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CITY2017

The IAFOR International Conference on the City 2017 in Barcelona, Spain

"Cities of the World. World Cities."

July 14–16, 2017 | NH Collection Barcelona Constanza, Barcelona, Spain

city-programme-2017-Cover

History has long shown an ambivalence towards the city. On the one hand, it has been the metropolis, a necessary, vital site of commerce and culture. On the other it has been​ ​considered the fallen place, at once dangerous and shadowed in crime.

This ambivalence holds across continents, from​ ​the Americas to Asia,​ ​from​​ ​Europe to Australasia. How, in an age of transnationalism and global media​,​ should we regard ​these cities?

What are our prevailing images of the city as past and present, magnet and threat? Do cities retain their lust​re as citadels of enlightenment and art or are they urban dinosaurs wracked by over-crowdedness and pollution?

IAFOR​’s forthcoming conference on the city is an exciting addition to our global conference calendar. It will place the international, intercultural and interdisciplinary tenets of IAFOR at the very heart of multiple academic approaches to the city, from the development of the classic city states east and west, to the emergence of the vast organisms that are our modern cities.

Different cities have very different personalities, influenced, for example, by history, government, climate, and geographical location – from uptight financial powerhouses to relaxed tourist resorts, they are governed in different ways, and compete against each other for attention and resources, sometimes domestically, but also with other foreign rivals. This conference encourages interdisciplinary and comparative reflections from the world’s cities, from small cathedral city to sprawling metropolis.

The city has always been a centre of creativity and imagination. The many cultures that are formed within the city have become definitive of the development of human civilisation in different eras. From the cities that were the product of the ancient river civilisations on the Nile​ and the Tigris Euphrates or the Ganges and the Yellow River​,​​ to​ the classical and medieval city states, to the modern cities of the industrial revolution, the city provides an exciting object of study. The conference is set up to encourage the exploration of the city in all its variations and to provide a further context for reflections on globalisation as the wave of today and tomorrow.

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The IAFOR International Conference on the City 2017 and The IAFOR International Conference on Global Studies 2017. Photography by IAFOR Media. Image copyright © IAFOR 2017

CITY2017 Conference Photographs

Human interaction is at the root of all knowledge creation, and hence the great importance of the conference in introducing, testing and spreading ideas through challenging, rigorous and thought provoking discussion and debate. But beyond that, a conference is also a great chance to meet people from around the world, and to extend and grow ones’s professional network, and above all, to make friends.

It may be impossible to tell the story of the conference, or rather the many hundreds of interlocking stories that go to make up the conference, but the documentary photography in this slideshow aims to give a taster of the more serious academic side of the event, as well as the lighter side…

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Programme

  • Memory and the Modern City
    Memory and the Modern City
    Keynote Presentation: Dr Simon Sleight
  • Intersectional Realities, Law and Belonging. Not?
    Intersectional Realities, Law and Belonging. Not?
    Keynote Presentation: Professor Adrien Katherine Wing
  • Breaking Point: The War for Democracy in Ukraine
    Breaking Point: The War for Democracy in Ukraine
    Featured Film Screening & Featured Presentation: Professor Mark Jonathan Harris
  • My Barcelona – The City as Answer to a Personal Question
    My Barcelona – The City as Answer to a Personal Question
    Featured Presentation: Gloria Montero
  • My Moscow
    My Moscow
    Featured Presentation: Professor Svetlana Ter-Minasova
  • Refuge: Refugee: Moonlight and Precarious Love
    Refuge: Refugee: Moonlight and Precarious Love
    Featured Presentation: Professor Baden Offord
  • The Challenges of Doing Cultural Studies Today
    The Challenges of Doing Cultural Studies Today
    Featured Panel Presentation: Professor Donald E. Hall, Professor Baden Offord, Professor Emerita Sue Ballyn, Professor Svetlana Ter-Minasova
  • Gastronomy for a Healthy Ageing World
    Gastronomy for a Healthy Ageing World
    Featured Presentation: Dr Elena Urdaneta, Basque Culinary Center, Spain & Iñigo Cojo, Basque Culinary Center, Spain
  • Daily Life: What a Precarious State We Live In
    Daily Life: What a Precarious State We Live In
    Featured Panel Presentation: John Rochlin, Dr Francesc Llauradó & Peter Sotirakis
  • Urban Monsters: The Edgy Japanese Folkloric Fiction of Yukimi Ogawa
    Urban Monsters: The Edgy Japanese Folkloric Fiction of Yukimi Ogawa
    Spotlight Presentation: Dr Richard Donovan
  • The Place of Artistic Innovation: Local Area Characteristics and Arts Growth in Arles
    The Place of Artistic Innovation: Local Area Characteristics and Arts Growth in Arles
    Spotlight Presentation: Dr Elena Raevskikh
  • IAFOR Silk Road Initiative Information Session
    IAFOR Silk Road Initiative Information Session
    Professor Georges Depeyrot, Dr Ljiljana Markovic & Dr Joseph Haldane

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Speakers

  • Gloria Montero
    Gloria Montero
    Novelist, Playwright & Poet
  • Professor Baden Offord
    Professor Baden Offord
    Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University, Australia & Cultural Studies Association of Australasia
  • Dr A. Robert Lee
    Dr A. Robert Lee
    Nihon University, Japan (retd.)
  • Professor Emerita Sue Ballyn
    Professor Emerita Sue Ballyn
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Dr Simon Sleight
    Dr Simon Sleight
    King's College London, UK
  • Dean Adrien Katherine Wing
    Dean Adrien Katherine Wing
    University of Iowa College of Law, USA
  • Professor Donald E. Hall
    Professor Donald E. Hall
    Lehigh University, USA
  • Professor Mark Jonathan Harris
    Professor Mark Jonathan Harris
    Director, Producer & Writer | University of Southern California, USA
  • Professor Svetlana Ter-Minasova
    Professor Svetlana Ter-Minasova
    Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
  • Peter Sotirakis
    Peter Sotirakis
    Writer, Translator & Independent Scholar
  • John Rochlin
    John Rochlin
    Australia Spain Business Association (ASBA), Spain
  • Dr Elena Urdaneta
    Dr Elena Urdaneta
    Basque Culinary Center, Spain
  • Dr Francesc Llauradó
    Dr Francesc Llauradó
    Nufarm Germany, Germany
  • Professor Georges Depeyrot
    Professor Georges Depeyrot
    French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), France
  • Dr Ljiljana Markovic
    Dr Ljiljana Markovic
    University of Belgrade, Serbia
  • Dr Bill Phillips
    Dr Bill Phillips
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Professor Myles Chilton
    Professor Myles Chilton
    Nihon University, Japan
  • Dr Cornelis Martin Renes
    Dr Cornelis Martin Renes
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Dr Elena Raevskikh
    Dr Elena Raevskikh
    French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Centre Norbert Elias, France
  • Dr Richard Donovan
    Dr Richard Donovan
    Kansai University, Japan

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Organising Committee

The Organising Committee of The IAFOR International Conference on the City (CITY) is composed of distinguished academics who are experts in their fields. Organising Committee members may also be members of IAFOR's International Academic Advisory Board. The Organising Committee is responsible for nominating and vetting Keynote and Featured Speakers; developing the conference programme, including special workshops, panels, targeted sessions, and so forth; event outreach and promotion; recommending and attracting future Organising Committee members; working with IAFOR to select PhD students and early career academics for IAFOR-funded grants and scholarships; and oversee the reviewing of abstracts submitted to the conference.

