Deborah Conners

Director / Associate Professor (Teaching Stream)

• Email Deborah Conners
• 613-520-2600 x 4498

My concern with the politics of gender issues arose during several decades of activist work within women’s movements, including as a coordinator at Women’s Network PEI. Through these experiences, I became interested in how we could engage diverse women, men, and gender queer people to speak with others advocating for social goals that did not necessarily align with their own. My belief that this ability to dialogue across difference is a crucial skill set in our times was fostered in my Master’s in Conflict Studies at St. Paul University. In my Sociology PhD at Carleton, I explored this approach further in a reflexive examination of feminist work to end violence against women. Following this, I did a Mitacs Post-Doctoral Fellowship with the Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women, looking at the impact of Ontario’s mandatory charging policy in cases of domestic violence.

I bring my interest in the politics of reconciliation to my teaching in the social justice stream and the minor in community engagement, seeking to create opportunities for students to learn across difference and to consider what supports the creation and maintenance of difference. I often take to my students puzzles to which I do not yet have the answer to, an approach which generates a joint discovery process. It is this ‘learning together’ that frames a dynamic course that is useful to everyone involved. My goal is that students leave my classes with increased ability to learn how to learn.