Walking in/as Publics: Editors Introduction

Walking has an extensive history in the arts, humanities and social sciences as an artistic practice, as part of public programming and pedagogy in museums, schools and community spaces, and as a research methodology that is attentive to place, situated knowledges, sensory experiences and movement. More recently, there is a renewed interest in walking, as indicated by the number of organizations, publications, symposia, research projects, and artistic events that foreground walking. WalkingLab (www.walkinglab.org), a queer-feminist walking research-creation collective co-directed by Stephanie Springgay (University of Toronto) and Sarah E. Truman (University of Melbourne), has emerged as a leader in the area of walking studies. WalkingLab organizes international walking events, conducts research with diverse publics including youth in schools, and collaborates with artists and scholars to realize sitespecific research-creation events i that complicate and rupture the White-cis-hetero-ableistpatriarchal canon of walking scholarship.