Reflections on the Work of Play in Early-career Scholarship and Pedagogy

This moderated panel explores how the concept of play, broadly defined, has shown up and shaped our experiences as early-career academics. Members of the 2024-26 Green College leading scholars cohort will reflect on the themes raised during our year of ‘Seasons of Play,’ reflecting on how play can function both as a methodology and a mindset across diverse disciplines. We approach play as a mode of engagement characterized by risk-taking, experimentation, flexibility, courage, resistance, and subversion, and we will reflect on how this informs our teaching and research roles. We will also examine the tensions that arise when play comes up against institutional expectations of productivity, standardization, and rigour. This conversation invites attendees to consider the role of play, its potential, and its limits, in fostering innovation and discourse in academia. 

This event is open to the general public and does not require registration (but please note that our seating is limited). A reception in the Piano Lounge, Graham House, will follow this event. 

Series image: Germaine Koh, Tools and Twister, part of League Nanaimo, 2025.

Tolúlọpẹ́ A Akínwọlé, Department of English Language and Literatures

My teaching and research coalesce around African literatures, African screen media, cultural and critical theory, global Black literatures, urban studies, infrastructure studies, and Black geographies. My current book project, Moving Parts: Automobile Aesthetics in Postcolonial Africa, examines cultural expressions of spatial anxieties through literary and artistic representations of the public bus in African cities. I study the archives of literary, artistic, musical, and filmic texts that have formed around the public bus in order to offer the bus as a key material through which to reorient current understandings of the global Black city.

Katelynn Boerner, Department of Pediatrics

My research focuses on making pain research and care more accessible and equitable for young people. We do this by understanding the developmental, individual, and social factors that are involved in pain, and by thinking creatively about how to use this information to change practice. I am especially interested in understanding the role of sex, gender, and neurodiversity on pain, and have projects looking at the experiences of chronic pain in gender-diverse and autistic youth.

Tahia Devisscher, Department of Forest Resources Management

In my research I focus on how to manage forests and other greenspaces in and around cities to support human well-being and build social-ecological resilience to climate change. I am also very interested in developing practical strategies to address the increasing disconnect between people and nature caused by rapid urbanization. The findings coming from my team aim to inform nature-based solutions to climate change and improve nature recovery initiatives that foster clear synergies between climate resilience, biodiversity enhancement, and human health in greener urban and peri-urban landscapes.

Germaine Koh, Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory

I am a visual artist and organizer whose work crosses disciplines to explore connections between humans, technological and natural systems. I am bringing to UBC ongoing interdisciplinary research-creation projects, including the Home Made Home initiative to research, design-build and advocate for low-impact building forms; the League project focused on play as a form of creative practice; technological experiments and public activities looking at circular textiles, sustainable fibres and slow fashion; and projects using interactive electronics which bring into relationship the human, built and natural environments.

Jac Nobiss, School of Social Work

My research delves into Indigenous identity regarding intersectional dynamics. Many of these intersections include challenges that affect the health and well-being of Indigenous Peoples. Applications of pan-identity often conflate history, experiences, and circumstances that are piecemeal understandings of only one nation but are assumed to be the same for all. My work has focused on bringing cultural stories, teachings, and traditional ways of being and knowing to light and bridging these pieces with contemporary use and understanding of nation-specific identities.

Nicole Krentz, Molecular and Systems Pharmacology

My research focuses on understanding how genetic factors contribute to diabetes risk. I am particularly interested in genes and mutations that impact how cells and tissues normally develop and how defects in these processes may lead to diabetes. By understanding the underlying genetic component of diabetes, my research strives to pave the way for improved strategies in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of this complex disease.