The 2026 Big Thinking Summit: Inflection Point introduced a new kind of Federation event. Built through an interdisciplinary open call for proposals, it created a national forum for exploring how humanities and social sciences knowledge can contribute to public life.
Several participants and presenters were invited to engage with the event in a rapporteur capacity. Chosen for the individual perspectives they brought to the Summit; they reflected on the conversations they witnessed unfolding across the program.
Report on collaboration and communities of practice at the Big Thinking Summit
By Gabriel Flacks, Humanities Teacher, Champlain College, and Co-founder of Linkr
Background
At the Federation for the Humanities and Social Science’s Big Thinking Summit, June 8-11, 2026, I was invited to serve as a rapporteur. I was to focus on the way the Federation could enhance communication and collaboration across the network to support key actions outlined in the Federation’s 2026-2030 strategic plan, including:
- Amplifying impact through advocacy and public engagement
- Strengthening the community through capacity building by supporting scholars and leaders to engage, collaborate, and lead nationally.
- Reimagining new ways of convening by evolving Congress and developing flexible, year-round opportunities for meaningful exchange.
My invitation to serve in this capacity was based on my extensive experience with communities of practice in education that are being used as engines for collaboration and innovation.
My academic research is in Philosophy (MA) and Cognitive Science (PhD c). Since 2006, I’ve taught in and coordinated the Humanities Department at Champlain College, Saint-Lambert. Informed by my research, my courses on cognitive science, critical thinking, the philosophy of science, and ethics always integrate experiential learning, such as Virtual Exchange, community service projects, student portfolios, and online community building. Over the last 10 years, I also led the development and coordination of the College’s Experiential Learning certificate program.
I’ve been privileged to work at an institution that has been supportive of these initiatives, but even with administrative support, implementation of such programming was initially nearly impossible given limitations in campus software. Education technology has not often been designed to foster inter-campus collaboration, student agency, or off-campus and community intersections with academia. This inspired my work in developing technology to support these approaches to higher education.
In 2016, I co-founded Linkr, a company that provides secure, private, social and customizable hubs to learning communities of all shapes and sizes. Linkr has supported dozens of institutions, organizations and programs responding to a rapid and insistent technological, economic and cultural change. All stakeholders in universities and colleges are facing enormous impacts and challenges due to the disruption of AI, attacks on research credibility, skepticism about degree values, and fiscal restructuring. Increasing communication and collaboration within and outside our community is a way that higher education and the Humanities and Social Sciences can clarify and assert our relevance while enabling our disciplines to participate in creating the best future for Canada.
Case Studies
Presenters at the Summit provided inspiring case studies of how the Humanities and Social Sciences are responding to this inflection point. The Summit itself amplified the voices of innovative members and gave attendees paths to collaborate, strengthening the community. Across the Summit’s three days, I learned about how pedagogical models are being updated, research opportunities are being expanded, and community ties are being forged by institutions. It became clear that the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences finds itself well-positioned to support its members in responding to this moment by following through on its action plan and building its own online community with various communities of practice, a desire for collaboration many presenters and attendees highlighted during the Summit.
University of Alberta’s Chief Librarian, Dr. Dale Askey, in a panel on “research innovation,” pointed to a “malaise of hyper-specialization” that hinders research and pedagogy in higher education. While cultures emerge in distinct disciplines for good reason, as expertise breeds specialization and neologisms, insular methodologies and vocabulary restrict clarity in communication and limit collaboration and hinder the scaling of innovative and impactful practices.
Such hyper-specialization limits collaborative progress within and across institutions and reduces the public’s capacity for recognizing and taking advantage of research.
In a session on “Reimagining Higher Education,” Shauna Hingston from the Alberta Office of Public Safety described her role in developing policy related to disaster preparedness. She attended in hopes of further making the connection of research to policy but noted the challenges of accessing relevant research as a non-academic. An opening for improvement in this regard is in front of us, and as Hingston illustrated, is sought by those outside academia; it is felt by those inside and outside academic contexts and opens space for better communication of existing research to enable access and opportunity.
