The Communication Doctor's keynotes are thought-opening sessions with a scientific backbone. They can be delivered as a keynote, a public lecture, or a facilitated reflection session, depending on the context.
The series below consists of four talks that can each stand on their own, while also forming a continuous reflection on language, culture, interaction, and meaning.
The keynotes are available in Dutch, English, German, and, where appropriate, French.
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| Keynotes with backbone | Communication Doctor |
1. Intercultural Communication Under the Lens
What we really need beyond clichés about language and culture
Intercultural communication is not a niche. We engage in it every day, often without naming it as such: in everyday encounters and in professional collaboration. Sometimes it flows naturally, sometimes it breaks down.
In this talk, Communication Doctor Greet examines what intercultural communication actually is and why some popular ideas about it prove too simplistic. What do people really need to act competently in intercultural contexts? More language skills? More knowledge of cultures? Or something else?
The talk offers a clear framework to understand cultural differences not as something reducible to culture alone, but as a dynamic interplay of language, context, power, and interaction.
2. The Ecology of Conflict
The third outcome beyond winning or losing
Conflicts are often framed as a struggle with two possible outcomes: winning or losing. In reality, the field is richer and more nuanced.
In this talk, Communication Doctor Greet explores how conflicts actually unfold and what room for action people have within them. Drawing on her Aikido Interaction Model, she examines what she calls the third outcome. This outcome is not a fixed destination, but a spectrum of possibilities in which relationship, context, timing, clarity, and strength do not exclude one another, but are brought into alignment.
3. Understanding Japan in the West: The Case of Aikido
Between meaningful appropriation and empty banalisation
Japanese traditions are popular in the West, from interior design (japandi) and therapies (reiki) to martial arts. But what do we actually understand of these traditions?
Using the martial art of aikido as a case, this talk explores what happens when a practice leaves its cultural context. Is simplification inevitable? And if so, is it necessarily empty, or can it become meaningful?
4. Aikido: A Modern Tradition
History, context, and meaning
Aikido is often presented as deeply rooted in the samurai tradition. In reality, it is a 20th-century martial art with a complex relationship to both tradition and modernity.
This talk situates aikido in its historical context and explores what it means today, both within and beyond the dojo.
A more in-depth lecture for practitioners and those familiar with aikido.
Author
Greet Angèle DE BAETS
Communication Doctor
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