Michelle Schira Hagerman

About: Michelle Schira Hagerman is Associate Professor of Educational Technologies and Director of the Teacher Education Program in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. She is also the founding director of edstudiO, a multifaceted research lab and learning space dedicated to the exploration of playful, creative, and inclusive teaching practices. A former high-school teacher, Professor Hagerman’s research explores the complex interactions of literacies, technologies and teaching. She is co-editor, with colleagues from the United States and Finland, of the forthcoming International Handbook of Research in Digital Literacies (Routledge), which will provide a multidimensional portrait of priorities, methods, and approaches to digital literacies research, curated through global collaboration and centered on criticality.  

Presentation title: Constructing a Critical, Relational, and Action-Oriented Vision for the Future of Digital Literacies

Presentation description: At a moment, historically, that is punctuated by multiple intersecting existential threats, including threats driven by technological systems, Professor Michelle Schira Hagerman outlines the urgent case for digital literacies scholarship that is critical, relational, and action-oriented. Informed by the central, introductory arguments that she has outlined (with co-editors) in their International Handbook of Research in Digital Literacies (forthcoming, Routledge), Professor Hagerman will trouble existing neoliberal conceptions of digital literacies as skills, and advance a multidimensional vision for the field of digital literacies scholarship.