Research in Focus is designed to spotlight faculty, staff, and student research, spark meaningful dialogue, and strengthen engagement across our campuses. In this session, we were inspired by two insightful and amazing presentations:

Mary Drinkwater, Course Lead/Instructor for the Master of Educational Leadership program, presented a theoretical framework for ethics of care that extends beyond human relationships to encompass human-non-human interactions in crisis and change leadership. Drawing from African philosophies, particularly Ubuntu, her work challenges educational leaders to move beyond anthropocentric thinking and consider new roles and responsibilities for higher education institutions in how they relate to and engage with both human and more-than-human worlds.

Cagdas Dedeoglu, Faculty from Liberal Arts, introduced posthuman design thinking—a synthesis of Deleuzian pragmatics and traditional design thinking methodologies. His approach reconceptualizes politics by moving beyond the assumptions, values, and norms of humanist modernity to embrace what he defines as: “Moving beyond a human-centered paradigm, integrating elements of design thinking, but reconfiguring its framework to decenter the human subject, embracing a multi-species and techno-ecological perspective.”