now, four decades after the publication of his foundational study, we are once again confronted with an essentialist, exclusionary Fortress Europe that closes its borders to the Other, and we wonder as to why, how to turn the tide, and how to “embrace difference” in the spirit of the conference theme. What role can art play in this debate? Does an image always speak louder than words? Is art’s mediation of meaning always for the better? By the hands of three experts in art, cultural exchange, identity, migration, globalization, the Mediterranean and the Near-East, this round table aims to tackle these questions so as to find productive interfaces that places “the work of art” in a wider political, sociological, geographical and cultural perspective.
Panellists
Emilienne Malfatto
Stephen Copland
Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio
Martin Renes (moderator)
Parenting Education Within Contexts of Vulnerability and Child Protection: Positive Parenting, Resilience and Vulnerability
Featured Presentation: Nuria Fuentes-Peláez
The purpose of this presentation is to reflect on parenting education in the context of child welfare and child protection from the perspective of two promising approaches, resilience and positive parenting. The family is the first context of socialisation for children and strengthening this is a priority if we are to avoid situations of social exclusion.
Parenting programmes help to empower parents as well as strengthening their parenting skills, thereby contributing to the construction of a form of parenting that is unique to their family but that is under the umbrella of children’s rights and child welfare. The development of positive parenting, together with the development of resilience, become protective or mitigating factors in situations of adversity, such as poverty or in prevention of abuse.
The experiments carried out by the research group GRISIJ (Grupo de investigación en intervenciones socioeducativas en la infancia y la juventud – Research group for social-educational interventions in childhood and adolescence) on the development and evaluation of parenting education within the framework of child protection and in situations of vulnerability, provide a good starting point for this reflection.
In light of evaluations of the educational programmes implemented, the participation in international projects, such as the GIFT Project (Growing in Family Today), and of society, which is becoming more and more diverse, we see the need to introduce a third point of reflection: diversity and how it is addressed in parenting programmes within the framework mentioned above.
Looking at the role of diversity in the context of educational programmes based on positive parenting and resilience may provide a platform to exchange perspectives to address a topic that is found within other areas of education.
Dr Isabel Alonso-Breto obtained her PhD from the University of Barcelona in 2003, where she is currently a Senior Lecturer. A scholar in the area of Postcolonial Studies, she has worked on authors of Caribbean, Canadian, Indian and South-African origin, while her present research focusses on literature and life writing by Sri Lankan authors, mostly of the diaspora. A visiting scholar in recent years at the Universities of Toronto (Canada) and Marburg (Germany), Dr Alonso-Breto has been the guest editor of several issues of academic journals such as Coolabah and Indialogs, and is the general editor of the miscellaneous journal Blue Gum. Also interested in the social role of creative writing and translation, she has several pieces to her credit in this regard. Lately she has translated into Spanish the anthology Siembra solo Palabras, by Sri Lankan Tamil poet Cheran, published in 2019. Dr Alonso-Breto is a member of Ratnakara, a research group devoted to the study of the literatures and cultures of the Indian Ocean, and the Vice-Director of the Centre for Australian and Transnational Studies at the University of Barcelona.
Interview Session (2021) | Brexit, Borders and the Gibraltarian Voice: a Conversation With M.G.Sanchez
Dr Sue Ballyn is the Founder and Honorary Director of the Centre for Australian and Transnational Studies Centre at the University of Barcelona from where she graduated with a BA in 1982. Her MA thesis on the writings of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes won the Faculty prize in 1983. In 1986 she won the Faculty prize again, this time for her PhD thesis on Australian Poetry, the first PhD on Australian Literature in Spain.
She joined the English and German Philology Department on graduation 1982 and has remained at the university ever since. In 1990 she founded the Australian Studies Program which was recognised as an official University of Barcelona Observatory - Studies Centre in 2000, known as CEA, Observatorio Centre d’Estudis Australians. It is the only Australian Studies Centre in Spain and one of the most active in Europe.
Over the last twenty-five years, Sue Ballyn’s research has been focused on foreign convicts transported to Australia, in particular Spanish, Portuguese, Hispanics and Sephardim, and she works closely with the Female Convicts Research Centre, Tasmania. She has published and lectured widely in the area, very often in collaboration with Professor Lucy Frost. May 25th 2018 will see the publication of a book on Adelaide de la Thoreza, a Spanish convict, written by herself and Lucy Frost.
