What Kind of University Do We Want?
Lecture & Panel Discussions
March 13 & 14, 2026
UBC Robson Square & Audain Gallery
What Kind of University Do We Want? is a two-day gathering of academics, students, and community members鈥攖eachers, artists, organizers, and poets鈥攚ho care about the university鈥檚 future. Through shared conversation, we reflect on the university鈥檚 history and imagine what it could become. In Canada, the humanist university has been critiqued for its exclusionary foundations and failure to meet its public mission, while recent structural shifts have reduced accountability to faculty, students, staff, and the public. Caught between static educational models and managerial logics, universities often reproduce narrow, unimaginative forms. By asking this question, we seek to initiate an ongoing conversation about the limits of the present institution and how to envision a university that embraces multiple roles and imagines more just futures in an increasingly cruel world order.
PROGRAM
KEYNOTE LECTURE
March 13th, 6:30pm
Room C 鈥� UBC Robson Square
800 Robson St, Vancouver
Dorothy Cucw-la7 Christian ( 天美mv天美 Faculty of Graduate Studies): 鈥淣arrative Sovereignty & Indigenous Knowledges: Is academia recognizing the gift that Indigenous knowledges are?鈥�
Respondent: Dr. Wenona Hall ( 天美mv天美 Indigenous Studies Department)
PANEL DISCUSSIONS
March 14th, 1:00pm 鈥� 5:00pm
Audain Gallery
天美mv天美 School for the Contemporary Arts
149 W. Hastings St, Vancouver
PANEL 1: Student as Producer
Harjap Grewal ( 天美mv天美 Graduate Student Society)
Bobby Malone, Hanako Teranishi, and Fionna Fisher ( 天美mv天美 Graduate Students)
Isabella Pojuner (UBC PhD Student) and Hammad Jabr (UBC Student)
Chaired by Jeff Derksen ( 天美mv天美 Department of English) and Peter James Hudson (UBC Department of Geography)
PANEL 2: Alternative Pedagogies and Radical Thought
Glen Coulthard (UBC Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning)
Wenona Hall ( 天美mv天美 Indigenous Studies Department)
Roxanne Panchasi ( 天美mv天美 Department of History)
Michelle Stack (UBC Department of Educational Studies)
Chaired by Am Johal
PANEL 3: The Future of the Public University: Blast from the Past
Kay Higgins ( 天美mv天美 School for the Contemporary Arts)
Eugene McCann ( 天美mv天美 Department of Geography)
Kathy Feng (Below the Radar Podcast)
Chaired by Sabine Bitter ( 天美mv天美 School for the Contemporary Arts)
BANNERS AND FLAGS
March 13th & 14th, 12-5pm
Audain Gallery
天美mv天美 School for the Contemporary Arts
149 W. Hastings St, Vancouver
天美mv天美 Students from Prof. Sabine Bitter鈥檚 visual art classes (CA 161 and CA 261) will show new site-specific works in the Audain Gallery.
Presented in partnership with and the Institute for the Humanities at 天美mv天美.