Gardeners
Digital gardening offers a different way to think about how we interact with information online. We are not the first to use the language of a digital garden to describe our work, adding to those who describe cultivating digital landscapes that are explorable and invite you to follow your curiosity. Digital gardens emphasize ideas and online landscapes that grow slowly over time. Gardens are imperfect and incomplete spaces, and they are spaces cultivated with care. Below are some of the gardeners who have helped tend to and cultivate this digital garden.
The Tkaronto CIRCLE Lab
The Tkaronto CIRCLE Lab was created in 2017, by founding director Eve Tuck, with funding from the Canada Fund for Innovation John R. Evans Leadership Fund. When it is at full capacity, our lab includes students, faculty, staff, and community researchers. The physical space of our lab is located at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. Our space includes rooms dedicated to arts- and materials-based research, participatory research with youth and communities, visual and audio research, and community gatherings. Our lab commitments are to social change, supportive openness, and collaboration and collaborative writing. We are trying to grow our lab with intention and in good relation to each other, to communities in the city of Tkaronto, and with lands and waters.
For more information about our lab space, our research, and current lab members, visit our website: https://www.tkarontocirclelab.com/.
If you would like to reach out to us, please send an email to TkarontoCIRCLElab@utoronto.ca.
Education Commons
This site was created in collaboration with OISE Education Commons. We acknowledge their contributions that helped bring the Digital Garden to life.
Thank you especially to Paul Steacy, Mark Hume, Hentry Mathias, Andrea Zdzylowski, Jed Dela Cruz and Laura Hagglund.
TRU Technoscience Research Unit
Special thanks to the Technoscience Research Unit (TRU) for their support in adding project profiles highlighting Indigenous science research.
Advisory Board
This project is accountable to and guided by an international advisory board. We are so grateful for the generous feedback and input provided to us. Current advisory board members include:
Dr. Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Dr. Linda Tuhiwai Smith is a Maōri scholar and researcher who has made significant and compelling contributions to the fields of Māori education and health, and Indigenous Studies and education. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1998) is one of the most influential texts on Indigenous research, a foundational book for critiques of the existing relationships between dominant institutional research and Indigenous communities and knowledge systems. This book has inspired generations of Indigenous scholars, and launched many other discussions to guide scholars, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, today and into the future.
Prof. Tuhiwai Smith is one of the first Māori women to become a Fellow of the Royal Society, she has received an Honorary Doctorate in Canada and her Prime Minister’s Award is the highest national award for lifetime achievement in education. Smith has held several positions, including the founding Co-Director of the Maori Centre of Research Excellence, the Pro-Vice Chancellor Māori and Dean of the School of Māori and Pacific Development at the University of Waikato in New Zealand.
Dr. Bagele Chilisa
Bagele Chilisa is a full Professor of the Post-Graduate Research and Evaluation programme at the University of Botswana. Over the last 30 years she has taught Research design, Measurement and Evaluation courses to graduate and undergraduate students. She conducts professional development workshops on Indigenous research methodologies and contextually and culturally relevant evaluation around the world. She has also served as guest lecturer, speaker, resource person and keynote speaker at several conferences in Universities in South Africa, USA, Norway, UK, Italy to mention a few.
Dr. Chilisa is the Director of the HIV and Behavior Change Adolescent Program, member of the UNDP evaluation advisory board and the International Evaluation Council. She has over 80 publications and has received over 30 million pula in grants to conduct and design interventions to address gender inequalities and to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS on the quality of life of people in Botswana and beyond. Her book Indigenous Research Methodologies is an outstanding contribution to the theory and practice of Indigenous approaches to research. The book is engaged in many universities across the globe. Dr. Chilisa is the recipient of the University of Botswana Research Team Leader of the year; University of Botswana Researcher of the Year award and the International HIV Researcher award.
