One way to future-proof students in our globalised world is to improve their cross-cultural communication skills. With students and academics more mobile than ever, the ability to reach across divides – be they language, culture, religion, economic or location – will be in demand whatever the workplace. These skills offer a path to belonging, innovating, being effective and thriving in higher education and industry.

For this episode, we talk to two very different experts in cross-cultural education; one works in medical and healthcare communication in Hungary and the other teaches creative writing and other media in the mountains of Central Asia. They share their advice for creating a classroom that supports language learning and understanding, how teaching can adapt to maximise the benefits of an international student cohort, connecting practical clinical skills with functional language, and how language learning itself creates more empathetic communication.

Lucy Palmer is a senior lecturer of communications and media based at the Naryn campus of the University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan. She is also a former foreign correspondent and a successful memoir writer.

Katalin Fogarasi is an associate professor and director of the Institute of Languages for Specific Purposes at Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary.