Hans Durrer lectures, and conducts seminars, courses, and workshops on the following subjects:
Intercultural Communication
Millions of people, be they business men, diplomats, teachers, laborers, students, immigrants, refugees or aid workers, nowadays live for longer or shorter periods of time in another than their culture of origin. The once clear definitions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ are being blurred (for many); we’re confronted with new challenges, intercultural competence is demanded.
So how does one acquire such competence?
By getting acquainted, for instance, with the various forms in which verbal and non-verbal communication takes place, by becoming conscious of culture as a man-made concept that gets often hijacked by interest groups, and by learning to be aware of the mistakes others (Hans Durrer, for example) have made when meeting with strangers.
Visual Communication
Picture a little girl on her way to school.
If I now tell you that every day this girl goes to school hungry, you will all of a sudden see a quite different girl. But will you really ‘see’ that?
Reading pictures, that is the topic here. And answering questions such as:
Does a picture really tell more than a thousand words or isn’t it the other way ’round, that we need a thousand words to understand a picture? Does a Swiss, when looking at photographs, see the same as a Chinese? Could it be that Russians – one may keep in mind the Russian saying: he lies like an eyewitness - perceive the world more individually than Americans?
An introduction into the world of pictures, their language and their power.
Media Competence
What we know of the world, we know from the media. And despite our not really trusting these media, we nevertheless build our views of the world on them.
To understand the modern world, it is therefore imperative to know how the media operate.
Who are journalists and how do they work? Who gets to speak in the world news? When does something become world news? How does the agenda-setting come about? What are the criteria for news sources? What roles play propaganda and censorship? – are some of the questions addressed here. Critically, of course.
An introduction into global news.