Public Engagement and Impact in Research-Creation

Driven by a growing institutional focus on outreach and impact, researchers must navigate the dual challenge of producing menaingful work and communicating its significance beyond academia. Within the context of research-creation, where outputs can take various forms (exhibitions, performances, podcasts, public-facing activities, etc.), these questions of research dissemination and community engagement are approached in unique ways. In fact, the nature of the creative output shapes the research-creation process itself, making research communication an integral part of the inquiry. This roundtable will bring together researchers from diverse fields and backgrounds to explore these dynamics and share experiences from their own practices.

Join us for an engaging roundtable bringing together PhD candidate Richy Srirachanikorn, Dr. Scott DeJong, Dr, Hillary Bergen and Dr. Aurélie Petit to share experiences, discuss how creative forms drive public engagement, and explore the evolving landscape of research dissemination.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS:

Richy Srirachanikorn (he/him) is a doctoral candidate in the Social and Cultural Analysis program.

Rather than studying nostalgia as a historical concept or as a backwards-looking emotion, Richy looks at how people use technologies to recompose the past not for the way it was, but the way it could have been. Can we remind ourselves of the futures we had hoped for, but never came to be, in the past? What do these “lost futures” mean for the present?

Richy is a founding member of the Nostagain Network, the first student-led research collective in North America exploring the generative uses of nostalgia. Founded at the Milieux Institute in 2022, the network meets annually at the 4TH SPACE for its symposia and research-creation expo.

Aurélie Petit is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Chaire de recherche du Québec sur l’intelligence artificielle et le numérique francophones (IANF) in Montréal, where she works on the (Re)Generative AI for Culture project. She holds a Ph.D. in Film Studies from Concordia University.

Her research explores animation and technology through the lens of gender and sexuality. She has held positions at the Canada Research Chair in Digital Regulation in Work and Life, the AI + Society Initiative at the University of Ottawa, and the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research, building a body of work that moves fluidly between critical inquiry and creative practice.

Her intermedia research-creation projects have been presented at MUTEK Forum 2024, MUTEK Forum 2025, and HTMlles 2026.

Hilary Bergen is currently on faculty in the English department at Dawson College. Her research, which is influenced by her professional dance training, is on the historical intersection between dance and emergent media. She recently held an FRQSC postdoctoral fellowship at the New School in New York City, and she is the organizer of the international Dance and/as Technology conference, held most recently at UQAM in Montréal in 2024. She is a 2022 graduate of Concordia’s Interdisciplinary Humanities PhD program.

Scott DeJong holds a PhD in Communication studies from Concordia University where his research examined the relationship between playfulness and disinformation. His work bridges research and design to explore how alt communities use playful devices like memes to spread false content, how games are being used to teach the public about disinformation, and how interventions can incorporate play to re-evaluate critical thinking. This work has led to large-scale analysis of fake news games, various studies on political memes and content within Canadian social media, and the design of media literacy boardgames. In addition to his dissertation research, Scott actively studies class precarity and videogames, digital labour markets, relationships between humour and games, tabletop community cultures, and simulation design.

  November  5, 2026

1:30-3 PM

Milieux Resource Room EV 11.705