This volume brings together a representative set of the papers given at the third annual Intercultural Horizons conference held in Siena, Italy, in October 2013. The conference attracted presenters and attendees from a variety of nations throughout five continents. The papers included in this volume are drawn from a series of conference sessions in which academicians and practitioners in the field offered theoretical analyses, case studies and other perspectives on intercultural studies, civic engagement and related topics. The volume is divided into four sections: Theoretical Considerations of Intercultural Competence and Interculturalism; Intercultural Development and Assessment: Practical Examples and Research; Civic Engagement in International and Culturally Diverse Contexts; and Intercultural Education and Training. The reader will find that most of the papers address a variety of intercultural topics beyond their specific chapter designations. In particular, the theme of second language acquisition, education and use was an overarching theme that emerged from a large number of papers and presentations, specifically with regards to the complexities now faced by intercultural educators and researchers as a result of the increasing dominance of English as a “lingua franca” both in academe and many nations.

This volume features a collection of papers from the second annual Intercultural Horizons conference held in October 2012 in New York City (USA). The 2012 conference was the second in what is becoming an annual series of meetings, and the present volume therefore is a companion to one issued last year by Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Intercultural Horizons: Best Practices in Intercultural Competence Development, 2012). The papers included in this volume reflect a diversity of approaches both to intercultural education in the North American setting and to its application in service-learning and related contexts in diverse cultural settings in other nations. Our authors provide faculty and student perspectives, primarily from the level of postsecondary education but including a look as well at intercultural education at the primary level. Many of the papers focus in one way or another on issues of curriculum, teaching and learning in relation to developing intercultural competence in students in North American colleges and universities, particularly though not exclusively through the use of service-learning. All of the papers touch in one way or another on another important development now affecting almost all institutions of higher education in North America and, increasingly, in other nations worldwide—that of the university’s engagement with the community. During the past thirty years, such engagement has moved from the periphery to the core of many North American colleges and universities. Similar efforts are now emerging among many Asian universities and in Europe as well. The paper in this volume on the Polisocial initiative at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy is a good example of how the theme of university-community engagement is taking hold in a city and nation facing similar intercultural and economic challenges to those in North America—and serves as a preview of themes the International Center for Intercultural Exchange hopes to explore in its future conferences. www.ticfie.com

This volume originates from the fourth and fifth Intercultural Horizons conferences, held in New York and Sardinia, respectively. It reflects a diverse array of research, case studies and theoretical reflections on intercultural studies, civic engagement and varied perspectives on migration issues in the Mediterranean region. The book will be of interest to a broad audience both within and beyond academia, including researchers of intercultural education and communication, service-learning and related issues; college and university administrators responsible for intercultural and service-learning initiatives; and students enrolled in intercultural and service-learning courses. The papers within will also be useful to persons who serve as intercultural mediators, including trainers and coaches involved in intercultural studies in business and other non-academic settings.

This volume features a collection of papers from the first annual Intercultural Horizons conference held in May 2011 in Siena, Italy. The 2011 conference was entitled “Best Practices in Intercultural Competence Development” and featured speakers and participants from over 15 countries, including leaders in the field such as Janet Bennett of the Intercultural Communication Institute, Alvino Fantini of the School for International Training, Andrew Furco of the University of Minnesota, and Carol Ma of the Center for Service-Learning at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. The authors of these papers provide perspectives on intercultural communication and related issues from viewpoints as varied as the traditional researcher, the teacher in fields as diverse as second-language acquisition, music and the culinary arts, and the administrator of a specific program or at the senior level of a college or university. Together they form a representative sample of the themes discussed during the 2011 conference. The editors consider this first meeting to be the dawn, so to speak, of Intercultural Horizons, which aspires to become a respected venue for scholars and practitioners to exchange ideas, techniques and pedagogies on intercultural communication in years to come.

Skills for Academic and Career Success focuses on the essential skills you need to be successful in your studies and in your future career. This original textbook aims to improve and enhance your study skills; it also introduces some important aspects of business and professional communication. An integrated approach is used to bring together these key fields of academic skills and business communication competency. The emphasis throughout the book is on practical, applied learning. It has been developed to complement Australian tertiary education curricula in the areas of study skills and professional communication and is designed to enhance learning outcomes for students within the Australian and Pan-Asian context.

This new book is based upon clinical practice, teaching research and scholarly work undertaken over a period of 10 years. The leading author wrote a doctoral dissertation on much of the material described in this book, but until now it has only been published in scholarly articles within refereed journals. Gerald Monk and John Winslade have jointly published three textbooks, including Narrative therapy in practice: The archaeology of hope (Jossey-Bass), Narrative counseling in the schools (Corwin Press), and Narrative mediation (Jossey-Bass) and numerous other publications. Gerald Monk and Stacey Sinclair have jointly published two book chapters and three articles in widely disseminated referred journals.

The intensity of feeling that multiculturalism invariably ignites is considered in this timely analysis of how the ‘New Britain’ of the twenty-first century is variously re-imagined as multicultural. Introducing the concept of ‘multicultural intimacies’, Anne-Marie Fortier offers a new form of critical engagement with the cultural politics of multiculturalism, one that attends to ideals of mixing, loving thy neighbour and feelings for the nation. In the first study of its kind, Fortier considers the anxieties, desires, and issues that form representations of ‘multicultural Britain’ available in the British public domain. She investigates: the significance of gender, sex, generations and kinship, as well as race and ethnicity, in debates about cultural difference the consolidation of religion as a marker of absolute difference ‘moral racism’, the criteria for good citizenship and the limits of civility. This book presents a unique analysis of multiculturalism that draws on insights from critical race studies, feminist and queer studies, postcolonialism and psychoanalysis.