Dr. Cher Hill recognized for collaborative, community-engaged research

Dr. Cher Hill, Assistant Professor in SFU’s Faculty of Education, has received the 2026 SFU Research Excellence Spotlight Award for Innovation, recognizing research that bridges scholarship, community collaboration, and real-world change. 

Hill’s work focuses on theory and practice, uniting diverse knowledge systems through relational, place-based, and community-engaged approaches. Her research examines how scholarship addresses environmental, social, and cultural harms to foster more connected, thriving, and just communities. 

“I am incredibly honoured to be recognized by the SFU community for research excellence,” says Hill. “This is a very important recognition because, to me, it signals the valuing of diverse research, such as my own, that involves mobilizing scholarship to contribute to real-world change in collaboration with community members.” 

Much of Hill’s recent work centers on collaborative knowledge creation with Elders, educators, youth, and the land. This research advances transformative relational pedagogies in forests, explores posthuman research methods that highlight interconnectedness with more-than-human life, and supports trans-systemic knowledge creation for collective wellness.

A community-engaged researcher, practitioner-scholar, and educator, Hill grounds her work in collaborative knowledge creation across diverse systems. Her latest research examines threats to collective wellness, including the impacts of colonization, capitalism, and ecocide. 

Among her recent projects is the SSHRC-funded Learning to Care for Salmon, Our Communities, and Ourselves. This project advances environmental education research, supports care for waterways, strengthens human-land relations, and engages learners with the complexities of settler colonialism. 

Hill emphasizes the role of collaboration: “I am deeply grateful for longstanding partnerships with Elder Rick Bailey, teacher Neva Whintors, and Dr. Ching-Chiu Lin, as well as the colleagues and mentors in the Faculty of Education and beyond who support and inform my research,” she says. “Collaborative, trans-systemic, community-based research is only possible within strong, committed partnerships like these.”