Kathleen Vaughan, PhD, MFA

"It's important to me to create communities of learning in my classes so that we're learning together: I have a constructivist approach to learning. I want the work I develop with students to relate to contemporary issues and events so that we look beyond the classroom walls and move out into the world in as many ways as possible. I guess the questions for art education in the 21st century are, how do we orient ourselves within our current context: towards social and environmental justice, inclusivity, diversity? How do we explore the variety of media we have, and the richness of pop culture as well as the historically traditional fine arts? How do cultivate sustainability? How do we create and teach art that has an impact, that matters?

"I have a strong orientation towards research/creation and learning through making; making is at the core of my thinking, theorizing, writing, and teaching. In the end, we're all trying to find different ways to talk about how research happens through art-making and how we want to consider that research be expressed through art, language, and other associated communicative forms."

Dr. Kathleen Vaughan is a visual artist, writer, scholar, and educator whose work reflects a trans-disciplinary orientation to questions of place and belonging and the theme of ‘home’. She aims to balance her love for post-industrial sites, urban forests and green spaces with critical engagement, and often uses walking and mapping as method and form. Kathleen uses textile practices, painting, drawing, photography, installation, audio and video. Her work comprises multiple approaches, studio-based, collaborative/participatory and community-based. Active within her Montreal neighbourhood of Pointe-St-Charles, Kathleen has worked with seniors and children in social housing, schools and community agencies. She has also developed creative projects with children, adults and seniors in Toronto, Iceland, Latvia and the Netherlands, oriented to cultivating knowledge and awareness of ‘place’ and building community. 

As the Concordia University Research Chair in Art Education for Sustainable and Just Futures (Tier 1, 2021-26) and Socially Engaged Art and Public Pedagogies (Tier 2, 2016-21), Kathleen  initiated Studio Re-Imagine, to create and evaluate a series of socially engaged art projects in collaboration with a variety of local stakeholders in Montreal, Canada, and elsewhere, working with graduate researchers via research-creation and oral history methods. Its mandate is to explore how socially engaged art engages public pedagogies to build impact and promote change. 

These projects include:

- Learning With the St. Lawrence | Apprendre avec le Saint-Laurent, a SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada)-funded (2019-2024) interdisciplinary team-based initiative exploring the St Lawrence River as ecosystem and imaginary, as well as Walk in the Water | Marcher sur les eaux, on the environmental and social histories of the St. Lawrence River at Pointe-St-Charles, a studio-based project that integrates oral histories into textile mapping and includes a 'displaced' audio walk of the vanished and infilled shoreline

- The Future is Wool | La laine : matériau d'avenir, that aims to valorize wool as a sustainable and beautiful material for art, design, and handcrafting, and brings together public education about sustainability with awareness raising about humane sheep farming and artisanal and commercial wool production in Canada, the Nordic countries, and elsewhere

- The Arts and Artists in Communities, a continuing exploration of the role that the arts and artists can play in communities

Selected publications

Vaughan, K., Levesque, M., Szabad-Smyth, L., Garnet, D., Fitch, S., & Sinner, A. (2017). A history of community art education at Concordia University: Educating the artist teacher through practice and collaboration. Studies in Art Education, 58(1), 28-38.

Vaughan, K., & Pyne Feinberg, P. (2017). Walking together: Shared authority and co-mentorship between two artists on the move. Visual Inquiry, 5(3), 249-261. Special Issue: From Mentorship to Intellectual Partnership.

Vaughan, K., Dufour, E., & Hammond, C. (2016). The ‘art’ of the Right to the City: Interdisciplinary teaching and learning in Pointe-St-Charles. Learning Landscapes, 10(1), 387-418. Available on-line at http://www.learninglandscapes.ca/images/documents/ll-no19/vaughan.pdf

Vaughan, K. (2016). Dog dreams: A collage reflection of love, loss, poodles, art and academia. In A. Cole (Ed.), Professorial paws: Dogs in scholars’ lives and works (pp. 176-207). Big Tancook Island, NS: Backalong Books.

Vaughan, K. (2015).  A möbius paradigm for artistic research: Entwining qualitative practices and the uncanny in a further elaboration of a collage method of inquiry. In R.M. Viadel, J. Roldán, & X.M. Medina, (Eds). Fundamentos, Criterios, Contextos en Investigación basada en Artes y en Investigación Artistica/Foundations, Criteria and Contexts in Arts-based Research and Artistic Research. Vol 4: Panorama de especialidades artísticas/Landscape of Artistic Specialities (31-58). Granada, Spain: University of Granada Press. Available online at http://hdl.handle.net/10481/34215

Vaughan, K. (2014). Art, enchantment and the urban forest: A step, a stitch, a sense of self. In A. Sandberg, A. Bardekjian, & S. Butt (Eds.), Urban forests, trees, and green space: A political ecology perspective, 307-321. London: Earthscan/Routledge.

