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We are on pause and we will be coming up with more content as soon as we can. This hiatus is helping us to re-charge, re-evaluate and re-invigorate ourselves so we can come stronger. Thanks for following us this far.

Three parents came to Chasing Encounters podcast to share their experiences about being graduate students and how their families supported them throughout their journey. We discussed how rewarding is when they feel the support of their children in difficult times. * Biography: Meng Xiao is a scholar on international student engagement and the founder of Dream X Education Inc., an educational agency supporting international students engaging in North America. Latifa Soliman is a faculty of English communication at Durham College and is proud to be teaching a diverse group of adult students who decided to re-join school after years of abandoning it, aiming to fulfill their goals and invest in their education. Yi Liu is a spiritual teacher who helps to elevate awareness, happiness & parenting skills. Her insight on spirituality stems from both Chinese and western wisdom. Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, October 20). CES6E1 – parenting while being a graduate student. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces6e1-parenting-while-being-a-graduate-student * Sources: Xiao, M., Liu, Y., Soliman, L., & Chudaeva, E. (2021). Being a Parent—Rethinking Parenting Philosophy from Global Perspectives (X. Qian, Ed.). Dream X Education.

Dr. Katie Entigar joined us to have a conversation about their first experiences in Toronto as a new assistant professor at the University of Toronto. Katie enlightened us about what is meant by adult education. Dr. Entigar discussed how education, learning and meaning-making need to go beyond the school years as these take place in different contexts formal, informal and non-formal. In our conversation, we talked about various forms of adult education that fall into the concepts of communities of practice in which people learn from each other. Also, we considered how adult education is conceptualized depending on different contexts as different meaningful approaches to engage communities are enacted in what is called Diacultural Pedagogies. * Biography: Dr. Katie Entigar’s agenda focuses on nonprofit education with.of.by.for adult immigrants. As a scholar, they draw upon sociocultural theory, critical applied linguistics, women of color feminist philosophy and praxis, intersectional analyses, queer theory and thinking, and poststructuralist and decolonizing approaches to unearth and work creatively with concepts of contribution, silence, inclusion, and coalition in educational research and practice. They seek dialogue and coalitional practice to collectively radically imagine alternatives to our current violent and dehumanizing reality, which is not a given but always in the making. They take an ethically engaged, restless posture of radical unknowing in my work, seeking to center and uplift Black, Brown, and immigrant perspectives while recommitting daily to a praxis of accountability as an ally, accomplice, and educator * Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, June 1). CES5ESSE – 2021 Summer Special Episode * Sources: Entigar, K. E. (2020). Unintelligible Silence: Challenging Academic Authority in a New Socio-dialogic Politics of the Real for Collective Justice and Transformation. Outlines. Critical Practice Studies, 21(1), 06–18. Entigar, K. E. (2020). From Support to Solidarity: Writing Tutors as Advocates for Multilingual Writers in College Composition Courses. NYS TESOL Journal, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 35-37.

Born in Peru, Fernando Calderón-Figueroa accompanies us to learn about how cities have been designed to welcome or not their citizens. His research focuses on geography and territoriality with a focus on different international cities. He describes his fascination for how amazing humans have developed technology to adapt to their needs and create shelter. However, he questions the impact of built environments in urban design, and the concept of trust among people in relation to those contexts. He posits that there is a history of displacement, gentrification and social mobility that responds to how cities evolve and change over time. Listen to know more about our favourite spaces in the city of Toronto and our relationships with them. * Biography: Fernando Calderón Figueroa is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Sociology, University of Toronto. Fernando’s main interests are urban and political sociology, social policy, and quantitative and computational methods. His dissertation addresses the relationship between the built infrastructure of cities and social capital in three different contexts: Canada, Peru, and Colombia. Fernando is a member of the Urban Genome Project, where he conducts interdisciplinary research on urban social policy and neighbourhood change. * Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, June 29). CES5E8 – geography territoriality and land. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e8-geography-territoriality-and-land * Sources: Olson, A. W., Calderón-Figueroa, F., Bidian, O., Silver, D., & Sanner, S. (2021). Reading the city through its neighbourhoods: Deep text embeddings of Yelp reviews as a basis for determining similarity and change. Cities, 110, 103045. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2020.103045

