Engage Memorial Symposium 2025: Practice and Place

We are pleased to announce that the inaugural Engage Memorial Symposium will be happening in St. John’s, May 28-29, 2025. Sessions will also be presented virtually.

The symposium is open to Memorial students, faculty and ASMs, and staff who are involved in – or interested in learning about – publicly engaged research, teaching and learning, and public partnerships.

This event is intended to bring people together from across Memorial’s disciplines and campuses to talk about how we do public engagement: what’s working, what we’re learning, what future opportunities we can pursue together as we strive to connect our work with the communities we serve.

The symposium will mark two events: the launch of Memorial’s renewed Public Engagement Framework and Memorial University’s 100^th anniversary. We are inviting students, faculty and ASMS, and staff to submit proposals for:

• Short talks, presentations, and performances (15-20 minutes)
• Panels (3-4 panelists; 40-45 minute panel followed by 10-15 minute Q&As)
• Dynamic, hands-on workshops for public engagement capacity-building (55 minutes)

We encourage submissions from all disciplines, units, and campuses at Memorial; we also strongly encourage submissions that engage discussions of Indigenization and of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism. Submissions from Indigenous, racialized, minority-gender, and disabled students, faculty & ASMs, and staff are very welcome.

There is a limited amount of funding available to cover honoraria for public partners to be included as co-presenters; please contact OPE for more information.

Proposed presentations, panels, and workshops should respond to the theme of Practice and Place in public engagement at Memorial University, and should fit into one of the following four sub-themes:

 Enabling Public Engagement

e.g. Public engaged teaching & learning; Programs, processes & tools: Supporting the public engagement of students, ASMs, staff, and the public at Memorial; Promoting diverse voices in PE

 Doing Public Engagement Right

e.g. Building sustainable and resilient partnerships; Activism through public engagement; Engaging on place; Hard conversations in PE: Addressing the things no-one wants to talk about; Making an impact: How PE becomes reality

 Welcoming the Public

e.g. Community Experts: Valuing community knowledge and expertise; Embracing Unpredictability; Supporting community capacity; Sharing stories: Creative approaches to Knowledge Mobilization

 Recognizing, celebrating and rewarding public engagement

e.g. Lessons learned: Supporting each other through sharing experiences; Integrating public engagement into academic career goals; Compensating and valuing the public engagement work of students, ASMs, staff, and community/public partners; Monitoring and evaluating public engagement work

Submissions will be selected by the Engage Memorial Symposium Planning Committee, based on the following criteria:

• Originality
• Alignment with symposium theme/subthemes
• Expertise (including lived experience) of presenters
• Feasibility (in the case of workshops)

To submit a proposal: 

Please send your 250-word proposal, along with presenter bios and contact information, by email to OPE Framework Coordinator Andreae Callanan at andreae.callanan@mun.ca. The deadline for proposals is December 15, 2024. 

Any other questions? Feel free to contact Andreae at the email address above.