In order to take into account the specific interests of the members, we have distinguished five interest groups: Education & Development, Culture & Social Community, Clinic & Health, Work & Organization, and Theory & Methodology.
We are happy that the following colleagues are willing to serve as representatives of the interest groups: Bob Fecho for Education & Development, Luca Tateo for Culture & Social Community, Eugenie Georgaca for Clinic & Health, Rens van Loon for Work & Organization, and Tom Brinthaupt for Theory & Methodology.
The representative will become involved in stimulating the contact and cooperation among the members of the interest groups, to encourage members to exchange ideas and interests, and to organize webinars that will be accessible to all members of the Society.
Hubert Hermans - Honorary President
Education & Development - Bob Fecho
I’m looking forward to facilitating dialogue on the general topics of Education and Development as they relate to DST. In 2020, I will have taught for 24 years in secondary schools and 24 in the academy, so I have been involved in education all of my adult life. Having attended my first ICDS in 2008, I have presented at every conference since then, as well as published articles, chapters, and books that draw on DST particularly as it relates to literacy and teacher education.
If we accept Jerome Bruner’s idea that the self is our greatest work of art, then the ways that dialogue, story, and DST transact within schools and other education settings are integral to the ongoing being, doing, and becoming of learners. The complex dialogue across I-positions, the sense of self within other and other within self, the role of emotions in learning, and the factors that facilitate dialogue that leads to learning are essential to both what occurs in schools and to the implementation of DST.
Over the last 12 years, I’ve seen educational researchers, education psychologists, and teacher educators play a larger role at the biennial conferences. I think of this forum as an opportunity both sustain and enlarge that participation. Our overarching question is this: What does it mean for educators to embrace DST as a pathway for understanding what occurs among educational stakeholders and within educational settings? Issues of identity construction and teaching approaches as they relate to DST will be central to our initial discussions. However, I also invite participants to share any interests and concerns about DST, education, and development that they wish to explore.
Culture & Social Community - Luca Tateo
Dear valuable members
I have been invited to act as animator and facilitator to promote discussions within the scope of the ISDS research topic Culture & Social Community. I have accepted with great pleasure and joy, and I will begin by briefly introducing myself and my personal interests. My name is Luca Tateo and I am Associate Professor at the Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo. I am also visiting Associate Professor at the Federal University of Bahia and Associate Professor (15%) at Aalborg University. I am editor in chief of the journal Human Arenas, together with Pina Marsico, and editor in chief of the book series Innovations in Qualitative Research, by IAP. I am happily roaming between the oasis of psychology and human sciences, cultivating different interests and learning from different ages. I work on questions of epistemology, history and methodology of psychology, but also on controversial features of human experience, such as imagination, ambivalence, dilemmas, epistemic injustice, human development, tension or grief.
One of the distinctive features of the people gravitating in the field of dialogical science is the common concern for the relevant social questions that affect the life of everyone. At the same time, by assuming dialogicality as both a dimension of deep personal experience and the link between individual and collective phenomena, we are interested in both the society in the self and the self in the society. Many occurrences are nowadays calling for a stronger commitment of all of us around problems that affect mankind not only as such, but as part of the whole planetary living system. On the one hand, no single relevant problem - such as environmental crisis, migrations, regional conflict for resources, digital network regulations, etc. - can be solved by a nation alone. On the other hand, a general "atmos-fear" is growing, a diffused sense of uncertainty and undetermined threat, resulting in a general claim of closed identities, border-makings and new monological ideologies. New forms of social, environmental and psychological injustice are emerging, side by side to new forms of circular economy, community initiatives and environmental awareness. How can dialogical sciences grasp such complexity and, at the same time, develop the theory and practice of tomorrow? We need a bit of visionaries in social and human sciences, who can look at the past, present and future of human collective activity with a new gaze.
Within the possibilities of ISDS resources, we would like to nourish free discussion, dialogue and collaboration between members on the contemporary and future challenges. We will animate the members' forum, but also organize webinars inviting ISDS members to prepare 30 minutes presentations on a topic they consider relevant, followed by a short question time. Webinars will be recorded and posted on the forum to continue the discussion afterwards. Another space for discussion will be the "book corner", where members can post a short video-review (a couple of minutes) of a book (but also a conference, a software, etc.) they consider relevant. A special role should be played by students and early-stage researchers. We expect them to be the promoter of emerging novelty, In this sense, the Culture & Social Community will be a safe space, where they can dare to experiment new pathways outside the restrictive mechanisms of academic socialization.