Colombian born and educated in Europe, Dr. Diana García shares her thoughts about her experiences being a woman in different contexts and how these have shaped her work with youth communities in urban and rural areas in her home country. She discusses how youth have been excluded from the Colombian sociopolitical conversations at local and larger levels. She questions her own privilege and positionality as she reflects on what she can do to support marginalized communities to challenge corruption and inequality. She asks how the national identity is constructed and what citizenship means for young students and how they can be empowered to fight essentialist views of what it means to e Colombian. We finished our discussion by questioning the role of elite private schools and organizations to help Colombia build a prosperous future for all. Biography: Diana C. García Gómez is a recent Ph.D. graduate from the Childhood Studies Department at Rutgers University—Camden. Drawing from the fields of childhood studies, memory studies, and employing qualitative and ethnographic methods, Diana’s research focuses on children’s and youth’s political participation in peacebuilding, collective memory, and social movements in post-accord Colombia. Her dissertation - Cultivating Hope - centers children’s and youth’s participation in transitional contexts by examining their engagement with collective memory processes in urban and rural settings. Diana holds a BA in Political Science from Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, and a MA in Cognition and Communication from the University of Copenhagen. Diana has also written on children’s representation by the Colombia’s truth commission’s social media in “’I have the right’: examining the role of children in the #DimeLaVerdad campaign” (forthcoming). Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, June 17). CES5E7 –Youth as peacebuilders. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e7-youth-as-peacebuilders * Sources: García Gómez, D. C. (2018). The Perfect Computer? Children’s Experiences with ICT in Rural Colombia. In A. Mandrona & C. Mitchell (Eds.), Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods (pp. 218–232). Rutgers University Press.

With a vast language teaching experience, Dr. Heng Hartse describes his first experiences in ESL education as he tried to understand students’ backgrounds more in depth and trying to build bridges among the international students. He talks about second language writing and the difficulties some have when it comes to adapt to the Western forms of academic writing. He also discusses the tensions, challenges and possibilities of an EFL/ESL teacher. In understanding these, Dr. Heng Hartse explains translingual practice, world languages and English as a lingua franca (ELF) as concepts that respond to the emerging multilingual students in today’s classrooms. * Biography: Dr. Joel Heng Hartse is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, where he teaches academic literacy and TEAL teacher training courses. His work focuses on academic writing at the intersection the internationalization of higher education and the globalization of English, and has appeared in the Journal of Second Language Writing, Asian Englishes, Composition Studies, Across the Disciplines, the Journal of English for Research Publication Purposes, and English Today. He is co-author of the book Perspectives on Teaching English at Colleges and Universities in China (TESOL Press) and vice president of the Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing. See more at www.joelhenghartse.com Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, June 1). CES5E6 – Problematizing academic writing. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e6-problematizing-academic-writing * Sources: Fazel, I. & Heng Hartse, J. (2020). Gray areas of academic publishing: ‘Predatory journals’ under the lens. Journal of English for Research Publication Purposes 1(2). 157-67. https://doi.org/10.1075/jerpp.20008.faz Heng Hartse, J., Lockett, M. & Ortabasi, M. (2018). Languaging about language in an interdisciplinary writing course. Across the Disciplines, 15(3), 89-103. https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/atd/trans/henghartseetal2018.pdf Heng Hartse, J. (2018, October). On the possibility of a non-error-based approach to second language writing. TESOL Second Language Writing Interest Section Newsletter. Retrieved from http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolslwis/issues/2018-10-23/2.html Heng Hartse, J. & Kubota, R. (2014.) Pluralizing English? Variation in high-stakes academic texts and challenges of copyediting. Journal of Second Language Writing 24, 71-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2014.04.001

