Dr. Jessica Riddell, professor of literature at Bishop’s University, will give the second Shannon K. Murray Lecture on Hope and the Academy. Her presentation is titled "The Times are Urgent: We must Slow Down. Building Hope Circuits for ourselves and in community."

Dr. Riddell is holder of the Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence at Bishop’s University; a 3M National Teaching Fellow; author of Hope Circuits: Rewiring Universities and other Systems for Human Flourishing (MQUP, 2024); author of Shakespeare's Guide to Hope, Life, and Learning (UTP, 2023) with Drs. Lisa Dickson and Shannon Murray; and founder of the Hope Circuits Institute.

In her consultations and through the Hope Circuits Institute, Dr. Riddell pursues “an expansive call for the reinvention of universities and the renewal of their public mission. Dr. Riddell is a leading intellectual on the intersection between the humanities and higher education. She is one of Canada’s most prolific public scholars on the role universities play in a civil, just society and regularly convenes conversations about how education shapes creative democracy.”

The UPEI Faculty of Arts established the Shannon K. Murray Lecture on Hope and the Academy in 2023 to honour the achievements of Dr. Shannon Murray, an award-winning professor of English and a 3M National Teaching Fellow. In 2022, Dr. Murray was awarded the Christopher Knapper Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, one of the highest honours awarded in Canada for teaching and learning in higher education. The Knapper citation for Dr. Murray reads in part, “Shannon Murray is an exceptional colleague, scholar, collaborator, and educational leader. … Her passion lies in steering, mentoring, and advocating for others in order to make their work visible, valued, and celebrated. … [Others are] inspired by her commitment, integrity and agency. Shannon Murray’s force of goodness and grace, her elegance with a dash of irreverence, makes her an ally, advocate, and champion for the Canadian teaching and learning community.”