Event: An Evening with Prof Alison Phipps.
Title: Hospitality - Lessons from Refugees.
Chair: Peter Macdonald, Former Leader, the Iona Community.
Venue: Sanctuary, Augustine United Church, 41 George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1EL.
Date: Wednesday 23 May 2018.
Time: Registration: 6.30pm-7pm. Event: 7pm-8.45pm.
Event Description: Hospitality is culture itself, said the philosopher Jacques Derrida. The arts of hospitality are fundamental to the health and wellbeing of any society world wide. The sanctions on breaches of hospitality are rooted deep in the human psyche and the practice of hospitality is of critical important to the world’s religions. Over the past two years there has been a rapid increase in the civic organisation of the welcome to refugees worldwide. In many cases it has been clear that civil society has led where politics has lagged far behind. As UNESCO Professor for Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts, Alison Phipps is engaged in research, advocacy and activism with refugee and settled communities world wide. She brings lives within a web of stories and also of her own artistic practice and regular media work with in Scottish and international contexts. Through this lecture and her conversation she will explore the important, particularly of ceremonial and spiritual dimensions to her work, both personally and professionally.
Alison Phipps is Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies, and Co-Convener of Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network (GRAMNET). In 2017 she takes up the UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts at the University of Glasgow. She is Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Waikato University, Aotearoa New Zealand, was Thinker in Residence at the EU Hawke Centre, University of South Australia in 2016, and Principal Investigator for the £2 million AHRC Large Grant ‘Researching Multilingually at the Borders of Language, the body, law and the state.’ In 2011 she was voted ‘Best College Teacher’ by the student body, and received the Universities ‘Teaching Excellence Award’ for a Career Distinguished by Excellence. In 2012 she received an OBE for Services to Education and Intercultural and Interreligious Relations in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the Academy of Social Sciences.
She has undertaken work in, amongst others, Palestine, Sudan, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Germany, France, USA, Portugal, Ghana. She has produced and directed theatre and worked as dramaturg and creative liturgist with the World Council of Churches from 2008-2011 during the Decade to Overcome Violence. Most recently she co-directed Broken World, Broken Word, a Noyam African Dance Institute, Dodowa, Ghana with Tawona Sitholé & Gameli Tordzro.
She is regularly advises public, governmental and third sector bodies on migration, arts and languages policy and participated recently in a witness-bearing visit to Calais for Scottish Members of the Home Affairs Select Committee.
She is author of numerous books and articles, a published poet and a regular international keynote speaker and broadcaster and Member of the Iona Community.
Cost: £5/£3 (Concessions)/£1 (Students). For a Registration Form:
Contact: Neill Walker, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., 0131 331 4469.