Dr. Jo-Ann Archibald Q’um Q’um Xiiem
Indigenous scholar, author, and pioneer in the advancement of Indigenous education, Jo-ann Archibald (Q’um Q’um Xiiem) is the former associate dean for Indigenous Education and director of the Indigenous Teacher Education Program (NITEP), and is professor of Educational Studies in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia. She completed her Bachelor of Education at UBC in 1972 and continued on to earn both a master and doctorate in education.
Member of the Stol:lo Nation, Dr. Archibald is described as a visionary and an agent of change, and is nationally recognized for creating culturally relevant teacher education and graduate programs for Aboriginal students. During her career of more than 40 years, her work transformed the learning landscape through curriculum and program development, policy, teaching and research.
Dr. Archibald is the author of Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit published by UBC Press in 2008. She also served as editor of the Canadian Journal of Native Education.
Dr. Leigh Patel
Dr. Leigh Patel is a transdisciplinary scholar who studies the narratives that create material realities in society. Her research focuses on both the ways schooling delivers inequities and how education can be a tool for liberation. Dr. Patel is highly regarded for her contributions to discussions of participatory and collaborative research, the purposes of education, meaning-making in universities, and graduate student mentorship. She is a highly sought-after speaker and well-regarded scholar across the fields of education, ethnic studies, critical higher education studies, and literacy. Dr. Patel served as the inaugural Associate Dean of Equity and Justice in University of Pittsburgh School of Education.
Dr. Patel’s scholarly interests include the relationship between struggle and study, how narratives create and justify material inequities, language and literacy as ways of re-shaping curricula, decolonizing research and the historical analysis of education. She is a member of the National Academy of Education.
Dr. Alex Wilson
Dr. Alex Wilson is Neyonawak Inniniwak from the Opaskwayak Cree Nation. She is a professor with the Department of Educational Foundations and the Academic Director of the Aboriginal Education Research Centre at the University of Saskatchewan. She is a scholar whose theorizing and ethical practice has informed both Indigenous social movements, and Indigenous scholarship. She is highly regarded for ideas in land education, Indigenous queer and two spirit studies, and is a mentor to many in these fields.
Dr. Wilson’s scholarship has greatly contributed to building and sharing knowledge about two spirit identity, history and teachings, Indigenous research methodologies, and the prevention of violence in the lives of Indigenous peoples. Her current projects include two spirit and Indigenous Feminisms research: Two-Spirit identity development and “Coming In” theory that impact pedagogy and educational policy; studies on two spirit people and homelessness; and an International study on Indigenous land-based education.
Dr. Megan Bang
Dr. Megan Bang (Ojibwe and Italian descent) is a Professor of the Learning Sciences and Psychology at Northwestern University. Dr. Bang studies dynamics of culture, learning, and development broadly with a specific focus on the complexities of navigating multiple meaning systems in creating and implementing more effective and just learning environments in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics education.
She focuses on reasoning and decision-making about complex socio-ecological systems in ways that intersect with culture, power, and historicity. Central to this work are dimensions of identity, equity, and community engagement. She conducts research in both schools and informal settings across the life course. She has taught in and conducted research in teacher education as well as leadership preparation programs. Dr. Bang currently serves on the Board of Science Education at the National Academy of Sciences and is a member of the National Academies of Education.
Dr. Shawn Wilson
Dr Shawn Wilson is Opaskwayak Cree from northern Manitoba, Canada, and currently lives on Bundjalung land on the east coast of Australia where he is a Senior Lecturer in Indigenous Knowledge at Gnibi College of Indigenous Australian Peoples at Southern Cross University. He is also Adjunct Professor of Psychosocial Work at Østfold University College in Fredrikstad, Norway.
Through working with Indigenous people internationally, Shawn has applied Indigenist philosophy within the contexts of Indigenous education, health and counsellor education. In addition to further articulating Indigenous philosophies and research paradigms, his research focuses on the inter-related concepts of identity, health and healing, culture and wellbeing. His 2008 book, Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods is often cited for bridging understanding between western academia and traditional Indigenous knowledges. In addition to being on the editorial boards of several journals and the board of directors for the Tapestry Institute, he is co-editor of Research and Reconciliation: Unsettling ways of knowing through Indigenous relationships, which was released in 2019.
