Category: Public Talks

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Disrupting and Consolidating Communication Research: Applying Communication Theory to Practice

June 12-June 16, 2025

Massey University, Palmerston North, Aotearoa New Zealand

Oceania Hub: Aotearoa New Zealand

Hosted by:

Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE)

Communication and Media Studies at Massey University

Organizers: Debalina Dutta, Sy Taffel, Sean Phelan, & Mohan Dutta

Call for Submissions Due Date: March 7, 2025, 11:59 pm NZST

The Oceania Hub of the International Communication Association (ICA) 2025 conference, hosted at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University in Aotearoa New Zealand, explores questions surrounding disrupting Communication Research through the lens of Te Tiriti and Social Justice. Drawing on communication scholarship organized around the various registers of social justice, the Hub examines the intersections of communication theorizing and practice, mobilized toward disruptions and consolidation. The hub will be held in hybrid form, with both in-person and virtual sessions. Selected panels, papers, and interventions will be considered for waiver of conference registration fees.

We invite disciplinary and interdisciplinary submissions and multimedia communication interventions (video stories, film, performances, art forms, photographic images, sound productions) from the broader Asia-Pacific, focusing on the representation of the scholarship of communication practice from the Islands of the Pacific. The salience of Pacific participation is constituted around the global sustainability challenges of climate change, rising water levels, extreme inequality etc. We see the hub as offering an opening for disrupting what counts as communication scholarship through the engagement with practices of communication for social change.

The ICA Regional Hub at CARE will comprise a one-day hybrid workshop on “Connecting theory and practice as disruptions.” The workshop will bring in scholars from across the Asia-Pacific in both virtual and face-to-face sessions, focusing on key questions exploring the intersections of theory and practice in the context of addressing complex global challenges at a time when reactionary forces are on the rise. Aligned with the ICA 2025 conference theme of “Disrupting and Consolidating Communication Research,” the workshop will center the questions of disruptions from the context of the Pacific, anchoring the conversations in the struggles for justice and/or sustainability among others in communities across the Pacific. Sessions will connect with local organizers and activists in generating conversations on key questions on decolonizing knowledge. Centering the principles of Kaupapa Māori and indigenous methods across Asia and the Pacific, the workshop will explore the role of community as an organizing space for building knowledge.

The Hub will operate in a hybrid model, with face-to-face participation complementing virtual participation. We welcome paper or panel submissions on the following topics and beyond:

  • The futures of struggles around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)
  • Decolonizing communication scholarship
  • Sustainable communicative futures
  • ‘Disruptive innovation’ and social justice
  • AI and/as disruption
  • Disruptive alternatives to corporate platforms and infrastructures
  • Indigenous data sovereignty
  • Internationalization of the culture wars
  • Communication theory and mutant neoliberalism
  • The normalization of reactionary politics
  • Cultures of political resistance
  • Climate justice
  • Communication theory, transdisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity
  • Media cultures and ecologies
  • Imperialism, geopolitics and multipolarity

We extend a special invitation to postgraduate students, activists and scholars from the Global South, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+ and those living with disabilities.

We invite submissions from the region addressing the theme “Disrupting and consolidating Communication Research.” The submissions can take the form of academic papers as well as multimedia forms beyond the text such as photos, audio, video stories, film, performance etc.

Please submit a title and an abstract no longer than 250 words. If you are submitting a multimedia intervention, please describe the interventions in the abstract. Please email your submission to Debalina Dutta at D.Dutta@massey.ac.nz by March 7, 2025, 11:59 pm NZST.

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    1st MUSLIMS in ASIA PACIFIC (MAP) CONFERENCE

    Conference Theme:  Experiences and challenges of Muslims in Asia Pacific

    Time To follow

    INVITATION AND CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

    Abstracts are invited for submission to the 1st Muslims in Asia Pacific (MAP) Conference to be jointly hosted by the Centre for Culture-centred Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) Massey University in collaboration with Muslim Diversity Study and University of Otago, funded by Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ). The conference seeks to build an opportunity for scholars focusing on topics related to Islam and Muslims living in the context of Asia Pacific to connect, share and discuss the challenges that we have ahead. Our aim is to better understand the scope of research being done in Asia Pacific and Aotearoa NZ in topics related to Muslims and Islam, and to develop our community of researchers, practitioners and advocates, building a sustainable network for research, theorising, and advocacy centred on the experiences of Muslims in the region.

