Chapter 12: Knowledge Mobilization
What? So What? Now What?
As you grow and develop as scholars and as writers, each time you carry out research or produce a piece of scholarship, I invite you to consider how you can make your ideas move. What form could they take that would empower them to engage with the communities they are mostly likely to benefit?
When you’re thinking about moving your ideas outside the university, ask yourself:
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What did I learn or contribute or add to the conversation with my research? |
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Why does it matter? Who does it matter to? Who has the ability to make my idea or contribution affect change in the world? |
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How am I going to connect with the people I need to reach outside of the university? What genre or communication channel has the greatest chance of reaching them? |
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How am I going to listen to what is communicated back to me about my contribution? |
Stuffing the Bus: A Hungry Story
Dr. Jennifer Black, an Associate Professor in Land and Food Systems, leads the Public Health and Urban Nutrition Research Group. The goal of this vibrant research group is to improve understanding of the complex social and contextual factors that shape the health of individuals, communities and the environment. Their research focuses mainly on neighbourhood food environments, school health, food systems, and understanding the impact of community food programs.
Knowledge mobilization is a big part of Dr. Black’s research—making sure her research informs and is informed by priority questions and challenges facing North American cities.
Dr. Black recently collaborated on an innovative knowledge mobilization project called Stuffing the Bus. The graphic novel Stuffing the Bus is an interdisciplinary research-creation project developed by food and nutrition scholars Jennifer Black, Elaine Power, and Jennifer Brady and written by author and PhD Candidate Dian Day and illustrated by artist-scholar Amanda White. Stuffing the Bus is aimed at middle school aged audiences and explores the complicated realities of food insecurity. This project aims to catalyze the creation of innovative educational resources to engage children, educators and caregivers in more critical conversations about the causes, consequences and evidence-based solutions to food insecurity.
Media Attributions
- You Will Rise © Borislava Madeit adapted by Lindsay Cuff is licensed under a CC BY (Attribution) license
- Sprout by IYIKON from NounProject.com © IYIKON from NounProject.com is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike) license
- Watercan by IYIKON from NounProject.com © IYIKON from NounProject is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike) license
- Sun by IYIKON from NounProject.com © IYIKON from NounProject.com is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike) license
- Daisy by IYIKON from NounProject.com © IYIKON from NounProject.com is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike) license
- Stuffing the Bus Excerpt © Amanda White and Dian Day is licensed under a All Rights Reserved license
- Stuffing The Bus © Amanda White and Dian Day is licensed under a All Rights Reserved license
Scholarship includes those activities that contribute directly to the cumulative knowledge or creative resources in a discipline. Scholarship can take many forms. Regardless of the form in which scholarship is presented it should: reflect one’s professional and academic expertise, be shared (disseminated), and be reviewed by peers.
Historically, Indigenous Ways of Knowing have been excluded from and dismissed by academic discourse and scholarship. Part of the process of decolonization is asking ourselves who decides what knowledge should be shared? To what end? And why?
To help someone gain the capacity or capability to achieve something they couldn’t have achieved previously.
