Multilingual Matters Multilingual Online Academic Collaborations as Resistance: Crossing Impassable Borders (Researching Multilingually): 4

Review This book documents and enacts a creative improvisation that challenges, resists and connects. Produced by powerful academic online collaborators, it opens a window into the cultural resilience that stubbornly co-created curious academic bridges in spite of the impassable borders. This book offers a rare and valuable opportunity to learn from and about resilient education and scholarly innovation in areas torn by war, like the Gaza Strip. It challenges us to rethink our remits of possibility. --Khawla Badwan, Manchester Metropolitan University, UKThe book opens a discussion on what it means to collaborate through the internet when one of the two partners is living in a situation of forced closure. The collected stories of collaboration are not only stories of resistance and resilience, but narratives of innovation and openness. They represent an immense source of inspiration for the whole Mediterranean community and beyond, and examples of equitable and sustainable international academic collaboration. --Marcello Scalisi, UNIMED - Mediterranean Universities Union Product Description This book details online academic collaborations between universities in Europe, the USA and Palestine. The chapters recount the challenges and successes of online collaborations which promote academic connections and conversations with the Gaza Strip, despite a continuing blockade imposed on Gaza since 2007, and forge relationships between individuals, institutions and cultures. The chapters examine, from different perspectives, what happens when languages and the internet facilitate encounters, and the fundamental importance this has as a form of defiance and of resistance to the physical confinement experienced by Palestinian academics, students and the general population of Gaza. They highlight the limitations of multilingual and intercultural encounters when they are deprived of the sensory proximity of face-to-face situations and what is lost in the translation of languages, practices and experiences from the 'real' to the 'virtual' world. About the Author Giovanna Fassetta is a Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. Her research interests include multilingualism, intercultural communication, language education, migration studies, and indigenous knowledges and methodologies in research. Nazmi Al-Masri is an Associate Professor of Education at the Islamic University of Gaza, Palestine. His research interests include language teacher education, intercultural communication, curriculum development, and evaluation and technology in education. Alison Phipps is UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts, and Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. She writes and publishes widely in both academic publications and the media, and is a respected activist and campaigner for humane treatment for those seeking refuge.