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Halleh Ghorashi Karen van Oudenhoven-van der Zee Jack Levin Gloria Wekker Lee Badgett Ronald Prins Ruud Koopmans Dr. Gregory Paul P. Meyjes Bill Cope Leo Lucassen Margaret Reynolds Arthur Verdellen |
MAIN SPEAKERS
The conference will be opened by the Mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen.
The 2007 Diversity Conference will feature plenary session addresses by some of the world's
leading thinkers and innovators in the field of diversity studies, as well as numerous parallel
presentations by researchers and practitioners.
Garden Conversation Sessions
Main speakers will make formal 30 minute presentations in the plenary sessions. They will also
participate in 60 minute Garden Conversation sessions at the same time as the parallel sessions.
The setting is a circle of chairs outdoors. These sessions are entirely unstructured - a chance
to meet the plenary speaker and talk with them informally about the issues arising from their presentation.
Please return to this page for regular updates.
- Halleh Ghorashi
Halleh Ghorashi is an Iranian-Dutch anthropologist and special professor of Management of Diversity and Integration at the faculty of Culture, Organization, and Management at the Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is also member of the Dutch Advisory Committee of Foreign Affairs. Ghorashi is specialized in the fields of refugee studies, Iran, diaspora and migrant organizations, gender, multiculturalism, and diversity management. She is the author of the book Ways to Survive, Battles to Win: Iranian Women Exiles in the Netherlands and the U.S., which has received considerable attention in the Netherlands. Her current research focuses on the socio-economic integration and participation of ethnic minority women in the Netherlands – especially in the context of multiculturalism and the dominant discourse regarding migrant women. Ghorashi’s main research goal is to provide a better understanding of the growing diversity of the Dutch society.
- Karen van Oudenhoven-van der Zee
Karen van Oudenhoven-van der Zee (1966) is a personality psychologist by training and full professor of Organizational Psychology at the Faculty of Psychological, Pedagogical, and Sociological Sciences and director of the Institute for Integration and Social Efficacy at the University of Groningen. Furthermore, she is head of the department of Social and Organizational Psychology and leader of an interfaculty research program and centre of excellence on Integration and Social Efficacy. Her research interests, amongst others, lie in the field of cultural diversity, stress-coping strategies, personality research and pro-social behaviour in organizations. Her present research mainly includes the integration of ethnic minorities on the job market and the effectiveness of intercultural teams. Together with Jan-Pieter van Oudenhoven she has developed the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire, one of the first tools for assessing personality characteristics in intercultural contexts.
- Jack Levin
Jack Levin, Ph.D. is the Brudnick Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Northeastern University in Boston, where he directs its Center on Violence and Conflict and teaches courses in hate and violence. He has authored or co-authored 27 books, including 'Mass Murder: America’ s Growing Menace', 'Why We Hate', 'The Functions of Prejudice', 'Hate Crimes Revisited', 'The Will to Kill: Making Sense of Senseless Murder', 'Domestic Terrorism', 'Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder', and 'The Violence of Hate: Confronting Racism, Anti-Semitism, and Other Forms of Bigotry'. Dr. Levin has published more than 150 articles in professional journals and newspapers, such as The New York Times, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and USA Today. He appears frequently on national television programs, including 48 Hours, 20/20, Dateline NBC, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Oprah, The O’Reilly Factor, Larry King Live, and all network newscasts. Dr. Levin was honored by the Massachusetts Council for Advancement and Support of Education as its “Professor of the Year.” He has spoken to a wide variety of community, academic, and professional groups, including the White House Conference on Hate Crimes, the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
- Gloria Wekker
Gloria Wekker is Professor and Director of GEM. Center of Expertise on Gender, Ethnicity and Multiculturality. She is by training a social and cultural anthropologist, specialized in Women's Studies, African American Studies, and Caribbean Studies. Wekker studied Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and holds a PhD from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA, 1992). Her doctoral dissertation, Ik Ben een Gouden Munt [I Am a Gold Coin] centers on constructions of subjectivity and sexuality among Creole working-class women in Suriname. This research interest has become a longitudinal project (1990 - 2002).
Her most recent book is The Politics of Passion, NY: Columbia University Press, 2003. Wekker holds the IIAV - chair on gender end ethnicity from 2001 - 2006. See also http://www.let.uu.nl/~Gloria.Wekker/personal/
Through research on themes such as sexuality and identity/subjectivity, interethnic romantic relationships between Dutch white and black people, the history of the black, migrant and refugee Women's Movement in the Netherlands and gendered and ethnicized knowledge systems in the Dutch academy and society, Wekker participates in the development of multicultural and anti-racist gender theory in the Netherlands. Within Women's Studies, she situates herself as a representative of intersectional gender theory, i.e., an approach in which the simultaneous operations of gender, ethnicity, class, and sexuality are the primary object of analysis. Internationally she locates herself in the fields of Third World Feminist Studies.
