Abstract

Reaching beyond anthropocentrism and seeking meaningful collaborations for social transformation, my research and creative practices coalesce in environmental humanities and are both inter and transdisciplinary as they bridge communication and education studies, socially engaged practices, sensory and food studies, and urban human geography to cast a critical lens on environmental injustices and inequalities in times of social, health, economic and ecological crises.
Using a mixed methodology of research-creation and iterative and participatory practices, I have created a replicable intergenerational vegetable garden to contemplate embodied, embedded, relational and affective interactions with the materiality of urban ecology and multispecies ethnography with a focus on the parallels between subjective individual and cultural disconnectedness within and to the community, the natural world, and food production.
This innovative project has been devoted to fighting food injustices while synergistically empowering socially marginalized vulnerable individuals and providing empowering opportunities of becoming through learning together and participating in community care and life. Working with New Hope, a community organization serving a population living with poverty, food insecurity, social isolation, and health challenges, we engage in garden activities with Concordia University students against the effects of a capitalist, neoliberal hegemonic society where older adults are often left behind.
Through storytelling based in observation and interviews, this paper presents my activist participatory work through which academic research and social responsibility merge by exploring ways to build intergenerational community care and resilience, share adequate learning, and promote social transformation by developing and supporting alternative, just and inclusive social care models.