Research Institutes

Critical Digital Methods Institute

The Critical Digital Methods Institute (CDMI) is a collaborative research project of The Department of Arts, Culture and Media (ACM) at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), initiated with the support of the UTSC Interdisciplinary Challenge Fund (ICF). CDMI sees digital platforms and digital media cultures as too complex, too global, and too vast to be studied by single disciplinary approaches. CDMI scholars collaborate across disciplines, media, systems and people. They focus on critical and interpretive methods, social justice frameworks and digital methods that are attentive to questions and problems of equity, diversity and inclusion. A critical digital methods approach works towards digital research environments that favour interdisciplinary approaches and demand new research methodologies which synthesize contributions from the arts, humanities, social sciences, and beyond so they can better understand the cultural, technological, social, political economic and ethical dynamics of these spaces.

Flourish: Community-Engaged Arts and Social Wellness

One of four inaugural Clusters of Scholarly Prominence established at UTSC in late 2020, “Flourish” gathers together an interdisciplinary team of faculty, graduate, and undergraduate researchers drawn from Departments of Arts Culture Media (ACM), Health and Society, and the Faculty of Medicine. Using an arts-led, community-engaged approach to research and partnership, “Flourish” explores the ways creative arts engagement enhances social connection and wellness across the life-course.

The Flourish team combines expertise in arts-based (health) research methods, fine and performing arts, community-engaged practice, assessment/education science, and knowledge translation/implementation to investigate how creative practices might enhance the “global judgments of life satisfaction” that help define community-engaged wellness.

Our aim is to 1) Amplify local capacity in arts and community-centered definitions of wellness. 2) Advocate for these strategic objectives provincially, nationally, and internationally.