Research Themes

Indigenous research at ECU includes important research initiatives led by Indigenous faculty and the Aboriginal Gathering Place, which is dedicated to student projects, workshops, ceremonies, and celebrations of the University’s Aboriginal community.

Aligned with the priorities of the provincial and federal governments, ECU has continued to advance efforts toward the process of Indigenization and decolonization and is actively engaging with Truth and Reconciliation recommendations.

In doing so, the university is developing an intentional focus on the transformative capacity of Indigenous art, media, and design to advance decolonization and reconciliation. These include the equitable access and support of Indigenous research, the self-determination of Aboriginal peoples to set their own research priorities, the decolonization of research operations, and accountability and respect for Indigenous ways of knowing and community-led research work.

ECU is committed to advancing and promoting Indigenous research methodologies and Indigenous knowledges across disciplines, material processes, and cultural practices.

Ecological changes connected to the climate crisis such as growing ocean acidification, increased forest fires, decreasing biodiversity and extreme weather patterns indicate that human demands are exceeding the capacity of global ecosystems and nearing a catastrophic tipping point.

In response, the university is currently undertaking a climate action review as part of the work of the Climate Action Task Force (CATF). Faculty researchers on CATF are recommending expanded research for climate action within the institution, and in collaboration with organizations in the community.

Research-creation across art, media, and design provides an opportunity to better understand resources in terms of their social, affective, and cultural dimensions and their material qualities.

ECU aims to cultivate experimental, collaborative, and critical reflections that will contribute to ecological wellbeing and regenerative justice, foster collaborations with the more-than-human, and model critical revisions that explicitly counter overdevelopment and fossil-fuel extraction.

This research theme at ECU enables our artists, media makers, and designers to address and support climate action and more-than-human worldviews.

Social justice, health, and community wellbeing are mutually reinforcing priorities for ECU and our research focuses on both people and systems.

This research theme seeks to support the connection between cultural activities and movement building. ECU faculty, students, and staff are engaged across a spectrum of justice-seeking work ranging from grass-roots campaigns to poetic interventions, scholarly engagements to artistic experiments, and across exhibitions and curatorial projects.

ECU also supports investigations into the roles of artists, media makers, and designers in relation to broader social and political issues and the ways in which artist and designer-inspired actions can create alternative outcomes and infrastructures.

Through this work, we aim to enhance agency and include people with lived experience as co-designers, co-creators, and co-producers. This theme fosters transdisciplinary research and participatory projects that empowers a broad range of communities from care workers, health professionals, community organizers, storytellers, social scientists, material scientists, cultural workers, citizens, students, learners, and users, as well as professional artists and designers.

This research theme highlights that disciplinary and interdisciplinary material practice as knowledge production has the capacity to build new ways of understanding the world and, in turn, to affect the world by changing modes of creativity, production, use, and engagement with material.

Many contemporary artists and designers are exploring how ideas and forms co-emerge through material, conceptual, and embodied ways of working. Through disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, our researchers blur the boundaries between traditional knowledge and philosophical inquiry, and foregrounds art’s experimental engagement with diverse array of other fields – from physics, biology, ecology, science studies, social sciences and humanities and other artistic disciplines.

Artists and designers also continue to develop sophisticated practices for examining new forms of fabrication and production as an increasingly distributed and iterative phenomenon. This research theme highlights that material practice as knowledge production has the capacity to build new ways of understanding the world and, in turn, to affect the world by changing modes of production, use, and engagement with material.

Importantly, while artists and designers may be inspired by and collaborate with diverse epistemes, they do more than supplement existing knowledge – they actively create it, producing new paradigms and questions.

By applying expertise in materials, design, electronics, and art making, ECU aims to create opportunities for public discussion, critical making, and community participation in the act of making as inquiry.

Research driven by critical art, media, and design practices can foster new and more complex understandings of the role that technology can play in shaping the present and future.

This space of rapid development provides opportunities for artists and designers to significantly shape our future. As a rich, dynamic creative community, ECU contributes to creative and critical engagements with technology in collaboration with, and through expansive investigations across, legacy and emerging technologies.

Our researchers are poised to drive forward advances in technology and contribute to novel and disruptive dialogues with cultural, social, political, and economic contexts, and are at the forefront of creative research that addresses the complex and multifaceted impacts of technology.

From industry partnerships that help generate new insights and innovations, to introducing critical perspectives and creativity into our understanding of the transformative possibilities of technology, ECU commits to the continued development of world-renowned initiatives and research that can catalyze new forms of engagement with a range of technologies.

Engaging in land and place-based research connects ECU and its community to where we live, create, and work. It also nurtures discourse, catalyzes critical engagement with the land and with material forms and cultural meanings, and encourages the cross-pollination of ideas between academia, art/design practice, and place-based expertise.

Land-based research and radical localism is carried out in collaboration with communities and organizations engaging with concerns about local ecologies and ecological justice. Our researchers also engage with the public sphere on many levels. Socially engaged and public art, media, and design practices in the public realm are vibrant areas of work and investigation.

This work has a focus on creating a context and ethical framework for ongoing community engagement, which is expressed through internal and external collaborations, partnerships with industry, academia and non-profits, and innovative curriculum development.

Pedagogical innovation, experimentation, and leadership are found across our academic community, and we believe it is critically important to accelerate this area of research.

We see the iterative and reflexive examination of art and design pedagogies as an unwavering commitment to our students, our community, and our future. Faculty researchers from all areas of the university continuously draw upon diverse experiences and expertise to create educational opportunities that help learners thrive in a world of complexity and interdependence.

Developing new approaches to practice-based learning, building broader access to transformative educational contexts, and cultivating replicable best practices for ensuring diverse learners can excel in their chosen field will underwrite the next stage of pedagogical research at ECU. Education in art and design is never static and we will position our faculty researchers as world-leading experts in making-led, contextually-driven, and anti-racist art and design pedagogy.