  • Professor Baden Offord
    Professor Baden Offord
    Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University, Australia & Cultural Studies Association of Australasia
  • Dr A. Robert Lee
    Dr A. Robert Lee
    Nihon University, Japan (retd.)
  • Professor Emerita Sue Ballyn
    Professor Emerita Sue Ballyn
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Professor Donald E. Hall
    Professor Donald E. Hall
    Lehigh University, USA
  • Dr Bill Phillips
    Dr Bill Phillips
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Professor Myles Chilton
    Professor Myles Chilton
    Nihon University, Japan
  • Dr Cornelis Martin Renes
    Dr Cornelis Martin Renes
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Dr Joseph Haldane
    Dr Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
  • Kiyoshi Mana
    Kiyoshi Mana
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR)

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Review Committee

  • Dr Aimite Jorge, University of Namibia, Namibia
  • Dr Andrea Bellot, Rovira I Virgili University, Tarragona, Spain
  • Professor Bayez Enayati, Urmia University, Iran
  • Dr Dhyan Singh, Govt. P.G. College Dharamshala, India
  • Dr Diana Rios, University of Connecticut, United States
  • Dr Elena Raevskikh, Centre Norbert Elias - Marseille, France
  • Dr Eugenia Charoni, Flagler College, United States
  • Dr Gala Maria Follaco, University of Naples "L'Orientale", Italy
  • Professor Hulya Yuceer, Adana Science and Technology University, Turkey

IAFOR's peer review process, which involves both reciprocal review and the use of Review Committees, is overseen by conference Organising Committee members under the guidance of the Academic Governing Board. Review Committee members are established academics who hold PhDs or other terminal degrees in their fields and who have previous peer review experience.

If you would like to apply to serve on the CITY Review Committee, please visit our application page.

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CITY2017 Reviewers

IAFOR depends on the assistance of a large number of international academics and practitioners who contribute in a variety of ways to our shared mission of promoting international exchange, facilitating intercultural awareness, encouraging interdisciplinary discussion and generating and sharing new knowledge. Our academic events would not be what they are without a commitment to ensuring that international norms of peer review are observed for our presentation abstracts. With thousands of abstracts submitted each year for presentation at our conferences, IAFOR relies on academics around the world to ensure a fair and timely peer review process in keeping with established international norms of double-blind peer review. We are grateful for the time, effort and expertise donated by all our contributors.

Senior Reviewers (2017)
Reviewers (2017)

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CITY2017 Virtual Presentations

The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) is a research organisation, conference organiser and publisher dedicated to encouraging interdisciplinary discussion, facilitating intercultural awareness and promoting international exchange, principally through educational exchange and academic research.

Virtual presentations afford authors the opportunity to present their research to IAFOR’s far-reaching and international online audience, without time restrictions, distractions or the need to travel. Presenters are invited to create a video of their presentation, which is then uploaded to the official IAFOR Vimeo channel and remains online indefinitely. This is a valuable and impactful way of presenting in its own right, but also an alternative means for those delegates who may be unable to travel to the conference due to financial or political restrictions. The same publishing opportunities apply to virtual presenters, with final papers being included in the Conference Proceedings.

Stories About Hope’: Exploration of Survival, Refugee Identity and Possibilities for Belonging Through Art

Author Information
Tina Dixson, Institute for Social Justice, Australian Catholic University, Australia
Renee Dixson, University of New South Wales, Australia

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Smartcities As Utopia: A Postmodern Reality and a Modern Ideal

Author Information
Didier Alessio Contadini, University of Milan, Italy

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City of a Nation and a Nation of Cities: Jawaharlal Nehru and the Civic Consciousness of Anti-Colonial Nationalism in India

Author Information
Mohd Aquil, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India

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Ecofeminist Ethics for Sustainable Urban Public Space

Author Information
Rucha Newalkar, Iowa State University, United States
Andrea Wheeler, Iowa State University, United States

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CITY2017 Grant & Scholarship Recipients

Our warmest congratulations go to Mohd Aquil, Blanca Barreto Puente, Donna Banks, Seoungin Choi and Harriet Gaffney, who have been selected by the conference Organising Committees to receive grants and scholarships to present their research at The IAFOR International Conference on the City 2018 and The IAFOR International Conference on Global Studies 2018.

IAFOR’s grants and scholarships programme provides financial support to PhD students and early career academics, with the aim of helping them pursue research excellence and achieve their academic goals through interdisciplinary study and interaction. Awards are based on the appropriateness of the educational opportunity in relation to the applicant’s field of study, financial need, and contributions to their community and to IAFOR’s mission of interdisciplinarity. Scholarships are awarded based on availability of funds from IAFOR and vary with each conference.

The Organising Committee of the relevant IAFOR conference awards scholarships to eligible applicants who have submitted exceptional abstracts that have passed the blind peer review process and have been accepted for presentation at the conference.

Mohd AquilBlanca Barreto PuenteDonna BanksSeoungin ChoiHarriet Gaffney

Stuart D. B. Picken Grant & Scholarship Recipient

Mohd Aquil is currently enrolled in the Master of Philosophy programme at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, and studies modern history. He has completed his Master of Arts in Modern History and Bachelor of Arts at the Center for Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at JNU. He is currently researching urban history with a focus on urban and public culture, civic and municipal ideas. His current focus is on a city in North India, Allahabad, in the period of British colonialism.

City of a Nation and a Nation of Cities: Jawaharlal Nehru and the Civic Consciousness of Anti-Colonial Nationalism in India
Mohd Aquil, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India

IAFOR–Barcelona University Scholarship Recipient

Blanca Barreto Puente is a PhD candidate in the English Department of the University of Barcelona, Spain. Her main interest lies in the study of Renaissance Epic and the manner in which gender roles are represented in Early Modernity. Her current research is centered on the examination of the female warrior figures in Margaret Cavendish's works and the political resistance of said writer.

Cross-Temporal Icons: Amazonian Globality
Blanca Barreto Puente, University of Barcelona, Spain

IAFOR–Barcelona University Scholarship Recipient

Donna Banks is currently enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of Barcelona, Spain. She has an interdisciplinary background in art history, cultural history, and visual anthropology. She previously earned an MA in history from Temple University, Philadelphia, and an MA in art history from Howard University in Washington, DC.

A Critical Analysis of the Economic Benefit of Public Art
Donna Banks, University of Barcelona, Spain

IAFOR Scholarship Recipient

Seoungin Choi graduated from Hanyang University, majoring in politics and diplomacy, and is now studying international politics at the same university and planning to study further. Seoungin Choi’s interests are international politics, politics, theories and political sociology.

Theoretical Implications of Cosmopolitanism and Korean Textbooks Analysis
Seoungin Choi, Hanyang University, South Korea

IAFOR Scholarship Recipient

Harriet Gaffney is a PhD candidate in the School of Humanities at Griffith University, Australia, with Honours and Masters degrees in professional and creative writing from Deakin University. Her research seeks to unsettle notions of place, sovereignty, and belonging in the post-colonial context. In 2015 Harriet was awarded the Varuna Eric Dark Fellowship to further this work. In 2014 she won the Writers Victoria Regional Writers Award for the short story “Recognition”, and in 2012 received The Grace Marion Wilson Award for the creative non-fiction piece “A Battered Heart”.

