My work examines love as a way of knowing, framed by epistemological considerations from a diversity and inclusion standpoint. It applies the findings in pedagogic contexts to support a revitalization of knowledge-making practices that address issues of epistemic injustice in classrooms and beyond.

The traditional western classroom operates on epistemological traditions that prioritize certain forms of knowledge over others, namely Descartes’s mind/body split (Paris & Winn, 2014) in a “banking” model of education that Freire critiques as "characteristic of the ideology of oppression” (Freire, 2017). Pedagogies that stem from these limited models of knowledge-making often alienate students who come from different epistemological backgrounds; as Junot Diaz wrote about the creative writing classroom in particular, “I was a person of color in a workshop whose theory of reality did not include my most fundamental experiences” (Chavez, 2021). This gestures to the need for not only radically inclusive practices that shift dynamics of privilege and marginalization but also distinct ways of knowing that honour other ways to be. 

I use theoretical frameworks outlined by feminist pedagogues such as bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Ursula K. Le Guin to argue that love is crucial to dismantling colonial understandings of “legitimate knowledge” in favour of “knowledge in the making” intersecting with “selves in the making” (Ellsworth, 2005). I also engage with decolonial methodologies like storytelling, connecting, and sharing (Smith, 2012) to honour the many forms in which learning has existed across cultures for centuries. Seeing knowledge as embodied, relational process foregrounds praxis that caters to diverse lived experiences and identities. While pedagogues including Freire have written about the role of love in pedagogy, I focus especially on the epistemological implications of love, based on definitions of revolutionary love outlined by queer Black feminists, including Alexis Pauline Gumbs, bell hooks, and adrienne maree brown.

I came to this topic while working with Indigenous youth in Canada, and with the federal government as a Policy Analyst in the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, where questions of what counts as legitimate knowledge and data are highly relevant. Different communities had different definitions of how to learn, how to transmit that learning, and even what counts as learning or knowledge itself; these concerns are not limited to the Canadian context but essential to engage with everywhere. As part of my project, I developed anti-racist and decolonial writing workshops to further accessible ways of supporting students historically excluded from institutions of learning due to the delegitimization of their lived realities. Based on my teaching experience, I will share examples of exercises that provoke attention to emergence, holding emotions, and embracing love as ways of making sense in community, in opposition to a Cartesian mind/body split.

With the increasing prevalence of AI in education, developing different ways to learn and know has become extremely relevant not only to marginalized students but to everyone. I argue that love is a deeply critical skill and a means to counter current challenges to engage students in critical thinking, as LLM models can bring about a "knowledge collapse" (Peterson, 2025): a gradual narrowing of the information humans can access, along with a declining awareness of other viewpoints and other ways of knowing, the more that we treat that knowledge as singular or static. As such, though my work has clear outcomes in classroom spaces, these epistemological considerations can act as a guiding framework across a range of settings and disciplines as we redefine what knowledge means and how to share it in this crucial time.

My research relies on arts-based methods such as collaging workshops, wherein “by juxtaposing disparate visual elements, new associations and meanings arise” (Leavy 2018). I have also developed much of my praxis through writing workshops in community centres and classrooms as a part of my fieldwork. Exercises like map-making, movement, list-building, self-portraiture, or sketching feelings recognize that process (rather than product) is how ongoing meaning-making occurs. I also rely on posthuman theory and post-qualitative inquiry to frame living as loving as research methodology, such as St. Pierre’s “post-qualitative inquiry” that states: "the concept of data collection is itself problematic because it points to an ontology that assumes data are separate from human being and so can be 'collected'" (St. Pierre, 2021). Practicing anti-extractive qualitative research is crucial to furthering ethical decolonial scholarship. This means a) starting with love as an entry point, a different epistemological opening than mainstream western conceptions of knowledge, and b) finding other ways to engage with data and representation. For me, this has looked like fictioning (Burrows & O’Sullivan, 2019), fragmentation (Fadel, 2023), and situated writing (Livholts, 2019). Importantly, I engage with post-qualitative inquiry for its capacity for “radical uncertainty” but respond to important critiques (Wolgemuth et al., 2022) of how this should not be seen as an end goal. The aim of my work and of these methods is to recentre justice with love and care, hence the foundation of Indigenous and Black feminist scholarship in the outline of my project. In seeking to broaden which epistemological traditions are deemed as legitimate, I likewise expand on current approaches to doing research in order to honour different ways of knowing and being. My research methods also further feminist definitions of “everyday aesthetics” (Saito, 2020) as method, notably Sara Ahmed’s “listening with a feminist ear” and “tending to spillage” (2022) as well as adrienne maree brown’s “noticing” of emergence (2017) that legitimizes everyday acts and overlooked instances. Methodologically, love is defined as noting and ritualizing care, with the recognition that “what we pay attention to grows” (brown, 2017). This research therefore also involves everyday living and noticing as methodology; the definitions of living and loving are deeply entwined in this process of paying attention and leaning in.

My research outcomes include step-by-step pedagogical guides that can be applied in workshops, classrooms of varying subjects, and co-curricular educational spaces. I anticipate they could shift teaching practices to incorporate epistemologies of embodiment, storytelling, and relational pedagogy with implications on how we measure and define knowledge. These impacts could expand educational policies to further oral traditions, Indigenous land-based learning, or play-based learning frameworks as well as encourage institutions of higher education and public services to consider alternative solutions towards access. Legitimizing diverse ways of knowing means honouring existing but erased pedagogies, thereby creating more opportunities in mainstream education for anyone who comes from a background where knowledge-making looks different. Given the range of cultures that make up many of our schools today, it is crucial to honour the various ways that learning has been enacted and passed down; we will all profit from a revitalization of learning. In considering access, my work contributes to growing definitions of schooling, language, and community to better serve a range of needs. My research has gained international traction for pushing boundaries of form and content, moving towards decoloniality, and providing critical examples for educational change. Notably, I have two forthcoming book chapters in pedagogical academic volumes that outline the theory and praxis I discuss above as well as an edited volume on living and loving as research methodologies under contract with Routledge. I have also applied the epistemological implications I discuss in my work to other disciplines, such as in a recent co-written journal article on ways to engage differently with archives. These outputs speak to the urgency of these considerations and will help to further conversations on epistemic justice across fields.

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