Biography

Dr. Cary Campbell, Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, is an educational theorist and researcher, 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, ensemble director and performing/recording musician for over a decade, also holding a Bachelor’s of Music (2013). Cary is a member of the Online Learning Hub in the Faculty – committed to cultivating and supporting rich, online learning experiences – and also teaches upper-level, undergraduate music education courses.

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. Furthermore, Cary is a performing and recording musician — interested in music learning and cognition research and committed to creative music pedagogy as well as inventive arts-based research/inquiry generally (such as critical cartography and sound-informed qualitative research methods).

Through his ongoing work as Director of Research for the BC Society The Group (multimodal research), 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 associate editor with the Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education, and editor of the CS. Peirce Section of the international (De Gruyter) journal Chinese Semiotic Studies.

Awards and Scholarships

• Fund for International Research in Education (FIRE; Internal SFU Grant), (2023).
  Proposal: “Transdisciplinary Pathways in Higher Education Research and Education”
• SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Doctoral Scholarship (2020)
• SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship:
  Proposal: “Educating through semiosis: conceptualizing the learning process as edusemiotics with young music learners” (2016-2020)
• DORA International Visiting Scholar Award, Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia (2019)

Teaching Highlights and Curriculum Resources:

• FLIP THE MAP! - Map-based curriculum resources for the PNW
• Can a city be a school?
• Land Acknowledgment Map: seeing where we are?
• Land & Community Positioning
• Shared Animal Pathways: exploring multispecies wayfaring on Lasqueti Island

Selected Publications

See: Google Scholar Profile, for a full list of publications and citations.

• Campbell, C., & Olteanu, A. (2023). The Challenge of Postdigital Literacy: Extending Multimodality and Social Semiotics for a New Age. Postdigital Science and Education, 1-23.
• Campbell, C. (2023). ‘What do we talk about when we talk about climate change?’: meaningful environmental education, beyond the info dump. Journal of Philosophy of Education, qhad020.
• Campbell, C., & Lilburn, T. (2023). ‘How to be here?’, dialoging into climate-change: an interview with Tim Lilburn. Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education, 1(2), 6.
• Bai, H., Scott, C., Campbell, C. L., & Patel, J. (2023). EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION: Contemplative and Holistic Education as Inside-Out Work for Healing, Peace, Justice, and Equity. Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education, 1(2), 11.
• Campbell, C. (2022). Embracing the Learning Turn: The ecological context of learning. Biosemiotics, 15(3), 469-481.
• Campbell, C., Lacković, N., & Olteanu, A. (2021). A “strong” approach to sustainability literacy: Embodied ecology and media. Philosophies, 6(1), 14.
• Campbell, Cary (Ed.). "Peirce and learning theory: Special section introduction" Chinese Semiotic Studies, 17(1), 2021, 143-152. https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2021-0007.
• Campbell, C., Olteanu, A., & Kull, K. (2019). Learning and knowing as semiosis: Extending the conceptual apparatus of semiotics. Sign systems studies, 47(3/4), 352-381.
• Campbell, C. (2019). Educating semiosis: Foundational concepts for an ecological edusemiotic. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 38, 291-317.
• Campbell, C. (2018). In search of our beginnings: Locating ‘firstness’ in arts education in the service of advocacy. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 19(13).
• Campbell, C. (2018). Returning ‘learning’ to education: Toward an ecological conception of learning and teaching. Σημειωτκή-Sign Systems Studies, 46(4), 538-568.
• Campbell, C. (2018). Educating openness: Umberto Eco’s poetics of openness as a pedagogical value. Signs and Society, 6(2), 305-331.
• Olteanu, A., & Campbell, C. (2018). A short introduction to edusemiotics. Chinese Semiotic Studies, 14(2), 245-260.
• Campbell, C. (2017). Learning that reflects the living: Aligning anticipation and edusemiotics. Public Journal of Semiotics, 8(1), 1-25.
• Campbell, C. (2016). Indexical ways of knowing: An inquiry into the indexical sign and how to educate for novelty. Philosophical Inquiry in Education, 24(1), 15-36.

Teaching