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Established | 2006 |
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Affiliation | La Trobe University |
Director | Professor Joseph A. Camiller |
Location | , |
Campus | Bundoora Campus |
Website | Official website |
The Centre for Dialogue is an interdisciplinary research institution at La Trobe University. Professor Joseph Camilleri was the director of the centre from 2006 until 2013. The current director is Professor Alberto Gomes. The research centre specialises in the philosophy, method and practice of dialogue between communities, cultures, religions and civilisations. The key aims of the centre include:
The focus of the centre is largely concentrated on inter-cultural, inter-religious conflict and inter-civilisational conflict, as well as the researching of practical methods of dialogue which may encourage peaceful resolutions to conflict and mechanisms for cooperation.
The Centre for Dialogue has several current ongoing projects which act as the hallmark of the institutions' study.
Examples of such ongoing projects are investigating the tensions relations to the role of religion and culture in international politics, particularly since the 11 September terrorist attacks. Such projects continue to focus on how the government, nongovernment and civil society sectors have responded, most notable in Europe, the United States, and Asia (including Australia). The projects investigate both domestic conflict (for example, strategies to curb escalating tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims) and international tensions (for example, the implications arising from the rise of Political Islam and the War on Terror in international politics).
Other projects include:
The Centre for Dialogue also runs several educational programmes such as the Muslim Leadership Program for Young Muslims, which aims to empower young Muslim men and women and help them to reach their full potential as citizens and future leaders.
The Centre for Dialogue composes and distributes publications arising from their diverse research projects. This includes the publication of books, edited volumes and journal articles, as well as discussion papers that are distributed to relevant organisations and government departments. The centre also distributes a bi-annual newsletter that reports on the centre's activities, as well as includes opinion pieces on issues that relate to the centre's interests.
The Centre for Dialogue also distributes several working papers each year that do not necessarily relate to the centre's projects. Monographs are submitted to the centre to be considered by the editorial committee for publication. The intention of the working papers is to provide the research community (including students and academics), policy-makers, journalists and community leaders with an opportunity to contribute to ongoing debates. Papers are preferred to focus on the dynamics of conflict (whether intrastate, inter-state, or trans-state). They generally must also identify ways in which the theory and/or practice of dialogue has contributed to coexistence, co-operation and mutual enrichment and highlight methods that may foster peaceful relations in the future.
The Centre for Dialogue and its staff provide the core of the editorial input of the scholarly journal, Global Change, Peace & Security , published by Routledge and edited from La Trobe University.[ citation needed ]
The previous director; Professor Joseph Camilleri's most recent book, co-authored with Professor Jim Falk, was launched by UNDP head, the Hon Helen Clark, in Sydney, Australia in February 2010. The book Worlds in Transition: Evolving Governance Across a Stressed Planet, Edward Elgar, UK, is a synoptic overview of the way in which humans have come to collectively seek to shape their futures, and the challenges posed to that in a time of rapid transition.
The Centre for Dialogue hosts one major national or international conference and one major public lecture each year, such as an international conference titled "Europe and Asia: Between Islam and the United States" in 2008, and a 2009 controversial keynote address by former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami.
An ethnic conflict is a conflict between two or more contending ethnic groups. While the source of the conflict may be political, social, economic or religious, the individuals in conflict must expressly fight for their ethnic group's position within society. This criterion differentiates ethnic conflict from other forms of struggle.
The Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA) was founded in Jerusalem in March 1987 by Dr. Mahdi Abdul Hadi and a group of Palestinian academics and intellectuals. PASSIA is a member of the Palestinian NGOs Network and claims no affiliation with any government, political party organization.
Interfaith dialogue refers to cooperative, constructive, and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions and/or spiritual or humanistic beliefs, at both the individual and institutional levels. It is distinct from syncretism or alternative religion, in that dialogue often involves promoting understanding between different religions or beliefs to increase acceptance of others, rather than to synthesize new beliefs.
Interculturalism is a political movement that supports cross-cultural dialogue and challenging self-segregation tendencies within cultures. Interculturalism involves moving beyond mere passive acceptance of multiple cultures existing in a society and instead promotes dialogue and interaction between cultures. Interculturalism is often used to describe the set of relations between indigenous and western ideals, grounded in values of mutual respect.
Sheikh Mohammed Aboulkhair Zaki Badawi, KBE, GCFO was a prominent Egyptian Islamic scholar, community activist, and promoter of interfaith-dialogue. He was the principal of the Muslim College in London, which he founded in 1986. He also was a frequent writer and broadcaster on Islamic affairs.
