Dr. Dustin Louie is a First Nations scholar from Nee Tahi Buhn and Nadleh Whut’en of the Carrier Nation of central British Columbia. He is a member of the Beaver Clan. Dustin’s education background includes a degree in Canadian history, a Master’s in International Relations, and a PhD in Educational Research. The topic of Dr. Louie’s dissertation was Sexual Exploitation Prevention Education for Indigenous Girls. He has worked as an historian in a land claims law firm, studied Indigenous homelessness in Western Canada, worked internationally for non-governmental organizations in Uganda and Australia, and is now at the Werklund School of Education in the University of Calgary. As a tenure-track Assistant Professor, he teaches primarily in courses related to Indigenous education, social justice, and educational philosophy. Further research interests include practical approaches to Indigenizing education, decolonizing education, Indigenous pedagogies, and critical theory.

Tya Collins is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Administration and Foundations of Education at the University of Montreal. Her thesis concerns the overrepresentation of racialized youth in special education. As a former special education teacher, and an administrator in an alternative school setting, her research interests entail inclusion and exclusion issues in special education, postsecondary education access and perseverance, and educational equity.

André P. Grace, PhD is Canada Research Chair in Sexual and Gender Minority Studies (Tier 1) in the Faculty of Education, University of Alberta. His research focuses on the comprehensive health, educational, and cultural concerns of sexual and gender minority (SGM or LGBTQ+) youth. Currently, he also directs the Comprehensive Health Education Workers Project for vulnerable SGM youth in Edmonton. Dr. Grace has served as a member of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation’s Panel of Academic Experts for Sexual and Gender Minority Issues. With Dr. Kristopher Wells, he co-authored Sexual and Gender Minorities in Canadian Education and Society (1969-2013): A National Handbook for K-12 Educators, which the CTF published in 2016. His work advancing the need for greater synchronicity among research, policy, and practice informs his book Growing into Resilience: Sexual and Gender Minority Youth in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2015). In 2017, Dr. Grace received the Alberta Justice and Solicitor General Community Justice Award in the Innovation Category for his extraordinary contributions promoting community safety through crime prevention for the province’s SGM youth. In 2018, he received the CAFA (Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations) Distinguished Academic Award for his work linking his CRC research program to advocacy and action that recognize and accommodate SGM youth. For more information on his research and books, please visit https://www.andrepgrace.com.

Sue L. T. McGregor (PhD, IPHE, Professor Emerita) is a Canadian home economist and consumer educator (nearly 50 years) retired after 30 years from Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax NS. She has a keen interest in home economics philosophy and leadership along with consumer studies and education, transdisciplinarity, and research paradigms and methodologies. She is a Rhoda H. Karpatkin International Consumer Fellow and received the TOPACE International Award (Berlin) for distinguished international consumer scholar, especially consumer educator. Dr. McGregor is the recipient of Kappa Omicron Nu’s (KON) Marjorie M. Brown Distinguished Professor Award (home economics leadership) and is Docent in Home Economics at the University of Helsinki (lifetime appointment in recognition of international leadership). She published Understanding and Evaluating Research (SAGE) in 2018. Her scholarship is at www.consultmcgregor.com

Diane Collier is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Brock University. She conducts research in the areas of multimodalities and literacies with a special interest in connections across home and school. Using qualitative and interdisciplinary methodologies her work focuses on the processes of making and literacies, how children use everyday resources (particularly, popular culture), and what can be learned from children about their consumption and production of multimodal, cultural, and digital texts. Her research interests also include ethical considerations of children’s participation in research and considerations of creativity in literacies. She currently serves as the President of Language and Literacy Researchers of Canada / L’Association canadienne des chercheurs en langue et littératie: http://www.llrc-accll.ca/doku.php.

Mia Perry is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow in the School of Education and works at the intersection of arts and cultural production, public and community pedagogies, and literacy studies. She is interested in how the arts can mediate and materialise collective inter-disciplinary research, learning and action, particularly in relation to literacies, socio-ecological sustainability, and Global North-South collaborations. Mia is a Research Fellow with the Arts Education Research Group at Trinity College Dublin, and the Coordinator of the Sustainable Futures in Africa Network (www.sustainablefuturesinafrica.com).

