Professor Ien Ang is Distinguished Professor of Cultural Studies and Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow at the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney. She is internationally renowned for her work in transnational, multicultural and global cultural studies. She has published influential work on globalisation and media audiences, Asians in multicultural Australia, and the politics of knowledge and representation in cultural institutions. Her most recent books are On not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West (2001) and, with Gay Hawkins and Lamia Dabboussy, The SBS Story: The Challenge of Cultural Diversity (2008, forthcoming). She is frequently engaged as a speaker at both academic conferences and in public fora on dilemmas and challenges of living with difference and diversity in a globalising world. As ARC Professorial Fellow (2005-2009) she is working on a research program titled 'Cultural Research for the 21st Century: Building Cultural Intelligence for a Complex World'.
Day 3: Sunday 5th October
Session 4: Cross-cultural public networks
'diverCities: A global collaboration space for intercultural dialogue'
How can the internet promote intercultural dialogue between cities? This paper will discuss an experimental project that brings together researchers from Sydney, Mumbai and Singapore to create a digital space for 'dialogue' through the production and exchange of local/global stories on belonging, eating, travelling, dwelling and countless other shared, but culturally specific human practices. Can the computer screen - not the large urban screen but the ordinary desktop - be a tool for cross-cultural collaboration across cities around the world?