A true American Southerner born in Georgia and with a vast experience in South America, Dr. Jason Mizell discusses some if his work with Testimonios as a form of research methodology. His work stems from his culture, family, and community efforts to bring the voices of the most marginalized peoples (Latinx) to the front. He describes how he uses his skills and privileges to support them and questions how linguistics can really be anti-racist from both pedagogical and empirical approaches. Dr. Mizell briefly explains what is necessary to become a researcher who uses Testimonios as a methodology, as such, you need: • To be invited • To build relationships in communities and gain trust • To be humble and learn with them • To know why you want to do the work with the communities and educate yourself • To be willing to push against the system * Biography: Dr. Jason Mizell is an Assistant Clinical Professor in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Connecticut. He has taught in and directed various P-12 dual-language and ESOL programs, including having taught at some of the most prestigious bilingual schools in Latin America. Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, April 13). CES5E5 – Testimonios as methodology. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e5-testimonios-as-methodology * Sources: Mizell, J. (2020). Testimonios and apprenticeship: Developing relationships that nurture active civic engagement and learning. In R. Harman & K. Burke (Eds.) Culturally sustaining systemic functional linguistics: Embodied inquiry with multilingual youth. Routledge. pp. 39-63 Accurso, K., & Mizell, J.D. (2020). Toward an anti-racist genre pedagogy: Considerations for a North American context. TESOL Journal. Advance online publication. doi.org/10.1002/tesj.554

Dr. Niyozov grew up in Tajikistan, former Soviet Union, in a small village and a large family. He is a true plurilingual person with a vast international experience in education and research by engaging with numerous cultural groups along the span of his life. These experiences provided an ontoepistemological rationale that has driven the work he currently does with immigrant and refugees and with religious education. In today’s episode, Dr. Niyozov argues that religious education is important because there are subjects that have not been taught in some parts of the academic world or engaged as they have become taboo. It is important to provide the space for different religious dimensions from different parts of the world, engage, question and challenges how education is or not welcoming these experiences. He points out that we need to find spaces for challenging and pushing back ideas and to allow space for conflict and disagreement so we need to be able to handle controversy; this way it takes away the fear of being able to engage in academic conversations respectfully. * Biography: Prof. Sarfaroz Niyozov is an Associate Professor of Curriculum Studies and Teacher Development and Comparative, International and Development Education at OISE, University of Toronto. Prof. Niyozov is highly experienced in teaching and conducting long-term research on marginalized communities in Canada and internationally. Niyozov has authored and co-authored more than 70 publications, including books, journal articles, chapters, editorials and reviews. He teaches courses on cross-cultural teacher development, religious education, comparative education and researching in the Global South. He has held a number of leadership positions at OISE (co-chair of Curriculum & Pedagogy program of CTL (July, 2019-present); director of the Institute for Educational Development at the Aga Khan University, co-director of CIDE Program (2013-2019). He leads and co-leads education interest groups at OISE such as South Asia Education, Muslim Education; Central Eurasia Education groups and is on the Steering Committee of the World Congress of Comparative, International Education Societies. * Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, February 24). CES5E4 – https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e4-religious-education * Sources: Niyozov, S., & Punja, Z. (2009). The role of spirituality in the life and work of Ismaili teachers. Insights from Central Asia. In J. Lin & J. Miller. (Eds.), Spirituality, religion and peace education. Greenwich CT: IGA Publishing.

