Research Team
Craig Fortier, Social Development Studies
Matt Borland, Systems Design Engineering
Project Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted and exacerbated tensions existing between science, politics, and movements for social justice. The Emergent Encounters Action Project is a collaborative course bringing together students from Systems Design Engineering and Social Development Studies at the University of Waterloo to engage in an intensive case study-based project aimed at re-imagining social justice initiatives outside the logics of our current systems/structures.
This pilot project will recruit up to five students from each department to participate in a five-part collaborative case study where students will be mentored and supported by instructors and community members through the process of identifying a social issue, learning about its history and context, brainstorming potential interventions, being mentored on potential ways of organizing or enacting these, and then engaging in action-based outcomes. This pilot project would serve as a first run of what we hope will become a cross-listed collaborative course between our two departments.
References
Brown AM (2017). Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. Oakland: AK Press.
Fischer ARH, Tobi H, Ronteltap A (2013). When Natural Met Social: A Review of Collaboration between the Natural and Social Sciences. Interdisciplinary Science Review 36(4): 341-358.
Fortier C (2021). Abolition and Decolonization as Pedagogy and Practice, in Ewert L and Bird F (eds) Peace is Everyone’s Business. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.
Lansquiot RD (ed.) (2016). Interdisciplinary pedagogy for STEM: A Collaborative Case Study. Brooklyn: Palgrave-MacMillan.
Mutch S, Borland M, Mercer K (2021). Engineering, Patriarchy, and the Pluriverse: What World of Many Worlds Do We Design? What Worlds Do We Teach? Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA-ACEG) Conference, June 20-23, 2021.