Romancing Theft, Writing Belonging
Harriet Gaffney, Griffith University, Australia

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Memory and the Modern City
Keynote Presentation: Dr Simon Sleight

Densely populated, cities are also thickly inhabited by memories. This lecture explores the processes by which some aspects of the past are physically or emotionally inscribed into the built landscape, while others are overlooked or forgotten. It seeks to determine who gets to influence acts of concerted remembering, considers the actions of those who contest or adapt “official” versions of historical memory, and assesses the place of intangible cultural heritage and personal memory amidst ever-evolving city settings.

Taking a comparative and international view, the lecture addresses the past as it lives and dies in the modern city. Ranging from Japan via Australia and on to Europe, South Africa and the United States, the analysis takes in street names, archaeological digs, sites of memory including graveyards and Ground Zero, and fleeting moments of play and courtship. Surveying a diverse urban scene, the lecture offers some methodological pointers for engaging with memory and the city, ponders the contributions of significant scholars including Halbwachs, Hayden and Huyssen, and evaluates the first-hand experiences of walking city streets to bear witness to the past residing in the present.

Read presenter biographies here.

Intersectional Realities, Law and Belonging. Not?
Keynote Presentation: Professor Adrien Katherine Wing

In this presentation, I focus on the legal status of women of colour around the world under national and international law. Such women face an intersectional reality where their various identities, including race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation, cause them to face precarious conditions both literally and figuratively. I will use critical legal networks jurisprudence to illustrate how a state of belonging can be achieved formally and informally wherever they may be located as part of a coalitional approach to transcendence.

Read presenter biographies here.

Breaking Point: The War for Democracy in Ukraine
Featured Film Screening & Featured Presentation: Professor Mark Jonathan Harris

Featured Film Screening: Breaking Point – The War for Democracy in Ukraine

Breaking Point: The War for Democracy in Ukraine is an intimate look at the war and revolution in Ukraine through the eyes of ordinary people who risked their lives to create a more democratic, equitable, and independent country.

Our principal characters are a children’s theatre director, a doctor, a rabbi, a TV journalist, an investigative reporter, and a lawyer turned medic and her soldier husband. Their lives were transformed by the tumultuous, three-month revolution on the Maidan, which ended in the death of 123 protestors and the flight of corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych. When Russia retaliated by annexing Crimea and invading eastern Ukraine, our subjects went to war to defend and remake their country. Our film depicts this intense and on-going struggle, which has so far killed 10,000 Ukrainians and displaced 1.9 million refugees. Breaking Point is the dramatic and inspiring portrait of people willing to give up their private, normal lives to unite in a collective effort to bring the rule of law and democracy to their country. Their battle to wrest power from the autocrats and plutocrats who control their governments is a struggle that is being waged around the world, from the Mideast to America. The outcome affects not only the future of Ukraine, but the future of democracy throughout the world.

Featured Presentation: Breaking Point – Ukraine in the Era of Trump

Foreign empires, beginning with Genghis Khan, have been invading Ukraine for centuries, drawn by fertile soil and oceans of wheat. Three years ago, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin did the same in response to the Euromaidan Revolution. What started off as a peaceful protest against Putin protégé Victor Yanukovych’s corrupt government, turned deadly when Yanukovych’s police fired on unarmed protesters, and ended with Yanukovych fleeing to Russia. Putin responded by annexing Crimea and staging a covert invasion of Eastern Ukraine, triggering a war which has killed more than 10,000 and created two million refugees. New U.S. President Donald Trump’s bizarre admiration for Vladimir Putin is paired with a deep lack of knowledge about the annexation of Crimea, Russia’s invasion, or prior U.S. commitments to Ukraine. Trump’s election campaign and rise to the presidency have shown that one of the common strategies he shares with Putin is his use of disinformation and lies to deflect and confuse his opposition. The film presentation will explore some of the propaganda and disinformation techniques Russia is using to create disunity and destabilise Western governments, at a time when democracies everywhere, even in the U.S., are facing extremist and demagogic threats to Western values and institutions. I will also explore my realisation that while I started out making a film about the war for democracy in Ukraine, I ended up making a film about a battle in a global war for democracy, one that Europe and America now find themselves fighting as well.

Read presenter biographies here.

My Barcelona – The City as Answer to a Personal Question
Featured Presentation: Gloria Montero

Italo Calvino says that the delight you take in a city is not through the wonders it offers but in the answer it gives to a personal question. I remember the moment when I first said aloud “This is where I want to live.” Barcelona became an ultimate destination right from that first visit. Eventually, I was able to make my home here and have lived for years now in the Raval, Jean Genet's Barrio Chino, right in the heart of the old city, with its diverse and dense immigrant population. Only now, as I look back on my work as a writer, do I begin to glimpse the question Barcelona must have answered for me. A sociologist, an architect or urban planner, looking at the city from when the Romans settled it as Barcino, through its political and commercial development in the Middle Ages, to the rich texture left by Modernism, might analyse the city's magnetic attraction for tourists today. For me, Barcelona has become overlaid by memories of people and events so that certain corners now speak in my own voice. Gaudí, Picasso and Lorca have become personal experiences here but so has “the grandmother of Barcelona”, who for 6,000 years lay under three metres of soil until she was unearthed under the parking lot of the Boquería, the city's central market, right next to my home some 4 or 5 years ago. This Neolithic overtone to modern Barcelona has taken its place alongside the mad escapade of Columbus finally being able to show off his “New World treasures” to the Catholic Kings right here in the square outside the Tinell, the terrible consequence of the liquidation of the Jewish Call in the Gothic quarter, the ravages of Spain's Civil War, the long dictatorship and Barcelona's solidarity today with refugees. In this paper, I show how inadvertently through my work I have explored the question Barcelona put to me, answering a need to understand myself and all of us as part of an evolution that will continue even after we are no longer here to see it.

Read presenter biographies here.

My Moscow
Featured Presentation: Professor Svetlana Ter-Minasova

I had neither the luck nor the chance to choose my place on Earth for its beautiful views, good air, pleasant climate, etc. I just happened to have been born into it – sort of, accidentally.

My poor parents were much more unlucky both timewise and placewise. Indeed, timewise, both of them were born at the beginning of the twentieth century and, consequently, had to go through a revolution, a civil war, two world wars and the period of Stalin’s repressions. Placewise, they began their lives at godforsaken spots on the outskirts of the Russian Empire: a small town in Nagorny Karabakh, which has been an apple of discord between Armenians and Turks since time immemorial, was my father’s birthplace, and a tiny little town by the Caspian sea was my mother’s. When the “Red Revolution” came both big families (seven children in my father’s and eight in my mother’s) lost their fathers and fled to Baku, the biggest and the richest (though oil-rich) city in the area. By pure chance, my parents met at a training college at approximately the age of 20 (I say approximately as my father was officially 20, but actually 18, as he added two years at the age of 12 so as to be able to start working). At college they fell in love (again – approximately – as it was mostly my father, as far as I know) and got married.

Two years later, by extraordinary chance, they moved to Moscow, the place where I was born ten years later; my birth was a kind of accident for my mother who hated the idea of having a second child after eleven years’ interval. However, she had to obey Stalin’s decree prohibiting abortions, and thus, to some extent, I owe my life to Joseph Stalin, and my birthplace to a long chain of accidents.

Unlike my parents I have been lucky from the very start of my life, and that is how I have felt for all of my seventy-odd years. I was born in a very big city, more than eight hundred years old, the capital of a great country with a wonderful variety of everything, beginning with the weather: hot, generous summers; cold, snow-white winters; joyful springs; and romantically beautiful autumns. A city with palaces and slums, beautiful parks and dusty backyards, historical and ultra-modern buildings (including Corbusier’s) – all this has been mine.

