sschussler@uwaterloo.ca
EV1-208
Stuart's work sits at the intersection of inspiration and action, theory and practice, freedom dreams and the community organizing that makes them real. Universities have both inspired students who want to support radical movements and the resources to aid in this, but getting these students involved in accountable, constructive ways takes work. Stuart builds out pedagogies and partnerships to support groups on the front lines of struggles for justice.
Stuart's current research is on how universities are best able to support and learn from community organizations. These member-led groups are at the heart of the social movements that make history. Yet the same frenetic activity and mass participation that lend them dynamism also cause universities seldom engage them as viable sites of service learning. Stuart's research explores how to remedy this. "Bridging the Gap: The Makings of Constructive Service Learning with Community Organizations" is an interdisciplinary inquiry into the practices that allow university students, faculty, and staff to support community organizations in constructive ways, sometimes through research and more often through hand-on volunteer work. His previous research asked the broader question of what it even means to do "community organizing," through interviews with former students who are translating lessons learned from autonomous organizing by rural indigenous peoples Mexico into their own activism back home.
Stuart holds a PhD in Environmental Studies from York University, a Master's in International Relations from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Quito, Ecuador, and a Bachelor's from DePauw University in Indiana, with a major in Peace and Conflict Studies. He received a Fulbright Grant for study in Ecuador and sits on the Board of Directors of the Autonomous University of Social Movements. He also organizes with a migrant justice collective in Toronto and with an international network of activists in solidarity with the indigenous Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico.