Ehsan Akbari

Ehsan is an artist, educator and educational researcher. He is currently teaching Visual Arts Education at the University of New Brunswick.

He has worked as a Lecturer and Coordinator in Digital Pedagogy and Literacies in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. He received his Ph.D. from Concordia University in Art Education.

Akbari’s research is anchored in the question of how art can be used in classrooms to enrich teaching, learning, human interactions and environ-mental awareness. He believes strongly in the value of creativity, sensory learning and place-based education for engaging us with our bodies, our surroundings and each other.

He has developed various creative and arts-based approaches to using digital media to explore places including smartphone sensory photography, soundscape compositions and collective online mapping.

Education

• Bachelor in Fine Arts - Visual Arts (Honours). York University. Toronto, Ontario.
• Masters of Art Education, Concordia University. Montreal, Quebec.
• Doctorate in Art Education, Concordia University. Montreal, Quebec.

Key areas of interest

• Creative cartographies in education
• Sensory learning
• Complexity thinking and spatiliaty in education
• Makerspaces and STEAM (Science, technology, arts and mathematics)
• Digital, Media, visual and multimodal literacies

Current teaching

• ED 5209 — Creativity and Visual Arts in Teaching and Learning
• ED 5154 — Creativity, Images and Meaning
• ED 5213 — Issues in Art Education

Past teaching

• Lecturer in Educational Technology for the Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program (SUNTEP) Program. Gabriel Dumont Institute, Regina, Sas-katchewan.
• Lecturer in Digital Pedagogies and Literacies at the University of Regina, Saskatch-ewan.
• Lecturer in the Department of Art Education at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec.

Professional practice, committees, volunteer work summary

Member of the Review Board for Canadian Review in Art Education. Member of the Na-tional Art Education Associate, and the Canadian Society for Ed-ucation through the Arts.

Member of the Planning Committee for the “Teach and Learn in the Digital World” Confer-ence at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan. (2023)

Conference Co-ordinator for Visual Literacy Annual Conference, International Visual Sociology Annual Conference, and Uncommon Senses Conference at Concordia University (2016-2019)

Selected publications

Akbari, E. (2022). Sensory Design Methods: Mobile Sensory Photography & Collective Online Sensory Mapping. Explorations in Sensory Design.

Akbari, E. (2022). Sense Walks and Sense Maps at Parc Angrignon. Ex-plorations in Sensory Design.

Akbari, E. (2021). Spatial and Collective Learning through Mobile Sensory Photography and Creative Cartography (Doctoral dissertation, Concordia University).

Akbari, E. (2019). Spatial missions: My surroundings, my neighbourhood, my school. In J. C. Castro (Ed.), Mobile media in and outside of the art classroom (pp. 127–150). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

Akbari, E. (2019). Smartphones connect art students to sights and sounds of Montreal. The Conversation.

Akbari, E. (2016). Rumi: A cosmopolitan counter-narrative to Islamophobia. Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, 33, 48–67.

Akbari, E. (2016). Soundscape compositions for art classrooms. Journal of Art Education. 69(4), 17–22.