It is my Moscow.

Read presenter biographies here.

Refuge: Refugee: Moonlight and Precarious Love
Featured Presentation: Professor Baden Offord

In this presentation, I focus on the human condition in relation to people’s suffering around their sexuality. Catalysed by Michel Foucault’s observation that “People’s suffering must never be allowed to remain the silent residue of politics”, my intention is to explore those cultural spaces available, beyond the silent residue, where suffering is transformed into refuge, where recognition flourishes in surprising ways. Speaking of queer folk in this time of precarious love where death, derangement and denial mark their struggle for human rights, my purpose will be to understand how being a queer refugee is represented and articulated through recent media and cultural texts, including the recent film Moonlight.

Read presenter biographies here.

The Challenges of Doing Cultural Studies Today
Featured Panel Presentation: Professor Donald E. Hall, Professor Baden Offord, Professor Emerita Sue Ballyn, Professor Svetlana Ter-Minasova

Given the rise of anti-globalisation, nationalisms and cultural isolationism, 2017 and beyond will prove particularly challenging times for those of us working in cultural studies. Our four panellists will each speak for five minutes about emerging geo-political constraints on their work, as well as their respective national and institutional contexts. This will be followed by a general discussion with the audience about collective experiences and strategies for individual and collective response to the challenges that we face.

Read presenter biographies here.

Gastronomy for a Healthy Ageing World
Featured Presentation: Dr Elena Urdaneta, Basque Culinary Center, Spain & Iñigo Cojo, Basque Culinary Center, Spain

In this presentation, we analyse the role of gastronomy and nutrition using the healthy ageing approach used in Western countries. Also we propose methods and recommendations to be included into public policies to use gastronomy in an intergenerational way. In this global context, there is a food revolution and cooking could play a role within society and elderly communities. The reasons for dedicating time to cooking and care are explored and studied in depth. Also some reasons and consequences will be addressed.

Read presenter biographies here.

Daily Life: What a Precarious State We Live In
Featured Panel Presentation: John Rochlin, Dr Francesc Llauradó & Peter Sotirakis

Panellists: John Rochlin, Francesc Llauradó & Peter Sotirakis
Moderator: Sue Ballyn

This multi-faceted presentation will look at the fragile state of labour relations, how to feed the world and the precarious aspects of tourist travel. It will address the rise of the self-employed and those individuals who, because of the parlous state of the labour market, are being forced into Darwinian competitiveness and self-marketing in order to survive. The increasing lack of trade union coverage and protection, in general, of the individual worker will be discussed and the emergence of the “desperation economy”, more euphemistically referred to as the “collaborative economy”, will be analysed. The ever-increasing precarious nature of feeding the world will be looked at. The delicate nature of the food chain will be considered and suggestions made on how to reduce the threat of starvation in the world. Food wastage and environmental factors will also be considered and the relationship between the vagaries of weather and food production and their impact on the final consumer will be analysed. Another focus will be on the situation of tourists and the sometimes precarious state in which they find themselves when abroad. In particular, the plight of the tourist in Catalonia will be looked at from a consular perspective. Consideration will be given to the way in which consular assistance is offered to a tourist who is in a precarious and troubled state due to robbery, ill-health, criminal accusations or death of a partner or travelling companion.

Read presenter biographies here.

Urban Monsters: The Edgy Japanese Folkloric Fiction of Yukimi Ogawa
Spotlight Presentation: Dr Richard Donovan

Author Yukimi Ogawa can be seen as a companion artist to Yūko Shimizu, who visually reinterprets Sekien Toriyama’s beloved woodblock prints of yōkai — Japanese monsters and spirits — for a new, city-dwelling generation. The fact that Ogawa now writes exclusively in her second language of English suggests how she positions herself as a cosmopolitan interpreter of folkloric Japan. In online-published short stories such as “Town’s End”, Ogawa follows her monsters across the liminal spaces, both geographic and societal, that cohere in huge, heterogeneous entities like the Tokyo megalopolis, observing how her otherworldly subjects both resist and adapt to the forces of modernisation and globalisation in ways analogous to, and reflective of, its human residents.

In this paper, I examine some of the fresh territory that Ogawa is carving out as a new writer in a still-evolving online medium, and how she wields her sometimes-unfamiliar adopted language to express the voice of a new Japan through updated versions of the eerily engaging denizens of folk Japan.

Image | In Her Head by Yukimi Ogawa

Read presenter biographies here.

The Place of Artistic Innovation: Local Area Characteristics and Arts Growth in Arles
Spotlight Presentation: Dr Elena Raevskikh

Located in the south of France, the city of Arles has a rich and diverse history: the impressive Roman monuments get along with the Medieval heritage, the Van Gogh painting prototypes and the Camargue natural scenery. However, after several economic crises during the 1980s–2000s, Arles is currently one of the poorest French agglomerations, with an important unemployment rate and a low-income household. Since 2010, the Swiss-born art patron Maja Hoffman has bet to enhance the economic development of Arles by transforming the city as the new place of artistic innovation. The LUMA Foundation designed by Frank Ghery will be opened in 2018 in the old industrial district of Arles and will become one of the most ambitious arts and artistic innovation hubs in France. The new iconic structure is called to create a “Bibao effect” by attracting in Arles the international economic resources, human capital and new investments. This paper brings together ethnographical, cartographical and statistical methodologies to analyze the ways that the LUMA Foundation impacts the Arles urban area. How does the dynamic interplay between economic and political context, institutional arrangements, and social networks affect the urban transformations? How do the new cultural policies impact the territorial attractivity? What factors favor or create obstacles for the social assimilation of artistic innovations by the target population?

Image | Café Terrace at Night. Oil painting by Vincent van Gogh, Arles, France, 1888.

Read presenter biographies here.

IAFOR Silk Road Initiative Information Session
Professor Georges Depeyrot, Dr Ljiljana Markovic & Dr Joseph Haldane

As an organization, IAFOR’s mission is to promote international exchange, facilitate intercultural awareness, encourage interdisciplinary discussion, and generate and share new knowledge. In 2018, we are excited to launch a major new and ambitious international, intercultural and interdisciplinary research initiative which uses the silk road trade routes as a lens through which to study some of the world’s largest historical and contemporary geopolitical trends, shifts and exchanges.

IAFOR is headquartered in Japan, and the 2018 inauguration of this project aligns with the 150th Anniversary of the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when Japan opened its doors to the trade and ideas that would precipitate its rapid modernization and its emergence as a global power. At a time when global trends can seem unpredictable, and futures fearful, this Silk Road Initiative gives the opportunity to revisit the question of the impact of international relations from a long-term perspective.

This ambitious initiative will encourage individuals and institutions working across the world to encourage research centering on the contact between countries and regions in Europe and Asia, from Gibraltar to Japan, and the maritime routes that went beyond into the South-East Continent and the Philippines, and later out into the Pacific Islands and the United States. The Silk Road Initiative will concern all aspects of this contact, and examine both material and intellectual traces, as well as consequences.

Read presenter biographies here.

Gloria Montero
Novelist, Playwright & Poet

Biography

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.

Photo by Pilar Aymerich.

Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | How can writers respond when the future looks fearful?

