This volume delves into intersections of identities in complex societies, which reproduce and cross symbolic boundaries and form as well as challenge power relations. The volume offers both descriptive and analytical contributions with evidence-based suggestions of the ways forward in the messy reality of human superdiversity. It comprises studies from across four continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, South America), and ensures a global scope. The common theme across chapters is their concentration on broadly understood intercultural encounters, their features and implications for the engaged parties. Thus, the recurring themes discussed in the chapters are relations between minority and majority groups, including the issues of migration and indigenous cultures, the dynamics of integration processes, and their impact on the cultural identity of the participants of intercultural encounters. Several of the chapters present a linguistic perspective of intercultural communication, referring to post-conflict and postcolonial contexts, and focus on language policy and the related tensions between the development of linguistic diversity and social cohesion. The chapter authors provide qualitative methodological approaches against theoretical frameworks, looking at particular case studies, and refer to sociological and psychological aspects of interculturalism, sociolinguistics, and concepts relating to cultural identity.

This interdisciplinary volume is of interest to a wide readership, including those coming from cultural studies, cultural psychology, discourse studies, identity research, and sociolinguistics.    

Michał Wanke is a sociologist and Assistant Professor at the Department of Cultural Studies, University of Opole, Poland. He holds a PhD in sociology from the Jagiellonian University in Cracow (2017). He is a qualitative field researcher using a range of methods from ethnography and interviewing to arts based interventions to study drug user cultures, especially people who use cannabis in non-western contexts amid liberalizing processes globally. He also conducts research on migration related phenomena, most recently in a Horizon Europe PREMIUM_EU project aiming at uncovering migration benefits from vulnerable regions in Europe. He published in and guest edited international and Polish journals alike, he received funding from Erasmus+, National Center of Science in Poland and the Polish National Bureau for Drug Prevention. He acts in an advisory board to the Plenipotentiary of the Opole Province Marshall for Addiction Prevention. He has also been an experts’ group member for the Regional Action Plan for the integration of immigrants in the Opole Province in the years 2019-2023.

Marzanna Pogorzelska is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Linguistics, University of Opole. She is interested in intercultural, social justice and gender issues. Apart from research and didactic activities, Marzanna Pogorzelska realizes projects with workshops, debates, exhibitions and performances focused on intercultural dimension of education, also using the Theatre of the Oppressed method (Forum Theatre). As a Plenipotentiary for Equal Treatment at the University of Opole she performs anti-discrimination activities for both academic and wider local environment. She is the Polish recipient of The Irena Sendler Award "For Repairing the World" as well as European awards for promoting tolerance (European Tolerance Award and “Hiacynt” Award).