    We welcome practitioners, academics, and postgraduate students working on topics directly in, or related to: Muslims, Muslim studies, Critical Muslim studies, Islamophobia, Muslim identity and Muslimness. We would like this event to be inclusive. A range of papers will be accepted that fit under the term “research”, including but not limited to, conceptual papers, empirical studies, reports, and interesting cases.

    Please click this link for the call for papers or go this page https://easychair.org/cfp/MAP1_MuslimConferenceNZ

    For submission go here or click on this page https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=map1

    Deadline: Feb 25th 2025

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    Prof Mohan Dutta, CARE, Massey University presenting at Philippine Association for Communication and Media Research, Inc (PACMRI) Masterclass 2024

    Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) is proud to share that Prof. Mohan Dutta, Massey University will be featuring at the PACMRI Masterclass 2024 on 11 October 2024 | 3PM Philippine Time on Zoom and Facebook LIVE with renowned scholars.

    Date: 11 October 2024 | 3 PM Philippine Time via Zoom and Facebook Live

    Discover the Culture-Centered Approach to Communication and Media Studies!

    Are you passionate about amplifying marginalized voices and challenging dominant narratives? Join us for the fourth Philippine Association for Communication and Media Research, Inc. PACMRI Masterclass to explore a transformative framework that centers these communities in media and communication featuring renowned scholars Prof. Mohan Dutta from Massey University , Dr. Sudeshna Roy from Marquette University and Dr. Dazzelyn Baltazar Zapata from the University of the Philippines

    Register for the Zoom session here: https://bit.ly/2024Masterclass3

    #CultureCenteredApproach #CommunicationStudies #MediaStudies #SocialChange #RadicalDemocracy #PACMRIMasterclass #MohanDutta #SudeshnaRoy #DazzelynBaltazarZapata #UPLBCommunication #MasseyUniversity #MarquetteUniversity #UPDiliman #EmpowermentThroughMedia #AmplifyVoices #InclusiveCommunication

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    CARE Talk | The Far-right and Islamophobic Hate: Lessons from the United Kingdom

    19 August 2024 @ 8 pm NZST on Facebook LIVE!

    Link to Facebook LIVE: https://www.facebook.com/share/dPPADYQYVEuT5yMo/

    The Far-right and Islamophobic hate: Lessons from the United Kingdom

    Abstract:

    This panel, bringing in leading global anti-racist activists challenging Islamophobia, will address the nature of Islamophobia in white supremacist hate. It will explore the drivers of Islamophobic hate, intersections with rise of fascism, and the threat to democracy. 

    Panelists:

    Prof. Mohan J Dutta, Director, Center for Culture-Centred Approach to Research & Evaluation (CARE), Massey University.

    Mohammed Owais, Director of the United Kingdom Indian Muslim Council (UKIMC)

    Imam Waseem Razvi, Chair of the Alliance Against Islamophobia

    Dr. Haroon Kasim, Ani Caste/Anti Racism Activist

    #AntiRacism, #Islamophobia, #FarRight, #WhiteSupremacist, #UnitedKingdom, #UKRiots, #Fascism,

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    Public Talk – CARE Visiting Academic Series: The Embodied Meaning Making of Museums – Presented by Professor Greg Dickinson, Colorado State University

    CARE is excited about this upcoming Public Talk, a part of the CARE Visiting Academic Series: The Embodied Meaning Making of Museums – Presented by Professor Greg Dickinson – Professor and Chair Communication Studies, Colorado State University.

    Tuesday,23rd April 2024 @ 11am Palmerston North City Library, 2nd Floor- Heritage Space and Livestream on CARE Facebook & CARE YouTube channel.

    The presentation explores how contemporary rhetorical scholarship helps us weave together symbolic, material and embodied understandings of museums.

    Museums are powerful cultural and communicative institutions. Museums are often and correctly understood as institutions of Western modernity, central to colonialism and imperialism, and are a location of crucial contestations of the relations among past, present, and future. They are also powerfully effective and affective technologies of communication. Understanding how to engage museums as communicative institutions depends on a rich understanding of the modes of museal communication.

    In this presentation Prof. Dickinson will trace the communicative and rhetorical modalities of museums. Drawing on my, and my colleagues, research on US American museums—with particular attention to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West—he will focus on the rhetorical nature of collection and display practices within museums. While many within museum studies have explored both collecting and display, rhetoric scholars bring field-specific questions and concerns to these practices, questions and concerns that can enliven us to the political consequentiality of museums. Contemporary rhetorical scholarship helps us weave together symbolic, material, and embodied understandings of museums.