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | My Barcelona – The City as Answer to a Personal Question
The 14th Doireann McDermott Lecture (2016) | Filling in the Lonely, Empty Places
Professor Baden Offord
Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University, Australia & Cultural Studies Association of Australasia

Biography

Baden Offord is an internationally recognized specialist in human rights, sexuality, education and culture. In 2012 he was a sponsored speaker to the 14th EU-NGO Human Rights Forum in Brussels where he spoke on ASEAN and sexual justice issues. In the same year he conducted a three-week lecture tour of Japan sponsored by the Australian Prime Minister’s Educational Assistance Funds post the Great Eastern Tohoku Earthquake in 2011.

Among his publications are the books Homosexual Rights as Human Rights: Activism in Indonesia, Singapore and Australia (2003), Activating Human Rights (co-edited with Elizabeth Porter, 2006), Activating Human Rights Education (co-edited with Christopher Newell, 2008), and Activating Human Rights and Peace: Theories, Practices, Contexts (co-edited with Bee Chen Goh and Rob Garbutt, 2012). His most recent co-authored publication in the field of Australian Cultural Studies is titled Inside Australian Culture: Legacies of Enlightenment Values (with Kerruish, Garbutt, Wessell and Pavlovic, 2014), which is a collaborative work with the Indian cultural theorist Ashis Nandy. His latest chapter, ‘Queer activist intersections in Southeast Asia: human rights and cultural studies,’ appears in Ways of Knowing About Human Rights in Asia (ed. Vera Mackie, London, Routledge, 2015).

He has held visiting positions at The University of Barcelona, La Trobe University, the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and Rajghat Education Centre, Varanasi. In 2010-2011 he held the Chair (Visiting Professor) in Australian Studies, Centre for Pacific Studies and American Studies, The University of Tokyo. In Japan he has given lectures and research seminars at Chuo, Otemon Gakuin, Sophia, Tohoku and Keio Universities.

Prior to his appointment at Curtin University, he was Professor of Cultural Studies and Human Rights at Southern Cross University, where he was a faculty member from 1999-2014.

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | Refuge: Refugee: Moonlight and Precarious Love
Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | The Challenges of Doing Cultural Studies Today
The 4th Kathleen Firth Keynote Lecture (2016) | Holding to Account: Visualising Human Rights and Cosmopolitan Betrayal
Keynote Panel Presentation (2016) | Global Studies in Challenging Times: Focussing on the Arts, Humanities, and Cultural Studies
Dr A. Robert Lee
Nihon University, Japan (retd.)

Biography

A. Robert Lee, a Britisher who helped establish American Studies in the UK, was Professor in the English department at Nihon University, Tokyo from 1997 to 2011, having previously taught for almost three decades at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. He now lives in Murcia, Spain. He has held visiting professorial positions in the US at the University of Virginia, Bryn Mawr College, Northwestern University, the University of Colorado, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of New Mexico.

His academic books include Designs of Blackness: Mappings in the Literature and Culture of Afro-America (1998); Postindian Conversations (1999), with Gerald Vizenor; Multicultural American Literature: Comparative Black, Native, Latino/a and Asian American Fictions (2003), which won the American Book Award in 2004; Gothic to Multicultural: Idioms of Imagining in American Literary Fiction (2009) and Modern American Counter Writing: Beats, Outriders, Ethnics (2010). Has also been responsible for collections like Other Britain, Other British (1995); Beat Generation Writers (1996); China Fictions/English Language: Literary Essays in Diaspora, Memory, Story (2008); The Salt Companion to Jim Barnes (2010); with Deborah L. Madsen, Gerald Vizenor: Texts and Contexts (2010); Native American Writing, 4 Vols (2011), African American Writing, 5 Vols (2013), US Latino/a Writing (2014); and, with Alan R. Velie, The Native American Renaissance: Literary Imagination and Achievement (2013).

His creative work is reflected in Japan Textures: Sight and Word (2007), with Mark Gresham; Tokyo Commute: Japanese Customs and Way of Life Viewed from the Odakyu Line (2011); and the poetry collections Ars Geographica: Maps and Compasses (2012); Portrait and Landscape: Further Geographies (2013); Imaginarium: Sightings, Galleries, Sightlines (2013); Americas: Selected Verse and Vignette (2015); Password: A Book of Locks and Keys (2016); and Aurora: A Spanish Gallery of Image and Text (IAFOR Publications on-line, 2016).

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | History, Story, Narrative – Constructing History
Featured Presentation (2016) | City Poems - Readings
Professor Emerita Sue Ballyn
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Sue Ballyn is Professor Emerita at Barcelona University 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 Barcelona University 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 Prof. Lucy Frost. 2016 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 is 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 2016 a book of interviews with elderly women, with the working title Stories of Experience, will be published as part of this project. These oral stories are the result of field work she has carried out in Barcelona.

She is also 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. She currently holds the position of Profesor Emerita and Founder/Co-Director of the Australian Studies Centre, at Barcelona University.

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | The Challenges of Doing Cultural Studies Today
Keynote Panel Presentation (2016) | Global Studies in Challenging Times - Focussing on the Arts, Humanities, and Cultural Studies
Dr Simon Sleight
King's College London, UK

Biography

Dr Simon Sleight is Senior Lecturer in Australian History at King's College London, Co-founding Director of the Children's History Society and Deputy Director of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies in London, UK. His work explores the history of urban place-making, the evolution of youth cultures and the Australian presence in Britain. He received his tertiary education at Warwick, University College London and Monash University in Melbourne, where his doctoral thesis won the Serle Award for the best PhD in Australian history. His latest books are Young People and the Shaping of Public Space in Melbourne, 1870-1914 (Routledge, 2013) and, co-edited with Shirleene Robinson, Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World (Palgrave, 2016). He has also published on street gangs, processions, the representation of working childhoods, expatriate experience and the morphology of cities. His most recent publications feature in the edited collection Spatial Cultures: Towards a New Social Morphology of Cities Past and Present (2016) and Walking Histories, 1800-1914. A current co-edited textbook project will be titled History, Memory and Public Life: The Past in the Present, scheduled for publication in 2017. At King's College London, Simon teaches a range of courses including “London Calling: Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters with the Metropole” and “Electric Cities: The Experience of Modernity in London, Melbourne, New York and Paris, 1870-1929”. His current research project explores the concept and experience of “geographies of belonging” in relation to “British world” migrant groups in Britain, 1793 to present.

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2017) | Memory and the Modern City
Dean Adrien Katherine Wing
University of Iowa College of Law, USA

Biography

Adrien Katherine Wing is the Associate Dean of International & Comparative Law Programs at the University of Iowa College of Law. The author of over 130 publications, she is also the Bessie Dutton Murray Distinguished Professor of Law and has taught at Iowa since 1987. Her subjects include: International Human Rights, Law in the Muslim World, Critical Race Theory and Sex Discrimination Law. Dean Wing is Director of the UI Center for Human Rights and the France study abroad program. Prior to joining the Iowa faculty, she practised international law in New York with two firms specialising in international law issues. Her professional affiliations include the American Society of International Law, where she is a Counsellor, Co-Chair of Blacks of ASIL (BASIL) Task Force, and a member of the Executive Council. She is also the former ASIL Vice President. She currently serves on the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education Accreditation Committee, the American Association of Law Schools Recruitment and Retention of Minority Law Professors Committee, and the American Journal of Comparative Law Board of Editors. She is a law school inspector for the American Bar Association and has previously served as the UI Law School Associate Dean for Faculty Development and the on-site Director for the London Law Consortium semester abroad program. She has advised the founding fathers and mothers of the constitutions of South Africa, Palestine and Rwanda. Dean Wing received her BA magna cum laude from Princeton, her MA in African Studies from UCLA, and her Doctorate of Jurisprudence from Stanford Law School.

