Planning Workshops

In preparation for the Centennial Celebration in September 2009, members of the psychology department are organizing two planning workshops on the topic "Psychology: New Directions in the Social Sciences." Although initiated by psychology, the workshops are a quest for interdisciplinary synthesis within the social sciences that continues the spirit of the 1909 conferences.

The first planning workshop, which took place in July 2007 in Schengen, Luxembourg and included participants from Europe, Africa and the Middle-East, was funded by the Henry J. Leir Foundation.

The second planning workshop, scheduled for April 2008, will bring together participants from the American continents, Asia, and Australia (NZ).

The aim of these two workshops is to draw on the judgments of colleagues who are, both critically and from different cultural orientations, engaged with the subject and practices of psychology. (These colleagues can be either from psychology or a neighboring discipline.) We are hoping to represent colleagues from countries whose voices have thus far gone unnoticed.

These workshops provide each participant with an opportunity to elaborate—for no more then ten minutes —on one page of bullet points that set the stage for an hour-long discussion. The topical question for each participant was:

• "How would you envisage a discipline of psychology in the academy and the public in the twenty-first century that is relevant for your local community and for global society?"

For more information about the workshops, please contact Dr. Jaan Valsiner (jvalsiner@clarku.edu) or Dr. Michael Bamberg (mbamberg@clarku.edu).