Panel #1

The Many Voices of Sustainability

Dr. James Grant, Dr. Rosemarie Schade, Peter Graham, Dr. Adeela Arshad-Ayaz, Dr. M. Ayaz Naseem and Dr. Erin Manning

Abstract: Loyola International College proposes a panel conversation on Educating for environmental sustainability: A multidisciplinary conversation. The panel consists of five individual presentations. Panellists are educators from diverse disciplines such as history, philosophy, behavioral ecology, sociology, and environment studies. Central to this conversation is the belief that issues related to environment sustainability cannot be addressed in isolation or straitjacketed into individual disciplinary confines. These issues have to be approached from all sides, examined from all view points and analyzed through multiple conceptual and disciplinary perspectives. Each member of the panel will talk about issues related to global environmental crisis and the role education can play in creating awareness about these issues. The panellists will use diverse conceptual frameworks to explain the multi-layered complexity of ecological threats and the importance of trans-disciplinarity in seeking solutions and defining social responsibilities for all citizens around the globe. The panellists will talk about the importance of education in seeking various new alternatives and models to deal with unprecedented ecological threats and environmental challenges.

Bios: Dr. Grant is an aquatic ecologist, a Professor in the Department of Biology, and the Acting Co-Principal of the Loyola International College at Concordia University. His research interests include the behavioral ecology of mating systems, the conservation biology of fishes, and the threats to endangered species in Canada.

Dr. Schade is the Principal of Loyola International College. Her research interests are in the area of 20th c. German women’s history, and particularly the bourgeois feminist and youth movements. She has recently begun studying local projects involving sustainable practices in the state of Hessen.

Peter Graham is part-time lecturer at the School of Community and Public Affairs, Loyola International College and the McGill School of Environment. He has published a book on sustainable development.

Dr. Arshad-Ayaz is a post-colonial critical theorist and an assistant professor at the Department of Education, Concordia University. She has taught for universities in Pakistan, Canada and the United Kingdom. She has published on issues such as education policies and programs in developing countries, quality of education, the impact of globalization on education policies and practices in North American and European context.

Dr. Muhammad Ayaz Naseem is an Associate Professor of Education at Concordia University. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative and International Education from McGill University, Montreal. His research interests include feminist theory and philosophy, peace education, education in diverse societies, post-structuralism, qualitative methodologies and democratic and citizenship education. He has published widely including 4 books and more than 25 articles and book chapters. His co-authored book Scientism and Education was awarded the prestigious American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Award 2008. His current book Education and Gendered Citizenship in Pakistan (Palgrave-McMillan, 2010) has been nominated for the American Institute of Pakistan Studies Book Award.

Dr. Erin Manning holds a University Research Chair in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada). She is also the director of the Sense Lab (www.senselab.ca), a laboratory that explores the intersections between art practice and philosophy through the matrix of the sensing body in movement. In her art practice she works between painting, dance, fabric and sculpture (http://www.erinmovement.com). Her current project entitled Folds to Infinity is an experimental fabric collection composed of cuts that connect in an infinity of ways, folding in to create clothing and out to create environmental architectures. The next phase of this project will explore the resonance between electromagnetic fields and movement through the activation of the existent magnets in Folds to Infinity. Her writing addresses the senses, philosophy and politics, articulating the relation between experience, thought and politics in a transdisciplinary framework moving between dance and new technology, the political and micropolitics of sensation, performance art, and the current convergence of cinema, animation and new media.