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2017) | Intersectional Realities, Law and Belonging. Not?
Professor Donald E. Hall
Lehigh University, USA

Biography

Donald E. Hall has published widely in the fields of British Studies, Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, and Professional Studies. Prior to arriving at Lehigh in 2011, 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 (WVU). Before his tenure at WVU, he was Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), 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 2001 Lansdowne Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria (Canada), was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, for 2004-05, and was Fulbright Specialist at the University of Helsinki for 2006. He has also taught in Sweden, Romania, Hungary, and China. He has 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. In 2013, he was elected to and began serving 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 ethical intellectualism, and the Victorian (and our continuing) interest in the deployment of instrumental agency over our social, vocational, and sexual selves. His book, The Academic Community: A Manual For Change, was published by Ohio State University Press in the fall of 2007. His tenth book, Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies, was published in the spring of 2009. In 2012, he and Annamarie Jagose, of the University of Auckland, collaborated on a volume titled The Routledge Queer Studies Reader, which was published in July of that year. 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.

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | The Challenges of Doing Cultural Studies Today
Keynote Panel Presentation (2016) | Global Studies in Challenging Times: Focussing on the Arts, Humanities, and Cultural Studies
Professor Mark Jonathan Harris
Director, Producer & Writer | University of Southern California, USA

Biography

Mark Jonathan Harris is an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and Distinguished Professor in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, USA.

Among the many documentaries he has written, produced and/or directed are Huelga!, the landmark film about Cesar Chavez and the Delano grape strike (1968); and The Redwoods, which won an Oscar for Best Short Documentary and helped establish a redwood national park (1968). The Long Way Home, a film he wrote and directed about the period immediately following the Holocaust, won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary in 1997; and Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, which he also wrote and directed, won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary in 2000 and was selected by the US Library of Congress for inclusion in its National Film Registry. Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives (2003), a documentary that he wrote on slavery in America, was nominated for an Emmy for a Nonfiction Special and Harris was nominated for Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming. He also wrote The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing, a documentary about editing produced by BBC-TV, NHK, and STARZ, which is shown in film schools around the world (2004). In 2007, he produced Darfur Now, a film about the humanitarian crisis in Africa, which was nominated as best documentary of the year by the National Board of Review and the Broadcast Film Critics Association and won an NAACP Image Award. Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders, a film he executive produced, premiered at the Venice film festival and was shortlisted for the 2011 Oscar for best feature documentary. Code Black, another documentary he executive produced about ER doctors, won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 2013 Los Angeles Film Festival and became the basis for the CBS series of the same name. 

In 2010 the International Documentary Association honoured him with its Scholarship and Preservation Award. He holds the Mona and Bernard Kantor Chair of Production at the School of Cinematic Arts, where he heads the documentary program.

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | Breaking Point: The War for Democracy in Ukraine
Featured Film Screening (2017) | Breaking Point: Ukraine in the Era of Trump
Professor Svetlana Ter-Minasova
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia

Biography

Professor Svetlana Ter-Minasova is President of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia, and Professor Emeritus in the University. She holds a Doctorate of Philology from the University, and has published more than 200 books and papers on Foreign Language Teaching, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, and has lectured widely throughout the world.

She is Chair of the Russian Ministry of Education’s Foreign Language Research and Methodology Council, President and founder of both the National Association of Teachers of English in Russia, and the National Association of Applied Linguistics. She holds the Lomonosov Award, Fulbright’s 50th Anniversary Award, and was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Birmingham in the UK, the State University of New York in the USA, and the Russian-Armenian University in Armenia. She is a member of the IAFOR International Advisory Board.

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | My Moscow
Featured Film Screening (2017) | The Challenges of Doing Cultural Studies Today
Peter Sotirakis
Writer, Translator & Independent Scholar

Biography

Peter Sotirakis is a freelance Australian writer, translator and media professional with experience in the press, TV, film and radio industries in both Australia and Spain. Based in Barcelona since 1993, he currently works for a wide variety of clients, including film and TV producers, art centres, publishers, legal firms, local government departments, and so on, while continuing to produce his own independent video projects whenever possible. An RMIT graduate in Graphic Art and Media Studies, he is an active participant in the Barcelona branch of the Australia Spain Business Association (ASBA) and occasionally lectures on Australia in various educational centres and institutes in Catalonia. He was a speaker at the University of Barcelona Australian Studies Centre (UB ASC) “Landscapes of Exile” conference in 2004, and he screened his feature-length documentary Broken Circles: The Return from Exile and chaired a panel session at the UB ASC “Looking Back to Look Forward” conference in 2012. He was also a speaker at the UB ASC “Watershed” conference in 2014.

Previous Presentations

Plenary Panel Presentation (2017) | Plenary Panel Presentation I: Daily Life: What a Precarious State We Live In
John Rochlin
Australia Spain Business Association (ASBA), Spain

Biography

John Rochlin is an Australian lawyer and mediator. He practised as a barrister at the New South Wales Bar in Australia before moving to Barcelona to live in 1998. In 1991 he was admitted to practise as a barrister in Ireland. From 1999 to 2001 he was an occasional lecturer for the European Law Students’ Association at the University of Barcelona, on the subject of “Introduction to the English Legal System”. In 2001 he founded the Barcelona branch of the Australia Spain Business Association and is its current head. He works as an international lawyer with the law firm Riba Vidal in Barcelona. In 2013 he was appointed as the Honorary Consul of Australia in Barcelona for the regions of Catalonia and Aragon.

Previous Presentations

Plenary Panel Presentation (2017) | Plenary Panel Presentation I: Daily Life: What a Precarious State We Live In
Dr Elena Urdaneta
Basque Culinary Center, Spain

Biography

Dr Elena Urdaneta is Director of Research and Innovation at the Basque Culinary Center. She received her PhD in Pharmacy from the Universidad de Navarra in 1995. Dr Urdaneta has made a number of postdoctoral visits to centres abroad, including the UCLA Faculty of Medicine (Los Angeles, USA) and the Physiology Department of the University of California in Irvine. She currently leads research projects in the field of promotion of active and healthy ageing and e-health. She is the principal researcher of numerous funded research projects on physiology, gerontology and nutrition and is the author or co-author of more than twenty scientific research articles in international periodicals. In 2004 she received the “Beca Ortiz de Landázuri”, granted by the Department of Health of the Government of Navarre. Dr Urdaneta is the scientific coordinator of SIforAGE.

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | Gastronomy for a Healthy Ageing World
Dr Francesc Llauradó
Nufarm Germany, Germany

Biography

Francesc Llauradó was born in Barcelona in 1956. He graduated from the University of Strasbourg in 1983 with a PhD in soil science, then he specialized (MBA) in marketing of agricultural and food products in 1987 in France and England. He has worked mainly for Ciba-Geigy and Novartis in South America, France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Germany in the areas of seeds and plant protection. He was Director for Southern Europe of Nufarm, the company for which he has worked for more than 16 years. Currently he is General Manager for Nufarm Germany and Regional Manager of Northern Europe. He has also been President of AEPLA (Spanish Agrochemical Industry).

