We at the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation are deeply saddened to announce the passing of our founding Chair, Professor Emerita Katherine Graham, on December 16, 2025.
Professor Graham is being widely remembered for her significant contributions to the fields of public policy, local governance, community development, and Indigenous policy in Canada. At 3ci, we especially wish to honour her contributions to the fields of community engagement and community-based research.
Since the 1980s, Professor Graham was at the forefront of testing and learning on the most effective modalities of community engaged research and teaching with a wide range of partner communities and organizations. In 1994, she became founding Chair of 3ci’s Management Committee, helping establish our Centre as a national leader in stakeholder engagement and knowledge co-creation in the diverse fields of responsible investment, community economic development, Indigenous governance, impact measurement, and community-university partnerships. Professor Graham continued to serve on our Management Committee until this week.
From 2012 to 2015, Professor Graham also chaired the Steering Committee of the SSHRC-funded Community First project, based at 3ci. CFICE sought to optimize the impacts of community-university partnerships in poverty reduction, food security, environmental sustainability and combatting violence against women in seven Canadian provinces. CFICE gave birth to Community Campus Engage Canada, a national network and community of practice that fuels authentic research, learning, and creative partnerships between academic institutions and community organizations.
Professor Graham was also founding Chair of Community-Based Research Canada, from 2008 to 2015, a pan-Canadian network of engaged scholars and non-profit practitioners that has continued to flourish. Subsequently, she was instrumental in the collective effort of 16 Canadian post-secondary institutions to pilot a Canadian adaptation of the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, a certification process for best-practices in this field.
Plans to remember Katherine at Carleton will be shared with the 3ci community in the new year.