Wellington Sousa 

Program Teaching Staff

Dr. Wellington Sousa is an emerging adult education and community development scholar and practitioner. Dr. Sousa joined Coady Institute in March 2023 to advance the Asset-Based and Community-Led Development Program through research, teaching and capacity building, bringing 10 years of community development experience in Canada and internationally. Wellington is committed to seeing more communities leading their own development and moving toward the fullness of their potential. This vision led him to the Action Research for Citizen-Led Change Certificate at Coady Institute in 2016 and, later, to his PhD in Adult Education and Community Engagement at the University of Regina. Dr. Sousa’s doctoral research draws from a post-structural notion of power and self to explore how community practitioners become community-based research (CBR) facilitators. His study re-visits the idea of organic intellectuals as an essential concept to reclaim CBR as a people’s approach to change. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economic Sciences and a research-based Master’s Degree in Administration (Organizational Management) from the University of Amazonia (Universidade da Amazônia), Brazil. (Universidade da Amazônia), Brazil. 

Selected Publications

Sousa, J. W. (2022). Liberating community-based research: Rescuing Gramsci’s legacy of organic intellectuals. Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning, 8(3), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.15402/esj.v8i3.70755 

Sousa, J. W. (2022). Relationship as resistance: Partnership and vivencia in participatory action research. In R. Stoecker, & A. Falcón (Eds.), Handbook on participatory action research and community development (pp. 396–416) Edward Elgar. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839100970.00032  

Sousa, J. W. (2021). Community members as facilitators: Reclaiming community-based research as inherently of the people. Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, 14(2), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7767 

Sousa, J. W. (2021). Community development in Canadian adult education: Looking back and moving forward. Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 33(2), 27-43.