Critical hope as a framework in Global Health

This virtual event is organized by the Centre for Global Health and a link will be shared with all those who registered on the morning of the event date.

The field of global health offers a cornucopia of contexts in which hope is difficult to imagine - much less to sustain. And yet, those who are vital in the efforts toward healthier communities – students, activists, educators, healthcare workers, community leaders, and others – need connection and fortitude now more than ever. In this talk, author and education scholar, Dr. Kari Grain, introduces the idea of “critical hope” (Freire, 1994; Grain, 2022) and asks how it might offer a nourishing, relational framework for those in the field of global health.

BIO

Dr. Kari Grain is the author of Critical Hope and teaches in the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Education, where she leads the Adult Learning and Global Change (ALGC) Master’s Program. In her ongoing community engaged scholarship, Kari is a research consultant in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side with Simon Fraser University’s Community Engaged Research Initiative (CERi). Her research in global education, experiential learning, adult education, and anti-racism has been featured in peer reviewed journals, books, and podcasts. In the realm of higher education and beyond, Dr. Grain believes that critical hope has the potential to be a vibrant pathway toward systemic and personal change; vital to that process of transformation is an attunement to relational, creative, and vulnerable ways of being in the world with others. Grain is the co-editor of a forthcoming (2025) volume on Community Engaged Research with University of Toronto Press. Kari lives on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories.

Breanna Wodnik is a PhD Candidate at the Institute of Health Policy, Management & Evaluation at the University of Toronto, and a student in the Collaborative Specialization in Global Health. She received a Master of Public Health degree from Emory University specializing in global health, and has since researched organizational learning and community and stakeholder engagement in the context of neglected tropical disease and water, sanitation and hygiene programming. Her dissertation research focuses on the intersections of organizational learning and compassion in primary healthcare organizations.

Losang Sadutshang is currently a graduate student at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto and was a student research analyst at the Centre for Global Health. He is pursuing a Master of Public Health, Social Behavioral Health Sciences, with a Collaborative Specialization in Global Health, and works as a student analyst at the Office of International Affairs, Public Health Agency of Canada. His research interests are in social determinants of health and the role international affairs plays in shaping global health

Event Venue

Online