Re-Imagining Scholarship through the UBC Public Scholars Initiative

The Public Scholars Initiative (PSI) is one of UBC’s groundbreaking projects for re-imagining academic education for the sake of collaborative, action-oriented and/or creative forms of scholarship. It seeks to make scholarship, particularly doctoral education, relevant to the 21st century. Three Public Scholars at Green College, Amir, Emily, and Saori, will present the work that they are doing and explain how they hope to make a difference through their projects.

Saori Ogura is a PhD student in Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at Faculty of Medicine. Her work combines ecological, arts-based and occupational science perspectives to understand the meanings of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and apply that to climate change adaptation. She has won the Nikon Salon's Miki Jun Inspiration award for her drawings and photography from a year-long stay in the Eastern Himalayan villages. For more information, visit https://www.grad.ubc.ca/campus-community/meet-our-students/ogura-saori

Pianist, Emily Logan is a student in the Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance at the University of British Columbia and is a UBC Public Scholar. She is also a faculty member in the Department of Music at Vancouver Community College. As a performer, she has given solo and chamber music recitals, and was a guest artist at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Emily is the recipient of numerous awards, including local and national competition placement, SSHRC Doctoral Award, UBC scholarships, and ArtsNB Grants. Emily’s research work focuses on the wellbeing of musicians, looking specifically at interventions for Music Performance Anxiety. For more information, visit https://www.grad.ubc.ca/campus-community/meet-our-students/logan-emily

Amir Michalovich is a PhD student in the Language and Literacy Education Department at the University of British Columbia. His doctoral research employs participatory video with youth from refugee backgrounds to make visible their language and literacy resources, practices, and challenges. His interests include multimodal literacies, media literacy, qualitative data analysis, classroom interaction, language education, and arts-based research. For more information, visit: https://www.grad.ubc.ca/campus-community/meet-our-students/michalovich-amir