Brittany Amell

Hello!

My name is Brittany Amell.

You can call me Britt.

I am a Canadian interdisciplinary social sciences researcher, educator, artist, and activist with over a decade of experience in education, research, communications, and advocacy. I earned my PhD in Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies from Carleton University in January 2023.

Mitacs Postdoctoral Fellow (University of Victoria)

As of May 2024, I joined the INKE (Implementing New Knowledge Environments) partnership at the ETCL (Electronic Textual Cultures Lab, University of Victoria) as a Mitacs Accelerate Postdoctoral Fellow in Open, Collaborative Scholarship. Dr. Ray Siemens is my supervisor.

This postdoc builds on my previous research, which focused on epistemic (in)equity, “unconventional” modes of knowing, and community/ies. It also extends it, by inviting me to:

  • Engage with and participate in open scholarship and open social scholarship as a movement, form of resistance, and topic of study
  • Contribute to communal efforts to build the infrastructures that are needed to support community-driven scholarship and collaborative models of knowledge sharing
  • Consider the social, political, and technical implications of (and intersections with) open practices in digital research, production, and sharing

Some of the outputs associated with this work have included collaborating on the HSSCommons (Canada’s first and only public repository and social networking page for the Humanities and Social Sciences community!) with Dr. Graham Jensen (UVIC), Dr. Ray Siemens (UVIC), and the rest of the ETCL team.

In collaboration with members of the INKE Partnership (for a list of partners, click here), I also contribute to the Open Scholarship Policy Observatory (OSPO) in a lead policy fellow role. Some of my recent contributions to the OSPO have challenged me to consider the implications of generative artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms for open access and open social scholarship.

Elsewhere

Outside of this, I regularly collaborate on various projects including, most recently, one focusing on the socio-rhetorical dimensions of academic failure with Dr. Katja Thieme (UBC, link to Google Scholar page). I’ve also had the fortunate experience of co-editing a book that engages with the topic of re-imagining doctoral writing with Dr. Cecile Badenhorst (Memorial U, link to Google Scholar page) and Dr. James Burford (Warwick U, link to Google Scholar page). This book is available open access digitally via the WAC Clearinghouse and in-print here via the University Press of Colorado.

I am an active member of the Centretown Ottawa community, located on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin-Anishinabeg territory, where I regularly support the campaigns of local progressive political candidates in a research and communications capacity, collaborate as a member of the Dalhousie Parents’ Day Care Centre on donation drives, and join other local artist-activists in introducing intentional interventions in Centretown’s visual landscape.

Art by Britt

A skull appears in an ice cream cone, with a scoop of ice cream sitting atop the skull's head. Letters are arranged across the bottom of the image to spell the word "wait"
A grey circle appears centred against a white background. A white femme holds a camera up to her eye, as she smiles. The words, "HELLO world" appear to hover over her right (the viewer's left) shoulder. The words, "white feminism" appear vertically in the upper right hand corner. A woman wearing a hijab and a red prayer dress faces away from the viewer. Temporary dwellings appear clustered together in a black and white photograph situated in the bottom third of the image.
Two children appear to fly a kit as a cluster of war planes fly above and to the left.
A hand drawn self portrait sits in the centre of this collage. Images cut-out from a magazine are positioned around the self-portrait. One of these images is a photograph of a bridge with the words "This is Indian Land" spray-painted on the side.
Stolen Land — Paper collage and drawing by Britt Amell
Set in space, this collage features a topsy-turvy rollercoaster at the bottom of the frame. Above it, a sort of jelly mold faces downwards. A smoking volcano appears to sprout out of the jelly cake thing. Two rollerskates hang in the balance.
Set against a blue sky with fluffy white clouds, a frog sits perched on a moon. The moon has one eye that gazes towards the viewer. A dainty hand reaches out from the bottom right hand corner towards the bottom centre. In the centre, a ballpoint pen appears taped to the image. Words, cutout of a magazine, are arranged to say "a style so fresh!!!"
A femme presenting person is situated in the bottom right corner. Magnetic words are arranged into a poem that reads as follows: fall behind no music that death clench that spirit of disconnect come hither.
A typewriter appears in the middle of the image. Feminine eyes appear to the left of the typewriter. The word "NOW" repeats, scrolling down from the upper right corner towards the bottom right corner. A temporary community, possibly refugee, is observed in the background.
An image of a scanned sheet of loose leaf paper that has 'do you ever feel like you're in the wrong story' written in cursive with blue pen. A mini collage of a camera with the words 'creative perspective' is positioned below the text.
In the wrong story? Paper cut-out collage by Britt Amell
A finger points upwards. Balanced on top of the pointing finger is a cut-out of an eye. Stacked on top of the eye is an image of a femme person, sans eyes. The background for the image is white with a black circle positioned in the middle of the image, behind the stack.
Get in touch with me at britt amell . at . g m a i l . c o m

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