The Tenth International Conference on Religion and Spirituality in Society is delighted to announce Peter Cole as a 2020 Plenary Speaker.

Dr. Peter Cole is of St’át’imc and Celtic heritage. He is an Associate Professor, Indigenous Education, in the Dept. of Curriculum & Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia. He is Co-Advisor of a MEd in Ecojustice & Sustainability Education cohort, and Co-Director of the bi-annual Peru Global Seminar: Ecology, Technology & Indigeneity in the High Amazon. Prior to coming to UBC, Peter was an Associate Professor at the University College of the North, Head of First Nations Education at the University of Victoria, and Assistant Professor in Environmental Studies at York University.

Peter’s scholarship centres on equivalency of Indigenous knowledges and practices, narrativity and orality as equivalent genres for the creation and dissemination of knowledge, and ecojustice and sustainability learning in the Global North and Global South. All of Peter’s academic publications in books, book chapters and peer-reviewed academic and literary journals have been written in a narrative form, a type of ‘oral writing/speaking on the page’ so that his scholarship can be accessible not only to the academy, but to the communities with whom he is conducting research, as well as the wider public.

For over two decades, Peter’s research with Indigenous communities in British Columbia, and more recently with the Kichwa-Lamista in the High Amazon of Peru, has focused on regeneration of Indigenous languages, knowledges, ways of knowing, and ecotechnological practices to support them in cultural renewal and ecological sustainability. His current research with the Kichwa-Lamista explores how the interdependent enactments between the human and more-than-human contribute to their survival and continuance.

Submit your proposal to the 2020 conference here.