We live in a world where prisons are seen as a necessary condition for public safety and accountability. But there were no prisons on Turtle Island prior to colonization! The abolitionist dr eam of a world without prisons is grounded in a concrete historical context. This project both recovers and invents decolonial abolitionist methods for dismantling colonial institutions like prisons and jails, and for building freer, healthier, and more just communities.

United Way will be adapting their resources around the creation of a Social Innovation Lab to provide support to organisations impacted by COVID19, specifically be increasing their capacity to deal with new COVID-related challenges. The research will provide evidence and direction for the creation an online collaborative platform that allows community service agencies to access expertise, support and training through a dedicated online portal.

The non-profit sector is in the midst of an upheaval. The pressure of shrinking government budgets, a culture of austerity and fiscal conservatism, access to big data, and trends in corporate philanthropy, are creating new challenges and new opportunities for the sector to position themselves as powerful change agents. In an environment of scarcity, collaborating with other sectors and using evidence based decision making is crucial to ensuring that every dollar goes as far as possible.

Games have, in the last decade, become an important tool for teaching in both the education and business section. The application of games, and game mechanics, in these areas is often called gamification. The aim of this project is to explore how games can be used to create rich, first hand, experiences that can be used by educators to improve learning.

Increasingly, organizations supporting people with disabilities, like Facilitation Wellington Dufferin (FWD), describe their activities in terms of citizenship goals, e.g., promotion of social inclusion, control over one’s own life, and access to natural supports. Key concepts such as citizenship and inclusion are philosophically disputed, raising a “measurement problem”---what would even count as evidence of success?

The intern will investigate the architectural potential and philosophical merit of Near-Living Architecture, a design that allows environments to be aware and empathetic to their occupants. To do this, the intern will edit and contribute to the upcoming Near-Living Architecture Monograph, a written work describing the vision, execution and future applications of research conducted by PBAI. Furthermore, the intern will lead independent research on the topic of emergence, which reveals itself in this work, to create scholarly contributions to the field.