The UnLeading Project: Recent Episodes
Dr. Vidya Shah and the Unleading Team
This work has been inspired by Dr. Kevin Kumashiro who challenges us to question common sense assumptions of schooling, to acknowledge the partiality of knowledge, and to be in the practice of unlearning as we learn and unteaching as we teach.
The UnLeading Project makes two assumptions: Leadership exists in all spaces, and we are all leaders. If you are a leader or aspiring leader, or if you are interested in leadership in classrooms, schools, communities, homes, districts, and academies, this podcast series is for you. If you know that traditional approaches to leadership have not addressed the realities or attended to the aspirations of students and communities most harmed by schooling, this podcast series is for you.
Throughout this podcast series, we focus on:
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Naming the logics of discourses and intersecting systems of oppression that have been used to oppress, dispossess, and dehumanize
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Centering approaches to leadership based in knowledge systems that have been silenced under dominant conceptions of leadership
Come join us on the UnLeading journey!
In a time of great loss, change, crisis, and regeneration, Hospicing Leadership: Leading Through Crisis, Loss, and Grief explores what it means to turn towards grief, to recognize and honour its presence, and to consider what it means to be with grief and metabolize it into something else. In a time of unprecedented levels of grief, we explore what it means to lead in ways that tend to individual grief, communal grief, and systemic grief.
In Abolitionist Leadership: Towards Restoration, Love, and Liberation, we dive into the logics of carcerality that are deeply entrenched in schooling and society. These are logics of dehumanization that deem some people disposable, guilty, and dangerous to protect the claimed innocence and supposed safety of others. Join us for a conversation that unpacks these logics, challenges false binaries of good/bad, pure/evil, right/wrong, and opens us possibilities for restoration, community, love, and liberation for all.
In Leading Against Neoliberalism and Privatization, we consider how neoliberalism, capitalism, and privatization concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few, posing serious threats to the public good. These forces operate broadly across society, impacting healthcare, housing, job security, labour rights, and the weakening of unions. In education, neoliberal and privatization agendas manifest through private partnerships, specialized schools and programs, reliance on fees and fundraising, school choice, private schooling, homeschooling, and even in curriculum design and our understanding of students and education’s purpose. We’ll examine how these systems shape who we are as leaders, influence our relationships with one another, and envision possibilities for a more equitable future.
Leading for Linguistic Justice and Language Revitalization explores the ways in which narrow conceptions of language, notions of “standard” English, and accent discrimination maintain systems of white supremacy and colonialism. We consider how our understandings of language change our access to thinking and being in schools, communities, and the academy. This podcasts challenges Eurocentricity and invites us to consider how coloniality influences how we speak, listen, communicate, and engage with one another. We will also explore the possibilities of practices like translanguaging that allow people to bring their full selves and identities to a space.
Technologies of Leadership recognize that technology, like leadership, is not neutral. We will explore leadership as we move away from the Information Age towards the Age of Intelligence. We consider what it means to lead in a time of constant change, technological opportunities and innovative possibilities, but also in a time of unprecedented surveillance, an often unregulated technology sector, racist algorithms, and neocolonial practices in the AI sector and beyond. This podcast will explore how these technologies change us, how we need to rethink leadership in these times and through these times, and how we can lead in ways that leverage possibilities of technology, while actively resisting the potential dangers.
In this podcast, we consider the tensions, complicities, and complexities of cross-racial and other solidarities in leadership, as well as opportunities for collective liberation that emerge through these solidarities. This podcast highlights the intersectional nature of multiple systems of oppression and the relational nature of racialization within a system of white supremacy and settler colonialism. Our conversations consider what this work might look like in our everyday practice and the possibilities that emerge from leading through solidarities of joy and thriving.
For more information head to: https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading
In this podcast, we explore what it means to lead for climate justice as an intersectional and deeply relational approach to the present climate crisis. We consider the differential impact of the climate crisis on local and global communities, the existential and physical threats of the climate crisis, and how we might learn from and be in better relation with the nonhuman world. We acknowledge the important role that Indigenous communities and youth have on this movement whilst not absolving the rest of us in our responsibilities to end climate injustice.