    Livestream Links:

    Facebook LIVE: https://www.facebook.com/events/1126142745176836
    YouTube LIVE:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG4pwEiJVhA
    CARE Facebook Page:
    https://www.facebook.com/CAREMassey
    CARE YouTube Channel:
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF760E7rBst3U5GmJ5FhDDw
    CARE Twitter page
    https://twitter.com/CAREMasseyNZ

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    CARE Special Presentation: Palestine Solidarity and Ramadan with Dr. Fatima Junaid, Tayyaba Khan and Anthony Green

    Join us online on Tuesday 09 April 2024, 7pm for CARE’s Special Presentation on Palestine Solidarity and Ramadan with Dr. Fatima Junaid, Tayyaba Khan and Anthony Green.

    A conversation around solidarity and the dissonance that Muslims are feeling during Ramadan and may feel at Eid as we keep seeing the Palestinian Genocide.

    Supporting each other to keep going with the solidarity efforts and acknowledging that any effort is good as long as we are not silent. Please join us as we ponder on the question of what it means to have Eid in these times.

    Livestream Links:

    CARE Facebook Page:

    https://www.facebook.com/events/957996199291968/

    CARE YouTube Channel:

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF760E7rBst3U5GmJ5FhDDw

    Reading:

    Below is a document prepared by Anthony Green for the online talk supported by CARE – Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation.

    A selection of some different perspectives on the uses of language and on ways of seeing – a few examples of texts and sources that may be of interest.

    Palestine-Solidarity-and-Ramadan–9-Apr-2024Download

    Presenters:

    Dr. Fatima Junaid

    Dr. Fatima Junaid is an experienced consultant and educator working within public and private sector for over a decade. Dr. Junaid has done extensive research with marginalized communities including refugees, women, migrants and fishers’ communities. She focuses on developing mechanisms of support for better wellbeing outcomes. Currently she is a Senior lecturer at Massey University and a member of the several wellbeing (academic and professional) organisations. She also runs a social media support network group for Pakistani women in academia.

    Dr Junaid can be reached at f.junaid@massey.ac.nz or

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/fatimajunaid1/

    Tayyaba Khan

    Founder and trustee of Khadija Leadership Network, the New Zealand (NZ) Peace Ambassador for the European Muslim League, former Director of Advocacy at the Office of the Health and Disability Commissioner, and a community development practitioner with over 15 years of experience having worked with the migrant and refugee communities in The Occupied Territories of Palestine, Australia, United Kingdom and New Zealand. Tayyaba currently sits on the governance board of Mixit & Belong Aotearoa. She is also a regular panellist on RNZ’s ‘The Panel’, and ‘The AM Show’.

    Anthony Green

    Originally from the UK, he worked as a teacher of English and Literature, first in the UK and then, for eighteen years in Singapore. In the six months’ period after the mosque attacks, and again in the 2020 “anniversary,” he served as spokesperson for the Muslim Association of Canterbury

    His writings include books commissioned by Muis (Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura, Singapore’s Islamic Council), dealing with all aspects of the development and work of that body: its history, mosque-building programme, Hajj organisation, and more. His own work includes a history of how people travelled by sea from Southeast Asia to journey to Mecca for the Hajj. His interest is in people’s stories, particularly of those who are “unsung” – what the poet Brian Patten called, “the loose change history spent without caring.”

    Image by Palestinian photographer Hosny Salah, currently living in Palestine Gaza Strip

    https://pixabay.com/users/hosnysalah-10285169/

    CARE Twitter page:

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    The Urgency of Addressing Palestinian Mental Health in Times of Genocide: Special Presentation

    A conversation with Dr Samah Jabr

    Through her responses to a series of wide-ranging questions, Dr. Samah Jabr, Head of the Mental Health Unit within the Palestinian Ministry of Health, gives essential insights into the ways to understand Palestinian mental health before, during, and after catastrophe and genocide. By invoking the principle of “observing and learning” from Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Dr. Jabr challenges western pathologizing and individualizing around mental health, and offers a community-centered and liberatory alternative framework.

    Professor Walid Adel Afifi, Dept of Communication; Associate Dean, Division of Social Science, University of California – Santa Barbara

    Associate Professor Guido Veronese, in Clinical and Community Psychology, University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy.

    Visiting at Gaza Community Mental Health Program, Gaza where I teach Family Therapy.

    Dr. Samah Jabr, consultant Psychiatrist, Head of the Mental Health Unit, MoH

    Acknowledgements:

    Image by Palestinian photographer Hosny Salah, currently living in Palestine Gaza Strip

    Link: https://pixabay.com/users/hosnysalah-10285169/

    Music: Native American Drums 2 Hours, Royalty Free Music by Kevin MacLeod