[csaa-forum] Call for EOIs - Research Assistant: 'Listening across difference'

[Tanja Dreher]

EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST are sought for a Research Assistant to work on a 
pilot research project 'Listening across difference'. The project is 
based at the University of Technology, Sydney. Details of the research 
appear below.

The position entails 2 days per week work over a period of 9 months, 
beginning June 2009. Remuneration is at RA HEW Level 6.

The Research Assistant will:
- Conduct recorded interviews with participants and organisers of 
'listening projects' including Living Libraries and Digital Storytelling 
initiatives.
- Undertake participant observation on listening projects.
- Conduct background research to identify relevant literature and 
potential interested participants
- Establish and maintain an online database/archive of research data and 
background materials
- Liaise closely with the chief researcher, Dr Tanja Dreher

TO EXPRESS YOUR INTEREST IN THE POSITION please send a brief CV (4 pages 
max) and a statement (2 pages max.) outlining your skills, experience 
and motivation relevant to the position.

Please send your EOI via return email to Dr Tanja Dreher 
tanja.dreher at uts.edu.au by Monday 25 May.

LISTENING ACROSS DIFFERENCE
Chief Investigator: Dr Tanja Dreher (UTS)

This project investigates innovative listening practices to develop new 
understandings of the communicative aspects of multiculturalism and 
protocols for negotiating differences of language, culture and politics. 
Contemporary community relations and antiracism work has increasingly 
turned to a politics of speaking, yet attention to ‘listening’ is 
underdeveloped in both research and practice. Through case studies of 
'listening projects' such as Living Libraries and Digital Storytelling 
initiatives, this research identifies the practices and motivations 
required to challenge everyday hierarchies of attention.

'Listening across difference' addresses the challenge of ‘living with 
differences’ as one of the most crucial challenges in contemporary 
Australia. The objective is to develop a novel framework for working 
with the challenges of difference by focusing on the communicative 
aspects of multiculturalism and the neglected practices of political and 
intercultural listening. The following aims will fulfill this objective:

    * analyse and evaluate innovative listening practices which seek to
      develop understanding across language, cultural and political
      differences,
    * produce a complex, empirically-grounded definition and a nuanced
      understanding of intersubjective listening,
    * evaluate contemporary listening practices in a report for
      stakeholders including policymakers, local government and
      community and cultural development organisations and
    * establish a theoretical framework for emerging media studies
      research on listening as social communication.


This project investigates practices which seek, in different ways, to 
shift the hierarchies of attention which shape everyday listening, 
producing opportunities to listen across differences in new and 
challenging ways. ‘Listening’ has recently captured the attention of 
politicians, an eclectic range of scholars and organizations involved in 
community relations, interfaith, antiracism and conflict-resolution work.

The project arises out of ongoing collaborations developed through 'The 
Listening Project' funded by the ARC's Cultural Research Network (CRN). 
The Listening Project is a program of collaboration that generates 
sustained discussion and a publication around the practices, politics 
and ethics of the cultural literacy of ‘listening’. The project develops 
a new area of study through an innovative model of networking, bringing 
together researchers in a range of disciplines and media and cultural 
producers. It also develops the notion of ‘cultural literacy’ to include 
not only familiarity with or fluency in cultural rules and values but 
also the capacity to strategically intervene in communicative processes 
of meaning-making and interpretation in ways that invigorate 
inter-cultural interaction and public dialogue. Further details on The 
Listening project are available at 
http://www.transforming.cultures.uts.edu.au/news_events/Listening_project.html

-- 
Dr Tanja Dreher
ARC Postdoctoral Fellow
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Technology, Sydney
PO Box 123
Broadway NSW 2007
Email: tanja.dreher at uts.edu.au
Phone: (02) 9514 1671

UTS CRICOS Provider Code:  00099F
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