Spring School Diary

14^th of April

The first meeting of 'Laboratory for Diversity Research' started with a lecture from Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova, the head of the IL SIR. The topic of the lecture was ideological background of inclusion as a principle of organizational culture and one of the key values of modern society. The lecture involved listeners in an active discussion about contradiction of universal and individual in their practice. In addition, conceptual aspects of 'universal design', as the mainstream of modern inclusive practice, were proposed for discussion.

The second highlight of the seminar was a presentation of Ksenia Barton, a representative of the LEGO global office. The presentation was about inclusion and equality in modern business culture and the role of large international companies in promoting these ideas in the world and in Russia in particular. Furthermore, Ksenia Barton demonstrated a huge amount of examples of how branding process can successfully integrate symbols of inclusion into its communication messages, spreading the value of inclusion among consumers and increasing profits of the enterprises.

After presentations and discussions, the participants divided into two working groups to make acquaintance with each other in a more interactive way.

21^st  of April

The second seminar of 'Laboratory for Diversity Research' was devoted to the problematic of gender equality. Professor of The Department for Social Institutions Analysis Elena Rozhdestvenskaya held a lecture about the modern approaches to the analysis of the social construction of gender identity and the specifics of the field of gender studies and the implemented problems. The participants of the seminar actively took part in the discussion, asking questions about queer identity, queer research, and gender spectrum and trying to understand the shades of self-identification process and transgenderity.

At the second part of the meeting, participants divided to groups to discuss relevant real-life cases. The ensuing discussion highlighted humanitarian, security and equality issues connected with this topic.

28^th  of April

On the third meeting of 'Diversity Laboratory', the subject matter of interculturalism was raised for discussion. The first part of the seminar started with an orientation lecture from IL SIR leading researcher Antonova Viktoria Konstantinovna. After giving a definition for multi/interculturalism, its basic models, theoretical background and methodological features were discussed and a real-life case was demonstrated.

In the second part of the meeting, the participants were divided into two groups, each one studying one of two cases: 'School classes: How to find balance in working with a class, part of which consists of children with a migrant background?' and 'Studio of the Polytechnic Museum for children and adolescents with a migrant background: How can cultural institutions be involved in the process of socialization and education of children with migration experience?'