Professor, Concordia University
Vivek Venkatesh, PhD is an internationally renowned researcher and research-creator focused on building community resilience and tolerance against hate through a resolutely public pedagogical approach. He holds the UNESCO co-Chair in Prevention of Radicalisation and Violent Extremism (UNESCO-PREV), and is Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (CSLP) at Concordia University, where he is Full Professor of Inclusive Practices in Visual Arts and Chair of the Department of Art Education.
His myriad contributions to promoting tolerance and non-violence have been co-created with community and scholastic partners, and have taken many forms: massive open online courses, multimedia portals, curricular frameworks, peer-reviewed publications, feature films, documentaries, musical soundtracks, as well as multimedia productions. He has been awarded close to $8.9 million (CAD) in external funding as principal or co-principal investigator, has published and presented nearly 70 peer-reviewed scholarly pieces, as well as curated and performed at over 25 festival, art installation and concert events.
Dr. Venkatesh’s leadership with respect to unique and impactful collaborations has been remarkable. His directorship of the CSLP is but one example. Working at the intersection of cognitive and motivational science, instructional design, educational technologies, research-creation and social pedagogy, the Centre has a highly multi- and inter-disciplinary cohort of nearly 50 researchers, over a dozen professional staff and several hundred students. Under Dr. Venkatesh’s directorship, the Centre’s refreshed mandate has been granted $2.24 million (CAD) in funding for infrastructure until 2027, and now emphasizes collaborations with scholars and community practitioners from diverse backgrounds in the fields of political science, humanities, religion, psychology, philosophy, multimedia art, and clinical psychiatry.
Among the most prominent and extraordinary initiatives led by Dr. Venkatesh through the CSLP and the UNESCO-PREV Chair is Project SOMEONE (SOcial Media EducatiON Everyday), a multi-media online platform devoted to the reduction of hate and violent extremism as a function of education in critical digital literacy. Most recently, Dr. Venkatesh has focused his highly multidisciplinary efforts on cultivating resilience to online hate using audio, visual, and textual materials developed as part of his research program. Alongside research-creation specialist Owen Chapman, they are engaging the multiple challenges of hate speech at their roots, through the development of two unique public and participative pedagogy projects: Landscape of Hate and Landscape of Hope. Both of these projects expand knowledge mobilization activities far beyond traditional academic paths, and include film and music production, and curation of live performances by musicians, visual artists, filmmakers and writers. They have reached more than 6000 people at festivals in Canada, Norway, and Iceland.