The session, “Knowledge Exchange and Mobilization,” described this as a need to “connect insight to influence.” Attendees discussed how such “vectors of influence” can be enacted and monitored, encouraging and increasing approaches to help the public recognize the pragmatic impacts of research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Federation here can play a key role in supporting its members by sharing strategies for mobilizing research and tracking the impact of research, not only via citations but in non-academic community contexts. The outcomes found in research in Humanities and Social Sciences are increasingly sought, not only as quantitative outcomes but also in qualitative visioning that can inspire and direct public servants, industry leaders, NGOs, and all Canadians looking to build a healthy, strong, and safe Canada.
Institutional collaboration with public policy makers and the communities of which academic institutions are a part is one way to showcase and build this impact. Beyond research, opening collaborative pedagogical opportunities between academia and the community can support this messaging, bringing academic research into contact with community members. It also updates classwork, guaranteeing its relevance to undergraduate and graduate students while building 21st century competencies fostered by studying in our disciplines, including communication, creativity, critical thinking, information literacy, and understanding of the relationships between Canada’s past, present, and future. Many presentations, including my own on the College’s experiential learning program, highlighted how many institutions are building in this direction.
In the presentation, “How Can We Nurture and Scale up Future-oriented Innovative Universities?” presenters from Olin University in Boston illustrated an institution-wide project-based and experiential learning approach. All students are engaged in project-based learning and collaborative engineering models, often in partnership with local businesses, ensuring learners see how their education has a direct impact and connection with non-academic life. The presentation showed how Olin is indeed “a dynamic and forward-thinking college transforming how engineering is defined, how it's taught, and how an engineer can serve people and the planet.” Co-presenters at this session showcased their flipped classroom approaches at, for example, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), where many classes are engaged in active learning approaches approaching community challenges.
Louisa Cruz from Toronto Metropolitan University offered a unique hands-on workshop where attendees could experience how such active approaches in classrooms can enable individuals to develop and harness their own creativity and leadership skills, key to academic research-creation and increasingly crucial in the current zeitgeist. I began this facilitated, multi-stage workshop with curiosity, and in the end appreciated how Cruz’s workshop gave each individual time to be introspective about their own manner of learning, and then, in sharing our varied approaches, illustrated the value of bringing together collaborators with different approaches to knowledge-generation.
After the hands-on workshop section, several attendees pointed to the inherent inclusivity of these methods, as it offers space where varied “styles” of creative process are honoured, opening space for Indigenous approaches to knowledge and learning. The Summit itself had carefully celebrated Indigenous ways of knowing throughout the event. Jerry and Jo-Ann Saddleback helped open the event with President of the Federation, Karine Morin, respecting and recognizing differences in culture to open dialogues. This kick-off illustrated how this kind of intercultural dialogue is a case study of, in Saddleback’s words, the “magic of human beings” in our ability to exchange ideas and stories.
Celebrated journalist and author Tanya Tanaga brought this theme of listening to Indigenous voices to a national level in her June 9 keynote. Tanaga insisted that Canada needs to better ensure Indigenous peoples’ stories are organized and made available and has taken on the responsibility of gathering and sharing stories via a search for such stories. This research has provided the raw materials for her work. Yet she explained how challenging finding this information has been. Humanities and Social Science disciplines, with the help of the Federation, can play a role here as stewards and “contextualizers” of these stories.
Dr. Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey, as part of a keynote panel on Democratic Resilience, echoed Tanaga’s messages. While the past may be replete with injustice and pain, we don’t have the luxury to pretend it doesn’t exist; when we recognize past behaviours, we can best make decisions about our future actions. Through a deepened understanding of how we’ve gotten here as a society, we can look to a better future. In Adjetay’s words, “there is hope in knowing”.
Conclusion
It was a privilege to be able to spend my time at the Summit where I directly experienced the value of collaboration across the Federation. Now, I look forward to supporting the Federation in reimagining how all its members can engage in increased collaboration across disciplines and communities.
The Federation is introducing new Communities of Practice, providing its members and the wider Humanities and Social Sciences community streamlined paths towards collaboration and communications across disciplines, institutions, and sectors. Communities of Practice sparked at the Big Thinking Summit are already emerging. The Research Impact group enables participants to explore strategies to showcase the impact of research from Humanities and Social Sciences. Another is exploring the Futures of Humanities and Social Sciences, opening broad conversations about the future we are collectively building.
If you have ideas about other Communities of Practice that you’d like to lead or join, please reach out to me directly or share them in the hub. We all have an opportunity to not just imagine but enact and embody new approaches for Humanities and Social Sciences researchers and educators to impact the world. Let’s get down to it, together.