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Joint Chair in Women’s Studies (JCWS) at the University of Ottawa and �Ӱ�ԭ�� University

In 1985, the Office of the Secretary of State created a Joint Chair in Women’s Studies (JCWS) at the University of Ottawa and �Ӱ�ԭ�� University. Four other chairs of women’s studies, in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Quebec City and Halifax, were also established under the same program. Working in both French and English, the incumbent of the Joint Chair in Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa and �Ӱ�ԭ�� University teaches, engages in research and participates in appropriate committees and events on both campuses, acts as a resource person on women’s issues and feminist research at both universities, and establishes and maintains contact with local, regional, national and international feminist educational and community-based organizations.

Corrie Scott is the incumbent of the Joint Chair in Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa and �Ӱ�ԭ�� University.

Dr. Corrie Scott began her JCWS mandate on July 1, 2026.

During her mandate as Joint Chair in Women’s Studies, Dr. Scott will plan activities that revolve around the theme of “Feminist AI Literacy for Everybody”. She will pursue three main objectives which are both practical and political in nature.

First, Dr. Scott aims to alleviate some of the burden that AI-driven challenges present for instructors in both Institutes by inviting scholars, activists and artists to lead workshops with the aim of providing practical teaching support as well as space for students to explore the impact that AI is having on their lives. How do we adjust assignments and evaluations to ensure meaningful learning and assessment in a way that “moves us closer to justice, not just inclusion or diversity” (Mingus 2011)? How can we better communicate the importance of creativity and critical thinking skills to students? How do we extend intersectional feminist texts that we already teach to unpack AI’s epistemological, ethical and political implications?

Her second objective is to improve student feminist AI literacy by developing new graduate and undergraduate courses that Dr. Scott will teach at the University of Ottawa and �Ӱ�ԭ�� University. Feminist AI programming will equip students with a structural analysis of power that empty AI branding is designed to obscure. Topics might include algorithmic justice, data gaps, Afrofuturism, digital colonialism, ghost work, structural gender and racial “bias”, Indigenous data governance frameworks, relational epistemologies, edtech, anti-black and anti-Palestinian surveillance culture, climate justice, labour rights, sociotechnical ableism, crip technoscience and linguistic injustice. Dr. Scott will be teaching undergraduate and graduate level courses including WGST 5902D Feminist AI Literacy for Everybody at �Ӱ�ԭ�� and FEM6500C Féminisme et IA at uOttawa.

Third, she will invite scholars doing work on AI to speak at larger events intended for the wider campus community. She seeks to amplify scholars, artists and activists whose work questions AI’s corporate tendency to prioritize efficiency over meaning, extraction over care, output over creativity and private profits over the collective good. Her third objective is thus to think big and contribute to building the collective political power required to set AI on a better path across both campuses. Dr. Scott’s Joint Chair activities will engage with alternative ways to imagine what AI could be – an “engine of abundance” (Lewis et al., 2024) rather than a mechanism of extraction; a tool built for all peoples, not just the privileged; crip technoscience (Hamraie and Fritsch 2019) rather than “retrofitted” accessibility (Dolmage 2025). Dreaming big is a necessary antidote to empty AI hype and doom-laden tech pessimism (Bender and Hanna, 2025).

Previous Joint Chairs in Women’s Studies