Research Interests

Dr. Cary Campbell, Continuing Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, is an educational and curriculum theorist, music educator and community organizer. Cary completed his SSHRC funded PhD in Arts Education at SFU in 2020. He has worked as a music educator in community arts and conservatory settings for over a decade, also holding a Bachelor of Music (2013) and active as a performing/recording musician. In the Faculty, Cary teaches courses in practitioner inquiry and place-based education, educational philosophy and curriculum theory as well as music education. He is a member of the Online Learning Hub in the Faculty – committed to cultivating and supporting rich, online educational experiences. 

Informed by biosemiotic, post-digital and post-humanist theory as well as place/Land-based pedagogy, his research addresses the nexus of educational problems posed by mass digitization, climate change and the broader challenges of cultivating place-connectedness in today’s globalized and hyper-capitalist society. 

Earlier this year, and building on a series of recent articles, chapters and interviews about teaching in a time of climate crisis and ecological loss (see Campbell, 2023; Lilburn & Campbell, 2023; Rees, Campbell & Hoeller, 2024; Campbell, 2024) Campbell began work on a monograph, "Education in need of limits: renegotiating learning & teaching in a time of social and environmental unravelling.”

More recently, he has become involved in research on "postdigital literacies" (Campbell & Olteanu, 2023; see Lackovic, Olteanu & Campbell, 2024), exploring practices and methods that reveal the postdigital condition of contemporary education, increasingly defined by fuzzy boundaries and distinctions between digital/analog as well in-person and online education and learning (Jandrić et al. 2018; Brown et al. 2024). 

Campbell remains active in community arts education and music education fields. For instance, he has recently begun work on a series of workbooks, co-written with Thomas Hoeller and stemming from teaching EDUC 469 and EDUC 478, presenting an approach to the theory of creative musicianship and creative pedagogy. [see: https://thegrouplegroupe.org/tuning-in ] Through 3 books – Book 1 Sound; Book 2 Music; Book 3 Instrument – Campbell and Hoeller present a series of prepositions and guiding heuristics that can be used by both musicians and music educators to cultivate and bring attention to different aspects of their artistic and pedagogical practices.

Through the last decade, Campbell has contributed to the fields of educational (edu)semiotics as well as biosemiotics informed learning theory (see Campbell and Olteanu, 2018; Campbell et al. 2019; Campbell, 2022; Campbell and Olteanu, 2023) in an attempt to theorize learning beyond anthropocentric and language-centred frameworks dominant within educational fields. 

Through his ongoing work as Director of Research for the BC Society The New Curriulum Group, Cary collaborates with teachers, artists and community members to create curriculum resources and digital tools that connect people and students with their own localities, communities and public spaces.

Additionally, Cary has held several scholarly and literary editorial positions, currently working as an editor for the Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education, as well as previously (2017-2022) the editor of the CS. Peirce Section of the international (De Gruyter) journal Chinese Semiotic Studies. He is also co-editor of the educational webzine Philosophasters.org, and a frequent book reviewer for SubTerrain Magazine and other literary periodicals. 

NOTE ON SUPERVISION: Please note that as a Lecturer, I cannot be the senior supervisor of MA or PhD students, but I am able to co-supervise with other faculty members. Get in touch if you are interested in working with me.