There are currently 3 individuals engaged in the research for the Intercultural Workplace Project. Two of us are established academic staff at the School of Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies and the third is a full-time research assistant and former student of the MA in Intercultural Studies.
Dr. Bill Richardson
Dr. Richardson is the Head of the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at DCU and a Senior Lecturer in Spanish in the School. He has extensive experience of teaching and curriculum development at both second and third levels, with wide ranging experience of intercultural issues both at a theoretical level and in the context of relations between Spain and Ireland.
He is the author of Spanish Studies: an introduction (Arnold, 2001) and of numerous articles and conference papers on issues relating to interculturality, language education, Hispanic Studies, contrastive linguistics and translation.
Dr. Aileen Pearson-Evans
An expert in the area of intercultural studies for many years, Dr. Pearson-Evans is the Director of the Centre for Intercultural Studies in DCU and a lecturer in Intercultural Studies in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at DCU. She has broad experience of teaching and curriculum design at second and third level, introducing innovative programmes in EFL, German, French, Japanese and Intercultural Studies.
She pioneered the first cross-cultural training workshops for DCU students embarking on Study Abroad programmes, and has designed and taught various intercultural seminars for business executives dealing with Japan and France. Her PhD specialised in the area of cross-cultural adjustment and she has since published widely in this area, including collaborating with Trompenaars/ Hampden-Turner on the Irish section of Culture Compass CD-Rom (2000), an interactive programme designed to offer intercultural training to business executive.
Sylvia Schroeder
Sylvia is the Research Assistant of the Intercultural Workplace Project. A former student of our MA in Intercultural Studies when it was first established nearly 3 years ago, Sylvia graduated with first class honours in 2002 and has been compiling materials for the Intercultural Workplace Project since October 2000 and intends to do her PhD in this area. She also holds a first class honours BA in Social Anthropology and Women's Studies from Queen's University in Belfast.
Turning her theoretical knowledge into practice, Sylvia is currently the Chairperson of the Cultural Committee in Mount Carmel Hospital, Dublin, which was set up in 2002 to deal with issues of cultural diversity as they affect staff and patients in an Irish healthcare setting. Sylvia also has experience in translations, project administration, quality improvement data analysis and as a research assistant.