Suzanne Smythe

Current Projects

• AI and the People: A collaborative exploration of life with AI in a Vancouver community.
• Automated Literacies: A recently completed SSHRC IG and ongoing inquiry that asks how automation is changing literacies, and what this means for literacy educators invested in advocacy, fairness and a critical approach to AI literacy education. You can read more about the project here and here.
• The adult education oral history project. A collaborative oral history of the pluriverse of adult education in British Columbia.

Keywords

automated literacies, algorithmic culture, AI literacies, adult education, community education, socio-technologies; pluriversality

Selected Articles and Resources

• Booker, E., Butterwick, S. Smythe, S., Walker, J., Wilbur, A. (May, 2026). Imagination and improvisation in the pluriverse of adult education: A work in progress. Proceedings of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education conference (pp. 262 – 267).  https://www.casae-aerc2026.org/2026_CASAE_AERC_Proceedings_FINAL.pdf
• Smythe, S. (2025). Techno‑dreaming and the technicity of automation: A rhizomatic reading of post‑war technologies in education. International Review of Education, 71, 941 – 957.
• Smythe, S. and Vanek, J. (In Press). Theorizing everyday digital literacies for adult learners. In Castek, J., Coiro, J., Sparks, J. & Hagerman, M.S. (Eds.), International Handbook of Research on Digital Literacies. Routledge.
• New Literacies of Automation video series. These videos share insights about ‘digital worlds’ from one of our research collaborators, the Burnaby Neighbourhood House.
• Ng, D. (Producer, Director) and Sungshine, J. (Producer, Director). (2025, May). The Digital Cafe: We all have to learn the digital world. Love Intersections Media Arts Collective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn_arxduNXA
• Ng, D. (Producer, Director) and Sungshine, J. (Producer, Director). (2025, May). The Digital Café: Enough with neocolonial form-filling. Love Intersections Media Arts Collective. https://youtu.be/Gv5cp7wx8io
• Ng, D. (Producer, Director) and Sungshine, J. (Producer, Director). (2025, May). The Digital Café: They speak to me in my language. Love Intersections Media Arts Collective.    https://youtu.be/XSH8J-4519g

Doctoral Supervision

• André, Gwénaëlle (PhD, 2024), Youth, technologies and becomings. Rethinking digital literacies through relational ontologies
• Sutherland, Gregory J. (EdD, 2024), Investigating practitioner navigation of institutionalized social justice education in British Columbia secondary schools
• Barreiro, Jacky (PhD, 2023), Of volcanoes, pedagogies, and possibilities: Towards posthumanist pedagogies of critique
• Breshears, Sherry (PhD, 2023), Making it work: The politics of precarious employment in adult English language teaching in British Columbia, Canada
• Smith, Mark (EdD, 2021), Serious learning: Older adults in university continuing education
• Wilson, Ann (EdD, 2017), Joining Learning and Making: A Practitioner’s Retrospective Auto/biographical Account of How Inquiry Can Contribute to Social Justice Efforts in a Community

Master’s Supervision

• He, Chunxiao (MA, 2025), More than collaborators: Graduate students' interactions with automated writing technologies in academic writing
• Dilley, Laura (MA, 2016), Individual, inter-professional, and institutional influences on the knowledge translation process: A qualitative synthesis of the experiences of physicians and nurses in hospital settings (Co-supervisor)