Maria Montejo was in our episode to help us understand the many nuances of Indigenous knowledges and epistemologies. From animal spirits and nature, she embarks us on a journey of respect to mother earth and other living and non-living creatures. She describes the presence of a Spiritual intelligence as a way to connect through life to a deeper understanding of who we are in convergence with all elements of nature. She posits that humans would not be able to truly understand others unless we go through a process of healing the trauma and pain of our past experiences. * Biography: Maria Montejo (Deer clan) is a member of the Mam Jakaltec/Popti (Mayan) community of Indigenous people who reside in the Xajla territory of Guatemala. Many years ago, Maria and her family came to Canada as refugees and settled in Toronto. Maria works to introduce Canadians to the basic knowledge of the worldview of Indigenous Peoples, as well as their spiritual and cultural values. In addition to her formal schooling, Maria has been mentored from a young age by various Elders, Medicine people and Traditional Teachers on Turtle Island and from Central and South America. Maria has had the privilege of being exposed and participating in various ceremonies and traditional cultural practices that have fueled her passion to develop programming that will bridge the Newtonian/allopathic model of wellness and an Indigenous/multi-dimensional approach. * Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, February 10). CES5E3 – Indigenous Knowledges. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e3-indigenous-knowledges * Sources: https://ncct.on.ca/programs/dodem-kanonhsa/ http://accessola2.com/SC2016/speaker/maria-montejo/

Chilean born Marlen Mondaca describes her experiences within the nonprofit organization sector. She provides some useful information about what it means to work with international and development organizations such as Seeds of Hope, Save the Children, Plan International, and OXFAM. Rooted on a rights based approach, Marlen explains that some of the objectives of these organizations are alleviating poverty, supporting local organizations, providing formal and non-formal education programs on health, nutrition and child & family protection among others. Marlen offers specific information about the necessary skills anyone needs to pursue a career in this sector: 1) Having a good theoretical and historical foundation of international issues, 2) being able to make management or technical decisions, 3) having some knowledge of statistics, and program evaluation, 4) having good communication skills to connect with donors, managers and program officers, 5) having some experience in areas such literacy, numeracy, health, nutrition or experience in the region, 6) having knowledge of languages from the communities and 7) becoming a volunteer or finding a placement in any of the organizations. * Biography: Marlen Mondaca, Special Advisor to the CEO on Strategy and Thought Leadership. She assumed her current position in May 2020 following nine years as Director of International Programs and Chief of Programs and Policy Officer. She is a champion of children’s rights and gender equality. She began her career working with refugees in Guatemala and Honduras and then went on to work as a Public Policy Advisor for Oxfam Great Britain and Oxfam Canada based out of Santiago, Chile. While at Oxfam, she helped expand programming in the areas of violence against women, women and trade, and food security. Marlen is known for her long-standing commitment to programs and policies that are rooted in social justice and are holistic and gender transformative. Marlen believes that the international aid sector needs to re-imagine itself using principles of social justice, political ecology and localization. Marlen holds Masters’ Degrees in Journalism. * Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, January 27). CES5E2 – https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e2-international-aid-sector * Sources: https://www.savethechildren.ca/ https://www.oxfam.ca/ https://plan-international.org/

In today’s podcast, we have Yecid Ortega from the University of Toronto. He sees himself as a citizen of the world, and his work certainly reflects an international perspective to education and research. With a very marginalized background, he studied primary and secondary education in public schools and got interested in learning languages to understand the world. He tells the story of his life from poverty in Colombia, to working in the USA and to becoming a Canadian citizen. From a very young age, Yecid knew education was key to engage with communities and move socially. He noticed the idea of English as a symbol of power and has worked vigorously to dismantle it through critical education. His epistemological vision is engaged in a future of decolonial praxis in which educators, researchers and stakeholders work towards a better future for humanity. *Biography: Yecid Ortega is a Ph.D. candidate in the program of Language and Literacies Education (LLE) and the specialization program in Comparative International, and Development Education (CIDE) at OISE – University of Toronto, Canada. His general research interests are within decolonial critical ethnographic and case study approaches to research. Yecid explores how globalization, capitalism and neoliberalism influence language policy decision-making processes and their effects on classroom practices and students’ lived experiences. *Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, January 13). CES5E1 – From critical education to decolonial praxis. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e1-from-critical-education-to-decolonial-praxis *Sources: Ortega, Y. (2020). “Rebeldes en acción”: A case study in English teaching in a marginalized Colombian high school. In L. M. Berger (Ed.), Social justice and international education: Research, practice, and perspectives (pp. 111–134). NAFSA: Association of International Educators. * Coelho, D & Ortega, Y. (2020). Pluralistic approaches in early language education: shifting paradigms in language didactics. In S.M. Lau & S. Van Viegen (Eds.), Plurilingual pedagogies: Critical and creative endeavors for equitable language in education. (pp. 145-160).Taylor Francis. * Ortega, Y. (2019). “Teacher, ¿Puedo hablar en Español?” A reflection on plurilingualism and translanguaging

