Research Projects
Project Leader
2025-2026
Embodied Narratives: Tension, Movement, and Identity in Filipino Migrant Experiences
Funding: SFU David See-Chai Lam Centre, $30,000
Role: Principal Investigator
This project examines embodied narratives of migration, with a focus on the tensions, movements, and identities shaping Filipino migrant experiences
2023–2026
Re-storying Community: Arts-based Digital Storying for Community Inquiry
Funding: New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF), Special Call: Research for Postpandemic Recovery, $493,608
Role: Principal Investigator
This international research project explores how communities generate knowledge through arts-based digital storying. Working with community partners and researchers across multiple locations, the project investigates how creative practices can support community connection, knowledge sharing, and post-pandemic recovery.
2020–2022
Storied Lives: An Impact Study of COVID-19 on Seniors and Their Community Support Services
Funding: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Partnership Engage Grant, COVID-19 Special Initiative, $25,000
Role: Principal Investigator
Partner: MOSAIC
In partnership with MOSAIC, this study brought immigrant seniors, community practitioners, and academic researchers together to examine seniors’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project explored how arts-based knowledge co-creation could strengthen understanding of seniors’ well-being, social connectedness, and community support networks.
2016–2021
The Transversality Hub: Towards a New Mode of Learning for Community Arts Practice
Funding: SSHRC Insight Grant, $139,066
Role: Principal Investigator
Co-investigators: Rita Irwin, Anita Sinner, and Peter Grimmett
This project examined community as a space of knowledge production and investigated how the arts contribute to community arts practice. Through case studies, visual ethnography, and archival research, it explored the potential of community arts to support social change and innovation.
2012–2015
Youth Arts Practice as the Production of Knowledge for Community Development
Funding: SSHRC Insight Development Grant, $73,257
Role: Principal Investigator
This study investigated how young people’s arts practices generate knowledge within communities and broader cultural contexts. Combining participatory ethnographic and image-based methods, it explored youth creative practice as a form of critical inquiry into community development.
2011-2013
Media Arts for Inquiry: Investigating Youth and Community Development through Young People’s Creative Practice in Community Media Arts Centres
Funding: SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, $90,000
Role: Fellowship recipient and researcher
This research examined how young people in community-based media arts centres use creative and digital practices to develop visual literacy, construct meaning, and engage with their communities.
Project Team Member
2026-2027
Art Education in a Digital World: A Pan-Canadian Knowledge Synthesis
Funding: SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant, $29,604
Role: Co-investigator
Principal Investigator: Emma June Huebner, Université de Montréal
This bilingual knowledge synthesis maps research on emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, in Canadian K-12 art education to inform curriculum, pedagogy, and policy.
2024-2025
Transformative Education for Refugee Children and Youth: Strengthening Well-being and Shaping Futures
Funding: SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant, $30,000
Role: Co-investigator
Principal Investigator: Robert Williamson, Simon Fraser University
This knowledge synthesis examines how education systems can strengthen the psychosocial well-being of refugee children and youth, challenging deficit framings in favour of systemic, strengths-based change.
2023–2026
Children’s Ecological Imagination with Augmented Storying
Funding: SSHRC Insight Grant, $170,768
Role: Co-investigator
Principal Investigator: Kristiina Kumpulainen, University of British Columbia
This project investigates how the art of augmented storying can enrich children’s ecological imagination through place-based inquiry across six sites in British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador.
2022–2025
Learning with the Land
Funding: SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, $200,000
Role: Co-investigator
Principal Investigator: Rita Irwin, University of British Columbia
This international collaboration explores learning with the land through arts-based, relational, and place-conscious approaches.
2021–2024
Pathways to Education: An International Study to Understand the Educational Experiences of Refugee Children with Dis/Abilities
Funding: SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, $200,000
Role: Co-investigator
Principal Investigator: Robert Williamson, Simon Fraser University
This international study examines the educational experiences of refugee children with disabilities, with attention to the conditions shaping their access to and participation in education.
2016–2019
O Canada! Reimagining Canadian Identity: A Cosmopolitan Approach to Teaching and Learning
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant; $199,002 (Rita Irwin, Principal Investigator; Geogre Belliveau, Peter Gouzouasis, Carl Leggo, and William Pinar, Co-investigators; Ching-Chiu Lin, Collaborator)
This research investigated the arts as spaces to document as well as reimagine Canadian identity by exploring a cosmopolitan approach to teacher education and student learning. This is an artistic and pedagogical intervention situated in an artist-in-residence initiative within an inquiry-based teacher education program at The University of British Columbia (UBC).
2014–2018
Pedagogical Assemblage: Building and sustaining capacity through mentoring programs in British Columbia.
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Partnership Development Grant; $200,000 (Rita Irwin, Principal Investigator; Linda Farr Darling, Co-investigator; Ching-Chiu Lin, postdoctoral researcher).
Partners: BC ministry of Education, BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF), BC School Superintendents Association (BCSSA), and Teacher Education Office, UBC. Project website: http://mentoringbc.edcp.educ.ubc.ca
Pedagogical Assemblage brought together the Teacher Education Office at UBC, British Columbia’s Ministry of Education, the British Columbia School Superintendents’ Association, and the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation to establish a leadership network. The goal was to create strategies and policies to support teacher mentorship and complement the BC Education Plan’s aim to enhance teaching and learning.
2012–2015
Citizens of Tomorrow: Investigating the Impact of Community Media Arts Practice on Marginalized Urban Youth
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant; $215,340 (Kit Grauer, Principal Investigator; Juan C. Castro, C; Co-investigator; Ching-Chiu Lin, Collaborator)
This study investigated marginalized the media arts practice of urban youth in community digital-mediated arts programs and how media arts impacted their identity, culture, and wellbeing. This study took place in four community media-arts learning sites located in two culturally dynamic and geographically diverse urban environments: Vancouver, British Columbia and Montréal, Québec.