Public Humanities Hub Toolkits | Public Humanities Hub

As part of our Public Scholarship Series, where we host presentations by humanities scholars and other experts on publicly-engaged methods and skills, we have created a number of toolkits to assist with various kinds of public scholarship and practice. Each toolkit is themed around a specific kind of public scholarship. Please see below for a list of toolkits that are currently available. As we develop more, they will appear below in this same list. Toolkits are also periodically updated as necessary.

A tangle of blue and white hand-drawn circles as if bubbles surfacing against a dark background with light streaks in various directions, Barbara Yelin's illustration from But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust (2022)

Art and Testimony

This toolkit builds on the advice and resources shared by experts in a webinar series exploring arts-based research methodologies for constructing survivor testimonies. The chapters examine a variety of art forms—including performance, graphic novels, and comics—as approaches for documenting testimonies, conducting research, and teaching. Organized into three thematic clusters, the toolkit provides both methodological insights and practical resources available at UBC and beyond.

Performance as Testimony
Videotaped Interviews, Graphic Novels and Comics as Testimony
Teaching through Visual Testimony

Interlocking shapes in moody blues and greys show textures and markings in white, in Paul Klee's Rocks at Night (1939), Watercolor and ink on chalk-and glue-primed letter paper, mounted on paper. From the collection of the Guggenheim Museum in the public domain

Trauma-informed Research

This toolkit builds on the advice and resources shared by experts in a webinar series on trauma-informed research and practice. It introduces four thematic clusters with methods of trauma-informed research and further points to resources available at UBC and beyond.

Trauma-informed Research as Witnessing
Trauma-informed Research as Pedagogy
Trauma-informed Methods of Public Scholarship
Trauma-informed Research and Arts-based Methods

People extending their hands to grip those of others to lead them out of large askew structures and rubble. "None of us are free until we're all free" by Diana Nguyen, hosted at the Free Palestine Project for non-commercial use

Witnessing Genocide

This toolkit is for scholars whose work engages with the public realm and/or takes on public forms. It is also for public intellectuals who take up the role of the scholar-activist, or whose work is informed by theories and modes of changemaking. It builds from and expands upon the discussions and resources shared by scholars and engages with the following core questions. In the face of a genocide:

What is the role of the public intellectual?
How does the public scholar engage in responsible, ethical, and productive knowledge mobilization activities?
What kinds of publicly-engaged activities can most meaningfully contribute to acts of witnessing?