Good news just before the holidays! The Netherlands’ taskforce for applied research (SIA) has awarded a KIEM grant for the project ‘Cultural Bridges: Enhancing Workplace Recruitment and Onboarding for Migrant Professionals in Dutch SMEs‘. The project will be conducted by my colleagues Shohreh Parham and Cansu Aslan at Amsterdam School…
Category: News
Intercultural Chatbots Project enters next phase
In september 2025, the project on intercultural chatbots has entered the next phase, funded by a NRO Comenius Fellowship. We will further develop the chatbots, and implement them into courses at Amsterdam School of International Business in spring 2026. For a more detailed description, visit our project page: https://www.hva.nl/projecten/2025/9/intercultural-chatbots
Fellowship of the International Academy for Intercultural Research (IAIR)
In 2007, as a newly minted PhD Candidate, I attended my first conference of the International Academy for Intercultural Research (IAIR) in Groningen, the Netherlands. Since then, I have participated in numerous IAIR conferences, served on several committees, and was elected as a board member of the academy for the…
Comenius Fellowship for Intercultural Chatbots project
I’m proud to have been awarded a Comenius Teaching Fellowship, by the Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO). This grant will enable me to develop and implement a series of Intercultural Chatbots, AI-based teaching tools that enhance intercultural learning. It is undeniable that generative AI are having a profound impact…
Symposium ‘Intercultural Competence in Higher Education’
On Sept. 20th, we will host a Research Symposium on the topic of ‘Intercultural Competence in Higher Education’ at Amsterdam School of International Business (AMSIB). We will present state-of-the-art research on this theme, and provide an opportunity for networking and catching up with colleagues. Our Keynote speaker will be Prof.…
The benefits of internationalization in higher education
This week, all universities in the Netherlands are expressing concern about the upcoming budget cuts for higher education that have been proposed by the new national government, as well as policies to regulate the number of English-language study programs, and reduce the number of incoming international students. In her yearly…
Review of research on global citizenship in higher education – New publication
Global citizenship remains a fuzzy and often contested term, especially when used in the context of higher education. In this new paper, Leonor Gaitán-Aguilar reviews and synthesizes the vast literature on this topic and provides directions on how to research intercultural learning and civic engagement in global academia. This project…
Strategic diversity communication on social media – New Publication
My first foray into AI-based data analysis! Joao Goncalves, Pytrik Schafraad, Biyao Wu, and I used supervised machine-learning to study how organizations communicate about diversity on social media. The validation of our digital tool, called Diversity Perspectives in Social Media (DivPSM) was just published in Public Relations Review. The algorithms…
Are some individuals more susceptible to intercultural education than others? – New Publication
In 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, I developed a new online teaching module intercultural communication. The project was financially supported by the Community for Learning and Innovation (CLI) at Erasmus University. The module was taught by experienced trainers from RISBO Together with Mijail Fugueroa, I conducted an evaluation…
Diversity workshop at the Municipality of Delft
It was very cool to be back in my birthplace to provide a workshop at the Gemeente Delft (Municipality of Delft) on diversity in teams. Thanks, Mark Rothuizen, for the invitation. Also nice to see my former school building in the ‘Delfts Kwartet’: What used to be the Jan Vermeerschool…