Dirk J. Rodricks
Biography
Dr. Dirk J. Rodricks, Ph.D. (he/him) is a Postdoctoral fellow in Arts, Health, and Social Wellness with the Department of Health and Society and Associate Director of the FLOURISH Collective - a designated Cluster of Scholarly Prominence led by Dr. Andrea Charise. A Queer/Khush, racialized (Desi/South Asian) settler with ancestors from the southern part of India, Dr. Rodricks holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Pedagogy (with an emphasis in Critical Studies and a collaborative specialization in Ethnic and Pluralism Studies) from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto and a M.Ed. in Higher Education and Student Affairs Administration from the University of Vermont. As a scholar-practitioner with over 15 years of professional experience in postsecondary education administration committed to learning across difference through critical, creative, anti-racist, and de/colonial pedagogies, Dr. Rodricks' research interests include multiply-marginalized young adult identity formations and negotiations of social wellness in formal and nonformal sites of learning, intergenerational ethnoracial and queer inheritances across transnational contexts, and de/colonizing qualitative methodologies anchored by applied drama. His doctoral research, “This Body Has Fought Hard to be Here”—Unearthing Mishritata: Using Drama to Map the Multiple Minoritization of Queer Desi/South Asian Young Adults in Toronto,” was recognized by two Special Interest Groups (Queer Studies and REAPA: Research on the Education of Asian and Pacific Americans) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) with their respective Dissertation of the Year Award. He was also recently awarded the 2021 Intersectional Inclusion Award by the Gender and Sexuality Knowledge Community for NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education in recognition of his research and professional practice. Dr. Rodricks has been published in the ASHE Higher Education Report Series, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, Youth Theatre Journal, and Qualitative Inquiry. Most recently, he co-edited (with Dr. Kathleen Gallagher and Dr. Kelsey Jacobson) Global Youth Citizenry and Radical Hope: Enacting Community-Engaged Research Using Performative Methodologies published by Springer in 2020. Dr. Rodricks currently serves on the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, and Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance. Follow him on Twitter (@khushscholar).
Awards and Grants
2021 Outstanding Dissertation Award, Research on the Education of Asian and Pacific Americans (REAPA) Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA)
2021 Dissertation of the Year Award, Queer Studies Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA)
2021 Intersectional Inclusion Award, Gender and Sexuality Knowledge Community, NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education
2021 Nominee, The TaPRA Edited Collection Prize, Theatre and Performance Research Association, London, United Kingdom
2018 Emerging Scholar (Designated Honor), 9th International Drama in Education Research Institute (IDiERI), Auckland, New Zealand
2017–2018 Dean’s Achievement Scholarship, OISE, UofT
2013–2017 Ontario Trillium Scholarship, School of Graduate Studies, UofT
Publications
Books and Refereed Monographs
Gallagher, K, Rodricks, D. J., & Jacobson, K. (Eds.). (2020). Global youth citizenry and radical hope: Enacting community-engaged research through performative methodologies. Singapore: Springer Nature.
Conroy, C., Ong, A., & Rodricks, D. J. (2019). On access in applied theatre and drama education. Oxford: Routledge. [Nominated for The 2021 TaPRA Edited Collection Prize, Theatre and Performance Research Association, London, United Kingdom]
McCoy, D.L. & Rodricks, D. J. (2015). Critical race theory in higher education: 20 years of theoretical and research innovations. ASHE Higher Education Report Series, 41(3), 1-117. [over 300 citations to date]
Selected Refereed Journal Articles, Refereed Major Research Papers, and Book Chapters
Rodricks, D.J. (2020). Methodology in 3D: Commensality and meaning-making in a global multi-sited applied drama ethnography. In K Gallagher, D. J. Rodricks, & K. Jacobson (Eds.), Global youth citizenry and radical hope: Enacting community-engaged research through performative methodologies (pp. 197-218). Singapore: Springer.
Rodricks, D.J. (2018). Access through the shadows: Lessons from applied performance practice research at the borderlands. Research in Drama Education: Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 23(3), 389-405.
Gallagher, K., & Cardwell, N., Rodricks, D. J. (2018). Stories from within and without: A multi-perspectival ethnography of the constitutive and creative acts of oral history theatre-making in local communities amidst global crises. In A. Harris, P. Thomson, & K. Snepvangers (Eds.), Creativity policy, partnerships, and practice in education (pp. 307-330). London: Palgrave-MacMillan.
Rodricks, D. J., Gallagher, K., Haag, J., Wortley, S., Fusco, C., DeLisio, A., & Dicarlo, D., Zoltok, S., & McCready, L. (2018). Crossing places: A review of urban youth policy 1960s-2010s. Neighborhood Change Research Partnership Research Paper Series, 243, 1-73.
Gallagher, K. & Rodricks, D.J. (2017). Hope despite hopelessness: Race, gender, and pedagogies of drama/applied theatre as relational ethic in neoliberal times. Youth Theatre Journal, 31(2), 114-128.
Gallagher, K. & Rodricks, D. J. (2017). Performing to understand: Cultural wealth, precarity, and shelter-dwelling youth. Research in Drama Education: Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 22(1), 7-21. [Republished in book format as part of Routledge's SPIB (special issues as books) initiative; anticipated 2019]