Women in Research Council and Faculty of Education’s NET Lab co-host Dr. Vidya Shah for a Community Class – January 29
Ontario Tech’s Women in Research Council (WIRC), in collaboration with Dr. Joelle Rodway’s Networks for Educational Transformation (NET) Lab, will host a class led by Dr. Vidya Shah, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, York University, on Monday, January 29. This is the first of three community classes hosted as part of Ontario Tech’s .
Titled UnLeading: A Call to Reclaim and Redefine Leadership, the class will explore questions such as:
- What might it mean to undo and unlearn leadership practices and ideas that promote hierarchy, individualism, compliance, power over others, silence, and a culture of fear?
- How might we engage conceptions of leadership that disrupt and challenge the status quo, that centre historically marginalized ways of knowing and being, and that redefine leadership as responsive to socio-political contexts and the communities we serve?
Dr. Shah will share the framework and orientations behind the , a website and podcast series aimed to address these questions. She will share important findings about how we might radically reimagine leadership, based on her reflections and learnings since the launch of the UnLeading Project three years ago. Participants will have an opportunity to self-reflect on how their understandings of leadership uphold or challenge the status quo and describe how they will integrate UnLeading in their particular leadership contexts.
- When: Monday, January 29 from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
- Where: Online via Zoom.; registrants will receive the Zoom link prior to the class.
Dr. Vidya Shah is an educator, scholar and activist committed to equity and racial justice in the service of liberatory education. Her research explores anti-racist and decolonial approaches to leadership in schools, communities, and school districts. She also explores educational barriers to the success and well-being of Black, Indigenous, and racialized students. She teaches courses in York’s Master of Leadership and Community Engagement program, as well as undergraduate- and graduate-level education courses. She has worked in the Model Schools for Inner Cities Program in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and was an elementary classroom teacher in the TDSB. She is committed to bridging the gaps between communities, classrooms, school districts and the academy, to re/imagine emancipatory possibilities for schooling. You can learn more about her work on .
