Yearly Archives: 2018

The third Transcultural Leadership Summit, an annual conference at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, was once again a resounding success. Organised by students from Leadership Excellence Institute Zeppelin (LEIZ) and the Transcultural Caravan, the summit focuses on a particular country or region every year in order to shed light on issues of transculturality and transcultural leadership in the given region. After China and Sub-Saharan Africa in the last two years, the focus in 2018 was Brazil. Given the presidential elections in October and the leading role that Brazil has for the entire South American continent on global markets, this year’s focus is a very topical one.

Brazilian researcher Felipe da Fonseca is actually doing his doctoral thesis in Practical Philosophy (Applied Ethics) at the Albert Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg/Husserl-Archiv Freiburg and at UFRJ. Based on his academic background of law and philosophy, his aim is to apply existential anthropology in the fields of ethics and law. Next to his research, he is also working in the field of compliance and integrity programs. In his first blogpost for the Transcultural Caravan, he writes about the relationship between Nihilism, non-nihilistic ethics and transculturality. A blogpost by Felipe da Fonseca.

Our guest author Dr. Regina Kessy writes about the prejudices we still have when encountering foreigners – thereby especially focusing on the African continent and its historical framework – and about the need of a “transcultural gaze”, ensuring transcultural awareness and open-mindedness in today’s interconnected world.

From 9th to 17th of April, the Transcultural Caravan was part of an innovative concept of Zeppelin University: During the so called “ZU Bildungsexkursion”, several students, staff and collaborators travelled through Germany, accompanied by an eye-catching Airstream and lots of information about the university. A blogpost by Michelle Sun.

The explosion of visual media sharing around the world presents great possibilities but also an urgent need to address the chronic misinterpretation of images and spaces of “cultural others.” The dynamics of making sense about the world, or making truthful assertions about realities of others, is not a forthright process because the world appears differently to different people. The meaning and function of objects or concepts are culturally coded, and therefore an interpretation is fixed according to the “cultural-toolkit” available to the one perceiving the object or other people. A blogpost by Regina Kessy.