Date/Time
Tuesday, 9 February 2027, 6:00–7:30 pm CET
Format
online via Zoom
Language
English
Participation
free of charge, prior registration required
Registration «here»
International Online-Workshop 2027 - Collaboration between ZHdK & ZHAW
Some of the most interesting ideas emerge when different worlds collide: artistic and scientific, local and global, personal and political, practical and poetic.
But collaboration across difference is rarely simple. People may enter the same project with very different assumptions about time, responsibility, beauty, authority, community, conflict, care, or change. What feels inspiring to one person may feel confusing, intrusive, or irrelevant to someone else. What looks like a shared goal may hide very different ideas of what really matters.
In this 90-minute online session, Milton Bennett invites us to explore how we can work more consciously with difference across cultures, disciplines, professions, communities, and worldviews. Drawing on the idea of bisociation — the creative act of bringing together ideas from different contexts — we will ask how new meaning and new possibilities can emerge when perspectives meet.
At the heart of the session is what Milton Bennett calls self-reflexive consciousness: the capacity to notice how our own perceptions, identities, and cultural assumptions shape what we see. This awareness can help us collaborate with more openness, creativity, and responsibility.
Together, we will explore how this capacity can help us:
- notice the assumptions and frames of reference we bring into collaboration;
- see identity, culture, and perspective as developing rather than fixed;
- approach unfamiliar ways of thinking as potential sources of creativity;
- use difference as something to learn from.
The session combines short inputs with conversation and reflection. Participants will connect the ideas to their own projects, studies, workplaces, and communities.
No prior knowledge is needed — only curiosity about why people see things differently and how those differences can become sources of creative and meaningful collaboration.
Audience
Anyone interested in fostering meaningful collaboration across cultural and professional boundaries (creative professionals, designers, artists, students, educators, professionals and managers from all fields)
Lecturers:
– Mona Mijthab, Social Entrepreneur and Lecturer in MAS Strategic Design (ZHdK)
– Steffi Neumann, Lecturer for Leadership and Coaching, Institute of Applied Psychology (ZHAW)
– Florence Balthasar (ZHdK), Head International Office at the at the Zurich University of Arts ZHd
Guest:
Dr. Milton J. Bennett is a leading scholar in intercultural communication. After serving as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Micronesia, he completed his doctorate in intercultural communication and sociology at the University of Minnesota. He also holds degrees from Stanford University and San Francisco State University.
He was a tenured professor at Portland State University, where he established the graduate program in intercultural communication, and has taught intercultural studies at universities in the U.S., Europe and China. He is currently an adjunct professor of intercultural studies at the University of Milano Bicocca in Italy.
Dr. Bennett is the author of Basic Concepts of Intercultural Communication: Paradigms, Principles, & Practices and has contributed to key publications including The Handbook of Intercultural Training and American Cultural Patterns. He has published more than 75 articles and chapters on intercultural competence and global leadership.