Researcher positionality statement

As a University of Toronto librarian supporting entrepreneurship on campus since 2015, I have worked closely with the campus accelerators on all three campuses. My role in this community is peripheral; academic librarians act as liaisons to various departments, supporting curriculum through research and instruction support. My role connects me to curricular and co-curricular activity across multiple departments and campuses.

Entrepreneurship interests me as a form of experiential learning. My goal in supporting this community is not to glorify the high-profile investment engines that make up a small percentage of startups but rather to provide critical literacy skills to help students, faculty and staff make better informed decisions when attempting to create something new, regardless of the outcome. I believe most of this community are people who wish to make the world better while working within the constraints of a society that values profit over all. I deeply admire the students who attempt such a feat despite the risks it entails.   

My motivation for this project was to both be better informed about the origins of the community I support, and to capture and record as much of its history as possible. Given the lack of documentation on many aspects of this story, I relied on interviews with members of this community who played an active role in the creation of its many parts. My background as a business journalist, editor, and copywriter informed my approach to collecting and presenting the information presented here, which draws on but ultimately strays from an oral history methodology.  

I have pre-existing professional relationships with many of the people I interviewed for this project. Therefore, my position in conducting this research is unavoidably that of an insider. I took advantage of those relationships to access the stories of those who created it. These are primarily the perspectives of those with the resources and power to carry out such a project. As such, it is woefully incomplete. I hope that this exhibit provides an access point to others who wish to explore this history further.