By Joanne Carey on March 1, 2023
A Critical Geography Speaker Series
Organized by Students of Geography 480: Advanced Seminar in Critical Geography
Interested to learn about academic publishing from editors of international journals and internationally renowned scholars?
Join the students of Geography 480 for their speaker series: Cultural Economies of Academic Publishing. This series will allow students and others interested in publishing in scholarly journals, in podcasts, via social media, and using the popular media, to gain a solid understanding of the structural systems in which such knowledge production occurs. The presentations are purposely short so that there will be lots of time in each session for questions. Students in GEOGRAPHY 480 will act as interlocutors for a short period, then the presentations will be open to questions from the floor.
Moderator: Professor Lawrence D. Berg Moderator: Professor Lawrence D. Berg, former co-editor: SITES: A Journal for South Pacific Cultural Studies; co-founding editor: ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies; and former editor-in-chief: The Canadian Geographer.
Interlocutors: Students from GEOG 480
The Series will be available via Zoom: https://ubc.zoom.us/j/61639823447?pwd=bXNzTlp6MzhCSEQ2TlpkaEZra05XZz09
Presenters:
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Dates and Topics:
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Dr. Mary Gilmartin |
March 2nd @ 8:30PM (Pacific Time)
(she/her) is Professor of Geography, National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
The main focus of her research is contemporary Irish migration and mobility. Her book on Ireland and migration in the twenty-first century was published by Manchester University Press in 2015. She is currently engaged in two funded research projects on critical studies of migrant settlement and integration in Ireland. Mary is the former Editor-in-Chief of Social & Cultural Geography. |
Dr. Eugene McCann |
March 9th @ 7:30PM (Pacific Time)
(he/him) is Professor of Geography, SFU Department of Geography.
His research focuses on the policy context of urban life, and especially on the mobility of (neoliberal) policy, and assembling the urban. Eugene is Managing Editor of Environment & Planning C: Politics & Space. |
Dr. Jessica Stites Mor |
March 16th @ 7:30PM (Pacific Time)
(she/her) is Professor of History at the University of British Columbia.
Her research centres on solidarity movements, with a focus on the particularities of South- South transnational activism. Jessica is Editor-in-Chief of Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. |
Dr. Karis Shearer |
March 23rd @ 7:30PM (Pacific Time)
(she/her) is Principal’s Research Chair in Digital Arts & Humanities at the University of British Columbia and Co- Director of the UBC AMP Lab.
Karis is pursuing research on gender and affective labour in the Vancouver literary community of the 1960s and 70s, a collaboration which has resulted most recently in a piece called “Gender, Affective Labour, and Community- Building Through Literary Audio Recordings” and Wanting Everything: The Collected Works of Gladys Hindmarch. (Talonbooks 2020). |
Dr. Reuben Rose-Redwood |
March 30th @ 7:30PM (Pacific Time)
(he/him) is Professor of Geography and Associate Dean, Academic, at the University of Victoria.
He is Director of the Critical Geographies Research Lab at the University of Victoria, and he co-founded and serves as the current Chair of the Committee for Urban Studies. Reuben is Managing Editor of Dialogues in Human Geography. |
Dr. Onyx Sloan Morgan |
April 6th @ 7:30pm (pacific time)
(they/them) is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia.
Their work is is most often conducted in partnership with and at the direction of communities. Their positionality as a queer, non-binary white settler of Irish and Scottish ancestries steers their engagement. Their research seeks to: 1) reveal the power dynamics at the core of inequitable and oppressive structures, and 2) foreground the resistive, transformative relationalities that communities enliven every day for more just and sustainable futures. Onyx is a member of the ACME Collective and Editor-in-Chief ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. |
Dr. Minelle Mahtani |
April 13th @ 8:00 pm (pacific time)
(she/her) is the Brenda and David McLean Chair of Canadian Studies at the University of British Columbia.
She held the role of the Senior Advisor to the Provost on Racialized Faculty where she supported the recruitment and retention of racialized faculty. She is also a former national television news journalist at the CBC and was previously a journalism and geography professor at University of Toronto. She was host of a radio show at Roundhouse Radio, 98.3 Vancouver that was unapologetically anti-racist and feminist in its approach, focusing on the stories of systemically disadvantaged communities. |
Sponsored by the Spatial Justice CoLab and the UBC Institute for Community Engaged Research
Posted in Uncategorized
By Joanne Carey on February 24, 2023
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UBCO students sorting apples at Curlew Orchard. |
“Ugly” carrot tasting at the UBCO farmer’s market. |
Apple tasting with Chef Brad Vigue of UBC O Food Services and apple supplier Patrick Allen from Curlew Orchard. |
“Every decision we make about food is a vote for the kind of world we want to live in.” ~Francis Moore Lappe
The UBCO Local Food Values Dialogues are a way for the UBC Okanagan Community to more clearly identify and define the environmental and social values our university uses when purchasing local food from Okanagan food producers. Through these three dialogues, participants will think through what these values are, and how they could be identified on farms in the Okanagan bioregion, that grow some of the food that is eaten on campus.
