Against the background of globalisation and denationalisation as well as world-wide movements of migration and cultural exchanges, issues of diversity and difference have re-emerged as central for the political, social, and cultural self-conception of societies in Europe and North America. Particularly after the events of 9/11 and in the context of ‘the war on terror’, new questions and concepts of diversity concern not only individual nations, but are increasingly being discussed in the context of transnational processes of diversification and integration.

After over three decades of an official policy of multiculturalism, cultural pluralism is being renegotiated in Canada; and in Europe, the process of political and cultural integration poses problems that call for a critical evaluation of models previously applied nationally and Europe-wide.

This interdisciplinary conference seeks to investigate ways of thinking and negotiating diversity – cultural, political, ethnic, social – in Europe and Canada. Taking into account a long history of exchange and mutual influence, it will look at what has been and can be learned from one another. In order to do so, it brings together Canadian and European scholars from European and Canadian Studies as well as from the social sciences and Cultural Studies. While in all of these fields diversity and concepts of ‘managing difference’ have been paramount, serious transdisciplinary engagement with these questions in the context of transatlantic exchanges between Canada and Europe has been scarce.