In this metaepisode, we had a great conversation with El CafeciTO podcast produced by Latinx students at the University of Toronto, we learned about the challenges and the possibilities of creating and producing a podcast that supports the work of our communities. More information: https://www.elcafecitopodcast.ca/

With a Filipino background, Monica Batac and Hilary Naluz shared with us their work with the communities. They defy the idea that Filipinos do not go to post-secondary by demonstrating that both of them are pursuing graduate studies. With their community-oriented work, they hope to provide culturally responsive materials to youth as they engage with parents and other relatives to preserve the language and culture. One of their main goals is to help students maintain their heritage while working tirelessly towards their academic success and well-being by practicing self-care and appreciating where they are coming from. *Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, December 10). CES4E7 – Filipino Community Engagement. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces4e7-filipino-community-engagement

Shakespeare said that “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.” Acting and performance are at the centre of this episode as Nae Hanashiro Avila, a PhD student here in Toronto, discusses how identity and performance relate. Of Peruvian-Japanese descent, her mixed ethnical background and her expertise in performing arts begin a conversation about how we can be true to who we are as our different identities collide: Are they performed according or in opposition to expectations? She argues that however we express our identities, we need to be aware of how those performances reproduce or resist power relations. Her experience with theatre and the performing arts inspired her current research focusing on exploring feminist public performances in the Latin American context to contest power in the form of neoliberalism and patriarchy. *Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, November 25). CES4E6 – https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces4e6-performance-arts-reproducing-or-resisting-power

Growing up, reading was Adriana’s way to travel the world. The places, people, and cultures she read about motivated her to go and see it for herself. Finding beauty in every place she has visited, her experiences have inspired her research. Where does one experience the best of nature? Patagonia. History and architecture? Turkey. Night life? Hong Kong and Barcelona. Site-seeing aside, at the heart of her travels has been the opportunity to connect with people and learn from others about their cultures. While travelling to learn Chinese Mandarin in Taiwan, she serendipitously stumbled upon her current research focus. Listen to hear how this former computer programmer became impassioned about education and how the goal should be bringing together different languages and cultures, ultimately learning from each other. *Biography: Adriana Marroquin-Rodriguez is a Ph.D. student in Higher Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto in Canada, specializing in Comparative and International Education. Her areas of interest include student mobility, international student experience, and critical internationalization studies. Adriana has travelled extensively and has developed a keen interest in East Asian culture and knowledge traditions. Through her thesis research, she seeks to promote reflection and conversations about the differences and commonalities among different cultures, knowledge traditions and about what we can learn from each other. Besides, under the direction of Professor Elizabeth Buckner, Adriana contributes to a research project team that is empirically examining how different higher education institutions in Canada and the world frame and practice internationalization. *Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, November 11). CES4E5 – Travelling as inspiration for research. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces4e5-travelling-as-inspiration-for-research *Sources: Buckner, E., Clerk, S., Marroquin-Rodriguez, A., and Zhang, Y. (Accepted). Symbolic Commitments, Strategic Actions: How Canadian Colleges and Universities Frame Internationalization”. Journal article accepted for publication in the Canadian Journal of Higher Education. Professor Elizabeth Buckner: https://elizabethbuckner.com/ Professor Ruth Hayhoe: https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/lhae/Faculty/384/Ruth_Hayhoe.html

