“Critical Space”: An emerging community to engage in critical thinking and de/anti-colonial praxis

We are six engineers and engineering researchers from four institutions across Turtle Island , in Canada. We all share similar values and perspectives regarding the colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist (exploitative) nature of traditional engineering education and practices. Upon coming together, we noted shared feelings of isolation in our respective institutions. We felt stifled by the dominant ‘culture of disengagement’ that perpetuates depoliticization, the myth of meritocracy, and the socio/technical dualism in engineering. Consequently, we decided to create a book club (learning community) to engage with critical and decolonial literature in a collaborative manner. More specifically, we intended to form critical perspectives of engineering through non-dominant paradigms. In this paper, we reflect on our engagement in a critical literature book club as a space for learning and community support in engineering education.