PhD Oral Exam - Jacob Le Gallais, Art Education

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

Through studio-based research-creation and an integrated framework of post-qualitative inquiry and heuristic approaches, this illustrated dissertation engages with the urban wildlife, multispecies habitat, and post-industrial environment of the Lachine Canal. Positioning artistic practice as the primary site of knowledge production, the study mobilizes material inquiry, embodied observation, and iterative making as central modes of investigation. Concurrently, it is further informed by enchantment, drawing on childhood experiences of folk art, fairytales, and illustrated books that shape the work's aesthetic language and conceptual orientation. The research unfolded across three interrelated/overlapping phases of Observation, Creation, and Outreach, and a coda. The first two phases occurred simultaneously through embedded observation and responsive studio practice, producing a body of research-creation artworks that reimagine the Canal's other-than-human presences and reflect situated, affective encounters with the site. These works draw upon folk aesthetics, queer ecology, ecofeminism, childhood nostalgia, storytelling, and the imaginative possibilities of multispecies worlds. The third phase extended this inquiry into the public sphere through an exhibition and two participatory workshops, inviting participants into collective reflection and collaborative artmaking, culminating in a shadow-play collage installation. Finally, the coda reassembles the artworks in their intended installation, reasserting their ambitions to propose an alternative world. Documented through photographs and video, the project positions art as a catalyst for exploration, shared learning, dialogue, and relational engagement. The inquiry culminated in four interrelated instances of noticing: the capacity of artmaking to visualize community across human and other-than-human relationships; growth through adaptation as a shared condition of urban multispecies life; the role of perception and storytelling in reshaping encounters with place; and expanding understandings of the Anthropocene through situated artistic practice. Rather than functioning as conventional qualitative findings, these instances of noticing emerged through material experimentation, embodied encounters, dialogic engagement, and the entangled relationships between researcher, artworks, participants, place, and the other-than-human presences of the Lachine Canal. In keeping with post-qualitative inquiry's emphasis on emergence, relationality, and becoming, they are presented as recurring patterns across artistic practice, public engagement, and pedagogical encounter, inviting continued attentiveness to the possibilities of research-creation as a means of engaging with multispecies worlds.