PhD University of Alberta (1992); MA University of British Columbia (1981); BA University of Victoria (1979)

Will Garrett-Petts is Professor of English, Rhetoric, & Canadian Studies–and currently serving as Special Advisor on Integrated Strategic Planning, Office of the Provost. He was Associate Vice-President and then Vice-President of Research (Interim) at Thompson Rivers University from 2012 to 2023; and during the Spring of 2023 he held the Killam Visiting Professorship in Canadian Studies at Bridgewater State University. His recent books and catalogues include Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry (2015; paperback edition, 2020); Whose Culture is it, Anyway? Community Engagement in Small Cities (2014); Writing about Literature (2nd ed. 2013); Imaging Place (2009); Artists’ Statements and the Nature of Artistic Inquiry (2007); The Small Cities Book: On the Cultural Future of Small Cities (2005); and PhotoGraphic Encounters: The Edges and Edginess of Reading Prose Pictures and Visual Fictions (2000). He is Series Editor (with Nancy Duxbury Carreiro) for Small Cities: Sustainability in Community and Cultural Engagement (University of Calgary Press); and, supported by Social Sciences and Humanities in Canada (SSHRC Insight program) funding and Vancouver Foundation (Participatory Action Research) funding, he is engaged in exploring questions of visual and verbal culture, cultural and vernacular mapping, and the artistic animation of small cities. He also has a special interest in the theory and practice of including students in undergraduate research. Garrett-Petts co-edited a newly released book, Artistic Approaches to Cultural Mapping (Routledge, 2019; paperback edition, 2020).