Drawing from her personal experiences and a critical lens, Dr. Ruth Hayhoe shares a brief history and background of the concepts of comparative, international and development research and education. She illustrates the complexity of this rich field, emphasizing that CIDE’s main goal should be about learning from others on equal terms. The paradigm that the south must learn from the north can and should be challenged. How does one begin to do this? Bidirectional listening. In this way, each country can choose its own political systems based on international cooperation rather than domination. * Biography: Dr. Ruth Hayhoe is a professor in the Department of Leadership and Higher Education at the University of Toronto (OISE). Dr. Hayhoe's research has mainly related to Chinese higher education and educational relations between East Asia and the West. She has been interested in the ways in which cultural values and epistemologies from Eastern civilizations may provide a resource for new thinking in global higher education development. She is also interested in the intersection between Asian ways of knowing and women's ways of knowing, and questions of gender in cross-cultural leadership, topics stimulated by her personal experience of institutional leadership in an Asian context *Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, November 5). CES4E4 – Comparative, International, Development Education and Research. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces4e4-comparative-international-development-education-and-research *Sources: Hayhoe, R. (2014). China through the Lens of Comparative Education: The selected works of Ruth Hayhoe. Routledge. Sivasubramaniam, M., & Hayhoe, R. (2018). Religion and Education: Comparative and international perspectives. Symposium Books Ltd.

Language and how we communicate with each other is at the centre of this conversation with multilingual and multinational, Dr. Uju Anya. With intelligence and good humour, she provides a healthy reality check: contemporary society is multilingual and we need to face it, accept it and educate with that framework in mind. For her, this necessitates changing up how language plays a role in the classroom to reflect interactions in everyday society. How do we do this? We need to reexamine the biases and purist notions we have internalized about language. Teachers, in particular, must move from being arbiters (police) of language and become the enablers of cultural and linguistic diversity. *Biography: Dr. Uju Anya is an assistant professor of second language learning in the Curriculum and Instruction Department and a research affiliate with the Center for the Study of Higher Education at The Pennsylvania State University. She specializes in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and second language learning with a particular focus on race, gender, sexual, and social class identities in the language classroom. She has expertise in diversity, equity, and inclusion in educational policy and curriculum design, applied linguistics as a practice of social justice, intercultural communication, as well as service-learning and civic engagement in secondary and university-level language programs. *Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, October 28). CES4E3 – Policing Language. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces4e2-policing-language *Sources: Anya, U. (2016). Racialized Identities in Second Language Learning: Speaking Blackness in Brazil. Taylor & Francis. Anya, U. (2020). African Americans in World Language Study: The Forged Path and Future Directions. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 40, 97–112.

Norin Taj takes us on a journey from and back to Pakistan in this conversation. We start with growing up in her homeland, a place that contributed to her identities of being South Asian as well as Muslim - two complex and intricate entities that cannot be separated. Moreover, she shares stories of teacher training and teaching in Pakistan before immigrating to Canada, a move that provided her the opportunity to continue being an educator and a researcher. All of these experiences led her to return to Pakistan for her research that leaves us pondering two key questions: Should education focus on numbers/budgets or on actual education for the most marginalized? and how can girls’ education make use of better terms for empowerment? * Biography: Norin Taj is a doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership and Policy with a specialization in Comparative, International and Development Education at OISE. Her research interests are in the global policy discourse on girls’ education and its understanding in the South Asian context, particularly in Pakistan. When not working, she enjoys painting and writing poetry. *Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, September 30). CES4E2 – “Empowering” girls education in Pakistan. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces4e2-empowering-girls-education-in-pakistan *Sources: 1.Monkman, K., & Hoffman, L. (2013). Girls’ education: The power of policy discourse. School Field, 11(1), 63-84. 2. Khoja-Moolji, S. (2015). Suturing together girls and education: An investigation into the social (re) production of girls’ education as a hegemonic ideology. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 9(2), 87-107. 3. Meyer, J. W., & Jepperson, R. L. (2000). The ‘actors’ of modern society: The cultural construction of social agency. Sociological theory, 18(1), 100-120.

