Dr. jessie beier, PhD

Biography

jessie l. beier (MEd, PhD) is a teacher, artist, researcher, and conjurer of weird pedagogies for unthought futures. Working at the intersection of pedagogy, philosophy, and contemporary art, her practice crafts experimental concepts and methods that seek to resituate education within the urgencies of ecological collapse, algorithmic governance, and the exhaustion of what counts as knowledge and knowing in the face of today’s planetary realities. 

She is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Art Education at Concordia University, where her teaching and research mobilize research-creation, contemporary theory, artistic practice, experimental methods, and speculative philosophy as materials for a weird pedagogy—an experimental (and always insufficient) pedagogical anti-model, a speculative programme for the unprogrammable that seeks to actualize desired pedagogical otherworlds in collective and creative ways. Across pedagogical roles in museums, schools, universities, and community spaces in Quebec and Alberta, she has developed an approach to art education that asks no how to teach art but what art teaches, and how such lessons take shape in relation to the complex social, political, and technological conditions that shape contemporary educational life. 

Her scholarly contributions include the monograph Pedagogy at the End of the World: Weird Pedagogies for Unthought Educational Futures (2023) and the co-edited volumes Ahuman Pedagogy: Multidisciplinary Perspectives for Education in the Anthropocene (2022) and Sound Research in Troubling Times: Hope in Crisis (2024). She has published widely on art education, research-creation, curriculum theory, and speculative pedagogical futures, with recent and forthcoming work on feminist making, AI and pedagogy, sonic atmospheres, climate change education, and methodological frustration. A through-line in her work is a critical engagement with the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, particularly in relation to pedagogy, desire, micropolitics, ecosophy, ethico-aesthetics, and experimental modes of doing philosophy. 

As a practicing artist, beier has exhibited work for over a decade in galleries, universities, and community spaces, often creating immersive, multi-sensory environments that invite audiences to engage beyond ocularcentric norms. Her work spans image manipulation, audio-visual installation, live performance, sound composition, and intermedia communication, and often troubles assumptions about standardized habits of perception and the normative organization of bodies.

Current & Upcoming Courses

ARTE 682/882: Research Practice (Winter 2025; Winter 2026)

ARTE 680/880: Foundations for Inquiry (Fall 2024; Fall 2025)

ARTE 432: Community Art Education (Fall 2023; Fall 2025)

Courses Taught

ARTE 660/850: Post-Human Pedagogies in Art Education (Fall 2024)

ARTE 670/870: Critical Perspectives on Art Education History (Fall 2023)

ARTE 672/872: Advanced Critical Analysis (Winter 2024)

ARTE 424: Art Education in the Secondary School II (Winter 2024)

ARTE 425: Practicum in the Secondary School II (Winter 2024)

ARTE 422: Art Education in the Secondary School I (Fall 2023)

Selected Thesis Supervision

MA

Sedigihan, Reza. A Pedagogy of the Unrepresentable: Encounters with Monochromatic Abstract Art. Concordia University, 2025.

Books & Edited Collections

beier, j.l. & Chapman, O (Eds.). (2024). Sound Research in Troubling Times: Hope in Crisis. Co-edited w/ Owen Chapman. London/New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

The E.E.R.K. Collective. ( 2024). Energy Emergency Repair Kit (E.E.R.K.). New York: Fordham University Press.

beier, j.l. (2023). Pedagogy at the end of the world: Weird pedagogies for unthought educational futures. London/New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

beier, j.l. & jagodzinski, j. (Eds.) (2022). Ahuman pedagogy: Multidisciplinary perspectives for education in the Anthropocene. London/New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Recent & Forthcoming Publications

beier, j. l. (2026, forthcoming). Mixtaping. In L. Guilmette & A. S. Jaarsma (Eds.), Feminist making, doing, & sensing. Duke University Press.

beier, j. l., Cortes, J., & Mockler, V. (2026, forthcoming). Extreme frustrations: A-positioning art education’s futures. In N. Varas-Díaz & D. Nevárez Araújo (Eds.), Extremity and the future: Imagining lives to come. Lexington Books.

beier, j. l., Bélanger-Martel, S., Mossalim, J., & Pavlik, N. (2026, forthcoming). Learning machines: Rewiring AI’s pedagogical fabulations. In N. Ng-A-Fook & P. Phillips (Eds.), Rewiring for artificial intelligence: Education, contemporary issues, and futurities. Information Age Publishing.

beier, j. l., & Bocquillon, R. (2026, forthcoming). Underground atmospheres: Thinking-with subterranean sounds. In M. Unger (Ed.), Sonic atmospheres: Creation and control in sounding milieus. Routledge.

beier, j. l., & Wallin, J. (2025, in press). Fungal fictions: Or, what does fungi teach? In A. Sezen-Barrie & S. Tolbert (Eds.), The handbook of climate change education: Research, policy, and practice. Palgrave Macmillan.

beier, j. l., & Chapman, O. (2024). Introduction. In j. l. beier & O. Chapman (Eds.), Sound research for troubling times: Hope in crisis (pp. 1–13). Palgrave Macmillan.

beier, j. l., Abdul-Rauf, L., Butler, D. G., Chapman, O., & Venkatesh, V. (2024). Nothing, but hope: A conversation. In j. l. beier & O. Chapman (Eds.), Sound research for troubling times: Hope in crisis (pp. 197–219). Palgrave Macmillan.

beier, j. l. (2024). Weird horizons: Sound research at the sonic brink. In j. l. beier & O. Chapman (Eds.), Sound research for troubling times: Hope in crisis (pp. 221–247). Palgrave Macmillan.

beier, j. l. (2024). De-extinction. In C. Taylor (Ed.), The Routledge companion to gender and animals. Routledge.

beier, j. l. (2023). No going back: Countering de-extinction, un-fixing the future. Animal Studies Journal, 12(2).

beier, j. l., & Wallin, J. (2023). Walking on sunshine. In B. Herzogenrath (Ed.), New perspectives on academic writing: The thing that wouldn’t die. Bloomsbury.

Current Research-Creation Projects

Learning Machines: Re-thinking Accessible Art Education for Today’s Computational Turn
A multi-phase research-creation project that explores the entanglements between emerging technologies—AI, algorithms, machine learning, computation—and the machinic formations of subjectivity through which pedagogy becomes perceptible, legible, productive, and valued within contemporary educational milieus. By foregrounding the circuits between theory and practice, Learning Machines treats AI and algorithmic systems as generative sites for philosophical, aesthetic, political, and pedagogical inquiry. The project involves experimental collaborations, public-facing residencies, and the creation of resources that reimagine accessibility in technologically mediated learning environments. learningmachines.ca

The “Real World” of Art Education
This pilot project investigates how contemporary art institutions enact public pedagogy. Drawing on the aesthetic and narrative strategies of reality TV, the project delves into the lived realities of public pedagogues and the complex conditions shaping art education in the city. It seeks to connect practitioners across sectors, strengthen networks of collaboration, and lay the groundwork for public symposia and collective research.

Anthropocene ABCs

A collaboratively authored and illustrated primer—forthcoming with Fordham University Press—that critically engages with the contested naming of the Anthropocene. Organized as an abécédaire, the project combines scholarly essays, original illustrations by beier, and speculative interventions to explore the proliferation of alternative names for the Anthropocene, and to examine the ecological, political, and affective dimensions of planetary crisis through feminist, anti-colonial, and queer lenses.