The SOPR program has created space for us in higher education. SOPR is made up of students with lived experience and identities, often undervalued or made invisible in academia. We are queer, non-binary, women, racialized, Indigenous, newcomers, international students, neurodivergent, disabled, parents, activists, artists, change makers, and students at the intersection of many identities. During our time in SOPR we draw from our experiences, our individual and collective praxis, and different ways of knowing to create new, practice-based knowledge and to reimagine academia, together.
SOPR’s pillars, which include Intersectional and Decolonizing Approaches and the ‘Unsettling’ Nature of Change; Feminist, Gender, Sexuality and Other Critical Perspectives for Rethinking Difference and the Human; Indigenous Knowledge Systems; Social Justice and Praxis Orientation; Methodological Innovation and Boundary Crossing; and Community Engaged Scholarship, have led us to the program and are key to the transformative scholarship we aspire to practice. These pillars do not just guide us, by necessity, the commitments that underpin these pillars require us to embody and enact respectful, reciprocal relations with one another as a community of scholars, students, and support staff committed to change-making in and outside of the academy. Across cohorts and throughout our doctoral studies, we work to center social justice, community, care, and creativity in our research practice.
Below we share stories from current students reflecting on these ideas.
“In a more competitive program or one with less emphasis on collaboration and change making students like me would so easily fall through the cracks. I think this is critical to consider when analyzing the diversity (or lack thereof) of students from marginalized experiences at the graduate level – trans, disabled, low income & first generation etc where it is easy to internalize our shortcomings and asking for help can feel scary and stigmatizing. And yet our knowledge, experience & scholarship is so needed!”
Naty Tremblay, a multi-media artist, facilitator and community organizer and a third year SOPR Candidate
“In entering this program, I came from a political science and policy heavy background […] during my time in these academic spaces I was heavily involved in community work with survivor, racialized, and queer communities I hold kinship with, and was simultaneously engaged in artistic practices of making as a poet and an artist. Starting the SOPR program was the first time I was able to fully enter an academic space with all of these parts of myself intact, and not have to reserve pieces for certain audiences. The interdisciplinary nature and social justice focus of this program allowed me to enter as I am.”
“For the first time I was able to merge all of my passions, interests, and identities from community work to academia to artistic making. This program provided me with the tools to move differently and rethink traditional normative practices. It offered space to practice in ways that traditional neoliberal academia does not. It continues to provide a way out and a way forward to rethink, dream, and build. To dream of a different way of moving within the academy.”
Nealob Kakar, a poet, activist, artful inquirer/maker of all things, and second year SOPR Candidate
“In returning to academia after working in the field, my lived and work experience has been included and celebrated as foundational to my academic endeavors rather than being seen as some kind of “before” that is not applicable to my work in SOPR. I don’t know that the transition would have been so accessible to me if it hadn’t been for the Director and upper year SOPR students who made themselves available from day one.”
Jennifer Jolie, a first generation university student, disabled woman, and 1st year student in SOPR.
“I think using ‘social practice’ as a lens through which to engage in research and practice, and really to blur the lines between theoretical and practical knowledge, allows for more creative and flexible scholarly approaches which begin to dismantle colonial understandings and embodiments of scholarly practice within a western institutional context – not perfect by any means – but recognizing different temporal, cultural, spiritual, affective, and relational dimensions of knowledge has been transformative for me as a researcher and person in the world, and I believe can be for the university as an institution as well.”
Lindsey Thomson, Manager, Community Engaged Learning with Community Engaged Scholarship Institute and second year SOPR student
Angela Easby, a 3rd year PhD candidate in SOPR under the supervision of Dr. Kim Anderson, has found that the structure and creative atmosphere of SOPR has been instrumental in developing her research on Anishinaabemowin revitalization, and that her experiences in this graduate program have been validating of the kind of deep, thoughtful research relationship-building that she feels is central to her scholarly work.