Intercultural Adaptation

Theme: Adapting to unfamiliar cultures at work, in study, in social and personal life

Indicative research questions:

What challenges do people experience when they live, work or study in a culturally unfamiliar environment?How do they react to those challenges from a stress and well-being perspective, and what strategies help them develop resilience?How do they adjust their behaviour to fit in with the new environment, and what factors are helpful for this learning process?How does cultural change affect people’s sense of identity? What competencies, skills or strategies, and what personality factors facilitate adaptation?

For information on our public engagement associated with this theme, please visit our Public Engagement pages.

Research Projects:

Aims:

to understand what kinds of intercultural situations (i.e. those that involve people with a different cultural/language background) (a) senior staff and (b) new employees find demanding or challenging to deal with, and what kinds of situations they find less demanding;to understand what actions/behaviours for handling these situations work well, and what work less well in these contexts.to understand what skills, strategies and competencies could and should be developed amongst senior staff and newcomers

Funding: Internal

Project staff: Helen Spencer-Oatey, Claudia Harsch, Sophie Reissner-Roubicek, Daniel Dauber

Duration: Ongoing from October 2011

This project is exploring the impact that culture may have on the PhD research process. It aims to understand the challenges that PhD students and supervisors may face in terms of supervisory relationship, research design, data collection, data analysis, and ethical approval, when boundaries (e.g. linguistic, educational, political) are crossed during the research process.

Funding: Internal Project Staff: Professor Helen Spencer-Oatey, Dr Keith Richards, Dr Francesca Bargiela, Mr Stuart Reid, Dr Chen Shen (University of Newcastle, Australia) Duration: Ongoing

Project staff: Helen Spencer-Oatey

For information on our public engagement associated with this theme, please visit our Public Engagement pages.