Will Garrett-Petts is Professor of English, Rhetoric, and Canadian Studies at Thompson Rivers University. He has chaired two departments; directed two research groups; served as Associate Dean of Arts; received 31 external research grants totaling over $5 million in funding; published 18 books and catalogues, and over 150 articles, chapters and conference presentations. His recent achievements as, first, the Associate Vice-President of Research and Graduate Studies include developing and launching the University’s Strategic Research Plan in 2014 and the current plan in 2022; championing the introduction of 4 new programs to support undergraduate research training; and coordinating five research MOUs: one a tri-university research partnership with UNBC and UBCO; one with Bridgewater State University; one with the University of Coimbra, one with the United Way, working on the development of a social innovation “Change Lab”; and one with the City of Kamloops, developing and supervising the Researcher-in-Residence program. He was appointed Vice-President, Research in April, 2022; he was awarded a Killam Visiting Professorship in Canadian Studies at Bridgewater State University, Spring, 2023; and currently serves as Special Advisor on Integrated Strategic Planning, Office of the Provost. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Coimbra, a Board Advisory Member for Arts in Society, and an elected Councillor At-Large for the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR). 

His early scholarship sought to develop a rhetoric of reading, with a special interest in works of art situated at the intersection of visual and verbal literacies: prose pictures and visual fictions. His areas of current interest include small cities research, cultural mapping and community-engaged research, rhetorical theory and discourse analysis, artistic inquiry and interarts practices (see the MAIV Residency, Banff Centre for a collaborative example): MAIVBookFinalJuly09. Some recent thoughts on community engagement and local governance can be found in his review of Warren Magnusson’s Local Self-Government and the Right to the City.

Will’s most recent academic book is Artistic Approaches to Cultural Mapping: Activating Imaginaries and Ways of Knowing (Routledge 2019; rpt 2020), co-edited with Nancy Duxbury and Alys Longley. The book examines how contemporary artistic approaches can challenge conventional asset mapping by animating and honouring the local, giving voice and definition to the vernacular, or recognizing the notion of place as inhabited by story and history. An Open Educational Resource workbook on cultural mapping, written by Nancy Duxbury and Garrett-Petts was published in 2023. It is free for downloading here from Selected Publications: A Guide to Cultural Mapping.

Curriculum Vitae GarrettPettsCurriculumVitaeOctober2023