Meaghan Dougherty

Meaghan Dougherty serves as Continuing Faculty, having transitioned from Associate Faculty status in 2018. She is actively engaged in academic governance, collaborative scholarship, and student-centered pedagogy with a mission to reimagine education through social justice frameworks. Her work critically examines white-Western educational paradigms while developing imaginative approaches to leadership and equity.

Dougherty's research program investigates how to unlearn engrained educational power structures through interconnected domains: imagination in leadership, post-secondary to work transitions, relational teaching practices, and more-than-human entanglements. She employs performative methodologies and qualitative inquiry to transform educational spaces into brave communities where assumptions are interrogated. Central to her scholarship is the meta-question of dismantling oppressive systems while cultivating justice-oriented alternatives through collaborative meaning-making.

Her publication trajectory (2017-2025) reveals deepening focus on imagination as the linchpin for educational transformation. Early work analyzed math education and critical pedagogy, evolving into targeted studies on leadership imagination with frequent collaborator Gavin Judson. The 2023 edited volume and subsequent articles establish a coherent framework where imagination catalyzes practical leadership change in schools and communities, demonstrating consistent methodological rigor through relational ontologies.

Dougherty teaches foundational courses including Introduction to Research, Research Methods in School Counselling, and Individual/Group Counselling Theories. She directs the SSHRC-funded Cultivating Imagination project mobilizing knowledge through podcasts and blogs via CIRCE and VoiceEd Radio. Her pedagogy emphasizes co-creating relational learning spaces where students experience the presence and care they'll later provide as professionals, entering classrooms with humility while challenging dominant educational narratives.

The Cultivating Imagination: Leading Toward a Just Future initiative (www.cultivateimagination.ca) forms her primary research collective, connecting scholars, activists, and practitioners through multimedia content exploring imagination's role in social justice leadership. This team produces accessible knowledge mobilization resources that bridge academic research with community action, focusing on practical applications for educational transformation.