Ignorance As Strategy

Ignorance, or simply not knowing, has taken on negative connotations in academia. Yet , ignorance or the portrayal of ignorance are important aspects of research and communication across disciplines. This talk will highlight the ways in which ignorance can be operationalized to improve the rigour of academic work, and the art of asking questions. Examples will be drawn from statistics, physics, qualitative research, and gender dynamics in order to illustrate the importance of how much we don’t know.

Maya Lefkowich is a PhD student at the University of British Columbia, and is a social science researcher with Men’s Health Research. Maya’s research interests include: men's health, masculinities, community development, and knowledge translation/exchange. Maya holds a Master of Public Health degree from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

Dan Carney’s career has mainly consisted of a tour of giant state institutions. After escaping Cleveland, Ohio, he did bachelor's degrees in math and physics at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. He then did his PhD in the group of Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg at the University of Texas at Austin, spending seven years consuming tacos and writing on blackboards, before coming to UBC as a postdoctoral research fellow. He has had visiting appointments in Japan, Italy, India and Iran.