University of Exeter Intercultural Communication Lecture Series (3)

Join us in person for the University of Exeter Intercultural Communication Lecture Series! Tuesdays at 16:30-18:00 in person or online

The University of Exeter Intercultural Communication Lecture Series invites researchers who have made significant contributions to the field of Intercultural Communication to share their latest research with students and the wider academic community. The series will run in a hybrid format. Each event consists of a 50–60 minute presentation, followed by a Q&A session and a 40-minute workshop. The workshops will offer participants the opportunity to engage with data or questions related to the lecture. The thematic focus of the series includes everyday cultural and linguistic experiences, materiality, hospitality, homemaking, and artmaking, all approached through an intercultural lens.

Details

• Date: Tuesday 3 MArch 2026
• Time: 16:30-18:00
• Location: Forum, Seminar Room 10, The America Room or MS Teams

3 March: Dr Amina Kebabi, University College London

'Interculturality, the myth of neutrality, and the politics of difference'

Abstract

This lecture examines the permeability of social issues and inequality in the workplace and in the personal every day due to perceptions of difference and entitlement to enact discrimination. Drawing on the emerging field of raciolinguistics (Flores and Rosa 2015; Rosa and Flores 2017), the lecture unpacks ideologically laden perceptions of ‘race’ and language as neutral and given in categorising who is who and whether they belong or not. It also addresses the centrality of human-to-human relations in resisting inequality and revisiting the long-established understanding of interculturality as exclusive to human dynamics, using a critical posthumanist perspective (Braidotti, 2013, 2019; Ferri, 2020; Pennycook, 2018; Ros i Solé, 2025). The lecture has two main implications: It corroborates empirical findings of the need for ‘institutional action on racism’ (Arday and Mirza, 2018: vi) and it opposes ‘the pervasive myth that higher education is somehow beyond the perpetuation of racial inequity’ (Johnson and Joseph-Salisbury, 2018: 144) (see also Kebabi, 2025). The second implication is (un)learning knowledge and practices which perpetuate dualist epistemologies such as mind/body dichotomy and culture/nature continuum which still persist in the broad and interdisciplinary field of Intercultural Communication.

Bio: Amina Kebabi obtained a PhD in Applied Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, and is a Lecturer (Teaching) in Intercultural Communication (Dissertation Supervisor) at the UCL Institute of Education, University of London, UK. Amina is also the editor of book reviews for the journal of Language and Intercultural Communication, and the communications officer for the British Association for Applied Linguistics Special Interest Group in Intercultural Communication Research and Pedagogy.

Amina research interests include: materiality, culture, language ideology, identity, belonging, intercultural education, migration and gender in the media, qualitative research methods.

For any questions, please contact Dr Birgul Yilmaz [email protected]

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