Opening this season, Canadian Mexican JP Mathias teaches how if you follow the water, you can begin to understand abstract concepts such as development/underdevelopment or how political processes affect various groups differently within a community in a tangible way. Drawing from his educational background and from his work with different organizations, he discusses and questions water management in Indigenous territories (Pueblos Originarios) in Mexico illustrating how power relations and political processes affect marginalized communities by various stakeholders in the water question. He suggests that better education can potentially raise awareness of water inequalities, whether in Mexico or here in Canada, allowing for communities to imagine a new narrative that ensures equal access for all. * Biography Jon Paul Mathias is a PhD student in Human Geography at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the historical constitution of racial disparities in access to water in Mexico City. He has an MA in Political Science from the University of Toronto and a BA in International Relations from the Universidad Iberoamericana. He has worked as a researcher for the Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Geografía (INEGI) and the Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos (OEI), both in Mexico City where he is originally from. . *Suggested citation* Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, August 5). CES4E1 – Water Inequality in Mexico. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ce-s4e1-water-inequality-in-mexico *Sources* Delaney, D. (2002). The Space That Race Makes. Professional Geographer, 54(1), 6–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/0033-0124.00309 Radcliffe, S. A. (2017). Decolonising geographical knowledges. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 42(3), 329–333. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12195 Swyngedouw, E., Kaïka, M., & Castro, E. (2002). Urban water: A political-ecology perspective. Built Environment, 28(2), 124–137. https://doi.org/10.2307/23288796 Watts, M. (2003). Development and Governmentality. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 24(1), 6–34. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315258027-26 Vitz, M. (2018). A City on a Lake: Urban Political Ecology and the Growth of Mexico City. Durham and London: Duke University Press. https://bit.ly/2EY0rJU

We had an interesting conversation with Dr. Balyasnikova, working at York University. In this special summer edition, we got together at Queen’s Park in Toronto to have a chat about educational gerontology and community-engaged research. From Russia to the USA and now Canada Dr. Balyasnikova describes educational gerontology as a subset of adult education and health science that tries to understand learning experiences at a later life. For example, how certain learning experiences affect ageing or how ageist stereotyping impacts learning in older adult learners. She is also interested in community-engaged research which is embedded in the idea of working together to inform research and we see participants as collaborators rather than subjects of study while we build relationships. She invites us to question whether participants need research or not and what form research needs to take. Additionally, Dr. Balyasnikova enjoys using various art and narrative methodologies to understand participants’ lived experiences. She uses arts-based research as possibilities for participants to express themselves and she engages participants with stories, theatre, drawing or painting as multimodal narratives. Bio Originally from Saint Petersburg Russia, Natalia Balyasnikova completed her Ph.D. in Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia in July 2019. She explores older immigrants’ educational engagement in community-based settings. Using narrative ethnographic methods, she merges traditional ethnographic data generation with the facilitation of oral, written, and multimodal storytelling. With a focus on community-based research and public scholarship, Dr. Balyasnikova works with attention to the needs of the research partners and facilitates their vision for positive change. By analyzing learning that occurs at the intersection of ageing and immigration, her work suggests new pathways of community-based curriculum and educational policy in the context of changing demographics in Canada. Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, August 5). CES3E9 – Community-Engaged Research. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces3e9-community-engaged-research Sources Balyasnikova, N., & Gillard, S. (2018). " I Love to Write My Story": Storytelling and its role in seniors' language. Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 30(2). Balyasnikova, N., Higgins, S., & Hume, M. (2018). Enhancing Teaching English as an Additional Language Through Playfulness: Seniors (Ethno) Drama Club in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. TESOL Journal, 9(3), 481-497. Gómez, D. R. (2016). Language teaching and the older adult: The significance of experience. Multilingual Matters. Andrew, P. (2012). The social construction of age: Adult foreign language learners (Vol. 63). Multilingual Matters. Jeffery, B., Findlay, I. M., Martz, D. J. F., Clarke, L. (2014). Journeys in community-based research. University of Regina Press