Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1508472
15 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 27 SEPTEMBER 2023 NEWS PART of the exhibition Il-Malti: Il-Mixja sal-Għarfien Uffiċjali, held in Malta earlier this year, is now on permanent display inside the LEX building in Brus- sels, which houses the Transla- tion Service of the Council of the European Union. In Malta, the exhibition ran from February until April at the National Museum of Ar- chaeology and was the result of a joint effort by Heritage Malta and L-Akkademja tal-Malti. Through documents, books and information panels, the ex- hibition in Malta covered the history of the Maltese language from its Semitic roots until it was declared Malta's national language in 1964 and one of the European Union's official languages in 2004. Following the exhibition's success in Malta, it was decid- ed to have copies of the infor- mation panels that were part of the exhibition in Malta perma- nently displayed in Brussels. The copies were made with Heritage Malta's help, and the launch of the exhibition in Brussels was organised by the Maltese Language Unit as one of the activities held in the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union's Translation Service (LING) during the month of September, dedicated to multi- lingualism. The exhibition was inaugu- rated on the 15th of September, in the presence of Malta's Per- manent Representative to the Europen Union, Ambassador Marlene Bonnici, and Malta's Ambassador to Belgium, Clint Tanti, both of whom delivered short speeches. There was also a short ad- dress by the Head of the Mal- tese Language Unit, Monika Barabasz Lopes, and by one of the Directors of the Transla- tion Service, Katelijn Serlet. Guests were then treated to a short piano concert of Maltese melodies by Sandro Balzan, a member of the Maltese Lan- guage Unit. Various activities are planned in connection with the exhi- bition in Brussels, including a visit by Maltese children who attend the European School in the Belgian capital, in an effort to raise more awareness about the Maltese language. Part of exhibition about the Maltese language now on permanent display in Brussels AN international team of aca- demics led by The Open Univer- sity and including the University of Malta has won €3.2 million research funding to help peo- ple manage the development of extremist views at home and abroad in the run up to major po- litical events. Psychologists at the Open Uni- versity and the University of Malta are working on develop- ing tools for the project that has been funded by the European Commission's Horizon Europe programme involving 17 part- ners across Europe and beyond its borders. It will be used in the lead-up to events that are likely to become polarised, including national and European elections as well as referenda that, in extreme cases, split families. The over-arching project is known as OppAttune and in- cludes the development of a tool designed specifically for key tar- get audiences to enable more productive democratic debate. Yet it's aiming to reach far be- yond dinner-table discussions. The new ground-breaking tool is being developed by academics who hope it will limit the devel- opment of extreme narratives through showing people that their views might be considered extremist by others. They plan to have the free self- test tool kit, known as I-Attune, available on the OU's OpenLearn platform in 2025 to help citizens globally engage politically with each other without resorting to extremes. It will be available ini- tially for three years but could be rolled out further. Kesi Mahendran, Professor of Social and Political Psychology at the OU, is the scientific co-ordi- nator of OppAttune. The admin- istrative co-ordinator is the Pan- teion University in Greece. The project will allow citizens to assess three key aspects: their own susceptibility to extremism; their capacity to tune into other positions and their ability to sus- tain dialogue in highly polarised situations. Kesi said: "Whether we sit around a dinner table discuss- ing politics or in the echelons of power, democratic dialogue is crucial but there is huge capac- ity for ordinary people to either avoid politics or to become high- ly opinionated, partisan and en- trenched." Prof Gordon Sammut, project leader at the University of Mal- ta, said: "We are very excited about this project, which relies on methods developed here at the University of Malta that serve towards reconciling oppositional views. We are very pleased to see that our work is helping coun- ter extremism in Europe and we hope that it will also serve to boost political maturity in our country". Kesi continued: "Without the skills to navigate political situa- tions, politicians and people in the media can easily mobilise others. The hope is OppAttune will give people the tools to main- tain their political conversations without becoming so extreme that opposing parties or groups find them so threatening that they are removed." Six target audiences have been identified and include: • The public through on-line engagement with I-Attune • Young people: including school-age children and people aged 18-24 in coun- tries within Europe; par- ticularly Germany, the UK and Bosnia and Herzego- vina • Pro-Democracy media in- fluencers that have 10,000 plus social media followers that are directly engaged with democratic issues across Europe • Practitioners and poli- cy-makers across Europe engaged with: democrat- ic debate; prevention and countering violent extrem- ism; and freedom of speech. • Political actors at a local and national level; pro-de- mocracy political organ- isations within the eight implementation countries on either side of the Eu- ropean Union border - Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Kosovar region, Serbia, and Iraq (all post-conflict zones), as well as Portugal, Cyprus, the UK and Mal- ta (all understood to have polarising issues within their own borders that can be stirred up by political events). • The scientific research community €3.2m EU research funding hopes to manage extremist views