I am very pleased and honoured to act as domain representative for the Clinical & Health domain of the ISDS.
I am Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology at the School of Psychology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. I teach, research and publish in clinical psychology, psychotherapy and mental health, especially qualitative methodology, community mental health and critical perspectives on psychopathology. In the field of mental health, I am interested in using dialogical, deconstructive, discursive and biographical narrative ideas in order to examine the construction, experience and management of mental distress, especially its severe end. In the field of psychotherapy, I have combined discursive, narrative and dialogical approaches to understanding and analyzing the process of psychotherapy as a culturally defined, interactional process of meaning making and identity construction. I served as associate editor of the International Journal of Dialogical Science from 2012 until 2018.
I have been working on dialogical psychotherapy research for many years, trying to develop dialogically oriented ways of understanding the process of psychotherapy. In the course of this, I have had fruitful collaborations and exchanges of ideas with colleagues all over the world working on dialogical approaches to psychotherapy. I have also followed the very interesting work on dialogical approaches to psychopathology, especially in the case of psychosis, that has been developed. I am not familiar, and would like to hear more, about applications of dialogical self theory on the field of health.
I see this forum as a space for fruitful discussions, exchange of ideas, requesting and receiving information, finding out about new developments. I would like to encourage you all to a) share information about new publications, events and projects, b) post news about your ongoing research and/or practice, c) request information about topics you are currently working on, e) share your concerns and start discussions on topics of interest.
I hope this forum serves its intended role as a hub for lively collegial exchanges that enrich our growing dialogical community.
My name is Rens van Loon. I am a professor of Dialogical Leadership at the School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg University. I have been working as a scientist and consultant for more than 30 years in leadership. I extend the concepts of Dialogical Self Theory to the leadership of organizations, drawing on social constructionism and leadership frameworks. I am a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Society for Dialogical Science (ISDS). I love to write, my main book is Creating Organizational Value through Dialogical Leadership. Boiling Rice in Still Water (Springer, 2017).
For those who are interested, some more books and articles:
Van Loon, E. (Rens) & A. Buster (2019). The Future of Leadership: The Courage to be Both Leader and Follower. Journal of Leadership Studies, volume 13, number 1. 1-2.
Koonce, R. & Van Loon, E. (Rens) (eds) (2019). The Dialogical Challenge of Leadership Development. Information Age Publishing (IAP).
Van Loon, E. (Rens) & A. Buster (2019). Dialogical Leadership – Leading yourself across boundaries of self and culture. In: Alma, H. & I. Ter Avest (eds). Moral and Spiritual Leadership in an Age of Plural Moralities. Routledge.
DST is important for W&O because of its applicability. Once you understand the concept of Dialogical Self you can apply it without much effort on people’s functioning within work and organizations. Think about transitions such as: ‘I as a professional/entrepreneur’ to ‘I as a leader of professionals’ to ‘I as a leader of the organization’ and ‘I as a member of a supervisory board of the organization’. DST is very helpful in describing these transitions and analyzing what this means for effective, authentic and ethical leadership development within career and organization. We will discuss study and publish on these topics. Feel free to contribute with idea for research and development within this fascinating domain.
Tom Brinthaupt is Professor of Psychology at Middle Tennessee State University (US). His research focuses on studying self-talk as an individual difference variable, examining how self-talk relates to internal dialogues, and exploring ways to assess and validate the varieties of intrapersonal communication.
Dialogical Self Theory (DST) has shown extensive development and application as a theory of identity and society. There is a large DST research literature, as well as a biennial international conference devoted to the theory and its many extensions. The theory is very popular and have been applied to multiple fields and disciplines. Despite this progress, there is a need for greater measurement and methodological precision with respect to key DST concepts and constructs. In order to move DST forward, researchers and theorists would benefit from considering the “nomological network” associated with the theory. The nomological net refers to efforts to increase the clarity of and support for theoretical constructs. This process entails the use of observations and inferences that test and support the underlying constructs, clarity of operational definitions, and the need for agreement among those who are using and testing those constructs. In this forum, we highlight some of the ways that researchers can develop construct validation and support the nomological net for DST principles.
In this forum, participants are invited to post new research studies and discuss research and methodological ideas that contribute to efforts at strengthening the nomological net for Dialogical Self Theory. Please let us know if you have ideas or projects that will help us to further this goal.