Vaughan, K. (2013). Map as theory, theory as map: Meditations from the middle of the journey. POIESIS XV: A Journal of the Arts and Communication, 174-186.

Sinner, A., Levesque, M., Vaughan, K, Szabad-Smyth, L., Garnet, D., & Fitch, S. (2012). Reviewing an archive of practice: The historical unfolding of community art education, Canadian Review of Art Education.

Sinner, A., Mastrocola, P. & Vaughan, K. (2011). The colours tell me what to do: From graffiti artist to art teacher. BCATA Journal for Art Teachers 53(1), Special issue on Art and Design 2: 28-39.

Vaughan, K. (June, 2010). Creating ruins: From image to object in making Unwearableclothing. Mosaic: A Journal for Interdisciplinary Study of Literature (Special issue: Sculpture) 43(2): 185-201.

Vaughan, K. (2009). Research creation as material thinking: Reflecting on the context of making of two doctoral students at Concordia University, Montreal. (In association with two articles by doctoral students Danut Zbarcea and Natasha Reid.) Studies in Material Thinking (3). Available on-line at http://www.materialthinking.org/resources/v3/KV.pdf

Vaughan, K. (2009, April). A home in the arts: From research-creation to practice – or The story of a dissertation in the making, in action – so far! International Journal of Education and the Arts 10(13). Available on-line at http://www.ijea.org/v10n13/index.html

Vaughan, K. (2009, April). The importance of asking the ‘right’ questions: Considering issues of interpretation in art-as-research. Working Papers in Art and Design 5: The Problem of Interpretation in Research in the Visual and Performing Arts. University of Hertfordshire, UK. Available on-line at http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/index.html

Vaughan, K. (2009). Mariposa: The story of a work of research/creation, taking shape, taking flight. In R. Dean and H. Smith (Eds.), Practice-led research, research-led practice in the creative arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Vaughan, K. (2009). Finding home: A walk, a meditation, a memoir, a collage. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education 13(1): 12-24.

Vaughan, K. (2008). Inevitable. In D.F.A. Jacobs (Ed.), The authentic dissertation: Alternative ways of knowing, research and representation (pp. 117-120. London: Routledge.

Vaughan, K. (2007). Unraveling art and language, silence and speech in the making of Unwearable clothing. In J.G. Knowles, T.C. Luciani, A.L. Cole, L. Nielsen, and T.C. Luciani (Eds.), The art of visual inquiry (pp. 89-105). Toronto, ON & Halifax, NS: Centre for Arts-Informed Research & Backalong Books.

Vaughan, K. (2005, March). Pieced together: Collage as an artist’s methodology for interdisciplinary research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods IV(1). Available on-line at http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/4_1/html/vaughan.htm

Solo exhibitions

November 1-30, 2015 • Nel mezzo del cammin: Textile maps and their making. Installation of three textile maps, Lachine Canal, Angell Woods and Glendon Forest, in the arteSPACE Gallery and display vitrine of the Department of Art Education,Concordia University, Montréal, QC.

September 3-27, 2015 • Tissus urbains : Cartes textiles de promenades dans la nature urbaine. Installation of four textile maps, Lachine Canal, Angell Woods, Morgan Arboretum and Glendon Forest. Centre culturel Georges-Vanier, Montréal, QC.

September 5-October 26, 2014 • Evoking Place: Pointe-St-Charles and Montreal’s South West/La poétique du quartier: Pointe-St-Charles et le Sud Ouest. Installation of Nel mezzo del cammin: Canal de Lachine textile map. Salon Laurette, Montréal, QC.

June 2011 • Finding Home. A collage installation about self, place, community, and belonging. Northern District Branch, Toronto Public Library.

February 1-29, 2008 • Finding Home. A collage installation about self, place, community, and belonging. Type Books, Toronto, ON.

November 23-26, 2006 • Finding Home. Dissertation exhibition of multi-modal creative/scholarly work. Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, ON.

November 10-December 10, 2004 • Bog Series. Municipal Hall and Arts andCulture Centre, Gemeente Assen, Netherlands, in association with the Drents Museum’s presentation of The Mysterious Bog People.

