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."

Dr. Riddell is 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 awards 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. All are welcome.