Welcome to ESTIDIA!
Mission Statement
ESTIDIA has been set up to provide an easily available discussion and meeting forum for researchers and practitioners interested in transgressing traditional disciplinary and geographical boundaries in order to explore the interrelatedness and interdependence of languages and cultures in various social environments or communities. It aims at bringing together senior and junior colleagues belonging to various disciplines and professional orientations, who wish to establish contacts and to collaborate across cultural and disciplinary borders in Europe and beyond. ESTIDIA promotes ongoing exploratory dialogue between different scientific perspectives on human communication, learning mechanisms, interpersonal relations and socio-political processes, between different socio-cultural and academic traditions, between theory-based and practice-driven investigations. Linguists, rhetoricians, anthropologists, literary scholars, education specialists, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, as well as researchers from other related disciplines are called upon to join a vibrant research and practice community.
In line with the ‘Europe 2020’ strategy, ESTIDIA promotes enhanced collaborative networking, innovative project development, interdisciplinary education and research, interactive training initiatives and dissemination of best practices. It helps to enhance the correlation between academic enquiry and applied research, involving professionals, practitioners and the wider public.
A major goal is to stimulate brainstorming encounters in order to establish strong trans-national collaborative teams, to set up competitive research projects and to foster critical thinking in academic and professional writing in order to reach high publishing standards.
Last but not least, we want ESTIDIA to be the starting point not only of professional relationships, but also of life-long friendships.
Goals
The activities initiated and carried out within ESTIDIA have three main goals:
1. TRANSCULTURAL DIALOGUE
ESTIDIA facilitates dialogue and promotes collaboration across geographical, cultural and disciplinary borders in Europe and beyond. By initiating, organising and co-organising training courses, summer schools, meetings and events in different parts of Europe, it contributes to increasing awareness about linguistic and cultural diversity across borders, as well as within nation-state borders.
In true intercultural spirit, the languages used for presentations at various events are English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian, as well as other European languages, depending on the venue and the linguistic competence of a critical mass of participants.
2. INTERDISCIPLINARITY
ESTIDIA promotes cutting edge research and best practices in dialogue-based education, speaking and writing literacies, multilingual learning and transcultural curricula across the boundaries of disciplines and academic traditions. The goal is to stimulate training innovations and synergies within and across communities of scholars and practitioners, for the benefit of both junior and senior colleagues, as well as for the wider community in general. We aim to o share insights from research and experience, identifying common and different approaches and perspectives, successes and challenges.
3. MENTORSHIP
ESTIDIA encourages the development of informal mentoring relationships whereby experienced professionals and practitioners share their insights and expertise with junior colleagues to help them grow and excel. Particular attention will be paid to improving critical thinking skills in connection with currently changing cultures of learning, communicating and socialising. With a view to assisting junior scholars with the preparation of MA theses or PhD dissertations, as well as with article submissions to international journals, special conference sessions will be devoted to work in progress where students and young researchers will have the opportunity to present their ongoing research projects and receive constructive feedback from senior scholars.
SIGS
SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS (SIGS)
The main purpose of ESTIDIA SIGs is to bring together researchers, teacher trainers and practitioners from different disciplines and activity areas in order to engage in developing closer collaborations and sharing of information about dialogue-based education and research, speaking and writing practices, multilingual communication and interdisciplinary investigations across cultural boundaries and academic traditions. These groups are meant to work as close-knit exploratory communities of practice whose members are interested in contributing to ongoing dialogue on topical issues from different perspectives, in initiating common research and/or publishing projects, as well as in organising thematic workshops and courses.
