UGRS 2022 Keynote Presenter

UGRS 2023 Keynote will be announced in January.

Is Disciplinarity Dead?

Traditional divisions of knowledge in scholarship are increasingly being challenged by the complex issues we are facing.  The interconnected and difficult-to-articulate nature of many of society’s ‘wicked’ problems requires a commensurate interdisciplinary approach toward uncovering solutions.  This keynote talk will outline what it means to be interdisciplinary, and explore the emancipatory potential of interdisciplinarity for Indigenization, inclusion, and inquiry-driven imaginations of the future.

Dr. Leanne Roderick
Lecturer, Geography
Simon Fraser University

As an interdisciplinary political economist, urbanist, and critical data studies scholar, Dr. Roderick embodies one of the UGRS's core values: interdisciplinarity.

Dr. Roderick's work centers upon the urban scale as a site of economic and social power and change. She has a wide and versatile range of teaching, research, and advising interests, including: feminist political economy: a right to the "smart" city; urban finance, austerity and debt; surveillance and the city; urban technological innovation and inequality. 

A recipient of the 2020/2021 Excellence in Teaching award from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, her courses are designed to provoke and refine critical thinking, and facilitate an understanding of urban spaces and policy that is political, historical, and cognizant of relations of power.

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Leanne Roderick as the 2022 UGRS Keynote Speaker.