Dean's Keynote: Dr Bob Jickling

You are invited to our next Dean's Keynote Series event on Thursday, 20th November 2025.

The Dean's Keynote Series theme for 2025 is 'Transformative Research Translation: Bridging Theory and Practice for Lasting Global Impact'. We welcome all to attend this most important event.

Abstract

Having spent my entire career in outdoor and environmental education, I am still amazed by the wonderful work that people do within this field—broadly construed. Around this planet, people are touched in meaningful ways by this collective work, every day. Yet, with each successive report by the Intergovernmental Pannel on Climate Change I am also amazed by how little, if any, progress we have made in shifting the big picture. Hence, the title of this of this presentation and the question, “Is meaningful change even possible?”

It is evident to many of us that it is a mistake to think that we humans can control the pending crisis or that we can avert it with more technological innovation. If, then, we were to take this assertion seriously what might potential responses entail? What would a radically different way of knowing and meaning making look like?

This talk will encourage folks to consider how we must disrupt educational assumptions of our times if there is to be any possibility for meaningful change. And we will explore more expansive meaning making that arises through experiences that affect us as whole beings with bodies and emotions. So, here we will explore how we can, first, imagine arational ways of knowing. And, second, we will consider how we might artfully point to practices that may have the capacity to disrupt the current status quo.

Bob Jickling, Professor Emeritus at Lakehead University, taught taught environmental, experiential and outdoor education and environmental philosophy. His current research attempts to find openings for radical re-visioning of education.

His most recent book collaborations include Wild Pedagogies: Touchstones for Re-Negotiating Education and the Environment in the Anthropocene; Environmental ethics: A sourcebook for educators; and, Wilding Ecologies, Walking-with Glacier: An Educational Novella. As a long-time wilderness traveller, much of his inspiration is derived from the landscape of his home in Canada’s Yukon.