Interrupting Innovation: Centring the Social
Interrupting Innovation: Centring the Social is an incisive guide to how we can reframe social innovation towards the goal of societal transformation through compelling examples of community engaged action. It is co-edited by Melanie Panitch, Samantha Wehbi, and Jessica P. Machado, and was published by Fernwood in March 2025.
Click here (external link) to learn more about the book or to order it online.
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Events
Join co-editors Melanie Panitch, Samantha Webhi and Jessica Machado for the launch of Interrupting Innovation: Centring the Social. This launch will be facilitated by the executive director of the Office for Social Innovation, Dr. Eliza Chandler. It will feature remarks from the dean of community services Kiaras Gharabaghi.
Hosted as a free hybrid event. Join us from 5:30 - 7:00 p.m. in-person at the Daphne Cockwell Complex (DCC) Room 707/709, 7th Floor, 288 Church St. or online via Zoom. Click here (external link) to register. We will have ASL interpretation available.
Melanie Panitch and Jessica Machado will be at the International Social Innovation Research Conference (ISIRC) from September 3-5, 2025 at the University of Calgary (external link) . Further information on a presentation from the co-editors at ISIRC is TBA.
Further information on a book launch hosted by the Leo Panitch School for Socialist Education (external link) (LPSSE) in Fall 2025 is TBA.
About the co-editors
Melanie Panitch is an associate professor and former Executive Director of the Office of Social Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University. As the John C. Eaton Chair of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, she co-designed a minor in social innovation and developed partnerships internationally. She spearheaded the Sanctuary Scholars initiative, providing access to postsecondary for students with precarious immigration status. An activist, advocate, researcher and educator with strong roots in the disability rights movement, she was the founding director of the School of Disability Studies at TMU. The exhibit she co-curated, Out from Under: Disability, History and Things to Remember, is in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. She is the author of Mothers, Disability and Organization: Accidental Activists.
Samantha Wehbi is a professor, School of Social Work at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research and artistic-practice interests have focused on international issues and grassroots community activism and organizing in Canada and abroad, including Lebanon, her country of origin. Her work has explored the complexities of urban landscapes and issues of displacement, postcolonialism, translocality and social change. Her scholarship explores interdisciplinary intersections of art, community practice and pedagogy. Dr. Wehbi is the co-editor of Re-imagining Anti-oppression Social Work: Reflecting on Research and Re-imagining Anti-oppression Social Work: Reflecting on Practice.
Jessica P. Machado is the programming and stakeholder engagement officer in the Office of Social Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University. She has been creating and supporting social innovation initiatives in higher education for nearly ten years. She has created a funding program for student organizers and activists and supported the development of an access pathway to postsecondary education for people with precarious immigration status. She is a steward with her local union and is involved in grassroots community activism in gender-based and sexual violence. She is pursuing an M.Ed. in adult education and community development from the University of Toronto, and her work explores critical pedagogy through coalition-building activities and social movements.
