ICIC 2010

From August 18th-20th CBS hosted an international conference on intercultural cooperation - ICIC 2010. The conference was attended by 100 participants from 29 countries, primarily researchers, but also representatives of large international companies attended the conference.

The key-note speaker was Dr. Jemilah Mahmood who is head of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and former director of the NGO Mercy Malaysia. Jemilah Mahmood has extensive experience with international and intercultural collaboration from her work with emergency relief in Aceh, Afghanistan, Darfur, Gaza, Iraq, Myanmar, and most recently Haiti and Pakistan. Read an interview with Jemilah Mahmood in the newspaper Information

The second key-note speaker was the Norwegian psychologist Bjorn Z. Ekelund, the founder of the ’Diversity Icebreaker’, which is a new concept that facilitates a safe environment for the exchange of ideas between people, cultures and organizational units. He engaged the participants in a large workshop, where the many cultures, disciplines and personalities present at the conference came into play.

ICIC also offered an international PhD workshop as well as presentations and posters on intercultural collaboration in an IT and socio-cultural perspective.

The group behind the research program Cultural Intelligence as a Strategic Resource was involved in planning the conference with Anne-Marie Soederberg as general co-chair, Liselotte Skovsgaard Jessen as local arrangements chair, Lisbeth Clausen as late breaking papers co-chair and Martine Cardel Gertsen and Verner Worm as immigration chairs.