Linda Hawkins

Linda Hawkins is director and co-founder of the Institute for Community Engaged Scholarship at the University of Guelph. Her expertise is in designing and facilitating strategic community-university partnerships with local, regional and national organizations, and with other higher ed institutions to increase responsiveness, relevance and capacity for innovative engagement and action.  Linda is the founder of the Research Shop – an innovative mechanism operating around and between university and community silos – where up to 30 graduate students work as interdisciplinary researchers, brokering and carrying out community driven research.

Linda is currently working as co-chair for the development of Guelph Lab, a civic solutions lab in partnership with the City of Guelph that will address systems change in the region, and as facilitator for a local teams building local-global curriculum for a school for civil society and engagement. Linda also serves on a national team for a collaboration focused on transforming Canadian universities through building reward and development opportunities for engaged scholars.

Linda served as executive director of the Centre for Families, Work and Well-being from 2001-2009, overseeing the establishment of community-university research alliances on gender, father involvement and rural women’s livelihoods, and prior to that was a community researcher and program evaluator for government and community benefit organizations.