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- Sustainability of organic/regenerative agriculture, biodiversity conservation, and salmon habitats
Guest speakers: Eva-Lena Lang, Organic BC, Lia McKinnon, Okanagan Similkameen Stewardship (OSS), Andrea McDonald, Salmon-Safe BC
2:00 pm – 3:15 pm, Thursday, March 9
- Justice for farm workers, farmers and other food producers, particularly those representing Indigenous and other diverse groups
Guest speakers: Robyn Bunn, Radical Action with Migrants in Agriculture (RAMA), Ari Westhover, National Farmers Union (NFU).
2:00 pm – 3:15 pm, Thursday, March 16
- How can we at UBCO begin to confirm these values in our ongoing food value chain relationships?
Guest speakers: David Speight, Culinary Director, UBC, Brad Vigue, Executive Chef UBCO; Emily Jubenvil, Shuswap Organics, Patrick Allen, Curlew Orchard.
2:00 pm – 3:15 pm, Thursday, March 23
Register for our Local Food Values Dialogue Series by clicking here.
Participation can be via Zoom or in-person at the Institute for Community Engaged Research (ICER), in the ARTS building, Arts 368, at UBC’s Okanagan campus.
This series supports the work of the UBCO Food Services/Land to Table Network Local Food Procurement Pilot Project that links UBCO’s food consumers to food producers from the Okanagan bioregion.
If you have any questions, please email: local.food@ubc.ca
Background information:
The food value chain under discussion in this Dialogue Series was developed through a UBCO/ L2T Local Food Procurement Pilot Project that began in September of 2021. Through this pilot project, UBCO campus food system actors (including as student consumers and advocates; staff from UBCO Food Services and UBCO Campus Health & Wellness; faculty from the Institute for Community-Engaged Research (ICER); and others) were provided with increased access to local food through the activities of the Land to Table (L2T) network’s regional food system members (including food producers, processors, aggregators and distributors).
Inspiration for this pilot project has come from both sides of the food value chain. The Land to Table network, in its quest to build a thriving, healthy and resilient regional food system, has been hearing from small- and medium- sized farmers about the challenges they face in accessing stable markets for their food products. This has culminated in calls for an institutional champion to step forward locally to provide that market and in doing so, support the rebuilding of a regional food value chain, including the reinvestment into any missing links, be they actors, processes or infrastructure.
This call for a champion was answered when one of the Okanagan’s largest institutions, UBCO, decided not to renew its contract with Aramark, its Food Services provider, in 2018, opting instead for independent management of its own Food Services. UBCO now holds greater power over its food procurement decisions, which has permitted the development of a ‘demand pull’ based on food values (as opposed to the ‘supply push’ that is more common in global food supply chains), as currently summarized in the university’s draft Food Vision and Values.
This series is hosted by UBCO Food Services, the Land to Table (L2T) Regional Food System Network with support from the Institute for Community Engaged Research and students working as Local Food Champions.
Posted in News, Uncategorized
By Joanne Carey on January 19, 2023
Join MA student Hanna Paul for the next Starting a Conversation
Wednesday, Jan. 25
12:00 to 1:00 pm
Arts 368 | Zoom
Abstract: My MA thesis centers Métis women and youth of the North Vermilion Settlement (Buttertown), Alberta and their embodied experiences with moon time (menstruation) in relation to body confidence. My aunties expressed that we must share our stories to combat the colonial master narrative in the region. The Métis method of Visiting fostered my research and reconnection journey back to my community. My methodology is best captured by the process of Saskatoon berry picking that draws from my lived experiences while in community. Through thematic data analysis of semi-structured interviews, I captured core findings that focus on confidence building of youth of future generations.
Bio: Hanna is a Michif (Métis) cisgender woman. Her Métis family names are Paul, Lizotte, Lambert, and LaFleur. She is a second year IGS Master’s student under the supervision of Dr. Gabrielle Legault and Dr. Fiona McDonald. Hanna is in the CESCE theme and currently writing her thesis.
Everyone is welcome!
