Master of Arts in Social Practice and Innovation (MSPI)

Core courses

• MSPI 5010G Interdisciplinary Theory and Practice I (3 credits)
  Over the past decades, social science and humanities faculties, departments, journals, conferences and granting agencies, as well as governmental policy-making institutions and their respective stakeholders have emphasized the value of interdisciplinary research to social innovation and change. Interdisciplinary research blends two or more disciplines into a new or innovative approach. What interdisciplinary approaches are available to scholars and what theoretical and methodological challenges do they face when designing and undertaking interdisciplinary research? This is the first of a two term course, where students will examine  a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches to interdisciplinarity. The course serves as an introduction to complementary and competing approaches to interdisciplinary research. Case studies across the disciplines will serve to highlight the ways in which different approaches serve as frameworks for research projects.
• MSPI 5020G Interdisciplinary Theory and Practice II (3 credits)

  This is the second of a two term course. Having been introduced to a wide variety of interdisciplinary approaches to research in the first term of the course, students will construct their own interdisciplinary  approach to a research question or problem arising from the points of contact between the three fields that anchor the program: Communication and Digital Media Studies, Legal Studies, and Political Science. Students will work together and independently to develop new intersections across these fields, working toward articulating informed, engaging, and creative social practices. By the end of the two terms, students will be prepared to undertake an interdisciplinary Major Research Project.

• MSPI 5030G Foundations for Social Practice and Innovation (6 credits)

  This course provides students with the means to employ core concepts from the three disciplines that comprise the interdisciplinary program: communication, legal studies and politics.  The course will consist of three blocks corresponding to these disciplines.  The communication component examines foundational and current works in new media and communication studies. It focuses specifically on how current and emerging technologies may be designed and used by individual and collective actors for practices oriented to social innovation and transformation.   The legal studies component engages legal concepts such as: the rule of law; human rights; constitutionalism and the Crown; sources of law including the common law, the civil code and Indigenous law; distinctions between criminal, administrative/public and private law; and relationships between domestic and international law. The course explores these concepts in the contexts of theoretical perspectives such as legal pluralism and multi-juridicality, critical legal theories, and structures of sovereignty and jurisdiction. The politics component explores the realm of politics by focusing on the nature and role of the state, and different forms of understanding society and power. Historical transformations in the role of the state in the context of globalization and their impacts on democracy, the economy and on the relations between politics, policy-making and society will also be considered.

Electives: two of the following

• MSPI 5040G Advocacy, Change and Social Practices (3 credits)

  *Note that elective courses will be offered on rotation, so not all will be offered in any given year

  This course asks how advocacy can be integrated into social action in order to prompt interpersonal, legal, political, and economic reform. Students will consider historical and contemporary examples of allyship and inter-community relationship-building enacted through discourse, community and grassroots organizing, lobbying, protests, and artistic works. They will learn key theories of solidarity and social change found in scholarly research and activist movements while investigating the impacts of collective action on law, policy, and personal and professional practice. Students will examine several specific areas of impact, such as Indigenous sovereignty, healthcare service provision, homelessness and poverty reduction, consumer protection, labour, and rights advancement of women and sexual minorities, Indigenous and other racialized and equity seeking groups. This course will afford students opportunities to explore 1) how to strategically mobilize against unequal access to power and resources, 2) how to support the empowerment of populations vulnerable to material deprivation and violence, and 3) how to create transformative and restorative alternatives to unjust conditions.

• MSPI 5050G Communicating Law and Politics in Everyday Life (3 credits)

  *Note that elective courses will be offered on rotation, so not all will be offered in any given year

  In this course, students will develop critical and analytical skills in order to evaluate the nature of political and legal communication in everyday life.  As the digital age allows instantaneous and ongoing narrativizing and framing of events and phenomena  in real-time to both worldwide and highly specialized audiences, an in-depth understanding of narratives and frames, and how to create and interpret compelling legal and political narratives and frames, is becoming increasingly relevant.  Students will learn to employ analytical approaches through framing theory and narrative analysis.

• MSPI 5060G Information, Power, and Democracy: Constraints, Freedoms, and Ethics (3 credits)

  *Note that elective courses will be offered on rotation, so not all will be offered in any given year

  The means to amass and analyze data and the technologies of informational identity have been developing for more than a century, bringing us to the present moment where the internet, social media platforms, networked devices and other means of dataveillance have become integral to how we as citizens are addressed, assessed and characterized by governments, political parties, corporations and individuals.  The centrality of information gathering practices to governance, election campaigns, social movement activism and marketing requires understanding of the existing and yet-to-be-determined legal, political and ethical tools to constrain misuse of information and other data while also facilitating and protecting the flow of information to address power imbalances.  This course probes how information technologies link with contemporary politics and governance, including settler-colonial governance, and engages topical and contentious ethical debates surrounding the historical transformation of democracy and consumer society in the digital age.

• MSPI 5070G Special Topics in Interdisciplinary Studies (3 credits)

  *Note that elective courses will be offered on rotation, so not all will be offered in any given year

  Special topics will address recent conceptual and methodological advances or emerging issues and trends at the intersection of  the disciplines participating in the program.  Examples of possible special topics include: 1) existing graduate seminars such as Global Artificial Intelligence Ethics; and Whistleblowing and Digital Disobedience; and 2) cross-listed fourth year undergraduate seminars such as Communication Law and Policy; Indigenous Law and Politics; Art and Law; Law and Environment; Media, War & Conflict; or Global Communication.

• MSPI 5080G Directed Studies (3 credits)

  *Note that elective courses will be offered on rotation, so not all will be offered in any given year

  Faculty permission may be given for supervised research projects, individual study or directed readings in a specialized area not covered in the regular course offerings. Students wishing to pursue a course of directed studies must formulate a proposal accurately describing the course activities, readings, and schedule, in collaboration with a qualified faculty member who is willing to serve as supervisor. This course may be only taken once.

Required Major Research Project

• MSPI 5001G Major Research Project I (6 credits)

  This two-term course provides a framework for the development and implementation of the Major Research Project (MRP), which is the culminating requirement of the degree program. Students will develop the theoretical and methodological approach for their MRP proposal. In the MRP proposal, students will explain the social problem addressed by their research question, and their plan to engage with a community or public outside of the university. The outward-facing component of the MRP must include a plan for social practice and/or innovation that involves a practical collaboration with a specific community or public. The proposal will set out the form of the collaboration and a communication format, for example, digital media advocacy, a public education campaign, an event or an exhibition. Upon approval of the proposal, students will then work with their faculty supervisor on the implementation of the project, which will be concluded in MRP II.

• MSPI 5002G Major Research Project II (6 credits)

  Students at the second phase of the Major Research Project (MRP) will carry out the community engagement project approved in MRP I. Students will concretely execute their plan for social practice and/or innovation that engages community collaboration, and will compose the project’s outcome in the communication format developed in the proposal (for instance, digital media advocacy, a public education campaign, an event or an exhibition). Students will write a summative report or academic article, as approved by their committee, that self-reflexively describes, explains and assesses the efficacy of the project’s social practice and/or innovation.

• MA program admissions
• Student resources
• Major research project supervision areas
• Program map
• Current MSPI students