Dr. Kim Sawchuk is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, holds the Concordia University Research Chair in Mobile Media Studies, and is the Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies for the Faculty of Arts and Science at Concordia University.
Since the mid-1990s, much of Kim Sawchuk’s intellectual attention has focused on the intersection between age, ageing, and communication technologies (see: actproject.ca). Her research on ageing in networked societies is intersectional and challenges lingering ageist assumptions within media studies, where old age and new media are often positioned as incommensurable topics. This research is dedicated to fostering opportunities for intergenerational media-making and is foundational to a re-theorization of how we understand key concepts in the field of communications, such as mediation and mediatization. Dr. Sawchuk’s research asks what it means to age in a society where the pressure to become digital is being made into an imperative for participation in public life. She has conducted major ethnographic investigations on “seniors and cell phones” with Dr. Barbara Crow of York University. These studies have demonstrated the need for researchers to understand the connections between ageing, personal household economies, political economic forces and the policies that influence cell phone use; they also question how we understand “non-use”. Kim’s most recent work on ageing and media is centred on community-based media practices with older adults and is asking questions about the ways in which Web 3.0 is shaping public knowledge of age and ageing.
Kim is also a co-founder of the Critical Disability Studies Working Group (CDSWG) at Concordia, which is part of the cluster Communities and Differential Mobilities, within the newly reforming Hexagram. Her research in this area explores the use of research-creation and media-making with the Montreal disability rights community.
Current Research Collaborations:
Dr. Sawchuk is the director of Ageing, Communication, Technologies: Experiencing a Digital World In Later Life (ACT), a seven-year research project funded under the auspices of a 2.9 million dollar SSHRC Partnership Grant. ACT is an international, interdisciplinary, and multi-methodological research project that investigates the transformation of experiences of ageing with the proliferation of new forms of mediated communications in networked societies. ACT is a project housed at Concordia University, comprising various partners: Canadian and international universities, research groups (e.g., ENAS, NANAS, and WAM), and local community partners (e.g., RECAA, Atwater Library, Groupe Harmonie).
Dr. Sawchuk is the co-director of Wi: Journal of Mobile Media and a co-founder of the Mobile Media Lab (York-Concordia), located in Concordia’s Department of Communication Studies. She completed a six-year term as the editor of the Canadian Journal of Communication and is the co-founder of Studio XX, a feminist research and media arts centre located Montréal.
Education
BA, Political Science, University of Winnipeg
MA, Social and Political Thought, York University
PhD, Social and Political Thought, York University
Recent Conference Presentations
“TheReligion of the Average Israeli Jew”, Israel at 65 Years: Dimensions ofNational Identity in a Divided Society”, Concordia University, 2013.
“Antisemitismin Quebec”, Oyfn Veg (On the Road): aSymposium in Canadian Jewish Studies in honour of Professor Gerald Tulchinsky,University of Toronto, 2013.
“TheDavid Ahenakew Affair and the Problem of Using the Canadian Justice System inthe Fight Against Antisemitism”, Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, 2014.
“YehudaKaufman (Even Shmuel): the Portrait of an Israeli scholar, Intellectual, andActivist, 1927-1976”, Canadian Society for Jewish Studies, 2014; Associationfor Israel Studies, 2014.
“La migration hassidique à Montréal depuis 1941,” MIGRATIONSJUIVES CONTEMPORAINES, CIRCULATIONS ET ANCRAGES, Université du Québec àMontréal, 2014.
“A Link in the Great American Chain”: the Evolution ofan Orthodox Jewish Community in Cleveland, Ohio” Conference on the JewishCommunity of Cleveland, 2015
“A ‘Jewish Monkey Trial’: the Cleveland Jewish Centerand the Emerging Borderline between Orthodox and Conservative Judaism in 1920sNorth America”, Canadian Society for Jewish Studies, 2015
“Hasidic Migration to Montreal, 1941-2014”,Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, 2015.
“The Impact of “Lev Tahor” in Canada and ItsImplications for the Study of Contemporary Jewish Migration”, Sephardic, NorthAfrican and Middle Eastern Jewish Communities in North America (Montreal) 2015.
A Kabbalist in Montreal: the Life and Times of Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg
Articles
Dr. Robinson has published over fifty articles in journals such as Studies in Religion, Jewish Social Studies, American Jewish History, American Jewish Archives Journal, Jewish Quarterly Review, Judaism, Modern Judaism, Canadian Ethnic Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies.
Books (edited, co-edited, translations)
Cyrus Adler: Selected Letters (2 volumes, 1985). (Winner of the Kenneth Smilen Award for Judaica non-fiction).
AnEveryday Miracle: Yiddish Culture in Montreal(editor), (Montreal, Véhicule Press, 1990).
TheThought of Moses Maimonides: Philosophical and Legal Studies (editor),(Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter, Edwin Mellen Press,1990).
MenahemKaufman, An Ambiguous Partnership: Non-Zionist and Zionist in America,1939-1948 (Jerusalem, Magnes Press, 1991) (translator from Hebrew toEnglish)
Moses Cordovero'sIntroduction to Kabbala: An Annotated Translation of His Or Ne'Erav (Ktav/Yeshiva University Press, 1994).
TheInteraction of Scientific and Jewish Cultures in Modern Times (co-editor),(Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter, Edwin Mellen Press, 1994).
RenewingOur Days: Montreal Jews in the Twentieth Century(editor), (Montreal, Vehicule Press, 1995)
Juifs etCanadiens Français dans la société Québécoise(co-editor) (Sillery, Septentrion, 2000)
NotWritten in Stone: Canadian Jews, Constitutions and Constitutionalism in Canada(co-editor) (Ottawa, University of Ottawa Press, 2003).
Joseph Margoshes, AWorld Apart: a Memoir of Jewish Life in Nineteenth Century Galicia (Boston,Academic Studies Press, 2008) (co-translator from Yiddish to English).
LesCommunautés juives de Montréal: histoire et enjeux contemporains(Sillery, QC, Septentrion, 2010) (co-editor)
Canada’s Jews in Time,Space, and Spirit(Boston, Academic Studies Press, 2013) (editor)
The Future of the Past: the Jewish Public Library ofMontreal, 1914-2014 (Montreal, Concordia University Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies,2015) (co-editor)
History,Memory, and Jewish Identity(Boston, Academic Studies Press, 2016) (co-editor)
Books
Rabbisand Their Community: Studies in the Immigrant Orthodox Rabbinate in Montreal,1896-1930. (Calgary,University of Calgary Press, 2007). Available for free download:
http://dspace.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/49279
Translating aTradition: Studies in American Jewish History (Boston, Academic Studies Press,2008).
A History of Antisemitism in Canada (Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015).