This will be a hybrid event. If you’re joining via Zoom, please e-mail: icer.ok@ubc.ca for the link.
Posted in Event, News, Starting a Conversation
By Joanne Carey on January 10, 2023
Join visiting scholar, Dr. Farrah Bérubé for the next Starting a Conversation.

Tuesday, Jan. 17
12:00 to 1:00 pm
Arts 368 | Zoom
As an associate professor, I supervise more and more graduate students who are interested in the many and varied issues of intercultural communication. I have observed that my students are increasingly choosing to work on the impacts, contributions, and issues of the digital in intercultural communication situations. With good reason, interculturality benefits greatly from digital technology and digital technology generates more intercultural exchanges. Since the advent of digital technology, situations of intercultural relations have multiplied, become more complex, imposed and invented.
In this Starting the Conversation, I propose to explore how digital technology participates in intercultural exchanges and how it hinders these exchanges.
Bio: An associate professor at Department of Literature and Social Communication at Université du Québec à Trois Rivières, Farrah Bérubé is also a researcher at the Laboratory for Intercultural Relations Research (LABRRI) based at the Université de Montréal. Her expertise focuses on the space and treatment of human diversity in media and on the uses of media by immigrants (media representations of human diversity, uses and production of media by immigrants). She co-coordinated a 2-volume special issue in “Communiquer” dealing with intercultural and international communication.
Everyone is welcome!
This will be a hybrid event. If you’re joining via Zoom, please register here.
E-mail: icer.ok@ubc.ca with any questions.
Posted in Event, News, Uncategorized
By Joanne Carey on November 15, 2022
Starting a Conversation with Tori Stranges
Thursday, Nov.17
12:00 noon to 1:00 pm
Arts 368 / Zoom
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a public and personal health epidemic. Statistics Canada (2011) and the World Health Organization (2021) note that one in three identifying-women experience IPV in their lifetime. IPV is defined as physical, sexual, emotional, financial, psychological or identity-based abuse perpetrated by a former or current intimate partner. Of the physical instances of IPV, a recent review reported that up to 92% of women reported symptoms consistent with brain injury (BI) (Zieman, et al., 2017). All research in the field of IPV-caused BI have strictly focused on heterosexual women, ignoring the unique needs of 2S/LGBTQIA+ community members. Previous research highlights people who identify as part of the 2S/LGBTQIA+ community are at heightened risk of experiencing intimate partner violence. However, no attention has been given to the rate and ways that BI affects 2S/LGBTQIA+ survivors accessing health care.
Please email: icer.ok@ubc.ca for the link.
(Photo credit: Graham J. Farquar)
Bio:
Tori Stranges (she/her) is a PhD Student in the faculty of Health and Social Development at the University of British Columbia- Okanagan Campus. Tori’s research interests lay at the intersection of brain injury resulting from intimate partner violence in the 2S/LGBTQIA+ community. Tori recently moved to the unceded, traditional territory of the Syilx Okanagan Nation where she continues to play an active role in her community advocating for social justice, connection and change. Tori is also a recipient of the 2022 ICER Graduate Research Award
Posted in Event, News, Starting a Conversation
By Joanne Carey on October 24, 2022
The next Starting a Conversation
Friday, Oct. 28
11:00 am to 12:00 noon
Arts 368 (ICER)
Zoom
What can we achieve when unions and communities align to fight for climate justice?
Join Eric Solland (ATU Local 1722) and Kirstin Pulles (MA Student, Community Engagement, Social Change, and Equity) to learn more about the recent transit strike in Kelowna. ATU Local 1722 won a key moment in their fight for fairness, but their work isn’t over. Local climate activists and the transit union intend to work together for a funded, fair, and publicly managed transit system for Canada’s fastest growing city.
Kirstin is all about climate justice – and that means good public transit. A current student in a Master’s in Community Engagement, Social Change and Equity, Kirstin will spend the next two years exploring the role of labour in our struggle for a sustainable future. She was also a founding member of Free Transit Ottawa, fighting for affordable and accessible public transit in Canada’s capital city.
Eric has lived in the Okanagan since 1993 and has worked in the Transportation Industry since 1984. The last 18 years have been with Kelowna Regional Transit, where he has held a position on the Union Executive for the past 12 years. He is interested in engaging with politicians and the public on creating “Better Transit”.
Starting a Conversation invites students, community members, staff and faculty to join an informal brown-bag discussion on a variety of topics, usually led by one or two speakers.
