How can we live together with a little less murder?
In thinking about that question -- in holding it at the centre of all my work, I find myself curious about the ways power, threat, response, and responsibility circulate in our bodies, minds, stories, and ways of being together. I often wonder about how the things we can learn from our bodies, minds, and stories, can support ways of being together that are respectful and reciprocal. Right now, I'm working on developing tools and models that can support folks to train in times and spaces of relative peace in order to respond with clarity and kindness in times and spaces of overt conflict and dispute.
If we are research kin and the following language is meaningful to you, I am specifically interested in thinking about:
- somatic approaches to processing and movement in relation to experiences of traumatic affect;
- individual, collective, and institutional stamina for non-exiling practices of co-being and belonging that engage specifically, directly, post-pathologically, and responsively with abrasion, discomfort, conflict, dispute, hurt, and harm;
- strengths-based approaches to athletic conditioning methodology that are grounded in culturally-relevant systems of meaning;
- pedagogical approaches to support conscious engagement with (and intentional inhabitation of) one's axiological commitments and fidelities;
- emergent, iterative, creative, collective, and speculative research methodologies.
Current projects include:
- Axiology Clinic - an incubator for research-creative work done in non-traditional spaces such as: sport, physical activity, recreation, kinesiology, rehabilitative medicine, and rehabilitative technological spaces.
- Supporting flourishing in academic spaces through lab cultural enactments of axiological commitment in the Just Movements CreateSpace and the Minor Praxis Lab
- Dissertation: Gathering space: Invitations to doing and being together
Select Academic Publications:
(for full list, please refer to my CV)
Journal Articles
T. Sostar, N.V. Fawaz, E. Trimble, T.O. Markarian, B. Noble
The Qualitative Report, vol. 29(12), 2024, pp. 129-150
D. Peers, J. Joseph, C. Chen, T. McGuire-Adams, N.V. Fawaz, L. Tink, L. Eales, W. Bridel, E. Hamdon, A. Carey, L. Hall
International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 2023
Dismantling Historical Hardscapes: Unsettling Inclusion as Solidarity
N.V. Fawaz, D. Peers
Sport History Review, 2022
We become gardens: intersectional methodologies for mutual flourishing
D. Peers, J. Joseph, T. McGuire-Adams, L. Eales, N.V. Fawaz, C Chen, E. Hamdon, B. Kingsley
Leisure/Loisir, 2022
Book Chapters
Criply, madly, deeply: Salty cultures of the left behind (in press)
L. Eales, N.V. Fawaz, D Peers
B. LeFrancois, G. Reaume, I. Abdillahi, Mad matters: A critical reader in Canadian Mad Studies (2nd Ed.), Canadian Scholars Press
This garden is my home (in press)
N.V. Fawaz
R. Thawer, M. Khan, Queerituality: LGBTQ+ Muslims on mental health and healing, University of Regina Press
Conclusions and future directions (in press)
T. McGuire-Adams, J. Laurendeau, N.V. Fawaz, D. Uy, E. Bošnjak
M. Clark, W. Bridel, Social Issues in Canadian Sport, Human Kinetics Canada
When our survival is not given: The arts and athletics of remaining alive (forthcoming)
Peers D., N.V. Fawaz
Z. Avner, A. Jeffrey, L. Jones, Ethical Practices for Skilled Movement Behaviour: Post-Performance Reflections, Routledge
Myths of inheritance: Cardamom
N.V. Fawaz
R. Burke, In Between Spaces: An Anthology of Disabled Writers, Stillhouse Press, 2022
Knowledge Mobilization, Reports, & Policy
C. Smith, L. Tink, T. Ira, N.V. Fawaz, D. Peers, M. Vinod
University of Alberta, Office of the Vice-Provost - Access, Community, & Belonging, 2025
Trans inclusion in sport: Countering misinformation with research
D. Peers, W. Bridel, L. Eales, S. Dixon, J. Gainer, A. Lowik, N.V. Fawaz, A. Greey, J. Joseph, Tink. L., J. Laurendeau
2024