This virtual keynote occurred on Sept. 7, 2021 and the recording is now available.

View the slides from the keynote 
View slides from the presentation

Keynote: Manifesto for the Future: My Hopes for the Post-Pandemic University with Brenna Clarke Gray. 

The pandemic has made urgently clear that the inequities of race, gender, class, ability, and sexuality that are baked into our experience of post-secondary education cannot be allowed to continue. And yet many additional violences have been done to our students over the last year, most notably through the rise — and normalization — of surveillance capitalist solutions in education. Leaning heavily on ethic of care thinking and a desire to find hope in this very dark time, this talk invites all participants to come and think together, plan a resistance, and ultimately imagine a better future for all of us. The keynote will be followed by a 45-minute workshop taking participants through a guided reflection drawing on ideas from the keynote and experiences of teaching and learning during the pandemic.

Brenna Clarke Gray (she/her/hers) is the coordinator of educational technologies at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia. Her research interests include the history and future of open tenure processes, the role of care and care work in the practice of educational technology, and scholarly podcasting. Prior to her transition to faculty support, she spent nine years as a community college English professor and comics scholar. Brenna has published extensively on Canadian comics and representations of Canada in mainstream American comic books. She holds a PhD in Canadian literature from the University of New Brunswick. Outside of the academy’s walls, Brenna co-hosts Hazel & Katniss & Harry & Starr, a podcast about young adult literature and film adaptation, and pretends at the role of a public intellectual on her Twitter, @brennacgray.

The keynote will be followed by a 45-minute workshop taking participants through a guided reflection drawing on ideas from the keynote and experiences of teaching and learning during the pandemic.  To register for the keynote and/or the workshop.