Bio

Dr. Mary K. Bryson is, Administration, Faculty Affairs & Innovation, and Professor, Department of Language and Literacy Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Bryson’s program of research is designed to contribute foundational scholarship concerning sexuality and gender, and the role of networked social media and information literacies that shape access to knowledge and its mobilization. Dr. Bryson is the author of multiple publications concerning the social, cultural and educational significance of networked media technologies and publics that make significant contributions to theoretical accounts of gendered and sexual marginality, knowledge mobilization and resilience. Mary is a recipient of the American Educational Research Association Significant Body of Research award (2013), a Senior Fellowship (2011) at Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and in 2000, the Canadian Women in the Spotlight, Wired Women Pioneer in New Media award.

Project

The ‘Rethinking Cancer Education: Pedagogical Innovation’ Project investigates pedagogical innovation in cancer health in a context where current public health discourse position patients as informed and agentive in making treatment decisions. In 2018, cancer patients arrive at the clinic with a great deal of information about their diagnosis and their health condition, but it is rarely the case that care providers engage with patients as informed partners in cancer health decision-making. The fundamentally uneducational quality of a great deal of the communication between cancer health providers and cancer patients is exacerbated in the case of sexual and/or gender minority cancer patients, who are more likely to experience varied forms of discrimination in healthcare settings and to disengage from communication with cancer care providers.

As my contribution to the Pedagogical Innovation Public Program, I propose to provide a public lecture and also, a public workshop on Digital Storytelling as an innovative form of pedagogical intervention in Cancer Education. My Cancer’s Margins research has been published in Catalan, English and French.