- Lee Badgett
M. V. Lee Badgett is the research director and visiting professor at the Williams Institute of UCLA Law School for 2005-7. She is also an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Her 2001 book, Money, Myths, and Change: The Economic Lives of Lesbians and Gay Men (University of Chicago Press) presents her work on family policy and on sexual orientation discrimination. She’s working on a new book on whether same-sex marriage will change marriage or will change GLB people, drawing on the U.S. and European experiences with same-sex marriage.
Badgett received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California-Berkeley in 1990, and has a BA in economics from the University of Chicago. She has also taught at Yale University and the University of Maryland.
In 1999 The Advocate magazine named her one of "Our Best and Brightest Activists" for her ground-breaking research undermining the myth of gay affluence and for her efforts to found the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies (now merged with the Williams Institute). She was named one of the "Out 100" by Out Magazine in 2001 for her book. Her work has been cited in congressional testimony and legal briefs. She is quoted regularly in newspapers across the country, including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post.
- Ronald Prins
Ronald Prins is the Program Director of Diversity in the City of Amsterdam. Until April 2007, he was the Managing Director of Bos en Lommer Neighbourhood Council in Amsterdam-West, where people of very different background share schools, shops, public space etc. etc. In Amsterdam, unlike many other cosmopolitan cities, neighbourhoods can be very 'mixed' which means that behind a single building's entrance, one can find four cultural backgrounds, two religions, gay and straight all sharing the same staircase. Ronald Prins himself lives there too, as a gay man in a predominantly Muslim area. He is a uniquely experienced manager (and inhabitant) in a diverse context that is not always free from tensions. Since April 2007, Ronald Prins is the Managing Director of the Environmental & Building Department of the City of Amsterdam. His background is in Organizational Psychology and he has a Masters of Public Management (Twente/Maryland USA).
- Ruud Koopmans
RUUD KOOPMANS is Research Director of the Department “Migration, Integration, Transnationalization” at the Science Center Berlin for Social Research (WZB). In addition, he is professor of sociology at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He has published extensively on citizenship, immigration and integration, and xenophobia and right-wing radicalism. His books on these topics include Challenging Immigration and Ethnic Relations Politics (Oxford University Press 2000, with Paul Statham, eds.) and Contested Citizenship (University of Minnesota Press 2005, with Paul Statham et al.). His articles have appeared in major social science journals such as American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, European Journal of Political Research, and Theory and Society.
- Gregory Paul P. Meyjes
Dr. Gregory Paul P. Meyjes is founder of Solidaris Intercultural Services LLC, a cultural and international consulting firm in Falls Church, Virginia, and advisory board member of the International Journal of Diversity in Organizations, Communities, and Nations, in Victoria, Australia. A previous Professor, Public Information Director, Managing Editor, and global Researcher, Dr. Meyjes is an interdisciplinary minority specialist with graduate credentials from universities in Chapel Hill (NC), The Hague (Netherlands), Heidelberg (Germany), Oxford (UK), and Lancaster (UK). The recipient of Fulbright and other post-doctoral awards, his most recent article on “Language and World Order” was published in Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion in 2006 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins).
- Bill Cope
Bill Cope is a Research Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA and Director of Common Ground Publishing. His current research interests include theories and practices of pedagogy, cultural and linguistic diversity, and new technologies of representation and communication.
- Leo Lucassen
Leo Lucassen holds the chair of Social History at the University of Leiden and is also attached to the Institute of Ethnics and Migration Studies (IMES) and the Dutch Centre for the History of Migrants (CGM). He published extensively on Gypsies and other itinerant groups and more recently on the history of migration and integration in Western Europe. His latest book is The Immigrant Threat. The integration of old and new migrants in Western Europe since 1850 (University of Illinois Press 2005) and is editor (together with David Feldman and Jochen Oltmer) of Paths of Integration. Migrants in Western Europe (1880-2004) (Amsterdam University Press 2006).
- Margaret Reynolds
Margaret Reynolds has a long career in special education and has worked to develop equal opportunity policy and eliminate discrimination. She was elected to the Australian Parliament in 1983 and served as a senator and minister for sixteen years. In recent years she has lectured in Human Rights and International Relations and has represented Australia at a number of United Nations Conferences. She is currently responsible for the Tasmanian Division of National Disability Services. She has published a range of articles and monographs and is a regular guest speaker at national conferences.
- Arthur Verdellen
Arthur Verdellen is Director of Social Cohesion of the City of Amsterdam. He is manager-director of the Platform Amsterdam Together (PAS) which focuses on improving the social cohesion in the city and the realisation of the objectives of the ‘We, the people of Amsterdam’ programme. The main goals of this plan are to combat terrorism, radicalisation and polarisation and to mobilise positive forces within the city as a whole. PAS acts as a powerhouse for activities in the field of social cohesion and stability in Amsterdam. The main themes in the action plan ‘We, the people of Amsterdam’ are (1) accumulation of social capital; (2) establishing limits and demands; and (3) offering perspective and opportunities.