Intercultural Communication and Training

Collaborate. Achieve. Innovate.

We (Arnay, Hester, Jilke, Julie, Neringa, Nicoleta and Patrick) are excited to announce that we are working in collaboration with Cultuurhistorische Achtergronden & Informatie (CAI) to develop a more efficient intercultural communication/cultural competency training method for Dutch military personnel who are about to go on deployment abroad.

Our aim is to answer the following research question: “How can we develop an innovative and engaging method that teaches military forces about intercultural communication and its importance?”

Additionally, we wish to successfully create a product that will actually be useful to the Ministry of Defence for years to come, and that will make a real positive difference in the success of our military abroad.

This is why we’ve come up with the idea of a digital product that will train military personnel on important cultural differences between the Netherlands and the country of deployment. When creating the digital product, we will provide a framework that allows the Ministry of Defence to continuously update the product by, for example, adding new countries, updates for cultural shifts, and other new information. We aim to kickstart this method by providing important information and practical learning tools for the cultures of Romania and Lithuania, respectively, two countries of interest on the current eastern NATO border.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be stepping into the world of intercultural communication and defence, working out how best to combine the two. We’ll be conducting surveys alongside our research, in order to maximise the effectiveness of this new method.

Under the supervision of Sipke de Hoop (RUG) and Volbrecht van Leenen (CAI), we hope to present our finalised product in January 2025.