March 6-April 13, 2003• De l’esthétique des corps des tourbières et de la neurologie [Bog Series]. Galerie Montcalm, Gatineau, QC (in association with the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s international exhibition of The Mysterious Bog People).

Collaborative projects and group exhibitions

May 16-22, 2017 • Ilgiardino dell’Eden. A collaborative suite of off-Biennal art activities withCynthia Hammond and Kelly Thompson, addressing the histories and currentrealities of Venice’s largest private garden, for a generation in accessible tovisitors, and linked to thematics of local determination of the future of the tourist-overruncity. Installations at various sites on La Giudecca, Venice, and documented onthe project blog, https://giardinodelleden.wordpress.com/

October 5-10, 2016 • Glorious matter: The exhibition. Curator and participant of groupexhibition of artists in the ‘Textiles and Materiality’ cluster of Concordia’sMilieux Research Centre for Art, Culture, Technology, as part of the Conferenceof the International Visual Literacy Association, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts,Montreal, QC.

April 23-June 10, 2015 • Fifth Riga International Textile and Fibre Art Triennial. Nel mezzo del cammin: Angell Woods, walkingmap of the contested suburban Montreal green space. The only Canadian artworkselected for this important international show. Museum of Decorative Art andDesign, Riga, Latvia.

September2-29, 2014 • Parallax: Landscape in Translation with artists Cynthia Hammond andKelly Thompson. Textile maps, Nel mezzodel cammin: Summit Woods and MorganArboretum exhibited at the FOFA Gallery, Montréal, QC.

May 2014 • Nel mezzo del cammin: Canal du Lachine Canal.Textile map exhibited in the group show of the international conference“De-industrialization and Its Aftermath,” Montreal, QC.

April 2013 • Midwayin the Journey. Two textile maps of walks in Summit Woods and the MorganArboretum, exhibited in a group show of "Urban Forests and PoliticalEcologies" at Hart House, University of Toronto, ON.

July 28, 2012 & October 6, 2012 • Dans le village…/In the village...Collaborative site-specific participatory artwork with artist Shauna Jannsenfor the Musée d’Histoire de Montréal’s Quartiers disparus exhibition.

September 30-October 2, 2011 • I’ll take you home again, Kathleen.Mixed media installation as part of the participatory group exhibition DarlingArcade, developed under the auspices of Urban Occupations Urbaines andpresented at the Darling Foundry, Montreal, in celebration of the Journées dela culture, Montreal, QC.

February 26, 2011 • Selected images from Made Flesh. Threegraphic novel enlargements (digital collages) at the juried neighbourhood-basedshow at Griffintown’s New City Gas, Montreal, QC. Part of the city’s NuitBlanche celebration.

February 26, 2011 • Storied Sites. A participatory communityweave collaboratively coordinated with Kelly Thompson and Lisa Vinebaum, a 3Dfibre map of the city of Montreal, telling participants’ stories of space andplace.

November, 2010 • Home Sweet. 5 minute digital storytellingcontribution to .dpi 19 – Online publication of Studio XX, a non-profit feminist organization dedicated to newmedia art. Available at http://www.studioxx.org/en/

February 27, 2010 • Map: Raglan, Map: Humewood, Map: Cedarvale at New City Gas,Montreal, QC. Part of the city’s Nuit Blanche Celebrations.

Kathleen Vaughan teaches graduate and mixed level (BFA to PhD) Studio classes, Special Topics classes in Community and Socially Engaged Art and Museum Education, and undergraduate Community Art Education classes. She also leads the bi-annual Iceland Field School every second June, returning in June 2026

Kathleen often locates her Concordia University teaching within Montreal's fertile community settings, linking her courses to 'place' via various community-based experiential learning initiatives. These include "The Right to the City" (2014-2017), a course taught in and with local experts of Montreal's Pointe-St-Charles neighbourhood; courses taught at the Montreal Musteum of FIne Arts (2016, 2017) and that led to the collaborative creation of two audio walks that bring a 'peace' perspective to 10 artworks in the Peace Pavilion. Awarded competitive Curriculum Innovation Funding (2014, 2015, 2016) for these initiatives, Kathleen also won the Faculty of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award in 2016. 

Further, Kathleen has developed and every two years leads The Iceland Field School, a multi-level, month-long interdisciplinary course sited at the Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós, Iceland (2018, 2022, 2024, projected to return in 2026). This course builds on her ongoing relationship with the Textile Centre following her artist's residency there in 2016, and her ongoing research into wool as a sustainable and beautiful material for art, design, and handcrafting. 

Selected thesis supervision

PhD Supervision