Attendance of the World Youth Forum “Right to Dialogue” X Forum in Trieste, Italy

Starting out as an ESR (Early Stage Researcher) at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, my first few weeks were quite challenging and not easy because of diverse practical tasks and bureaucratic paperwork. These always need to be faced after moving to another country. Nevertheless, I had decided to attend the World Youth Forum “Right to Dialogue” X Edition, which ran from the 29th September until the 1st October 2017 in Trieste, Italy.

The Forum was a great opportunity for professional development, as specialists and students, representing more than 20 countries and different professional backgrounds, attended the event to present their research and ideas. They illustrate contemporary diverse socio-cultural and political world-wide perspectives, discourse, problems on the current and significant topics, and issues, which considered the main conditions for direct/indirect dialogue today, problems of interpretation and translation of texts, the role of science currently, and so on during the Forum sessions.

The Forum sessions passed quickly with enthusiastic and interesting presentations, which were followed by meaningful discussions. My presentation focused on one of the conditions of social dialogue, which forms though symbolic interaction within Soviet urban landscapes between societies and ideological monuments in the past and today. Many current interesting debates were on diverse fields of social sciences in other presentations and discussions, where I had participated for widening my research idea. However, personally, one of the most significant discussions was concerned with the process of textual translation from a perspective of a professional translator, when a text and its interpretation are not in their original language(s).

The Gift of Culture on the last day brought to a close all activities of this forum. This event was on the final day, which illustrated a great variety of cultural expressions around the globe. The majority of participants presented their cultures from personal to wider perspective - group, social or national ways of an appreciation of their own cultures. The expressions varied from music, performances, poetry and so on.

After the international forum, there was no time to relax, as one of my next obligations was to attend the Network Wide Workshop Week in Karlskrona, Sweden. On the way to this meeting, I was lucky to spend some hours in Ljubljana, where I discovered the historic center with many prominent architectural projects of J. Plečnik. In addition, there was time for a continuation of my research, as the National and University Library of Slovenia had many significant bibliographical sources for my studies. As a result, the World Youth Forum «Right for Dialogue» was a great opportunity to discuss my previous and current research while widening my professional network and checking one of the most valuable libraries for my ongoing research.

Text and photo: Aliaksandr Shuba