News

Project Someone Director Vivek Venkatesh is set to attend THE CYBERSECURITY REVOLUTION 2021 event where he will discuss the Landscape of Hope Project on May 21, 2021 10:00 UTC/ 6AM (Local).

This open and inclusive event streams from locations worldwide from UTC 0:00 until midnight. It is free to attend and requires no registration. 

Viewers can ask questions in the chat and on twitter using #SECREV2021.

Watch the event

Photo: Philipp Lansing – Unsplash

The University of Oslo’s Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) recently featured Combating Violent Extremism: Insights from Former Right-Wing Extremists, a study by Project Someone collaborator Ryan Scrivens, its Director Vivek Venkatesh, and other collaborators Maxime Bérubé and Tiana Gaudette. 

Read the article

Project Someone Director, Vivek Venkatesh, will join the Mosaic Institute’s upcoming panel on combating discrimination and online hate through social media in the context of education and youth on Tuesday, May 25th, from 6-7:30 pm EDT on Zoom.

The Mosaic institute is currently offering monthly panels on key issues linked to peace and justice education to benefit students and teachers. 

Register for this free public event.

In November 2020, the Landscape of Hope collective conducted a COVID-safe artists residency at the 4th Space at Concordia University in Montreal / Tiohtià:ke. Below are videos of the final performance as well as interviews with the musicians and visual artists.

Over the period of over a week, the team collaborated in creating soundscapes and visual representations of resilience in a COVID-era.

In attendance were Landscape of Hope creators Vivek Venkatesh and Owen Chapman, collaborators Martin Lelonde (UQAM) and Annabelle Brault. Concordia students were Nik Forrest, Éva Roy and Lou Raskin. UQAM students were Marilou Lyonnais Archambault and Michel Poulin.

Concordia student, Nakitta Hannah documented the event and it was organised by Kathryn Urbaniak. The residency was funded by Canadian Heritage and the FRQSC, and made possible thanks to The Office of the Vice-President, Research and Graduate Studies (OVPRGS) and the 4th Space.

Watch the Performance

Watch the interviews with the visual artists

Watch the interviews with the musicians

The UNESCO-PREV Chair’s watchwords for 2020 were adaptation and resilience in the context of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Although the latter forced the postponement of several important events, the Chair offered its first massive open online course, “From Hate to Hope,” and developed PROFILE, a new toolkit on racial and social profiling.

The Chair also continued to expand its mapping of areas of expertise and its bank of experts in the prevention of violent radicalization and extremism. It also developed a new research program on misinformation, conspiracy thinking and violent extremism.

Despite an increase in acts of solidarity, we have witnessed a proliferation of misinformation, hateful discourse, intolerance and violent extremist ideologies. Consequently, the crisis has fuelled and reinforced an already well-established global trend. As a result, the Chair experienced a particularly active year in Quebec, Canada and internationally.

Read the report.

Project Someone Director, Vivek Venkatesh, will deliver the keynote titled Social Pedagogy to Build Resilience Against Discrimination: Magnifying the Voices of Marginalised Populations for the Canadian Association of Research Administrators (CARA) 50th Annual Conference May 10-15, 2021. 

This year’s theme, Adaptable, Flexible, and Creative Research Administration in the New Normal, reflects current efforts to adapt to the changes brought about by the pandemic and the resulting upswing in research and technology. The Virtual Conference will include over 800 delegates involved with the information management and administration of complex research operations.

More information.

Project Someone Director, Vivek Venkatesh, will participate in the upcoming 88th ACFAS Congress where he will present “Pédagogie sociale – Comment bâtir une résilience durable dans les communautés marginalisées” on May 5, 2021, for the session titled “L’éducation, rampart contre le populisme.” 

ACFAS has highlighted this session in this press release (in French only), and its sponsor, The Conseil Supérieur de l’Éducation, has featured all speakers and their bios here (in French only).

Project Someone Director Vivek Venkatesh recently joined The Action Summit to Combat Online Hate with other experts to discuss the growing problem of Online Hate.

Funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Anti-Racism Action Program and organized by The Canadian Coalition to Combat Online Hate, powered by CIJA, This sold-out event took place on April 14 and 15, 2021.

More information on sessions and speakers.

Project Someone Director Vivek Venkatesh recently spoke at Accéder à soi. Accéder à l’autre, a second Study Day organized by The UNESCO Chair on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions at Université Laval, the UNESCO Chair for Human Rights and Democracy, the Observatory of Diversity and Cultural Rights and the CELAT, Cultures – Arts – Societies Research Center. The event explored the 2005 UNESCO Convention, artistic freedom and the inclusion of migrants in democratic societies.

Download the program (in French only) here.

Photo: Andrea Piacquadio

For this first digital lab event of the Spring 2021 season, Project Someone collaborators, Concordia University Ph.D. student Rawda Harb and Postdoctoral fellow Méi-Ra St-Laurent, will present tools and avenues of intervention on how to identify hateful content online and help people in the community who experience it. 

 Participants will first learn about tools and notions to allow them to distinguish between the different forms of hate speech online, including some strategies to defuse it. The presenters will discuss several initiatives, including Landscape of Hope, and participants will have the opportunity to practice what they have learned. 

 When: Thursday, April 22, 2021, from 12:30-1:30 EDT 

 More details for this free Zoom event can be found here.