Kathleen Vaughan

Kathleen Vaughan, PhD, MFA, is a Professor of Art Education at Concordia University's Faculty of Fine Arts, where she serves as Undergraduate Program Director for Art Education and Coordinator of the Community Art Education (BFA Major) program. She holds a Tier 1 Concordia University Research Chair in Art + Education for Sustainable and Just Futures (2021-2026) and previously held a Tier 2 Research Chair in Socially Engaged Art and Public Pedagogies (2016-2021). As an active member of the Royal Society of Canada's College, she directs Studio Re-Imagine and leads interdisciplinary research projects including Learning With the St. Lawrence and The Future is Wool.

Her educational background includes a PhD in Education from York University (Toronto), where her multimodal dissertation earned four academic awards, an MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University, a diploma from Ontario College of Art, and a BA in English and Art History from the University of Toronto. Prior to joining Concordia in 2008, she taught at York University's Faculty of Education, Ontario College of Art and Design, and Concordia's Studio Arts department.

Vaughan's research centers on socially engaged art practices, public pedagogies, and place-based inquiry, with particular focus on walking and mapping methodologies, textile practices, and environmental justice. She employs research-creation approaches that integrate studio-based, collaborative, and community-engaged methods, often working with urban forests, the St. Lawrence River, and cross-cultural contexts including Montreal, Toronto, Iceland, and Latvia. Her work bridges visual arts, environmental studies, and social justice through projects like Nel mezzo del cammin textile mapping series and community initiatives in Pointe-St-Charles.

Her research output demonstrates consistent exploration of walking as methodology, textile mapping, urban ecologies, and community engagement across diverse contexts. Key thematic threads include human-animal relationships (particularly with dogs), sustainable material practices (especially wool), and decolonizing approaches to community art. The publications reveal evolving methodological sophistication in blending artistic practice with scholarly inquiry, particularly through multimodal dissertation formats and interdisciplinary collaborations.

• Concordia University Research Chair in Art + Education for Sustainable and Just Futures (Tier 1, 2021-26)
• Concordia University Research Chair in Socially Engaged Art and Public Pedagogies (Tier 2, 2016-21)
• Faculty of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award (2016)
• Curriculum Innovation Funding (2014, 2015, 2016)
• Four international academic awards for PhD dissertation innovation

Vaughan has supervised numerous PhD and MA theses in Art Education, focusing on community art, research-creation, and socially engaged practices. Her major research grants include SSHRC funding for Learning With the St. Lawrence (2019-2024) and ongoing projects through Studio Re-Imagine. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in community art education, socially engaged art, and museum education, often linking classroom learning to Montreal community settings through experiential initiatives like The Right to the City course in Pointe-St-Charles.

As co-director of Studio Re-Imagine, she leads collaborative projects exploring socially engaged art's role in public pedagogies. She is an active member of Concordia's Textiles and Materiality cluster within Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology, and the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS). Her bi-annual Iceland Field School, hosted at the Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós, connects textile practices with environmental sustainability research.