Contemporary challenges and contexts of the local\, regional\, national \;and global raise urgent questions about cultural conviviality and \;cosmopolitan futures across the world. These are times when \;trans-cultural\, trans-national and multicultural belonging are \;particularly being tested through environmental catastrophe\, economic \;volatility\, parochialism\, fundamentalism\, notions of cosmopolitan and \;multicultural exhaustion\, and war. A key challenge lies in the \;paradox of culture\, in which belonging has become a fundamental \;question of preservation\, atavism\, tradition and survival as well as \;hybridity\, transgression\, possibility and transformation. The aim of \;this conference theme is to respond to this paradoxical challenge by \;opening up discussion\, critical reflection and analysis about \;emerging social and cultural identities that are formed at the \;intersection of multiple and multi-sited belongings.
\nWe hope that the conference theme will encourage academic and \;personal encounters and exchanges across national\, religious\, \;cultural and disciplinary divides.