Fookn Conversation - Talking About “Academicky” Stuff

Nicholas Ng-A-Fook

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Education
Updated Semimonthly

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.

5d ago

Dr. Marc Spooner

In Episode 75, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. Marc Spooner, Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. His research examines audit culture, academic freedom, the neoliberalization and corporatization of higher education, social justice, activism, and participatory democracy. Dr. Spooner has published extensively across academic and public forums. He is co-editor, with James McNinch, of the award-winning Dissident Knowledge in Higher Education (2018) and the recently published Knowledge Under Siege: Charting a Future for Universities (2026), both published by University of Regina Press. Our conversation begins with Dr. Spooner’s formative experiences in teacher education, graduate studies, student governance, and political activism at the University of Ottawa, where he learned to connect critical theory with collective action. We discuss the role of universities in sustaining democratic societies, the importance of academic freedom, tenure, union advocacy, and community-engaged scholarship, and the growing pressures of chronic underfunding, performance-based funding, political intervention, and corporate managerialism. Drawing on Knowledge Under Siege, we consider how universities have historically reproduced colonialism, exclusion, and institutional inequalities while also providing spaces for resistance, intellectual freedom, and social transformation. Dr. Spooner also reflects on the expanding influence of private consultants in reshaping higher education and the importance of Indigenous and decolonial knowledges, public engagement, and collective advocacy in imagining more equitable futures for universities. Throughout our conversation, we return to a central question: What are universities for, and how might we reimagine their responsibilities toward democracy, social justice, and the public good? Listeners can access the free, open-access PDF of Knowledge Under Siege: Charting a Future for Universities through University of Regina Press and CBC Ideas podcast episode.
Sep 3

Dr. Lucy Delgado

In Episode 74, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. Lucy Delgado (she/they), Canada Research Chair in Michif and Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer Education as Wellness and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Delgado is a Two-Spirit Métis woman, born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and a citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation. Her family includes Sinclairs, Cummings, and Prudens, some of whom took scrip in St Andrews and St Johns, as well as family and ancestors from Red River, Oxford House, and Norway House, adopted family from Sioux Valley Dakota Nation, and settler family from Ireland and the Orkney Islands. Dr. Delgado is also a community organizer involved in local and national initiatives and is actively involved with the Two-Spirit Michif Local of the Manitoba Métis Federation. In this conversation, we discussed the importance of self-location in research, nation-specific Métis scholarship, Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer inclusion, community connection, genealogy, racialization, curriculum policy, and treaty relationships. Dr. Delgado also reflects on the creation of Pawaatamihk: Journal of Métis Thinkers, an open-access journal dedicated to uplifting the voices of Métis auntie scholars, artists, and community members, as well as Mawachihitotaak and the development of Métis-specific scholarly networks that create spaces for mentorship, relationship building, and knowledge mobilization.
Aug 20

Dr. Dwayne Donald

In Episode 73, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. Dwayne Donald, Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta who holds a Canada Research Chair in Reimagining Teacher Education with Indigenous Wisdom Traditions. His research focuses in part on the different ways Indigenous wisdom traditions can expand and enhance understandings of curriculum and pedagogy. His scholarship engages curriculum studies, teacher education, and the ongoing effects of colonialism on educational thought and practice, while asking how educators might rethink relationships among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples through ethical relationality, treaty sensibilities, kinship, and wâhkôtowin. Recorded live during the annual CSSE conference at the University of Winnipeg, this episode took place on Treaty One Territory and the National Homeland of the Red River Métis, in Wiiniibak, Manido Abi, ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg, Anisininew, Ininiwak/Nehethowuk, Oceti Sakowin/Dakota Oyate, and Michif Peoples. Building on earlier conversation, they return to Dwayne’s evolving thinking about one’s standpoint, treaty sensibilities, kinship, and relational accountability. Drawing on his family history as a descendant of Treaty 6 signatories and his ancestor Jimmy Jock Bird, an interpreter and translator in Blackfoot homelands, Dwayne reframes treaty as a kinship covenant oriented toward love, responsibility, and cultivating more life-honouring forms of humanness.
May 20

Dr. Matthew Keynes and Dr. James Miles

In Episode 72, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. James Miles and Dr. Matthew Keynes to discuss their new co-authored book, Education and Historical Justice: Redress, Reparations, and Reconciliation in the Classroom. Drawing on comparative case studies from Canada, Australia, Northern Ireland, and South Africa, their scholarship examines how education systems, teachers, and students are increasingly being called upon to respond to histories of harm, violence, colonialism, and injustice within what they describe as an emerging “age of apology.” Our conversation explores difficult histories, truth and reconciliation, historical consciousness, collective responsibility, and the tensions surrounding historical justice education in liberal democratic settler states. Dr. Miles and Dr. Keynes reflect on their respective journeys through history education research in Canada and Australia, their collaborative writing process during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the challenges of thinking beyond simplified narratives of guilt, empathy, and reconciliation. We also discuss contemporary struggles over curriculum politics, residential school denialism, public memory, redress, reparations, transitional justice, and the possibilities and limitations of history education in confronting misinformation, settler colonial violence, and democratic uncertainty.
May 12

Dr. Carla Peck

In Episode 71, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. Carla Peck, Professor of Social Studies Education at the University of Alberta and Director of Thinking Historically for Canada’s Future, a national SSHRC-funded partnership focused on reimagining K–12 history education across Canada. Dr. Peck’s research explores how teachers and students understand history and democracy, with particular attention to how young people’s identities shape their historical consciousness, civic engagement, and sense of belonging within democratic life. Her scholarship asks what it means for students to see themselves in history and why such questions matter within increasingly polarized social and political contexts. Dr. Peck has authored and co-authored numerous articles and book chapters, and co-edited influential collections on difficult histories, global citizenship, and historical consciousness. Her most recent book, Rescuing Reason, co-written with Dr. Alan Sears, argues for the urgent role history education can play in sustaining democracy in Canada and beyond. Our conversation explores curriculum policy politics, historical thinking, civic empathy, public advocacy, and actions public intellectuals can take up toward confronting misinformation, polarization, and democratic decline.
Feb 13

Dr. Aaron Teo

In Episode 70 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. Aaron Teo is a Singaporean Chinese first generation migrant settler living on unceded Jagera and Turrbal lands. He currently works as a sociologist of education at the University of Southern Queensland. Our conversation centers on his research into the racialized and gendered subjectivities of migrant teachers and students from Asia within the Australian context, and the enduring legacies of White Australia in contemporary schooling and teacher education. Dr. Teo reflects on his journey from international student to secondary teacher and middle leader in Queensland, and ultimately to doctoral studies shaped by autoethnography and duoethnography. He speaks candidly about navigating predominantly white educational spaces, teaching critical race theory in teacher education programs, and making academic writing accessible without losing theoretical depth. We discuss the rise of anti-Asian racism during COVID-19, his involvement with the Australian Human Rights Commission’s national study on university racism, and his community engagement with the Asian Australian Alliance. Aaron highlights the politics of perpetual foreignness, Asia illiteracy, and the conditional inclusion of racialized communities in settler colonial nation-states. Throughout, he calls for critical pedagogies that move beyond symbolic inclusion toward structural change, consciousness-raising, and collective responsibility in confronting racialization within and beyond the classroom.
12/29/2025

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.
12/05/2025

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.

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.

Creator

Nicholas Ng-A-Fook
Years Active

2020 - 2026
Episodes

75
Rating

Clean
Copyright

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Fookn Conversation - Talking About “Academicky” Stuff