Fookn Conversation - Talking About “Academicky” Stuff

Nicholas Ng-A-Fook

How are we talking about the “academicky” stuff that informs our lived experiences? In response to such questions, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook invites you to delve deeper into the lives and thinking of different public intellectuals, writers, artists, community activists, politicians, school administrators, and teachers.

  1. Dr. Leyton Schnellert

    6D AGO

    Dr. Leyton Schnellert

    In Episode 69 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. Leyton Schnellert, an Associate Professor, at the University of British Columbia and Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship. Our conversation examines his decades of community-engaged research with rural communities and self-advocates across British Columbia. We discuss Growing Innovation in Rural Sites of Learning and how rural educators are resisting deficit narratives by cultivating rural cultural wealth, community-based inquiry, and place-conscious pedagogies in the face of teacher shortages and the persistent urban pull. Dr. Leyton Schnellert also reflects on participatory disability theatre projects, such as but not limited to The Right to Love and Be Loved, where self-advocates with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) claim space and voice their terms for doing theatre and social justice research. We talk about ethical relationality and decolonization in education change networks, learning alongside and from Indigenous community partners, Knowledge Keepers, and the land itself. Throughout the conversation, we return to themes of unlearning, liminality, consent, and uncertainty. We take up how meaningful change rarely follows a script. Dr. Leyton Schnellert shares stories of driving rural mountain roads, visiting smaller school communities, and (un)learning from students and self-advocates whose interruptions invite us to do education and research differently. Finally, he calls on us to consider what it means to do the beautiful, unfinished work of making education a more inclusive place for all.

    1 hr
  2. Dr. Laura Madokoro

    2025-12-05

    Dr. Laura Madokoro

    In Episode 68 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. Laura Madokoro, a mixed-generation settler historian from Quebec’s Eastern Townships and a leading scholar of migration, refuge, and humanitarianism. Now an Associate Professor at Carleton University, she draws on the intersecting confluences of an archivist, journalist, and historian to illustrate how stories surface held, and circulated within and by “humanitarian” settler colonial nation-states. Her first book, Elusive Refuge, reshaped understandings of the racialized politics of refugee admission, while her new book, Sanctuary in Pieces, examines two centuries of sanctuary, (re)fugitivity, and urban displacement. She also leads The Disaster Lab and Sites of Sanctuary, advancing work on diasporic disaster citizenship. Our conversation traced her early pathways through museums, archives, and journalism, and how these experiences cultivated a deep curiosity about whose stories get recorded, whose are silenced, and how one sentence can redirect an entire research trajectory. We discussed her long-standing interest in humanitarianism and the tensions between state rhetoric and the everyday labour of different historical and contemporary actors in a democratic commonwealth society. Dr. Madokoro reflected on the ethics of working with archives, the risks and responsibilities of making stories public, and the importance of respecting silence and refusal. She shares about the evolving practice of sanctuary, the challenges of visibility in volatile political climates, and how the body itself can serve as archive in understanding displacement. Throughout our conversation, she emphasized transparency, care, and humility in relation to the discipline of history. We closed our conversation by reflecting on writing during the pandemic and the importance of holding space for complexity, community agency, and our ethical responsibilities in relation to doing history as a beautiful, beautiful craft.

    1h 4m
  3. Dr. Marie Battiste

    2025-10-17

    Dr. Marie Battiste

    In Episode 67 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Marie Battiste is a citizen of the Mi’kmaq Nation, a member of the Potlotek First Nation and the Aroostook Band of Micmacs in Maine. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Saskatchewan and one of the most influential scholars of Indigenous education in Canada. Her groundbreaking scholarship has advanced the work of decolonizing education, cognitive justice, and protecting Indigenous knowledges, shaping curriculum studies and educational policy across the country. Dr. Battiste has authored several books such as but not limited to Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit, co-authored Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Global Challenge and Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Canadian Obligation with Dr. James (Sakej) Henderson, and edited several collections including Living Treaties and Visioning Mi’kmaw Humanities. Over her career, she has published more than 80 essays and reports, and her contributions have been recognized with six honorary degrees, election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and numerous national and community distinctions. We discussed the following: The central role that her Mi’kma’ki/Unama’ki homeland has made in relation to scholarship, the intergenerational impact of settler colonial government policies of forced displacement and residential schooling on families and community life, graduate studies, career and family transitions, language revitalization through Mi’kmaw literacy and curriculum-making, cognitive imperialism, cognitive justice, restoration of Indigenous knowledge systems, influence of the American Indian and Civil Rights Movements, treaty education, and how trans-systemic approaches to law, knowledge creation, and education remain foundational to constitutional reconciliation, and advocates for rethinking university reward systems toward valuing Indigenous knowledge outside Eurocentric peer-review metrics and stresses our ethical responsibilities to protect land, water, air, each other, and more-than-human-kin.

