This bilingual session is part of the 2019 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. It is an open event hosted by Federation for the Humanities & Social Sciences and the University of British Columbia.
Knowledge exchange is a two-way learning process between researchers and non-academic partners. Through dialogue, they share views, ideas and evidence. Each knowledge exchange process involves a form of translation, interpretation and adaptation as people strive to understand each other and create meaning out of the shared information.
What happens when knowledge exchange engages participants who speak different languages? Does language diversity merely add another layer of translation? Language difference has often been viewed as a challenge, but, in this bilingual session, we propose to explore it as an enabler of knowledge sharing.
Participants in this session will explore how harnessing differences and diversity, in this case language diversity, represents one way to innovate in research and knowledge exchange.
Session Format
The session will take the form of a facilitated group discussion. A ‘fish-bowl’-like technique, will be used to enable the participation of the entire group. The conversation will be sparked by ‘discussion initiators’ who will address guiding questions. The audience will be invited to jump into the conversation after each round of discussion. "This is done by arranging the room so that speakers are seated in the center of the room with other participants sitting around them in a circle'", and joining the inner circle when they want to contribute (Unicef, Knowledge Exchange Toolbox, Fishbowl).
Source: Open fish bowl sketch by Marcel van Hove
Guiding questions:
- Does language diversity affect interactions between participants?
- Does it promote new ways of communicating and exchanging?
Discussion initiators:
- Ariana Dagnino, Sessional Lecturer of Italian Studies, Department of French, Hispanic & Italian Studies, UBC
- Kate Curtis, Student, Department of Language & Literacy Education, UBC
- Olivia Done, Student, Department of Language & Literacy Education, UBC
- Candace Kaleimamoowahinekapu Galla, Assistant Professor, Department of Language & Literacy Education, UBC
- Charles Li, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Asian Studies, UBC
- Sara Gwendolyn Ross, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Peter A. Allard School of Law, UBC
Facilitators:
- Dawn Whitworth, Associate Director, UBC Support Programs to Advance Research Capacity (SPARC)
- Karine Souffez, Associate Director, UBC Knowledge Exchange Unit