Come journey with us. Welcome to UnLeading!
For more information head to: https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading
In this podcast we explore the connections between our inner lives and our outer presence and work in the world. We consider how our fears, fantasies, desires and worries all influence who we are and how we lead. Panelists share their thoughts on the significance of awareness, healing, embodiment, joy and creativity in leading and living. Finally, we discuss how we might apply our understandings and embodiments of these connections in the work we do in communities, schools and academies.
Come journey with us. Welcome to UnLeading!
For more information head to: https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading
In this podcast we consider what it means to lead toward disability justice in our thinking, in our practice, in our relations, and in our institutions. This framework was coined by disabled queer women of colour activists in 2005 and we consider how we might move towards this framework in education. Our panelists share in imagining what schools and communities might look like if they were designed around the transformative principles of disability justice and committed to communities of care.
Come journey with us. Welcome to UnLeading!
For more information head to: https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading
In this podcast, we highlight experiences, realities and identities that are often invisible or intentionally ignored in explorations of equity and anti-oppression today. We consider how the racialization of particular identities simultaneously leads to invisibility and hyper-visibility, both of which are dehumanizing experiences in leadership. This podcast takes us to a place of reimagining, reclaiming and re-storying the possibilities for leadership that draw from the strengths and wisdom of invisibilized people and worldviews, and the power of collectives and communities.
Come journey with us. Welcome to UnLeading!
For more information head to: https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading
Welcome to the Critical Spirituality in Leadership Podcast as part of the UnLeading Project. In this podcast, we explore leadership as a practice of continual critical self-reflection, healing, and the embracing of inner life. We consider what it means to embrace the whole self as a human becoming, rather than a human being, and how we might face tensions, paradox, and interconnections with all the complexities and complicities of the ego. In this conversation we reframe leadership as an act of stewardship and service that centers love, and walks students, families, and ourselves home. Come join us on this journey as we imagine what we might create anew! For more information head to:
https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading
Welcome to the Queering Leadership Podcast as part of the UnLeading Project. In this podcast, we explore the possibilities of leadership that is informed by a commitment to collective liberation, an embracing of the body, desire and pleasure, and an engagement with the unknown, the diffuse and the in-between. As we delve into this conversation, we call into question the very concept of leadership - the contradictions, the questions, and what it might mean to look for leadership in alternative spaces. Come join us on this journey as we imagine what we might create anew! For more information head to:
https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading
Welcome to the Culturally Relevant and Anti-Racist Leadership Podcast as part of the UnLeading Project. In this podcast, we center the knowledge, experiences, and expertise of Indigenous, Black and racialized leaders and make explicit the power relations found at the center of leadership. We name the ways in which efforts to challenge anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, and other forms of anti-racism are blocked, and expose what and who is overlooked, underreported, silenced, and erased in schooling. We consider our being-ness in this work and explore how we might care for ourselves and ready ourselves in this work. Come join us on this journey as we imagine what we might create anew! For more information head to:
https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading
Welcome to the Community-Centered Leadership Podcast as part of The UnLeading Project. In this podcast, we challenge traditional notions of leadership—where it exists, who can be a leader and what constitutes leadership. This conversation explores the ways in which formal leadership continues to harm Indigenous, Black and racialized communities, and how we might disrupt, dismantle, and abolish structures that were not created with or for those most harmed in education. We consider what it might mean to center love, humanity and justice in education, opportunities to create alternative learning spaces, and access for students who are not served seen, affirmed, or honoured in schools. Come join us on this journey as we imagine what we might create anew! For more information head to:
https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading
Welcome to the Decolonizing and Uncolonizing Leadership Podcast as part of the UnLeading Project. In this podcast we explore how we might restore our capacity to lead through a recognition of our interconnectedness, responsibility to each other, and a renewed wholeness as leaders who center love and healing in education. We explore our connections to land, creatures, ancestors and future generations, and how the communities we belong to and the communities we create inform possibilities for leadership. Come join us on this journey as we imagine what we might create anew! For more information head to:
https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading