Description

Talking Circles offer an opportunity to meet other delegates with similar interests and concerns. Delegates self-select into groups based on broad thematic areas and then engage in extended discussion about the issues and concerns they feel are of utmost importance to that segment of the Research Network. Participation is open, encouraged, and supported.

How Do They Work?

The Talking Circles are grouped around each of the conference themes so discussions can focus on the specific areas of interest represented by each theme. 

How to Begin:

Allow members of the group to briefly introduce themselves. 

The facilitator should encourage open dialogue and ensure a collegial and respectful conversation. 

Starting Questions to Assist Discussion

Talking Circle: Who are we?

What is the territory, or scope, or landscape of this thematic area?

What are the burning issues, the key questions for this theme?

What are the forces or drivers that will affect us as professionals, thinkers, citizens, and aware and concerned people whose focus is this particular theme?

What are the future directions (in research, in theory-building, in practice) for this thematic area?

Theme: Global Studies 

• Global flows
• Global security
• Human movement: migration, refugees, undocumented migrants
• The dynamics of globalization, diaspora and diversity
• Globalized economics: inequalities, development, ‘free’ and ‘fair’ trade
• Developed and developing worlds
• Inequalities in international perspective
• Poverty and global justice
• Human rights in global perspective
• The local and the global

Theme: Environmental Studies 

• The natural and the social: interdisciplinary studies
• Human environments
• Sustainability as a focus of interdisciplinary study
• What are applied sciences?
• Health and the environment
• People, place and time: human demography
• Environmental governance: consumption, waste, economic ‘externalities’, sustainability, environmental equity
• Human interests in the natural sciences: the politics of the environment

Theme: Organizational Studies 

• Management as social science
• Culture in organizations
• Technology and work
• The social dynamics of organizations
• Human resource management
• Workers’ rights
• Corporate governance
• Organizational and social sustainability
• Corporate social responsibility
• Knowledge ecologies: embedded knowledge in the organizational setting
• Tacit and explicit knowledge
• Private and public knowledge
• Scenario building and futures forecasting
• Organizational change

Theme: Communication

• Media studies as social science
• Communications as a social science
• Information and communications technologies
• The social web: the internet in its social context
• Human-computer interactions
• Literacies as a social learning experience