Questions: Email icer.ok@ubc.ca
Posted in Event, News, Starting a Conversation
By Joanne Carey on August 11, 2022
Join us on Wednesday, Sept.7 from 8:30 am – 11:00 am (PDT) | 4:30 pm – 7:30 pm (BST)
This event will take place via Zoom, and with a limited number of in-person seats available.
What does it mean to re-imagine the food system?
The UBCO-Exeter symposium is an opportunity to share experiences and knowledges on the issues of regional food networks in British Columbia, Canada and Devon, UK. We’ll explore our similar and divergent experiences, existing challenges, actions for change and the role of networks in supporting pathways to co-create sustainable food systems.
Invited speakers from Land to Table, BC, Organic BC, along with Food Exeter and The Devon Food Partnership, UK, will highlight the tensions and opportunities for regional food systems in the face of climate change, COVID recovery, cost of living crises, legacies of land based injustices and more.
Rebecca Sandover (University of Exeter) and Mary Stockdale (University of British Columbia, Okanagan) will then lead a roundtable discussion between the speakers and audience members.
Agenda:
8:30 am (PDT) | 4:30 pm (BST): Introduction and welcome
8:35 am (PDT) | 4:35 pm (BST): Presentation by Dr. Sandover
8:50 am (PDT) | 4:50 pm (BST): Presentation by Andy Johnson
9:05 am (PDT) | 5:05 pm (BST): Presentation by Eva-Lena Lang,
9:15 am (PDT) | 5:15 pm (BST): Presentation by Liz Blakeway
9:25 am (PDT) | 5:25 pm (BST): Presentation by Dr. Mary Stockdale
9:35 am (PDT) | 5:35 pm (BST): Bio break
9:45 am (PDT) | 5:45 pm (BST): Panel discussion and question period
Symposium Speakers:
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Rebecca Sandover
Lecturer, Human Geography, University of Exeter
Dr. Rebecca Sandover is Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Exeter. She is a social scientist with research interests in Sustainable Food Networks, food policy partnerships and Public Participation in Climate Change policy making. Using a knowledge co-production approach, she has in recent years been investigating action toward the formation of sustainable food networks in the South West UK. Her research is particularly focused on building local food partnerships with local authorities, boosting access to sustainable local food, addressing food insecurity and issues of health and wellbeing. Recently, she has also been researching Public Participation in Climate Change policy making, exploring the setting up and running of the Devon Climate Emergency’s Climate Assembly. |
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Andy Johnson
Consultant, Exeter Organic Local Food Hub
Andy Johnson is a consultant and advisor who works with organic growers, farmers, buyers, manufacturers, policy makers & campaigners in the aim of changing the food system. He worked as Manager for Riverford Farm Veg box scheme before setting up his own organic eggs production business. He now applies his skills to help the organic market to grow both as a consultant and as an activist for the Exeter Organic Local Food Hub.’ |
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Eva-Lena Lang
Organic BC, Executive Director
Eva-Lena Lang is the Executive Director of Organic BC. She grew up on an organic ranch and gained farming experience on agricultural operations in BC and Europe. To increase her capacity to support farmers and grow the regional food system she co-founded the North Okanagan Land to Table Network (L2T). This work led her to pursue a masters at the Institute for Community Engaged Research at UBCO, studying network development in food systems; applying her research to L2T. |
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Liz Blakeway
Land to Table, Network Director
Liz is the Network Director for Land to Table (L2T), a regional food system network based in the North Okanagan. She has grown with the organization over the past 4 years, working to create a thriving, just, resilient and re-localized food system that centers support for small scale farmers. Liz is passionate about catalyzing connections and collaboration, mobilizing network participants’ ideas, knowledge and energy to build systems that support community. She lives with her family and a growing number of animal on a small acreage/would-be-farm in the Shuswap. Liz loves to cook for her people and understands that having quality, clean, fresh local food is an absolute privilege. |
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Mary Stockdale
Adjunct Professor, Community, Culture & Global Studies (Geography), UBC Okanagan
Dr. Mary Stockdale is an adjunct professor and instructor for Community, Culture and Global Studies at UBCO, where she teaches and researches community resilience, sustainability and natural resource management. She has over 20 years of experience working in Southeast Asia (mainly Indonesia and the Philippines) on community-based management of non-timber forest products (NTFPs). In the Okanagan, she acts as a bridge between university and community for partnerships on topics such as regional food systems, sustainable transportation, transition town initiatives and climate change awareness. |
Posted in Event, News, Uncategorized
By Joanne Carey on March 25, 2022
Please join Liz Blakeway, Network Director for Land to Table, as she reflects on the challenges and opportunities of network and system building during both the pandemic and climate disruption.