Dr. Monique Guishard
Dr. Monique Guishard is Associate Professor of Psychology at the City University of New York (CUNY) Bronx Community College. Dr. Guishard’s work is focused on decentering /unsettling white normative biomedical and IRB centered research ethics frameworks. Coming from overly researched communities and penurious social class origins has influenced her complicated posture to research. Dr. Guishard claims nepantla — threshold spaces, as sites of radical relational humanizing ethical praxis. Using individual interviews, focus groups, longitudinal de-colonial ethnography her recently defended dissertation explored perceptions of ethical conduct in community-engaged and participatory action research in order to articulate points of divergence and resonance with biomedical ethical lodestones.
Dr. Guishard’s work is focused on building de-colonial ethics trainings. These trainings acknowledge the importance of traditional ethical guidelines but simultaneously critically question the limitations of these directives for how they attend to research as a historical site of trauma and dehumanization for minoritized people and the ethical and moral quandaries that often erupt in qualitative and participatory research. This work requires substantive re-imaginings of the: literature, historical examples, vignettes, and theories of change that permeate research ethics discourse and training. Dr. Guishard is a founding member of the Public Science Project, a member of the Bronx Community Research Review Board (BxCRRB) and serves as Project Lead of the Community Engaged Research Academy.
Dr. Malia Villegas
Dr. Malia Villegas (Alutiiq/Sugpiaq) is Vice President of Corporate Affairs with her Alaska Native village, the Afognak Native Corporation in Kodiak Island Borough. Dr. Villegas was previously the Director of the Policy Research Center at the National Congress of American Indians. Dr. Villegas completed her doctorate in Culture, Communities, and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.
Dr. Villegas is committed to improving educational experiences of Indigenous and rural youth and communities by exploring innovative institutional partnerships and community-based research processes. Her research interests include Indigenous philosophies of education, community- and place-based education, sovereignty and nation building, and social and moral development. In 2008, Villegas traveled on a Fulbright Fellowship to Aotearoa (New Zealand) to explore the successful Maori higher education initiative to develop 500 Maori PhDs in five years, which became the subject of her dissertation. Villegas has also served as a Research Fellow for the Alaska Native Policy Center of First Alaskans Institute, where she worked on research and policy related to Alaska Native education, student success, and community development. She co-edited a volume (with S. R. Neugebauer & K. R. Venegas) entitled, Indigenous Knowledge and Education: Sites of Struggle, Strength, and Survivance in 2008.
Dr. Michelle Fine
Dr. Michelle Fine is Distinguished Professor of Social Psychology, Women’s Studies and Urban Education at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). A highly influential educator and activist, her work addresses questions of social injustice that sit at the intersection of public policy and social research, particularly with respect to youth in schools and criminal justice.
A recognized pioneer in participatory action research, Dr. Fine’s scholarship and activism address critical issues of what she calls “circuits of dispossession and resistance,” documenting how youth contend with, are affected by, and resist inequities and the rising “punishment paradigm” in prisons, schools, communities, and social movements.
Dr. Fine’s activism includes serving often as expert witness in gender, race, and education discrimination cases, including test-based graduation requirements in urban districts. Most recently, Dr. Fine has been intensely involved with MCAS – Montclair (NJ) Cares About Schools – an activist group of parents working with educators, labor and civil rights groups, in a struggle over corporate reform and testing in a racially integrated suburban school district.
Dr. Leonie Pihama
Dr. Leonie Pihama’s extensive research interests cover whānau, economic transformation and national identity. She has a long history of involvement in Māori education, including te kōhanga reo and kura kaupapa Māori (total immersion pre–schools and schools), and has published widely.
Dr. Pihama sits on the Government-appointed Constitutional Advisory Panel. She has received numerous academic awards, including the inaugural Fulbright-Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga Scholar Award and a Hohua Tutengaehe Post-Doctoral Scholarship from the Health Research Council of New Zealand.