Ekmeleddin Mehmet İhsanoğlu is a Turkish academic, diplomat and politician who was Secretary-General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) from 2004 to 2014. He is also an author and editor of academic journals and advocate of intercultural dialogue.
The Faith and Belief Forum, formerly known as the Three Faiths Forum (3FF), is an interfaith organisation in the United Kingdom.
The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) is an initiative that attempts to "galvanize international action against extremism" through the forging of international, intercultural and interreligious dialogue and cooperation. The Alliance places a particular emphasis on defusing tensions between the Western and Islamic worlds.
Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami introduced the idea of Dialogue Among Civilizations as a response to Samuel P. Huntington's theory of a Clash of Civilizations. The term was initially used by Austrian philosopher Hans Köchler who in 1972, in a letter to UNESCO, had suggested the idea of an international conference on the "dialogue between different civilizations" and had organized, in 1974, a first international conference on the role of intercultural dialogue with the support and under the auspices of Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor.
Jenn Lindsay is an American social scientist, adjunct professor of Sociology and Communications, documentary filmmaker, video journalist and singer-songwriter currently based in Rome, Italy. Her work focuses on the exploration of social diversity, community building, personal transformation, and social change movements.
Mohammed Abu-Nimer is an American expert on conflict resolution and dialogue for peace. He is a full professor at the American University School of International Service in International Peace and Conflict Resolution in Washington, DC, the largest school of international relations in the United States.
The Muslim Jewish Conference (MJC) is an annual inter-cultural, inter-religious conference based in Vienna. MJC is a dialogue and leadership project that targets future leaders from sectors of economics, academics and politics in the start of their careers.
The Khalili Foundation is a UK-based charity promoting interfaith and intercultural understanding through art, culture and education. Its founder and chairman is the London-based philanthropist, art collector and scholar Sir David Khalili. A Persian Jew who grew up in Iran, he is notable for having the world's largest private collection of Islamic art. Established in 1995, the foundation has created interfaith and intercultural links through "cultural, academic, sporting and educational programmes".
Andreas Zick is a professor of Socialization and Conflict Research at Faculty of Education Science, Bielefeld University.
The King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue, mostly referred to as "International Dialogue Centre" and globally known by its abbreviation, KAICIID, is an inter-governmental organization that promotes interreligious and intercultural dialogue to prevent and resolve conflict. It was established in Vienna, Austria, but relocated to Lisbon, Portugal on 1 July 2022. KAICIID was opened in 2012 by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Republic of Austria and the Kingdom of Spain, following the initiative of Pope Benedict XVI and King Abdullah of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia who met in 2007 to discuss the founding of a new interfaith activity. The Holy See is a founding observer. The centre and its mission have been endorsed by many religious leaders and high-level politicians, including the Viennese Community Rabbi Schlomo Hofmeister, the Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn, and the former Austrian President Heinz Fischer. In 2021, Austrian media outlets reported that Japan, Argentina, Morocco, Indonesia and Canada were reportedly considering to join the organization as new member states.
The Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group is a non-violent conflict resolution group established in 1992 in San Mateo, California. Its first meeting was held in a local neighborhood residence. As of September 2019, the group remained active and continued to meet monthly in members' homes. The one-to-one, face-to-face method of conflict resolution, modeled by this dialogue group, was increasingly looked to globally by educators, researchers, journalists, activists, trainers, and strategists including the U.S. Department of State, which distributes the dialogue group's instructive films in Africa.
CEJI – A Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Brussels, Belgium. Established in 1991, the organisation's areas of expertise include: education; inclusion and social cohesion; discrimination and xenophobia; hate speech and hate crime; media and digital literacy. It also provides anti-discrimination training to teachers, social workers and others. The organisation recently launched a series of online courses on hate crimes with support from Google, Facebook and Twitter that provide 'tools to educators, activists and other professionals to identify and combat hate speech'.
Muslim Women's National Network Australia (MWNNA) is an association in Australia which represents a network of progressive Muslim women's organisations and individual Muslim women. MWNNA runs events and projects for Muslim women, and represents their views to media and government organisations.
Intercultural dialogue (ICD) "occurs when members of different cultural groups, who hold conflicting opinions and assumptions, speak to one another in acknowledgment of those differences". It builds upon the concept of dialogue, which refers to at least two people holding a conversation. And it builds upon the term intercultural, which is typically used to refer to people communicating across differences in nationality, race and ethnicity, or religion. Dialogue has several meanings: it sometimes refers to dialogue in a script, which simply means people talking, but more often it refers to "a quality of communication characterized by the participants' willingness and ability simultaneously to be radically open to the other(s) and to articulate their own views. ... Dialogue's primary goal is understanding rather than agreement."