Liz will talk about lessons learned from the past year’s work to create a food system network for the Village of Lumby and better understand the opportunities for food security and Village-owned ALR land use. Reflections will include:
- What does it mean to engage the agricultural and civic community around community identified needs during a time of disruption?
- How do we maintain momentum, to build on existing community food system goals while also fostering trust in community wisdom?
- How does community engaged research lend itself to responsiveness and capacity building?
- What role can community (L2T) organizations and university partnerships (ICER) play, to support local government food system aspirations and efforts?
Land to Table is a regional food system network, based in the North Okanagan, working to build a thriving, healthy, just and resilient regional food system that nourishes and connects people, sustains livelihoods, regenerates the environment and builds community. In collaboration with network partners, L2T builds the network (e.g. through communications, dialogue and events) and carries out projects that strengthen and support the local food system.
Land to Table was a recipient of a 2021 ICER Community Research Award.
WATCH LIVE
Questions? Email: icer.ok@ubc.ca
Posted in Event, News
By Joanne Carey on March 22, 2022
Join us for the next Starting a Conversation with Professor Bryony Onciul from 12:00 to 1:00 pm, Thursday, March 10, 2022.
This will be a hybrid event. Join us in person in Arts 368, or email: icer.ok@ubc.ca for the Zoom link.
Abstract:
Dr Bryony Onciul will present an overview of her new AHRC Fellowship project Renewing Relations (2022-23) and how it builds upon her previous research on climate change, heritage, colonial history, and Indigenous rights in Canada, the South Pacific, and UK.
Renewing Relations project focuses on the importance of (re)connections and (re)newing relations within and across groups, forms of heritage, places, practices, and wider kinship groups. It highlights the role of ecosystems and environment in maintaining and sustaining heritage and upholding Indigenous rights.
The project considers what the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) means for Indigenous communities, heritage bodies, and environmental stewards in practice in BC. How it relates to the history of BC, and asks how it is shaping new approaches and relationships, and what barriers remain. The aim is to improve understandings of the relationships between heritage, environment, kinship, and decolonization.
Bio:
Bryony Onciul is an Associate Professor in Museology and Heritage at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Museums, Heritage and Indigenous Voice: Decolonizing Engagement, and co-editor of Engaging Heritage, Engaging Communities. She co-designed and directed the Postgraduate Programme International Heritage Management and Consultancy at UoE. Bryony founded the UK Chapter of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS), and is a member of the international Executive Committee. Bryony is currently in Canada, a Visiting Professor at UBC, delivering her Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship Renewing Relations: Indigenous Heritage Rights and (Re)conciliation in Northwest Coast Canada.
Meet n’ Greet
Professor Onciul is a visiting scholar who would like the opportunity to meet students, staff and faculty with shared research interests and learn about their work. If you can’t make the talk, please join us in person in Arts 368, 11:30 to noon and 1:00 to 1:30 pm on March 10.
Posted in Event, News, Starting a Conversation, Uncategorized
By Joanne Carey on March 16, 2022
March 24,
Noon to 1 pm
WATCH LIVE
Abstract
How do we bring community engaged methods to digital spaces? How can we approach community when participants are digitally and geographically dispersed? What does it look and feel like to work with vulnerability in a pandemic? In this conversation, I take these questions as starting points to share my experience of threading community engagement through digital ethnographic research. Situating access as a method, I will share reflections about how community engagement offers an opportunity for digital research methods to be designed in a manner that is responsive to participants and communities. I suggest that, as a method, participant-led access is a deeply collaborative and political act because it creates the conditions for diverse bodies and minds to be present, whole, and well within a given space and time. At the heart of this dreaming and reflecting is a desire for accessibility and disability justice to be modalities that disrupt systems and spaces that too often ignore, devalue, and erase nonnormative bodies and minds within research.
Bio
Madelaine is an interdisciplinary graduate student at UBC, Okanagan. Through ethnography, Madelaine studies the intersections of visual, material, and digital culture with an emphasis in sensory knowledges and community-engaged methods. Her current research addresses gaps in digital accessibility by seeking to understand how individuals and organizations are collaborating to encourage more equitable access for/with people with disabilities. While Madelaine is currently non-disabled, she navigates the world with complex trauma and multiple forms of chronic pain that influence her daily physical, mental, and emotional capacities. As a queer and feminist scholar, this embodied lived experience is central in her research, writing, and living. In her free time, you can often find Madelaine with her partner and their many multispecies collaborators including their cat Sage and dog Harry.
Posted in Event, News, Starting a Conversation, Uncategorized