As part of their fellowship, Graduate Fellows are required to carry out a knowledge mobilization project, translating their research through a format that is engaging and informative for the public. These are some examples of student work created as part of the knowledge mobilization challenge.
The Black Joy Art Initiative
By: Mercedes Sobers (1st place)
Mercedes’s Black Joy Art initiative is a visual project that explores and celebrates the ways in which Black students, faculty, staff and alumni at the University of Toronto foster positive mental health. Mercedes used photography and videography to capture the artistic interpretation of respondents’ answers to three explorative questions:
- What does mental health mean to you?
- What are practices that you do, or have seen done, to improve mental health?
- How could mental health and wellness be improved within the Black community?
Landscapes of Learning: Exploring Visual Narratives of Collage with Afghan Youth in Toronto
By: Mediha Hassan (2nd place)
Mediha’s project is an exhibition that showcases the collage artworks of 21 Afghan youth in Toronto showing how their experience of learning in their everyday spaces. These are a collection of visual narratives that disrupt deficit discourses which often reduce their experiences to trauma, war and suffering. The research honours the multilingual voices of Afghan youth by presenting their reflections in the original languages in which they used to express their thoughts and feelings – either in English or Farsi.
Agricultural Context along the Canal de Castilla
By: Maria Alonso Novo (runner-up)
Maria’s knowledge mobilization is a pamphlet on 15th Century agricultural use of the Canal de Castilla in the north of Spain. The research investigates the foodscapes of secano (dryland) agriculture in the Canal de Castilla region, focusing on the Canal itself as a critical infrastructure supporting it. It depicts the story of agriculture and rural development and explores evolving relationships between land, water and food production in that region.
Mapping Novels, Mapping Characters
By: Marina Klimenko (runner-up)
Marina’s Knowledge Mobilization piece is a three-part interactive hard copy mapping canvas of Thomas King’s (Cherokee/Greek) 2014 novel The Back of the Turtle. The project’s largest component is a mixed-media collage on a circular canvas depicting a map of downtown Toronto. The collage’s base layer is a hand-painted map of Toronto showing the streets mentioned in the novel. The collage’s second layer is made up of pushpins representing the three characters who mention specific Toronto locations in the novel, sticky notes featuring quotes from the novel and photos that recreate the conditions through which characters visited the spaces.
Key Lessons for Government: How to Facilitate the Strategic Use of Property Tax Data
By: Graeme Stewart-Wilson (runner-up)
Graeme’s policy brief focuses on unlocking the strategic potential of property tax data. It examines the strategic potential of property tax data through a case study of data sharing between two government agencies in Uganda: the Kampala Capital City Authority and the Uganda Revenue Authority. The brief also identifies key unanswered questions related to the strategic use of property tax data and establishes an agenda for future research.