Dr. Jessica Riddell    Jarislowsky Chair of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence

Official Bio: Dr. Jessica Riddell is a Full Professor of Early Modern Literature in the English Department at Bishop’s University (Québec, Canada). She holds the Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence; in this capacity, she leads conversations about systems-change in higher education that shifts the focus from resilience to human and ecological flourishing. 

 

In her research, teaching, leadership, and administration, she facilitates dialogue at the national and international levels about how universities fulfil their public purpose. 

 

An award-winning educator and scholar, Dr. Riddell has published on Shakespeare, institutional culture change, inter-institutional collaborations, experiential learning, and inclusive high impact practices. Her book Shakespeare's Guide to Life, Hope, and Learning (University of Toronto Press, 2023) with co-authors Dr. Lisa Dickson and Dr. Shannon Murray, was nominated for the Gordon Book Prize. Her most recent book, Hope Circuits: Rewiring Universities and other Systems for Human Flourishing (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024), addresses the fragmentation, weakening of purpose, and instrumental practices of higher education and issues an expansive call for the reinvention of universities and the renewal of their social contract. 

 

Dr. Riddell has long been a philosophical figure in the higher education sector and a respected insider-advocate for shaping systems for human benefit. As the founder of the Hope Circuits Institute, she facilitates collective sense making for boards, senior leadership teams, senates, and various departments and offices across the university campus. At a time where there are so many indictments of higher education, her work invites people, communities, and institutions to engage in strategic planning around governance, relational wellbeing, student success, learning and teaching innovation, advancement, campus-wide engagement, and departmental/divisional renewal. In addition to retreats, books clubs, workshops and other forms of professional development, Dr. Riddell hosts hope summits, consults on policy development, and facilitates roundtables that offers an antidote to a sector-wide mission drift at a moment when publicly funded social institutions are under siege. 

 

Dr. Riddell is a leading intellectual at the intersection between the humanities and higher education. She is one of Canada’s most prolific public scholars on the role universities play in a civil, just society and regularly convenes conversations about how education shapes creative democracy. As an inter-disciplinary researcher, she’s engaged in knowledge creation in diverse fields from Shakespeare to transformative learning, inclusive high-impact practices to systems and design thinking and collective sense making. 

 

Dr. Riddell has a robust leadership portfolio in higher education and serves on several boards, including the Board of Directors for the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), as a Board Member of the Society of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE), VP Quebec for Senior Women Academic Administrators of Canada (SWAAC), member of the Research Advisory Board for Future Skills Centre, and has served on the 3M National Fellows Council and as VP Canada for International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. She also currently sits as a three-term Governor on the Bishop's University Board of Governors and a two-term Senator at Bishop's University Senate. 

 

She has received research funding from SSHRC, ECQ (Entente Canada et Québec), and STLHE (Society of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education) and was awarded funding for innovation from the McConnell Foundation, The Jarislowsky Foundation, CEWIL (Canadian Experiential Work-Integrated Learning), Business Higher Education Round Table (BHER). 

 

Dr. Riddell was awarded the William and Nancy Turner Award for Teaching Excellence (2011-2012) at Bishop’s University, received the 3M National Teaching Fellowship in 2015, was the recipient of a D2L Innovation Award for Teaching and Learning in 2022, and won the inaugural award from Forces Avenir (Quebec’s highest recognition in higher education) for Most Engaged Faculty/Staff Member in 2022.

 

Dr. Riddell convenes conversations in the public sphere and builds a shared belief that we can only engage in systems-change work when we are in communion with others, illuminated by the fundamental guiding values of equity, justice, and empathy. Her work moves us beyond the “way it has always been” into new spaces where universities can be on the frontline of social and economic renewal.