Keynote speaker
I am a critical media and creative industries scholar who studies the relationships between social justice and arts education, work cultures, and practices.
My research, creative projects and teaching engage critical and decolonial pedagogies, critical media literacy, social justice education, visual arts-based methodologies, and critical theory. I am an Assistant Professor and Educational Developer at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
I hold a Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies and a PhD in Equity Studies in Educational Theory and Practice from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Prior to my academic career, I was a film and television producer for Canadian domestic and international productions spanning the visual arts and mainstream media industry.
Over the past few years, my research practice has addressed a gap in scholarship about how arts-based education instructors and programmes engage with social inequities, justice movements, and social change in their teaching and educational communities. Recent research has identified a core challenge to instructors’ capacities to do desired justice-based work: feelings of isolation and reputational danger can detract or become a barrier for instructors’ teaching and learning intentions. In this interactive keynote presentation, I will share practical insights from my research and engage the conference community in a capacity-building exercise that will address isolation and contribute to building connections within the artist-teaching community.