Conference session

The form of the university appears rigid (determined by legislation, budgets, governance, and seemingly stable disciplinary structures), but the rapid destabilization of the last several years suggest a more elastic form for different affordances is necessary. This presentation offers a case study that illustrates how interdisciplinary collaboration across academic, leadership, and operational units can be supported through relational infrastructures. Focussing on the initiative Disability Cultures and Access (DCA), co-led with Dr. Danielle Peers, at the University of Alberta as a practical example of imagining and implementing an elastic form. A key feature of the DCA is its coordinative and emergent approach to leadership embodied in the DCA Strategic Collaborations Table. This Table is an example of a relational infrastructure that operates solely through buy-in and collaboration. It enables decision-makers to share in the identification of strategic priorities and pressing issues, collaborate across projects and teams, and agree on resource coordination and prioritization. On the basis of this case study, the presentation will explore how innovative collaborative infrastructures for change can be activated across diverse institutional contexts. It will this highlight how relational infrastructure grounded in humanities-based approaches can move social change in universities.