Aditi Mehta

Aditi Mehta

Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream

Urban Studies Program

“I teach a variety of community-engaged learning (CEL) courses at the University of Toronto. I am especially committed to using pedagogies that embody principles of “knowledge justice,” such as participatory action research (PAR) in which academics and community residents are collaborative partners in the process of designing an inquiry for the purposes of social change. I believe PAR courses address the disparity in knowledge production by exposing university students to unique perspectives and by building research capacity in excluded communities. The explanations that academic scholarship produces of our social world may be incomplete because they are shaped by a limited set of experiences.”

Aditi Mehta

URB 430: The Changing Cultures of Regent Park  
Initiated in 2019, this is a collaborative project between Urban Studies students at the University of Toronto and the  FOCUS Media Arts Centre at Regent Park. Together, we create media projects about Regent Park, its history and ongoing redevelopment, and the lived experiences of its residents. Learn more about the University of Toronto x Regent Park Focus: A Collaborative Media and Research Initiative. 

URB 342: Qualitative Methods for Urban Studies  
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I re-invented this course for the online teaching context by partnering with a city-run nursing home in Toronto. Students in the course each partnered with an elder resident who they built a relationship with and interviewed via Skype throughout the semester to develop an oral history project about the lived experiences of the city.  

To understand cities we must talk to elders more. Spacing Magazine, June 18, 2021. 

Steil, J., & Mehta, A. (2020). When prison is the classroom: Collaborative learning about urban inequality. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 40(2), 186-195.