Françoise Companjen Gert Hekma Melanie Eijberts Roos Gerritsma |
DAY CO-ORDINATORS
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- Françoise Companjen - Day 2 Co-ordinator: Integration
Francoise Companjen is a Dutch anthropologist with French roots. She studied anthropology and organizational psychology in the USA, Belgium and the Netherlands. She is an associate professor at the department Culture Organization and Management, Social Faculty at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Companjen’s specialty is intercultural communication and dialogue between people from Georgia and the Netherlands.
Francoise is author of the book Between Tradition and Modernity, Rethinking roles of NGO leaders in Georgia’s transition to Democracy . Companjen’s main research goal is to illustrate the western bias in concepts considered international such as culture, communication, structure, institution, democracy and voluntarism and to promote a viable larger Europe. She is establishing a foundation promoting research, education and exchange between people from Eastern and Western Europe, including Eurasia.
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- Gert Hekma - Day 3 Co-ordinator: Diversity as an Opportunity
Gert Hekma teaches gay and lesbian studies in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. His specialism is sociology and history of (homo)sexuality and he teaches in the BA and MA gender, sexuality and society -- see http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/g.hekma/ with the references to his research and teaching.
Gert co-organized several conferences f.e. Among Men, Among Women (1983), Organizing Sexuality (1994),Queer Sports (1998), Sexual Cultures in Europe and smaller ones on the Marquis de Sade, masturbation, the history of sexology, the rise of the gay and lesbian movement and same-sex marriage. He is currently working on an encyclopaedia of perversions, on the Dutch poet Jacob Israel de Haan, on discrimination of gays and lesbians in The Netherlands, on sex capitals and on a comparison of homosexual emancipation after WW II in various Western countries.
- Roos Gerritsma - Day 3 Co-ordinator: Diversity as an Opportunity
Roos Gerritsma (1974) – studied urban sociology at the University of Amsterdam, and currently works as a lecturer and researcher at the Hogeschool INHolland, Amsterdam/Diemen in Leisure and Tourism Studies. Her specific areas of interest & research are: creative cities, sports, leisure and lifestyles, slow cities/life and gay tourism.
She is also a lecturer in sociology and research methods at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (Art Academy) in Utrecht in the department of Documentary Photography.
Based upon the work of Richard Florida on Creative Cities (2002), she and her colleagues from Hogeschool INHolland, Karin Bras, Stephen Hodes and Jacques Vork carried out research in 2005-2006 on gay-tourism in Amsterdam amongst foreign LGBT-tourists, gay travel agencies, LGBT-inhabitants of Amsterdam, (gay) stakeholders and non-gay tourists. This research can be down loaded for free; an English article will be published in 2007 via ATLAS/ Routlegde.
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- Melanie Eijberts - Day 4 Co-ordinator: Diversity in organizations
Melanie Eijberts has received her Master of Science degree in Comparative Studies of Migration, Ethnic Relations, and Multiculturalism from the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, in May 2006. Currently she is pursuing a PhD degree at the department of Culture, Organization, and Management at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Halleh Ghorashi she is investigating the social, economic, and cultural integration as well as the feelings of belongingness of different groups of migrant women in the Netherlands, using both qualitative and quantitative research methods.
Eijberts is especially interested in how different migrant women shape their own integration, e.g., by means of self-organizations, and in which social, economic, cultural, and personal factors at the micro, meso, and macro level affect their choices and possibilities to practically and emotionally relate to the Dutch society and identity.
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