Every year, the ICM students carry out projects in teams, as part of their course.

Many of these, such as the ICA student association, fortnightly cultural differences seminars and the  InterCultural Career Opportunity event (ICCO) were born out of student initiatives.

Other projects include the Culture Shock and Mobility Workshops, hosted by the ICM students in order to help French students planning to go abroad and international students currently studying in Dijon to better understand and overcome culture shock and misunderstandings linked to cultural differences. See the video here to learn more. If you’re on the Dijon campus and want to take part in a workshop this semester, please sign up here.

List of on-going ICM projects

• Japanese delegation visit « Japanese short programme »
  This project consists of organising a 10-day visit to Burgundy for a group of 15 graduate students from Josai University on February 28th – March 8th 2019. The team will be in charge of preparation, management and accompanying the Japanese group from the day of arrival to the day of departure. Tasks include developing a 10-day programme, making reservations (accommodation, transportations, restaurants and so on), contacting tourist offices and many more.
• Diversophy Game
  This project involves updating and partially redeveloping diversity games originally developed by Georges Simons, author of many intercultural training games including Diversophy. The idea is to update the game to reflect a more modern-day approach to gender roles and their deconstruction in a professional setting, across different national cultures. The main topic of this year’s game (2018) is humor and how it is seen, evaluated and performed in different cultures. The game’s purpose is to develop wisdom and skills to deal with people different than ourselves. Diversophy contains different sets of cards divided according to its function: white (guide), yellow (choice), red (risk), blue (share) and green (smarts). DiversiGUIDE cards include wisdom from and about culture and invite reflection from players. DiversiCHOICE cards ask how to think or act in certain situations by giving a chance to choose between answers as multiple choice, true/false. DiversiRISK cards interrupt ethnocentric attitudes and invite players to react to the consequences. DiversiSHARE cards ask players to share their own experiences in a diverse environment. DiversiSMARTS cards include facts about the culture and invite players to answer to multiple choice or true/false questions regarding a particular fact.
• ICM communications
  Students joining this project are taking over the current ICM online communication tools and should develop a communication plan for ICM. The tasks include preparing business cards, developing the alumni network, contributing to our social network presence such as on Facebook, helping to update our ICM website.
• ICCO
  Following up from the successful 2016 event, this project involves designing an interactive event and inviting speakers to come and exchange with ICM students on the realities and possibilities of a career in the field of Intercultural Management. Every year objectives are set up according to students’ desires and speakers are invited from various European countries and associations. The second ICCO event will take place at the University of Burgundy in Dijon on 17 March 2017.
• SIETAR Congress
  During SIETAR Congress students present their previously developed research posters and can start networking for their future careers in Intercultural Management. Students will be organising everything from transportation to accommodation and on-site administration.
• ACI 2020 Conference
  This international conference, taking place on 17th and 18th September 2020,  is organised by the “Text, Image, Language” research unit of the University of Burgundy and  aims to address and bridge the gap between critical approaches to cultural identities common in academia and essentialising discourses increasingly widespread in the public sphere. Students are actively engaged in organising this event in terms of its online and media presence and are working on tools to guarantee a smooth execution of the event.
• FORTHEM Mobility Project
  The University of Burgundy has been awarded substantial EU funding as a part of a “European University Alliance” along with other European universities, in order to work towards setting up a joint “European campus”, promoting deeper integration between the universities, massive, seamless mobility for students and staff, including new forms of mobility not currently possible within the Erasmus framework. Students from ICM, together with undergraduate students from LEA (Langues Etrangères Appliquées), have collected and consolidated data on student and staff mobility from the 6 partnering universities. They additionally created a survey on mobility, which was then conducted in the University of Burgundy. The obtained data was then summarised in a draft report on barriers to mobility, which fed into the final report handed to the EU.

List of former ICM projects

• • Travelling Chameleon
    The project Travelling Chameleon – Adapting to Intercultural Situations aims at raising intercultural awareness in schools and at developing intercultural skills that are increasingly important in a globalised context. During the workshops, offered in English by the Intercultural Management (ICM) students, the pupils can learn more about tolerance for cultural diversity and gain a broader multi-cultural knowledge. One of the main goals is to create a positive image of interculturality and become more open-minded towards other cultures. The workshop will allow the pupils to experience interculturality in an interactive and fun way. Even complex topics, such as stereotypes, culture shock or misunderstandings, will be presented through activities tailored to their age. By creating a positive learning environment, the participants will be able to share their opinions in discussions and take part in games that will encourage intercultural understanding.

• • Graduation
    In 2019, the ICM students were in charge of planning the graduation ceremony for all master’s graduates in the department of Languages and Communication. This required meetings with the dean, the relevant study programmes, various faculty around the campus as well as practising our French with the necessary vendors. We were hoping to give a celebration all graduates can be proud of to commemorate their special day.