10 years of WSSR: Making better decisions together
This year, Concordia’s famed Workshops on Social Science Research (WSSR) celebrates its 10th anniversary.
It’s been a long time since Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson’s most famous quotation was uttered, “Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects,” he said.
Is he still right? In a political era of big data, micro targeting and political interference from foreign state operatives, how does media and political communications react? How do demographic shifts and evolving Canadian values manifest in the political sphere?
These are some of the big questions I’ve been exploring with the students of the WSSR since I started guest lecturing in 2015. My goal in each day long session is to equip students with new tools to analyse and understand politics and media.
Starting in Fall 2018, the theme will be ‘Deliberating a Public Agenda’. And with a federal election looming, WSSR will have plenty to talk about.
The WSSR provides opportunities to reflect, analyze and learn from some of Canada’s most interesting minds. Here, politicians, policy-makers, pundits and academics gather in a convening unlike any other.
These workshops are interdisciplinary experiences for students and non-students alike, creating a brilliant tactical training for social science research.
Strategic foresight, sense making and pattern finding are not traditional classes you can take in university. These are skills learned through practical application and practiced ability. Students in my WSSR workshops leave with a fresh understanding of the Canadian and media landscape, with some practical skills related to my work in social innovation and impact.
In a rapidly shifting political landscape students need outlets to challenge their own ideas and experience new ways of learning. This is where Dr. Mebs Kanji, Ms. Kerry Tannahill, and their entire team shine: they have a great ability to program topical lectures and sessions, while keeping a very close eye on the changing political winds in Canada.
Core to the mandate of the WSSR experience is to teach people to make better decisions by equipping them with new tools of inquiry and new ideas to challenge their own.
The WSSR team has built a reputation among decision makers and commentators as a venue to try out new ideas and teach core democratic concepts and also learn with a new generation of leaders and thinkers.
There isn’t really any other setting in Canada where academics, practitioners, students and the general public can come together with respect and purpose to learn and be exposed to so many new ideas, all with value and many in opposition to one another.
The WSSR has many exciting things in store for the coming year, and I look forward to being a part of it.
Ian Capstick is the founder of MediaStyle, and a frequent WSSR workshop contributor.