More recently she has become involved in a project on ageing in literature DEDAL-LIT at Lleida University which in turn formed part of a European project on ageing: SIforAge. As part of this project she is working on Human Rights and the Elderly, an area she started to research in 1992. In 2020 a book of interviews with elderly women, with the working title Stories of Experience, will be published as a result of this project. These oral stories are drawn from field work she has carried out in Barcelona.
She was recently involved in a ministry funded Project, run out of the Australian Studies Centre and headed by Dr Bill Phillips, on Postcolonial Crime Fiction (POCRIF). This last project has inevitably intertwined itself with her work on convicts and Australia. Her present work focuses on Sephardi Jews in Asian diaspora, and the construction of ageing.
Montserrat Camps-Gaset
University of Barcelona, Spain
Biography
Montserrat Camps-Gaset (Barcelona 1958) graduated in Classical Philology at the University of Barcelona in 1980. Her MA thesis on Maleficent Women in Archaic and Classical Greece won the Faculty prize. In 1985, she read her PhD thesis on Ancient Greek Festivals. In 1982, she also graduated in Theology in Barcelona. In 1989, she became Senior Lecturer at the Barcelona University. In 1992 and 1993, she went to the University of Leipzig thanks to a special development program of the DAAD for East Germany universities.
Apart from Catalan and Spanish, her native tongues, she speaks English, French and German fluently, has a good knowledge of Italian and Modern Greek and a basic level of Russian.
Her main interests are Mythology, First Christianism, Early Byzantine authors, and Classical Tradition. Her interests include folklore, women studies and national identity.
She has translated many works from Greek, German and Modern Greek into Catalan. She is currently working on the Catalan edition of Plato’s Laws in four volumes, and on a Catalan version of the Corpus Hermeticum. She has also translated books for children and youngsters from English and German into Catalan and Spanish. In 2013, she taught a Seminar on Literary Translation at the University of Leipzig.
She has published a book in French on Ancient Greek Festivals, and papers on Ancient Greek Religion, Women Studies, Mythology and EarlyChristianism, as well as Classical Tradition in modern writers. In 1998, she published a book of poetry.
At Barcelona University, she has been Head of the Greek Department (2001-2004) and Dean of the Philological Faculty (2004-2008), and has participated on the University Board for many years.
She is a member of several societies for Classical Studies and for Literature, such as the Catalan Pen Club.
Since 2008, she is a member of the CEAT’s Executive Committee. Thinking that academic activity must also include an engagement in communicating with a broader audience, she has undertaken the honour of codirecting the Centre as a new academic challenge for developing its capacity of producing and sharing knowledge.
Joseph Haldane
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
Biography
Joseph Haldane is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of IAFOR. He is responsible for devising strategy, setting policies, forging institutional partnerships, implementing projects, and overseeing the organisation’s business and academic operations, including research, publications and events.
Dr Haldane holds a PhD from the University of London in 19th-century French Studies, and has had full-time faculty positions at the University of Paris XII Paris-Est Créteil (France), Sciences Po Paris (France), and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (Japan), as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (France), The School of Journalism at Sciences Po Paris (France), and the School of Journalism at Moscow State University (Russia).
Dr Haldane’s research and teaching is on history, politics, international affairs and international education, as well as governance and decision making. Since 2015 he has been a Guest Professor at The Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, where he teaches on the postgraduate Global Governance Course, and is Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated within Osaka University.
A Member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network for Global Governance, Dr Haldane is also a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade (Serbia), a Visiting Professor at the School of Business at Doshisha University (Japan), where he teaches Ethics and Governance on the MBA programme, and a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s College of Education (USA), collaborating on the development of the Global PhD programme.
Dr Haldane has given invited lectures and presentations to universities and conferences around the world, including at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and advised universities, NGOs and governments on issues relating to international education policy, public-private partnerships, and multi-stakeholder forums. He was the project lead on the 2019 Kansai Resilience Forum, held by the Japanese Government through the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Office in collaboration with IAFOR.
From 2012 to 2014, Dr Haldane served as Treasurer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (Chubu Region) and he is currently a Trustee of the HOPE International Development Agency (Japan). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2012, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2015.
