Master of Arts in Social Practice and Innovation (MSPI)

Core courses

• MSPI 5010G Interdisciplinary Theory and Practice: Frameworks (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?  Students will be introduced to a variety of complementary and competing approaches to foundational interdisciplinary methods and theoretical frameworks.  Case studies across the disciplines will highlight how these approaches enable us to pursue diverse research questions and frame analysis for interdisciplinary research projects.

• MSPI 5020G Interdisciplinary Theory and Practice: Community Engaged Research (3 credits)

  The course focuses on community-engaged and community-based research, a broad constellation of research approaches that share the premise that members of researched communities are best positioned to identify the injustices they experience and the social change they need. Community-engaged research takes myriad forms, cutting across disciplinary boundaries, meaning that lessons learned from community engagement can apply to the full range of theoretical and methodological approaches available to students for their Major Research Projects.  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.

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

  This course provides students with the means to employ core concepts from and across the three disciplines that comprise the interdisciplinary program: communication, legal studies, and politics. The communication component examines foundational and current works in new media and communication studies, with a focus 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 that address the role of law in supporting or discouraging social innovation. The politics component explores the realm of politics and the political by focusing on different forms of understanding society, governance and power.  Students will begin to formulate their approach to their intended research topics in ways that benefit from these disciplines and their interrelationships.

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, climate action, 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 (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 existing and yet-to-be-determined legal, political and ethical tools in order 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.  The course may be cross-listed with approved fourth-year undergraduate seminars.

• 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 comprehensively 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 courses: total 12 credits

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

  The standard time to complete the Major Research Project (MRP) is two terms.  In the first term, this course provides a framework for the development and implementation of the MRP, which is the culminating requirement of the degree program. Students will develop the theoretical and methodological approach to their research topic 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 through an  outward-facing component of the project. The proposal will set out the form of the outward-facing component, 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 the MRP second term.

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

  Students in the second phase of the Major Research Project (MRP) will carry out the project approved in MRP I. Students will execute their plan for social practice and/or innovation that engages with communities or the public, and will compose the project’s outward-facing component as 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 that self-reflexively describes, explains and assesses the efficacy of the project’s social practice and/or innovation.

Part-time or Accelerated students

• MSPI 5101G Major Research Project 1A (3 credits)

  *Part time or Accelerated students can divide Major Research Project I into two 3 credit parts by taking both 1A and 1B in consecutive semesters.

  The 1A course is intended for part-time or accelerated MSPI students who are in their first MRP term.  In this course, students will craft the framework for their MRP, which is the culminating requirement of the degree program. Students will work with their supervisor to  develop the theoretical and methodological approach to their research topic and articulate it in their  MRP proposal.  Students will explain the social problem addressed by their research question, and set out their proposed plan to engage with a community or public through an outward-facing component of the project, for example, digital media advocacy, a public education campaign, an event, or an exhibition.  Satisfactory approval of the proposal by the student’s supervisor and interdisciplinary advisor is required to pass this course.

• MSPI 5102G: Major Research Project 1B (3 credits)

  *Part time or Accelerated students can divide Major Research Project I into two 3 credit parts by taking both 1A and 1B in consecutive semesters.

  The 1B course is intended for part-time or accelerated MSPI program students who have successfully completed MSPI 5101G.  In this course, students will begin implementing their proposed plans.  This will include applying the proposed methodology to address their research question, and instantiating their plan for the outward-facing component of the project.  Satisfactory progress toward implementation will be determined by the student’s supervisor.

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