Many changes have occurred in the past few months since our move to Thunder Bay, and most all of them for the better!
In April 2022 I joined the Centre for Social Accountability at NOSM University as a part-time Research Associate. The Centre is led by an interdisciplinary group of medical doctors, researchers, and scholars, and its aim is to improve health and wellness in Northern Ontario through policy leadership and advocacy, research and innovation, and education that better aligns medical training with community needs. It is situated on the Anishinabek Nation and hosts several programs including NORTHH, MERLIN, and an Indigenous data sovereignty working group.
The team I work with is currently developing a unique approach to social accountability in medical education and health care, and my work with the Centre is focused on writing, communications, and the epistemology of social accountability. I am also interested in how my work on violence and conspiratorial thinking bears upon issues of public health, from the complexities of the World Health Organization’s definition of violence to the severe and negative effects that conspiracy theories continue to have on public health.
In another vein, in late 2021 I took over operations of a publishing company called Pandora Press that specializes in scholarly works in the Anabaptist Mennonite tradition. The press has published landmark books like C. Arnold Snyder’s Anabaptist History and Theology and Astrid von Schlachta’s From the Tyrol to North America: The Hutterite Story Through the Centuries.
As the new Director of Pandora Press I am interested in working with authors who write critically, creatively, and rigorously on topics related to Mennonite Studies and the history of the Anabaptist groups. See here for a catalogue of our titles, here for a brief history of the imprint, and here for covers of our recent and forthcoming titles.
Beyond that, my work as a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto continues, and I am currently revising my dissertation for publication and writing my postdoctoral book on conspiracism and critique!
Dr. Maxwell Kennel 