Donald E. Hall
University of Rochester, USA
Biography
Donald E. Hall is Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering at the University of Rochester, USA. Prior to moving to Rochester, he was Dean of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University, USA. Dean Hall has published widely in the fields of British Studies, Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, and Professional Studies. Over the course of his career, he served as Jackson Distinguished Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English (and previously Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages) at West Virginia University. Before that, he was Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge, where he taught for 13 years. He is a recipient of the University Distinguished Teaching Award at CSUN, was a visiting professor at the National University of Rwanda, was Lansdowne Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria (Canada), was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, and was Fulbright Specialist at the University of Helsinki. He has also taught in Sweden, Romania, Hungary, and China. He served on numerous panels and committees for the Modern Language Association (MLA), including the Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, and the Convention Program Committee. In 2012, he served as national President of the Association of Departments of English. From 2013-2017, he served on the Executive Council of the MLA.
His current and forthcoming work examines issues such as professional responsibility and academic community-building, the dialogics of social change and activist intellectualism, and the Victorian (and our continuing) interest in the deployment of instrumental agency over our social, vocational, and sexual selves. Among his many books and editions are the influential faculty development guides, The Academic Self and The Academic Community, both published by Ohio State University Press. Subjectivities and Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies were both published by Routledge Press. Most recently he and Annamarie Jagose, of the University of Auckland, co-edited a volume titled The Routledge Queer Studies Reader. Though he is a full-time administrator, he continues to lecture worldwide on the value of a liberal arts education and the need for nurturing global competencies in students and interdisciplinary dialogue in and beyond the classroom.
Professor Donald E. Hall is a Vice-President of IAFOR. He is Chair of the Arts, Humanities, Media & Culture division of the International Academic Advisory Board.
Baden Offord
Curtin University, Australia
Biography
Baden Offord holds the Dr Haruhisa Handa Chair of Human Rights, is a Research Professor in Cultural Studies and Human Rights, and is Director of the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University. An internationally recognized specialist in human rights, sexuality, culture and education, he works across Australian, Cultural and Asian Studies. His work includes the co-authored book Inside Australian Culture: Legacies of Enlightenment Values (Anthem, London: 2015); Towards Inanition: Diminishing the Humanities, Communications and Arts at Our Peril (2020) and "Beyond our Nuclear Engagement: love, nuclear pain and the whole damn thing." Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 22 (3): 17-25. (2017). He is an Adjunct Professor at Southern Cross University, and has previously been a Visiting Professor at the University of Barcelona and also Chair (Visiting Professor) in Australian Studies in the Centre for Pacific and American Studies at the University of Tokyo.
Professor Offord is a member of IAFOR’s Academic Governing Board. He is Chair of the Cultural & Area Studies section of the International Academic Advisory Board.
Dr Cornelis Martin Renes graduated from the University of Barcelona with a BA in 2001, an MA in 2006 and PhD in 2010. He joined the English and German Philology staff in 2001. His main teaching areas have been English poetry from the Renaissance to contemporary times, and postcolonial studies with a special emphasis on the Asia-Pacific area and Australia in particular. He wrote his thesis on indigenous Australian literature and identity formation. He co-directs the Australian Studies Centre at the university, which was recognised as an official University of Barcelona Centre in 2000. Since the 2000s his main area of research has been indigenous Australian literature, and more recently he has become a member of a research project, POCRIF, which looks at postcolonial crime fiction and is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education. He currently holds the positions of Adjunct Lecturer, Co-Director of the Australian Studies Centre at the University of Barcelona, and Member of the EASA (European Association for Studies of Australia) Board. He maintains steady contact with Australian academia through visiting fellowships.
IAFOR is very excited to be returning to the vibrant city of Barcelona, and continuing our relationship with the University. Barcelona is one of Europe’s most diverse and exciting cities, that has long been at the intersection of different cultures, religions, languages and peoples. Its rich intellectual and artistic traditions have made the city the home to writers, visionaries, artists and dissidents of all backgrounds. It continues to be a place where ideas and ideologies jostle for position, conservatism and change, a place of questioning and subversion; high, low, popular culture and counterculture. As a city it has embraced difference and been forced to embrace difference like few others, and its long history and its present attest to, and contextualise questions of independence, globalisation and belonging, as issues driven by regionalism, nationalism and ethnocentrism play out in the city’s political arenas. 