Previous Presentations

Plenary Panel Presentation (2017) | Plenary Panel Presentation I: Daily Life: What a Precarious State We Live In
Professor Georges Depeyrot
French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), France

Biography

Professor Georges Depeyrot is a monetary historian at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris. He began his scientific career in the 1970s studying coin finds and joined the CNRS in 1982. After some years he joined the Center for Historical Research in the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) and is now a professor at the École Normale Supérieure. After his habilitation (1992), he specialised in international cooperative programs that aim to reconsider monetary history in a global approach. He has directed many cooperative programs linking several European countries, including those situated at the continent’s outer borders (Georgia, Armenia, Russia, and Morocco). Professor Depeyrot is the author or co-author of more than one hundred volumes, and is the founding director of the Moneta publishing house, the most important collection of books on the topic of money. Professor Depeyrot is a member of the board of trustees of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique.

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | IAFOR Silk Road Initiative Information Session
Dr Ljiljana Markovic
University of Belgrade, Serbia

Biography

Dr Ljiljana Markovic is Dean, Chairperson of the Doctoral Studies Program and Full Professor in Japanese Studies at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. She has previously served as Vice Dean for Financial Affairs, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade (2008-2016). She holds the positions of Chairperson of the Association of Japanologists of Serbia, Member of the University of Belgrade Council, Chairperson of the University of Belgrade SYLFF Committee, Member of the Republic of Serbia, Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Bilingual Education Board, and Member of the Republic of Serbia, Ministry of Culture, Committee on Books Procurement for Public Libraries. In 2010 she received the Gaimu Daijin Sho Award from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and in 2011 she received the Dositej Obradovic Award for Pedagogical Achievement. She is the author of a large number of publications in the fields of Japanese studies and economics.

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | IAFOR Silk Road Initiative Information Session
Dr Bill Phillips
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Bill Phillips is a Senior Lecturer in English literature and culture at the University of Barcelona and head of the English and German Studies Department. He lectures on British poetry, crime fiction and other contemporary fiction. He has published widely on poetry, focusing particularly on the Romantic period, ecocriticism, ecofeminism, postcolonial studies, gender studies and popular fiction, including detective fiction, science fiction and zombies.

He is head of POCRIF (Postcolonial Crime Fiction: a global window into social realities), a research project on postcolonial crime fiction financed by the Ministerio de Economía y Competividad. The project’s team are members of the Australian Studies Centre, based at the University of Barcelona, and the group’s research forms part of the wider academic and investigative work carried out by the Centre.

Keynote Presentation (2018) | Catalonia’s Referendum on Independence from Spain

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2016) | Crime Fiction - A Global Phenomenon
Keynote Panel Presentation (2016) | Global Studies in Challenging Times - Focussing on the Arts, Humanities, and Cultural Studies
Professor Myles Chilton
Nihon University, Japan

Biography

Myles Chilton (BA University of Toronto; MA and PhD University of Chicago) is a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Nihon University. Originally from Toronto, Canada, Chilton has been in Japan for over twenty years, writing about relationships between contemporary world literature and global cities in Literary Cartographies: Spatiality, Representation, and Narrative (Palgrave Macmillan 2014), and in journal articles such as Comparative Critical Studies, The Journal of Narrative Theory, and Studies in the Literary Imagination. He also focuses on global English and literary studies in such books as the monograph English Studies Beyond the ‘Center’: Teaching Literature and the Future of Global English (Routledge 2016); and in chapters in the books The Future of English in Asia: Perspectives on Language and Literature (Routledge 2015), Deterritorializing Practices in Literary Studies (Contornos 2014), and World Literature and the Politics of the Minority (Rawat 2013). Chilton has also presented papers on these and other topics at universities around the world. He is also on the editorial board of the IAFOR Journal of Literature and Librarianship.

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | History, Story, Narrative – Constructing History
Keynote Presentation (2016) | Walking the Global City - Journeys in World Literature
Dr Cornelis Martin Renes
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

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.

Featured Presentation (2018) | ¡A España no hay presos políticos! / In Spain there are no political prisoners!

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017)
Featured Panel Presentation (2016) | Postcolonial Crime Fiction - A Global Phenomenon
Dr Elena Raevskikh
French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Centre Norbert Elias, France

Biography

Dr Elena Raevskikh is a research fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), at the Centre Norbert Elias in Marseille, France. She holds a PhD in sociology from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). Her PhD thesis is entitled “The Genesis and renewals of institutional forms of culture: a study of music conservatories and their territorial anchors”. Dr Raevskikh has also graduated in international public law from the Lomonosov Moscow State University Law Faculty in Russia, where she studied the legal aspects of the process of economic and monetary integration in the European Union. She is currently involved in the ANR-Curricula research project funded by the French National Research Agency, which aims to analyse the reorganisation of cultural institutions in cities designated “European Capitals of Culture” in four European countries (France, Sweden, Poland and Italy). For this project, Dr Raevskikh is developing new conceptual and methodological approaches to identify the creative territories and the socio-cultural dynamics of artistic innovation.

Previous Presentations

Spotlight Presentation (2017) | The Place of Artistic Innovation: Local Area Characteristics and Arts Growth in Arles
Dr Richard Donovan
Kansai University, Japan

Biography

Dr Richard Donovan lectures in comparative literature and translation studies in the Faculty of Letters at Kansai University, Japan. He has also worked as a translator at the Kyoto City International Relations Office. He obtained a PhD in literary translation studies at Victoria University of Wellington in 2012. The title of his thesis was "Dances with Words: Issues in the Translation of Japanese Literature into English". His other areas of interest include Japanese media subculture and environmental technology.

**Dr Richard Donovan is the editor of the IAFOR Journal of Literature & Librarianship. He is Chair of the IAFOR Publications Committee.

Previous Presentations

Spotlight Presentation (2017) | Urban Monsters: The Edgy Japanese Folkloric Fiction of Yukimi Ogawa
Professor Baden Offord
Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University, Australia & Cultural Studies Association of Australasia

Biography

Baden Offord is an internationally recognized specialist in human rights, sexuality, education and culture. In 2012 he was a sponsored speaker to the 14th EU-NGO Human Rights Forum in Brussels where he spoke on ASEAN and sexual justice issues. In the same year he conducted a three-week lecture tour of Japan sponsored by the Australian Prime Minister’s Educational Assistance Funds post the Great Eastern Tohoku Earthquake in 2011.

Among his publications are the books Homosexual Rights as Human Rights: Activism in Indonesia, Singapore and Australia (2003), Activating Human Rights (co-edited with Elizabeth Porter, 2006), Activating Human Rights Education (co-edited with Christopher Newell, 2008), and Activating Human Rights and Peace: Theories, Practices, Contexts (co-edited with Bee Chen Goh and Rob Garbutt, 2012). His most recent co-authored publication in the field of Australian Cultural Studies is titled Inside Australian Culture: Legacies of Enlightenment Values (with Kerruish, Garbutt, Wessell and Pavlovic, 2014), which is a collaborative work with the Indian cultural theorist Ashis Nandy. His latest chapter, ‘Queer activist intersections in Southeast Asia: human rights and cultural studies,’ appears in Ways of Knowing About Human Rights in Asia (ed. Vera Mackie, London, Routledge, 2015).

He has held visiting positions at The University of Barcelona, La Trobe University, the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and Rajghat Education Centre, Varanasi. In 2010-2011 he held the Chair (Visiting Professor) in Australian Studies, Centre for Pacific Studies and American Studies, The University of Tokyo. In Japan he has given lectures and research seminars at Chuo, Otemon Gakuin, Sophia, Tohoku and Keio Universities.

Prior to his appointment at Curtin University, he was Professor of Cultural Studies and Human Rights at Southern Cross University, where he was a faculty member from 1999-2014.

