Blog – SOPR Stories

Creating space for transformation in higher education

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.

Welcome to the SOPR Stories Blog!

Hello and welcome to SOPR Stories, the student-led blog for the Social Practice and Transformational Change doctoral program at the University of Guelph.

Looking back at my time in SOPR with Gratitude

Hello, everyone, my name is Hannah Fowlie, and I just defended my thesis project, Grief Refracted: Digital Storytelling as Liberatory Praxis. In this project, I explored disenfranchised grief (Doka, 1989) with eight other storytellers, and made a story as well. Rather than a book-length dissertation, the stories were woven together in a film that incorporating interviews and poetic, visual, and sonic explorations of grief and loss, accompanied by a written reflection. I was interested in how the arts and social sciences can support each other with a “synchronicity [that can move] in both directions (Gallagher, 2008, p. 78). In the Social Practice and Transformational Change (SOPR) program, I found a home for my work. Coming to the end of my journey, it makes good sense to look back and reflect on my experience in the program. I am feeling a sense of loss that I will no longer be formally part of the SOPR community however, I will look for ways to stay involved and connected.