Blaine E. Hatt (PhD & ADL E-Learning) is an Associate Professor (Intermediate/Senior Division) in the Schulich School of Education at Nipissing University. He is a former Secondary School Administrator (Vice-principal and Principal) and an elementary and secondary classroom teacher. His post-secondary teaching includes undergraduate courses in Imagination Creativity Education (ICE), Curriculum Development and Evaluation, English for I/S Learners; and graduate courses in Creativity and Learning, Adult Learning, Educational Leadership, and various Literacy-based courses. His research interests focus on Imagination Creativity Education (ICE), teacher-hiring processes, communities of learnership, the principal as instructional and system leader, and, online learning experiences of instructors and adult learners. He is an inaugural recipient of NU’s Schulich Fellowship Award for Teaching and a past recipient of the Secretary of State Award for Excellence in Teaching Canadian Literature, and of a Provincial and  National Hilroy Award. Contact: blaineh@nipissingu.ca.

Kathleen Gallagher is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Toronto. Dr. Gallagher’s books include, Why Theatre Matters: Urban Youth, Engagement, and a Pedagogy of the real (University of Toronto Press, 2014); The Theatre of Urban: Youth and Schooling in Dangerous Times (University of Toronto Press, 2007) Drama Education in the Lives of Girls: Imagining Possibilities (University of Toronto Press, 2000). Her edited collections include: The Methodological Dilemma Revisted: Creative, Critical and Collaborative Approaches to Qualitative Research for a New Era (Routledge 2018); In Defence of Theatre: Aesthetic Practices and Social Interventions. (with Barry Freeman, University of Toronto Press 2016); Drama and Theatre in Urban Contexts (with Jonothan Neelands, Routledge 2013); The Methodological Dilemma: Creative, Critical and Collaborative Approaches to Qualitative Research (Routledge, 2008); and How Theatre Educates: Convergences and Counterpoints with Artists, Scholars, and Advocates (with David Booth, University of Toronto Press, 2003). Dr. Gallagher has published many articles on theatre, youth, pedagogy, methodology and gender and travels widely giving international addresses and workshops for practitioners. Her research continues to focus on questions of youth civic engagement and artistic practice, and the pedagogical and methodological possibilities of theatre.

Dr. Carl Leggo is a poet and professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. His books include: Growing Up Perpendicular on the Side of a Hill; View from My Mother’s House; Come-By-Chance; Teaching to Wonder: Responding to Poetry in the Secondary Classroom; Lifewriting as Literary Métissage and an Ethos for Our Times (co-authored with Erika Hasebe-Ludt and Cynthia Chambers); Being with A/r/tography (co-edited with Stephanie Springgay, Rita L. Irwin, and Peter Gouzouasis); Creative Expression, Creative Education (co-edited with Robert Kelly); Poetic Inquiry: Vibrant Voices in the Social Sciences (co-edited with Monica Prendergast and Pauline Sameshima); Speaking of Teaching (co-authored with Avraham Cohen, Marion Porath, Anthony Clarke, Heesoon Bai, and Karen Meyer); English in Middle and Secondary Classrooms (co-edited with Kedrick James and Teresa M. Dobson); A heart of wisdom: Life writing as empathetic inquiry (co-edited with Cynthia Chambers, Erika Hasebe-Ludt, and Anita Sinner); Sailing in a Concrete Boat: A Teacher’s Journey; Arresting Hope: Prisons That Heal (co-edited with Ruth Martin, Mo Korchinski, and Lynn Fels); Arts-based and Contemplative Practices in Research and Teaching: Honoring Presence (co-edited with Susan Walsh and Barbara Bickel); Hearing Echoes (co-authored with Renee Norman); and Poetic inquiry: Enchantment of Place (co-edited with Pauline Sameshima, Alexandra Fidyk, and Kedrick James).

In addition to publishing many books, articles, poems, and stories, Carl has been an educator in school and university classrooms for over 37 years. He is known among his students and colleagues as a poet-teacher with a passion for poetic knowing and poetic living. No day is complete without reading and writing poetry.

Integral to his current creative and academic life, Carl Leggo is a happy grandfather to four darling granddaughters with the magical names: Madeleine, Mirabelle, Gwenoviere, and Alexandria.