    59 min
  4. Dr. Philip S. S. Howard

    2025-09-08

    Dr. Philip S. S. Howard

    Dr. Philip S. S. Howard is an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University’s Faculty of Education, where he explores the social formations, pedagogical processes, and epistemological frameworks that shape how we understand ourselves, form identities, and exercise agency in the context of antiblackness, colonialism, and racial injustice.  Dr. Howard’s recent projects include an examination of contemporary Canadian blackface as a post-racialist phenomenon; narratives of Black life, agency, and resistance in educational contexts across Toronto, Halifax, and Montreal; and broader questions of Black Studies and its presence in Canada. We discussed the following: ISATT Conference at Glasgow University, British Empire and transatlantic slave trade, historical injustices and public memory, cosmetic versus substantive transformational change, post-2020 anti-Black racisms, post-racialist rhetoric, blackface in Canadian universities, cyclical backlash, Black Life, freedom movements, settler colonialism and higher education, Sylvia Wynter’s rethinking of the human in response to settler colonial logics, possibilities and limitations of institutionalizing Black Studies, critique of “Black excellence” discourse, historical consciousness and the archive, epistemologies of ignorance, and so much more.

    1 hr
  5. Dr. James P. Burns

    2025-06-10

    Dr. James P. Burns

    In Episode 65 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. James P. Burns an Associate Professor of Curriculum Studies at the University of New Mexico. Prior to joining the faculty at UNM, Dr. James P. Burns was an Associate Professor in the School of Education and Human Development at Florida International University and an Assistant Professor at South Dakota State University. His research interests include curriculum theory, Foucauldian studies, violence, ethics of non-violence, fascism, education policy, and masculinities studies.  We discussed the following: Whose knowledge is of most worth, his reflections on Israel, Gaza, epistemicide, truth, and the banality of evil, history, myth of the frontier, manhood, crisis of masculinity, industrial military complex, historicity of American violence, popular culture, attacks on higher education, his forthcoming book Myth, Manhood and Curriculum Towards Truth, Self-Cultivation, and Reparation, and so much more.

    1h 3m
  6. Dr. Claudia Eppert

    2025-04-17

    Dr. Claudia Eppert

    In Episode 64 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Claudia Eppert a Professor of Secondary Education at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on the ethics of witnessing social and ecological suffering and trauma through literary, aesthetic, and mindful, contemplative, holistic engagements, along with exploration of the possibilities of psycho-social transformation to a more just, compassionate, and regenerative world.  We discussed the following: her educative lived experiences,  teaching, graduate studies, literary studies and engagement, cross-cultural philosophical studies, memory work, life writing research,  historical witnessing, shadow texts and questions, mindfulness, Buddhism, non-dualism and basic goodness, ecological witnessing, species extinction, and so much more.

    1h 11m
  7. Dr. Mark Priestley and Dr. Stavroula Philippou

    2025-03-29

    Dr. Mark Priestley and Dr. Stavroula Philippou

    In Episode 63 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Mark Priestley and Dr. Stavroula Philippou. Dr. Priestley is a Professor of Education at the University of Stirling. His research focuses in part on the processes of curriculum making across the different layers of education systems.  He is also the Director of the Stirling Centre for Research into Curriculum Making. Dr. Stavroula Philippou is an Associate Professor in Curriculum and Teaching within the Department of Education at the University of Cyprus.  Both represent their respective countries as national Representatives of the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (IAACS). Both are Co-convenors who support Dr. Majella Dempsey the Lead Convenor of Network 3-Curriculum of the European Educational Research Association (EERA). We discussed the following: educational and political differences in Canada, United Kingdom, Scotland, Cyprus, European Union and Middle East, their co-edited collection Curriculum Making in Europe, Supra, Macro, Meso, Micro, and Nano contexts of curriculum making as a social practice, collaborating on research with teachers as curriculum makers, navigating European Union Research Grants, their tenure as editors of the Curriculum Journal, implications of artificial intelligence for curriculum making, and so much more.

    1h 3m
  8. Dr. Laura Forsythe

    2025-03-24

    Dr. Laura Forsythe

    In Episode 62 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Laura Forsythe a Michif Assistant Professor at the University of Winnipeg in the Faculty of Education. She is the elected Bison Local Chairperson of the Manitoba Métis Federation, the official democratic and self-governing political representation of the Red River Métis. Her kinship ties include the Huppe, Ward, Berard, Morin, Lavallee, and Cyr lines. Her ancestors worked for the Northwest and Hudson’s Bay Companies, fought in the Victory of Frog Plain, and owned Lot 31, the site of a contemporary Métis space called Pakan Town. Her research focuses on Métis-specific contributions to the academy, Métis inclusion efforts, Métis research methodologies, and educational sovereignty. We discussed the following: Our academic leaves, her journey toward becoming a Métis scholar, responding to the historical erasure of Métis women from the academy, sharing Métis  scholarship Around the Kitchen Table, honouring the intergenerational contributions and advocacy of Métis grandmothers and aunties, Pawaatamihk: Journal of Métis Thinkers, Mawachihitotaak (Let’s Get Together) a national Métis network, creation of Métis spaces, and so much more.

    1h 2m
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Ratings & Reviews

4.2
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

How are we talking about the “academicky” stuff that informs our lived experiences? In response to such questions, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook invites you to delve deeper into the lives and thinking of different public intellectuals, writers, artists, community activists, politicians, school administrators, and teachers.

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