Interculturality as a benefit… not a burden

Dr. Milton Bennett is a founding director of the Intercultural Development Research Institute (IDRInstitute), which sponsors innovative research in the area of intercultural communication competence. Based on these investigations and other work in intercultural relations, he creates and conducts programs in domestic and international diversity for corporations and other organizations.

Dr. Bennett is well known for his Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, which since its publication in 1986 and many subsequent updates has been the most accepted theory of intercultural communication development and guide for intercultural training design. The DMIS represents his research conclusion that perceptual complexity and metacognition are the key processes in intercultural competence and the intercultural aspects of global leadership.

Milton was a founder (with Janet Bennett) and long-time director of The Intercultural Communication Institute (ICI), a non-profit training institute that operated in Portland, Oregon USA for 35 years. During his tenure as a director, ICI developed the annual Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication, which was the field’s premier professional development program. For his theoretical and institutional contributions to the field of intercultural communication, Milton has received awards for excellence from the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR) and from NAFSA: Association of International Educators. 

After serving as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Micronesia, Milton returned to complete his doctorate in intercultural communication and sociology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He also holds a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University (two years of physics, BA in literature and creative writing) and a master’s degree in psycholinguistics from San Francisco State University. He now splits his time between the USA (Washington State) and Italy (Milan) with his Italian wife and bicultural son.

Dr. Shizu Yamamoto is a professor of intercultural communication at Tokai University. With Dr. Bennett as her academic advisor, she studied at Portland State University and earned her Master's degree for her research through a DMIS lens on Japanese students’ intercultural experiences in the U.S. Dr. Yamamoto received her PhD from Sophia University with a dissertation on how Japanese members in Japanese majority organizations perceive their interaction with non-Japanese coworkers.

Her current research interests are centered on intercultural sensitivity and the development of intercultural training methods. Her research specifically focuses on DMIS, using both qualitative and quantitative methods to examine how Japanese people perceive, interpret, and express their experiences of difference. Based on the results of previous studies, recent research includes the development of a Japanese psychological scale for DMIS.

Dr. Yamamoto is the lead author (with T. Ishiguro, M. Bennett, & D. Okabe) of a new book published in 2022 with the English title Experiencing Intercultural Communication: Growing Up With “Differentness.”