Live Work Well Research Centre
Live Work Well Research Centre
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The LWWRC Blog: Notes from the Field

Land Acknowledgements Part One: Your Responsibility to Treaty

Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released their Final Report in 2015, institutions such as the University of Guelph have started to incorporate land acknowledgements into their practices, such as at the beginning of meetings or presentations. Individuals might include an acknowledgment in their email signature or at the beginning of a class they are teaching. Acknowledging the traditional territory we are on is important and can be a good step in learning about the history of the region. However, land acknowledgements run the risk of being insincere if no action is taken or if people aren’t speaking from an informed place, especially if they don’t acknowledge or do anything about their ongoing contributions towards land theft and erasure.

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The Great Balancing Act!

My PhD journey began in September 2016. My start was probably a bit different from the average student’s. I pulled up to MacDonald Institute reminiscing about my graduate school days that I had finished a few years before. I thought about the classes I took and the friends I made during my MSc program in Family Relations and Human Development. This time I was not arriving to Student Orientation with one of my best friends (who happened to be in the same program as me during my master’s), but I was arriving with my parents and my four-month-old son. That’s right—I am fairly sure I was the only one on campus that day beginning this new school year with my mom, dad, and son in tow.

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Our Knowledge, Our Voices Postcard Series

Violence against women 1 is a pervasive and persistent problem, but too often it is an invisible problem. In family and community conversations, silence hangs over this topic, even though it touches the lives of most women and people who care about women. 2 The reasons for this are complex, but stigma and backlash are among the reasons women do not speak out. 3 Both the likelihood of experiencing violence and the risks of speaking out are intensified for women experiencing multiple forms of structural marginalization, especially disabled women, LGBTQ+ people, women, young women, and Indigenous women. 4  The fact that violence against women most often occurs in private settings – “behind closed doors” – also contributes to its invisibility. With the loss of social supports and stay-at-home orders, the increase in violence directed towards women and girls during the COVID-19 pandemic has been called a “shadow pandemic” by researchers and advocates. 5

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Autism Acceptance Day

April 2, 2021 was Autism Acceptance Day. [Editor's note April 2024: We have changed the language from Autism Awareness to Autism Acceptance to reflect the understanding of autism as a lived experience, not an illness or condition.] The focus of this day was to provide an opportunity for people to learn about what Autism is, acknowledge the lived experiences of people with Autism and increase support to these individuals, their families and caregivers. Approximately 1 in 66 children are diagnosed with Autism. However, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is still very misunderstood by many people. ASD is a term used that refers to a wide variation in types and severities of symptoms people with Autism experience.

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Change Starts Now

The Guelph Black Heritage Society (GBHS) is a community cultural and spiritual gathering space, providing resources and services to empower the community to connect to our Black history, present & future. A team of Univeristy of Guelph students had the opportunity to work with the GBHS. Below, one of the students from this team, Kamrani Doray, provided us with a blog post on the project and its importance to the community.

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Intersectional Conversations with Girls and Women with Disabilities 

Each year the Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences holds a conference meeting that brings together over 70 different academic associations to the same location. It offers a great opportunity to meet other scholars, policy makers, and practitioners to learn about research happening in a variety of fields, including the Canadian Disability Studies Association, the Canadian Sociological Association, and the Sexuality Studies Association to name a few. A past undergraduate research assistant at the Centre had the pleasure of attending this conference and shared her experience with us. The student took the opportunity to ask them what living and working well means to them. 

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