Max Liboiron (Memorial University, Canada)

Friday 23 January 2026, 12 midday - 2pm

Learning Centre, Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities

All welcome

Max Liboiron (Memorial University, Canada)

From poking the bear to moving the mountain: a workshop on strategic change for researchers, writers, and communicators

As researchers, writers, and communicators, we often take on projects because we want our work to matter. We aim to shift conversations, unsettle norms, inform decisions, normalize alternatives, or open up new possibilities. But how does change actually happen? And how can we design our work so it genuinely engages the problems we hope to address?

This 90-minute workshop begins with an overview of common theories of how change happens (and fails to happen), and examines the strengths and pitfalls of each. From there, we’ll explore how our own projects interface with the issues we care about, whether those are challenging hetero or homonormativity in popular culture or addressing the climate crisis (or both simultaneously!).

By the end, participants will have practical frameworks for clarifying what kind of change they’re aiming for, how to aim, and how their work can more effectively contribute to it. Think of this workshop as a little bit of therapy for your project: there will be more clarifying frustration than a silver bullet of resolution in the first session. But you do get worksheets to take home.

Dr. Max Liboiron is a Professor of Geography at Memorial University and Director of the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), a lab recognized for its inventive blend of feminist, anti-colonial, and community-led science. Their work moves fluidly between grassroots practice and national policy, from creating new tools for plastics monitoring to reshaping how Canada understands plastics and Indigenous research. Liboiron is the award-winning author of Pollution is Colonialism (Duke, 2021) and co-author of Discard Studies: Wasting, Systems, and Power (MIT, 2022).