Dr. Pihama was the Principal Investigator on the Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga research project Tiakina Te Pā Harakeke: Māori childrearing within a context of whānau ora. She has led other NPM projects in the past, on education, eugenics, and neonatal care.
Dr. Bryan Brayboy
Dr. Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy (Lumbee) is President’s Professor of Indigenous education and justice in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. At ASU, he is senior advisor to the president, director of the Center for Indian Education, associate director of the School of Social Transformation, and co-editor of the Journal of American Indian Education. From 2007 to 2012, he was visiting President’s Professor of Indigenous education at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Dr. Brayboy’s research focuses on the role of race and diversity in higher education, and the experiences of Indigenous students, staff, and faculty in institutions of higher education. He has been a visiting and noted scholar in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway. He and his team have, over the past 17 years, prepared more than 155 Native teachers to work in American Indian communities and more than 15 American Indian PhDs.
Dr. Brayboy is a fellow of the American Educational Research Association and a member of the National Academy of Education.
Dr. Jessica Ruglis
Dr. Jessica Ruglis is a professor of (in)human development, scholar-activist of public education and public health, participatory researcher, and youth advocate. For the past twenty years, Dr. Ruglis has been an educator in middle school, high school, college, university and community contexts, across the US and in Montréal.
Dr. Ruglis’ academic, policy and community work focuses on the intersections of health, education, human development, (in)justice and equity; in particular understanding education as a social determinant of health. Dr. Ruglis serves on the Board of Directors for Chalet Kent (2017-present), and recently has collaborated with No Bad Sound Studios (2016-present) on the intergenerational community based participatory action research project Sampling Youth Development.
Dr. Ruglis lives in Montréal where she is an Associate Professor at McGill University.
Dr. Jeffrey Ansloos
Dr. Jeffrey Ansloos is an Associate Professor of Indigenous Health and Social Policy and the Canada Research Chair in Critical Studies in Indigenous Health and Social Action on Suicide at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at University of Toronto. His research explores social and environmental dimensions of Indigenous peoples health, critical and feminist studies of suicide and grief, the politics of harm reduction, Indigenous feminist and queer methodologies, ethics, and intersections of technology in Indigenous organizing. He currently directs the Critical Health and Social Action Lab, which undertakes research on social and environmental dimensions of health and works to build justice with Indigenous communities. For the last 20 years, Ansloos has also worked in various capacities, as a front-line mental health service provider in healthcare and social services, a youth worker in public schools and community non-profits, and as a psychologist. Dr. Ansloos is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Victoria in the Faculty of Human and Social Development, and a visiting scholar at the University of Western Australia in the School of Indigenous Studies and the Centre for Best Practice in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention. Dr. Ansloos is Nehiyaw (Cree) and English and is a treaty member of Fisher River Cree Nation (Ochekwi-Sipi; Treaty 5). He was born and raised in the heart of Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Dr. Patricia Krueger-Henney
Dr. Patricia Krueger-Henney’s research follows mixed method designs to examine educational policies in urban school systems. Moreover, through participatory action research Dr. Krueger-Henney documents how young people perceive and experience social injustices produced and reproduced by current purposes of education. She has authored journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers outlining how youth-centered visual narratives situate purposes of education as embodied and spatialized knowledges. Prior to joining the University of Massachusetts Boston, Dr. Krueger-Henney was a faculty member of various teacher education programs and also taught social studies in New York City public high schools.
Dr. Max Liboiron
Dr. Max Liboiron is a science and technology studies (STS) scholar, environmental scientist, and activist. As an Associate Professor in Geography at Memorial University, Dr. Liboiron directs Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), an anticolonial marine science laboratory that specializes in grassroots environmental monitoring of plastic pollution. Dr. Liboiron has played leading roles in the establishment of the field of Discard Studies (the social study of waste and wasting), the Global Open Science Hardware Movement (GOSH), and is a figure in feminist science studies, Indigenous science and technology studies, and justice-oriented science methods. Dr. Liboiron is managing editor of Discard Studies, an interdisciplinary hub for research on waste and wasting.