Dr. Amanda Wager

Amanda Claudia Wager, PhD is a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Community-Engaged Research and Professor in the Faculty of Education at Vancouver Island University in Canada.

Of Jewish Ashkenazi ancestry, born in Los Angeles and having grown up in Amsterdam, she embraces learning languages and creating art as cultural advocacy. Her research focuses on community-led public art projects involving languages, literacies and participatory arts-based methodologies, such as storytelling, theatre, mural painting, spoken word poetry, hip-hop music, and wood-carving.

Amanda is the founding director of the arc: art, research and community which works together with many communities across Vancouver Island and beyond using the arts as a form of bridging communities, truth-telling and language reawakening. Amanda has presented and published multiple journal articles, as well as co-edited/authored four books, and supported the creation of documentary films in relation to art as a form of cultural advocacy.