MAIS Research Cafe Series
Hang out and recharge with your professors!
MAIS students and faculty are invited to a series of brief talks by MAIS faculty about their research and teaching interests—followed by time to ‘hang out’ in a relaxed, social environment. The cafés take place every two months on Tuesday afternoons from 2 to 3:30 p.m. (Mountain). Those teaching in the MAIS program, as well as program students or anyone taking one or more MAIS courses, are welcome.
March 24, 2026
Dr. Nisha Nath will discuss her forthcoming co-authored book The Letters: Institutional Lives and EDI (Fernwood Press, Spring 2026), and her new SSHRC-funded project with Dr. Willow-Samara Allen exploring how Canadian public sector workers exercise discretionary power in contexts of extreme inequity. This work has led Nath and her collaborators—Dr. Rita Dhamoon, Dr. Anita Girvan, and Dr. Davina Bhandar—to create the Insurgent Resurgent Knowledges (IRK) Lab, working outside institutional contexts to explore new ways of knowing and learning.
Dr. Angela Specht will discuss community-based research and how it can build capacity and help nonprofits tell their stories. Stories speak to their missions and mandates, engage the public in value formation, and build communities of care, partnership and action. Specht will speak to ongoing work through nature journaling with the Wabamun and District Museum and new work being developed with the Wabamun Watershed Management Council to tell the stories of Wabamun Lake, its wildlife, water health, people, and environmental fragility.
Upcoming Research Café sessions
May 19, 2026 – Dr. Norin Taj: Leadership Development among Racialized Immigrant Girls