Dr. Roxy Cohen
Post Doctoral Fellow & Senior Research Associate
Rooted and Rising Co-Director
Dr. Roxy Cohen is a Post Doctoral Fellow and Senior Research Associate at the Young Lives Research Lab. She is Co-Director of the Rooted and Rising Leadership Program and Co-Community Fellow, Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research.
With the Young Lives Research Lab, Dr. Cohen leads Canadian youth advisory committees to shape research on youth and planetary wellbeing in the Digital Age. Committed to centering youth voices in research and social change, Roxy uses creative and supportive approaches to engage young people in decision-making and knowledge dissemination.
As Co-Director of the Rooted and Rising Lab (R+R), Roxy collaborates with an intergenerational network of youth leaders and educators—both formal and community-based—to deliver nourishing education programs for people navigating what we currently call the climate crisis, and re-membering how to care with the natural world. R+R’s root program is the Youth Climate Leadership Certificate, co-certified by university and community partners including Young Lives Research Lab.
Her PhD dissertation, Rooted and Rising: A Pedagogical Narrative Inquiry into Re-Storying Education in the Era of Climate Change, explores the first R+R youth certificate. Her inquiry pursues re-storying and re-structuring education as practices of interconnecting, social action, and prefiguration, the deliberate and experimental implementation of desired futures in the here and now.
A passionate advocate for climate justice since high school, Roxy earlier co-founded Conscious Minds Camp & Co-op, a youth-led, pay-what-you-can summer camp fostering healing and transformation through collaborative living and learning. As Treasurer and Mentor, she continues to support the next generation of leaders. Roxy’s community engagement also includes urban food sovereignty. With the St. James Town Community Co-operative, she has facilitated design charrettes and municipal dialogues for the OASIS Food Hub, a pioneering project in urban climate/food resilience, and remains an active supporter of the co-op.
Roxy holds a PhD in Education: Language, Culture, and Teaching from York University; a Master’s in Education from York; and a B.A. in Human Geography and Equity Studies from the University of Toronto.
Contact Roxy Cohen: cohenrox@yorku.ca
Publications
A Gallery to Rethink and Re-place the Anthropocene: Framing From A Place-based Borderless Higher Education by Steve Alsop and Roxanne Cohen, forthcoming (https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph-detail?docid=b-9781350151277&tocid=b-9781350151277-chapter10)
Adaptation of a structured story-dialogue method for action research with social movement activists by Blake Poland and Roxanne Cohen, 2017. (Adaptation of a structured story-dialogue method for action research with social movement activists)
PhD Dissertation: Rooted and Rising: A Pedagogical Narrative Inquiry into Re-Storying Education int he Era of Climate Change (https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/5ff3bca5-dcd8-4529-be79-00c13021ede4/content)
Rooted and Rising: Co-Developing Experiential Education for Climate Leadership for Youth and Planetary Wellbeing - Dahdaleh Institute Global Health Seminar Series - https://www.yorku.ca/dighr/recap-co-creating-experiential-learning-for-youth-leadership-and-planetary-health-by-rooted-and-rising/
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