Conference session

At a moment when the Humanities and Social Sciences face questions about who produces knowledge, whose voices are amplified, and how authority is recognized, this session asks a central question: what role do academic libraries play in the rapidly evolving research landscape? The Kula: Library Futures Academy at the University of Victoria - the world’s first library-based institute of advanced studies - offers a pathway to how libraries can be a driver of institutional transformation. Our libraries sit at the intersection of knowledge production and technological change, and the Kula Academy explores the implications of this to advance collaborative research and engagement frameworks across disciplines, geographies, and traditional boundaries. This session will benefit academic leaders, HSS scholars, research administrators, digital scholarship practitioners, and community-engaged researchers seeking actionable institutional models rather than abstract critique, and those who are asking themselves what it means “to library” in an age of transformation in higher education.