2024 Shannon K. Murray Lecture on Hope and the Academy to take place at UPEI September 3
Dr. Jessica Riddell, professor of early modern literature at Bishop’s University, will give the second Shannon K. Murray Lecture on Hope and the Academy on September 3, at 11 am, in the Dr. Steel Recital Hall, Steel Building, UPEI. Her presentation is titled "The Times are Urgent: We must Slow Down. Building Hope Circuits for ourselves and in community."
In her presentation, Dr. Riddell will outline ten conceptual tools that help build hopeful systems where individuals and communities flourish.
“Universities are anchors of hope in our communities,” said Dr. Riddell. “We need hope now more than ever as we grapple with unprecedented pressures—from climate crisis to geo-political instability, political polarization and a myriad of other crises. Hope is not merely a stance: it is a mindset we can build and then deploy in our communities and institutions. As members of the academy, we are wired for hope—to teach it, to share it, and to imagine a better future. Universities are complex organizational systems with robust social missions to the broader society. And yet they are also slow to change and reluctant to innovate. We must re-wire systems with hope circuits to better fulfill our mandate at a time where human and biotic flourishing are endangered. Those with experience in any relational, human-centered organization with a social purpose and fiscal constraints—government, not-for-profits, corporate sectors, or other K-12 educational systems—might also find these thought prompts resonate in their specific contexts and even adapt the design principles for their organizations.”
Dr. Riddell is the holder of the Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence at Bishop’s University; a 3M National Teaching Fellow; author of Hope Circuits: Rewiring Universities and other Systems for Human Flourishing (MQUP, 2024); author of Shakespeare's Guide to Hope, Life, and Learning (UTP, 2023) with Drs. Lisa Dickson and Shannon Murray; and founder of the Hope Circuits Institute.
She was awarded the William and Nancy Turner Award for Teaching Excellence (2011-2012) at Bishop’s University, received the 3M National Teaching Fellowship in 2015, was the recipient of a D2L Innovation Award for Teaching and Learning in 2022, and won the inaugural award from Forces Avenir (Quebec) for Most Engaged Faculty/Staff Member in 2022.
In her consultations and through the Hope Circuits Institute, Dr. Riddell pursues “an expansive call for the reinvention of universities and the renewal of their public mission. Dr. Riddell is a leading intellectual on the intersection between the humanities and higher education. She is one of Canada’s most prolific public scholars on the role universities play in a civil, just society and regularly convenes conversations about how education shapes creative democracy.”
The UPEI Faculty of Arts established the Shannon K. Murray Lecture on Hope and the Academy in 2023 to honour the achievements of Dr. Shannon Murray, an award-winning professor of English and a 3M National Teaching Fellow. In 2022, Dr. Murray was awarded the Christopher Knapper Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, one of the highest honours awarded in Canada for teaching and learning in higher education.