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | Refuge: Refugee: Moonlight and Precarious Love
Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | The Challenges of Doing Cultural Studies Today
The 4th Kathleen Firth Keynote Lecture (2016) | Holding to Account: Visualising Human Rights and Cosmopolitan Betrayal
Keynote Panel Presentation (2016) | Global Studies in Challenging Times: Focussing on the Arts, Humanities, and Cultural Studies
Dr A. Robert Lee
Nihon University, Japan (retd.)

Biography

A. Robert Lee, a Britisher who helped establish American Studies in the UK, was Professor in the English department at Nihon University, Tokyo from 1997 to 2011, having previously taught for almost three decades at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. He now lives in Murcia, Spain. He has held visiting professorial positions in the US at the University of Virginia, Bryn Mawr College, Northwestern University, the University of Colorado, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of New Mexico.

His academic books include Designs of Blackness: Mappings in the Literature and Culture of Afro-America (1998); Postindian Conversations (1999), with Gerald Vizenor; Multicultural American Literature: Comparative Black, Native, Latino/a and Asian American Fictions (2003), which won the American Book Award in 2004; Gothic to Multicultural: Idioms of Imagining in American Literary Fiction (2009) and Modern American Counter Writing: Beats, Outriders, Ethnics (2010). Has also been responsible for collections like Other Britain, Other British (1995); Beat Generation Writers (1996); China Fictions/English Language: Literary Essays in Diaspora, Memory, Story (2008); The Salt Companion to Jim Barnes (2010); with Deborah L. Madsen, Gerald Vizenor: Texts and Contexts (2010); Native American Writing, 4 Vols (2011), African American Writing, 5 Vols (2013), US Latino/a Writing (2014); and, with Alan R. Velie, The Native American Renaissance: Literary Imagination and Achievement (2013).

His creative work is reflected in Japan Textures: Sight and Word (2007), with Mark Gresham; Tokyo Commute: Japanese Customs and Way of Life Viewed from the Odakyu Line (2011); and the poetry collections Ars Geographica: Maps and Compasses (2012); Portrait and Landscape: Further Geographies (2013); Imaginarium: Sightings, Galleries, Sightlines (2013); Americas: Selected Verse and Vignette (2015); Password: A Book of Locks and Keys (2016); and Aurora: A Spanish Gallery of Image and Text (IAFOR Publications on-line, 2016).

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | History, Story, Narrative – Constructing History
Featured Presentation (2016) | City Poems - Readings
Professor Emerita Sue Ballyn
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Sue Ballyn is Professor Emerita at Barcelona University 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 Barcelona University 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 Prof. Lucy Frost. 2016 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 is 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 2016 a book of interviews with elderly women, with the working title Stories of Experience, will be published as part of this project. These oral stories are the result of field work she has carried out in Barcelona.

She is also 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. She currently holds the position of Profesor Emerita and Founder/Co-Director of the Australian Studies Centre, at Barcelona University.

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | The Challenges of Doing Cultural Studies Today
Keynote Panel Presentation (2016) | Global Studies in Challenging Times - Focussing on the Arts, Humanities, and Cultural Studies
Professor Donald E. Hall
Lehigh University, USA

Biography

Donald E. Hall has published widely in the fields of British Studies, Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, and Professional Studies. Prior to arriving at Lehigh in 2011, 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 (WVU). Before his tenure at WVU, he was Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), 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 2001 Lansdowne Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria (Canada), was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, for 2004-05, and was Fulbright Specialist at the University of Helsinki for 2006. He has also taught in Sweden, Romania, Hungary, and China. He has 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. In 2013, he was elected to and began serving 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 ethical intellectualism, and the Victorian (and our continuing) interest in the deployment of instrumental agency over our social, vocational, and sexual selves. His book, The Academic Community: A Manual For Change, was published by Ohio State University Press in the fall of 2007. His tenth book, Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies, was published in the spring of 2009. In 2012, he and Annamarie Jagose, of the University of Auckland, collaborated on a volume titled The Routledge Queer Studies Reader, which was published in July of that year. 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.

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | The Challenges of Doing Cultural Studies Today
Keynote Panel Presentation (2016) | Global Studies in Challenging Times: Focussing on the Arts, Humanities, and Cultural Studies
Dr Bill Phillips
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Bill Phillips is a Senior Lecturer in English literature and culture at the University of Barcelona and head of the English and German Studies Department. He lectures on British poetry, crime fiction and other contemporary fiction. He has published widely on poetry, focusing particularly on the Romantic period, ecocriticism, ecofeminism, postcolonial studies, gender studies and popular fiction, including detective fiction, science fiction and zombies.

He is head of POCRIF (Postcolonial Crime Fiction: a global window into social realities), a research project on postcolonial crime fiction financed by the Ministerio de Economía y Competividad. The project’s team are members of the Australian Studies Centre, based at the University of Barcelona, and the group’s research forms part of the wider academic and investigative work carried out by the Centre.

Keynote Presentation (2018) | Catalonia’s Referendum on Independence from Spain

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2016) | Crime Fiction - A Global Phenomenon
Keynote Panel Presentation (2016) | Global Studies in Challenging Times - Focussing on the Arts, Humanities, and Cultural Studies
Professor Myles Chilton
Nihon University, Japan

Biography

Myles Chilton (BA University of Toronto; MA and PhD University of Chicago) is a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Nihon University. Originally from Toronto, Canada, Chilton has been in Japan for over twenty years, writing about relationships between contemporary world literature and global cities in Literary Cartographies: Spatiality, Representation, and Narrative (Palgrave Macmillan 2014), and in journal articles such as Comparative Critical Studies, The Journal of Narrative Theory, and Studies in the Literary Imagination. He also focuses on global English and literary studies in such books as the monograph English Studies Beyond the ‘Center’: Teaching Literature and the Future of Global English (Routledge 2016); and in chapters in the books The Future of English in Asia: Perspectives on Language and Literature (Routledge 2015), Deterritorializing Practices in Literary Studies (Contornos 2014), and World Literature and the Politics of the Minority (Rawat 2013). Chilton has also presented papers on these and other topics at universities around the world. He is also on the editorial board of the IAFOR Journal of Literature and Librarianship.

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | History, Story, Narrative – Constructing History
Keynote Presentation (2016) | Walking the Global City - Journeys in World Literature
Dr Cornelis Martin Renes
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

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.

Featured Presentation (2018) | ¡A España no hay presos políticos! / In Spain there are no political prisoners!

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017)
Featured Panel Presentation (2016) | Postcolonial Crime Fiction - A Global Phenomenon
Dr Joseph Haldane
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

Biography

Joseph Haldane is the 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 current research concentrates on post-war and contemporary politics and international affairs, and 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 a Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated within the university.

He is also a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the College of Education of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

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.

A black belt in judo, he is married with two children, and lives in Japan.

IAFOR Silk Road Initiative Information Session
Kiyoshi Mana
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR)

Biography

Kiyoshi Mana is the Director of International Operations at The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), and is responsible for overseeing the global operations of the organisation, including IAFOR’s conferences in Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East. He is also the Vice President for Global Partnerships and Affiliations, developing our expanding relationships with universities and organisations around the world.

An American of Japanese descent, Kiyoshi has long been fascinated by the country of his ancestors, studying both Japanese language and culture at San Francisco State, and also successfully training to be a sushi chef. Coming from a family of educators, he came to Japan in 2009 to continue his studies and to teach, before joining IAFOR in 2011 in a position that utilizes his marketing experience, and his strong commitment to education.