Culture and Communication Network (CULCOM) Annual Conference on ‘Business Communication within and across Culture’
16 July 2025, Lancaster Suite (Lancaster Castle) and on Microsoft Teams by clicking on CULCOM2025
Deadline for submissions: 16 June 2025 (23:59 British Summer Time)
Call for submissions: This is the third annual conference of Lancaster University’s interdisciplinary, cross-faculty Culture and Communication Network (CULCOM). The conference is open to staff and postgraduate research students based at Lancaster University and our Chinese partner universities who are interested in the role of culture in any area of business communication.
At a basic level, culture is about ‘how we do things around here’. However simple, such a definition reveals important aspects of culture: that it is shared by a group of people (‘we’); that it is about behaviours underpinned by beliefs and values which are perceived as appropriate by this group of people (‘how we do things’); and that it relates to a particular context (‘around here’), for example, a business organisation. Communication is central to getting things done in any business organisation; it can also be complex and its forms (spoken, written, multimodal, internal, external, in-person, online) can be blurred. There are various topics in business communication where the role of culture has been an enduring area of interest, including: leadership; marketing, branding and advertising; recruitment; negotiations; and meetings. More recently, discussions have focused on the role of AI in business communication and its impact on culturally influenced practices. These are some of the subthemes of the conference, but we are open to submissions outside of these subthemes if the research is within the broad area of business communication within and across cultures.
Keynote(s):
- Professor Xingsong Shi, University of International Business and Economics, School of International Studies (China): Professor Shi has extensively researched the role of culture in various areas of business communication including business expatriates’ adaptation, multinational companies’ brand personality, and corporate identity construction.
- Professor Veronika Koller, Lancaster University, Department of Linguistics and English Language (UK): Professor Koller has extensive experience in researching, teaching and consulting on areas of business communication including branding, change management, and accounting.
We invite:
- 200-250 word abstract for a 15-minute presentation (a 10-minute presentation followed by 5 minutes for questions and answers) about completed or ongoing research.
To make a submission, express interest in attending (without presenting), and for any other questions regarding the event, email Dr Dimitrinka Atanasova at d.atanasova@lancaster.ac.uk .
At Lancaster University, we are passionate about business communication within and across culture. The Department of Linguistics and English Language and the School of Global Affairs have partnered to launch a new MA in Intercultural Business Communication in the 2025-26 academic year co-taught by experts in business and intercultural communication.