Day 1 - Language Connects

Language: English
Location: Hörsaalzentrum CP1, room 0.022/0.023

Language in academia serves various communication purposes, from disseminating research findings to instructing students and sharing administrative information. However, it's inherently ideological. How can institutions promote diversity in research and teaching and work against exclusionary language use? This workshop explores challenges and solutions, using the BCDSS as a case study. We'll discuss its Antidiscrimination Policy, urging members to reflect on language use, and its Language Policy, embracing linguistic diversity. By sharing policy development experiences, we aim to foster inclusivity and reflection in academia.

Instructors: Imogen Herrad and Dima Al-Munajed from the Cluster Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS)

Improvisational theatre to learn strategies for dealing with discrimination

Language: German
Location: Hörsaalzentrum CP1, Hörsaal 2

Forum theatre offers a playful and interactive way of dealing with social conflicts and developing alternative options for action. In this workshop, elements of Forum Theatre are used to enable collective learning and to critically question racism together. Different perspectives are explored through interactive exercises.

Instructor: Ana Valeria González (she/her) is a director, performer and theatre educator in independent theatre. Her focus is on biographical, emancipatory and participatory theatre. She identifies everyday conflicts in the artistic process in order to create new perspectives. Social discrepancies and anti-discrimination work are central themes that she integrates into theatre in an inspiring way.

Workshop on discrimination-sensitive language and developing approaches for action

Language: German
Location: Hörsaalzentrum CP1, room 0.020

Language shapes our view of the world and therefore also the way we interact in our society. Depending on how we name someone or something, we can include or exclude people. This can have a fundamental impact on the day-to-day work of universities. Whether in collaboration with colleagues and students or through publications, language resonates in every area of work at these institutions. This is why it is particularly important for universities as educational institutions to address the topic of "language and inclusion". What does it mean to exclude through language in a university and how can this be determined? Are there approaches to making language more inclusive at the University of Bonn? The 3 hour workshop will attempt to answer these questions.

Instructor: Sho Tatai (he/him) - Diversity adviser, trainer, coach & speaker 

Language: German
Location: Online via Zoom

The internet and social media offer many advantages that we utilise in our everyday lives, but we also encounter discrimination, hate comments, disinformation and conspiracy narratives on a daily basis. But what can we do about it? How can we recognise digital violence and actively counter it?

The workshop aims to raise participants' awareness of hate speech online and equip them with arguments, tools and knowledge to identify hate speech and discriminatory behaviour online and to learn about different strategies for action and dealing with it. The workshop then aims to empower participants to counter digital hate speech and thus develop digital and analogue moral courage.

Instructors: Patricia Oulehla, Friederike Hobein (Trainers for political education)

Language: German
Location: Hörsaalzentrum CP1, room 0.021 and Online via Zoom

Universities are not discrimination-free spaces. Anti-discrimination and social inclusion are not automatically a given when a university serves students from different nations. The various forms of discrimination, including ableism, are systemic problems and not just a series of incidents. We are all confronted with this issue - whether as perpetrators or victims, as teachers or as students.

The concept of anti-bias education offers a constructive way of dealing with overt and covert prejudice and discrimination mechanisms. It is a political and action-orientated strategy that focuses on various forms of discrimination and their interaction with individuals or population groups, which can be based on disability, ethnicity, economic class, gender, age, sexual orientation and religion (intersectionality). The critical examination of attitudes, power and ideologies of superiority and inferiority plays a central role here.

After a brief basic introduction to the anti-bias approach, the interactive workshop will focus on the topic of ‘ableism’ and discrimination-sensitive language and strategies for dealing with discriminatory statements and actions.

Instructor: Dr. phil. Prasad Reddy, ZSIMT (Zentrum für soziale Inklusion, Migration und Teilhabe)