The R-PEACE team

Fiona Black

Fiona Black is a professor of Religious Studies at Mount Allison University, whose research focuses on the reception of scriptural texts in western cultural and political history. She divides her time between projects on gender, sexuality and the erotic in scriptural texts and traditions and on the impact of religion on the contemporary construction of identity in the Caribbean.

Fiona is an award winning and internationally-recognized teacher who teaches courses in Western religious texts and traditions, strategies of interpretation, gender and sexuality, the body, and religion and violence.  Her pedagogy especially focuses on reading and understanding religious traditions from marginalized perspectives. Her classroom practice includes a variety of collaborative, project-based and experiential opportunities. Currently, Fiona is formulating a Humanities learning Lab for participative pedagogies and she is developing collaborative university and school programming for Marshview Middle School on project-based learning.

Fiona’s work has been funded by SSHRC, Mount Allison University, and by the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religious Studies.

Michael Fox

Michael Fox is a professor of Geography and Environment at Mount Allison University. His teaching and research have focused on place-based education, university-community relations, community planning and municipal affairs, and he is a regular consultant on municipal strategic planning and research, community-based experiential learning, field research methods, housing and land use issues, and small town economic development and sustainability projects. Michael is the Coordinator of the Regional Centre of Excellence for Education for Sustainable Development (RCE Tantramar), a UNESCO designated Centre through the United Nations University. He is a member of the Sackville Schools 2020 group and a member of the Innovation Hub community-based education cooperative within the New Brunswick Department of Education. Michael is a Canadian representative to the Association for Experiential Learning.

Michael strives to connect his students and their learning to the communities in which their university is located through direct research and experiential learning. Recent projects have included an outdoor environmental education project at Salem Elementary School, and at Marshview Middle School, a three-stream recycling program and an arts performance project on youth and environmental issues. Michael’s students are currently working in a wide range of community-based projects, such as Riverview High School, Dorchester Consolidated School, the Town of Sackville, the Sackville Farmer’s Market, S-E Regional Service Commission, and the Department of Education and Early Childhood Education. These projects have been supported by a number of funding agencies, including the SSHRC Aid to Small Universities Program, the New Brunswick Environmental Trust Fund, New Brunswick Heritage, Renaissance Sackville, and Natural Resources Canada.

Erin Steuter

Erin Steuter is a professor of Sociology at Mount Allison who specializes in the analysis of the media.  Her books, Pop Culture Goes to War, At War with Metaphor, and Drone Nation address the role of the news media and popular culture in representing the current war on terror, including issues of Islamophobia and civilian casualties. She has conducted numerous workshops on media literacy, fake news, stereotypes of marginalized groups, manipulative advertising, and representations of women for a wide variety of community organizations such as the Sackville Memorial Hospital, Marshview Middle School, the Town of Sackville, the Moncton Public Library, and the N.B. Conservation Council. 

Erin is an award winning researcher and teacher who has published extensively in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning on creating student engagement with the social world. Her classroom fosters conversations about social justice and activism and she consistently works to create safe and just learning spaces for her students. She has designed and supervised many experiential learning projects for students and community members such as poverty awareness simulations, girl power camps, and alternative media workshops.

Her projects have been funded by the Mount Allison University Teaching Innovation fund, the Purdy Crawford Teaching Centre, and the Mount Allison Leadership in Community Service Learning Grants.

Andrew Wilson

Andrew Wilson is a professor in the department of religious studies at Mount Allison University.  His broad research interests are in the convergences of cultural studies, sacred texts and Christian thought, which he considers alongside various contemporary theoretical frameworks and approaches. Using tools such as deconstructive, gender, psychoanalytic and literary criticisms, Andrew has published on various contemporary cultural phenomena as they intersect with the  ongoing legacy and “afterlives” of the Christian tradition in the secular West. Three current projects include a monograph on postmodernism, an investigation into the links between contemporary portraiture and Christian iconography, and an analysis of modern day pilgrimage traditions.

Andrew is an award-winning teacher, offering courses in the areas of Christianity and culture, theoretical approaches to the study of religion, philosophy of religion and ethics. He is currently the Chair of Sackville Schools 2020, a group of community members working towards the transformation of education in the town of Sackville in accordance with 21st Century learning principles.  He is also Chair of the Sackville Early Music Festival, which presents world class musical performances to the community along with education programs in the schools and other community groups.  Andrew works closely with the Moncton and Saint John Catholic Archdiocese in the area of adult faith formation. Each year he facilitates a number of workshops on a range of topics and presents on various issues as a guest speaker at retreats and local conferences.