General Description:
Language and culture are not only the ways in which human beings express themselves or relate to each other—in a fundamental sense, they define us as human. In the face of great social, cultural, and technological change, the importance of our languages, literatures, cultures, art, and values cannot be overstated. Dilla University works to advance thinking and understanding of the complex intersections of language, culture and society, including how language both reflects and creates thought, culture, and power relations thereby pushing traditional disciplinary boundaries through theoretical and methodological innovation. By learning about the ideological practices and processes that have shaped and continue to structure the lives of people historically and cross-culturally, it becomes possible to transform and change inequitable practices. It is necessary to investigate the cultural, historical, philosophical, linguistic, literary, and artistic dimensions of human experience and understand the diversity and complexity of our changing world. Scholars at Dilla University also pay close attention to how social conventions, categories and indexical meanings are constructed, actualized, negotiated and disputed with reference to wider social, cultural, economic and historical conditions including exploration of new communicative contexts and practices and the study of the underpinnings of creativity and art.
Aim:
Sub-Themes:
Sub-theme 1: LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION
This theme focuses on modes of narration and making meaning, along with their social, political, epistemological, technological and ethical implications. It draws attention to the impact of new communications technologies, intercultural communications to develop creative ideas, document living languages and media that enable people to communicate, create, learn, share, and collaborate including the particular relationships that exist between language and communication.
Sub-theme 2: GENDER, AND POWER RELATIONS
This theme draws attention to gender and power relations, gender and livelihoods, gender and poverty/vulnerability, gender and energy, gender and reproductive health, gender sensitive governance and empowerment, and changes in human and social development settings including the structure and function of families, and the changing roles of women, men, young people, and children.
Sub-theme 3: PEACE BUILDING AND ECONOMIC LAWS
Building peace and preventing conflict, requires understanding social, cultural, and political structures in which conflicts are located and the types of institutional arrangements that can lead to diversity, inclusiveness, and social justice. The theme draws attention to conflict resolution, peace-building, and the right to development, including sustainable development goals that woven economic integration and investment.
Sub-theme 4: CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS LAW
The theme focuses on universal human rights and the complex contexts that shape its implementation, pragmatic efforts of criminal justice machinery in projecting everlasting solutions to ensure access to justice and prevention of all forms of crimes and in complying with the human rights laws including socio-economic rights recognized by Ethiopia.
Sub-theme 5: FEDERALISM, CONSTITUTIONALISM AND DEMOCRATIZATION
Central to this theme is the conceptual and theoretical concepts of federalism, constitutionalism, and rule of law and the respective nexuses that are holy trinities for ensuring democracy resilience, peaceful co-existence and mutual accommodation in a country like Ethiopia that has territorially concentrated differences of identity, ethnicity, religion or language including the dogma of federalism in constitutionalism and rule of law.