I am Director, Curriculum Development and Delivery, Open Learning, at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia. I oversee not only the design and development of Open Learning’s course offerings, but also the delivery of our close to 500 courses to nearly 30 000 students annually.

From 2018-2024, I was Director of Marquette University’s Center for Teaching and Learning. There, I oversaw the CTL’s educational development initiatives, the Service Learning and Interprofessional Education programs, and the Norman H. Ott Memorial Writing Center.  I was also an Adjunct Associate Professor in Marquette’s Department of English. 

From 2011-2018, I was a faculty member at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta where I served as the university’s Faculty Development Coordinator in the Centre for the Advancement for Faculty Excellence and taught in the Department of English. At MacEwan I ran everything from small workshops on student engagement and assessment to large events for hundreds of people such as MacEwan’s annual Faculty Development Day and the MacEwan Book of the Year program. I also served as the Director of the annual National Great Teachers Seminar in the Canadian Rockies and was co-Chair of the Educational Developers Network of Alberta from 2016-18.

Prior to joining MacEwan, I served as Director of the University of Vermont’s Canadian Studies Program (2006-11) and was an Assistant Professor in the Department of English. Between 1996 and 2009, I also helped to run Northwest Passages, a groundbreaking online bookstore and information resource he cofounded in 1996 that focused on Canadian literature.

I have nearly twenty-five years of experience teaching courses in postcolonial literatures and literary theory, with a strong emphasis on the literatures of Canada. My book Sanctioned Ignorance: the politics of knowledge production and the teaching of the literatures of Canada was published by the University of Alberta Press in 2013 and won the 2013 Gabrielle Roy Prize (English section) which each year honours the best work of Canadian Literary Criticism in English.

I earned a B.A. (Hon) in English and French Language and Literature (1993) from the University of Alberta, a M.A .in Canadian Literature from the University of Western Ontario (1995), and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (2002) from the University of Alberta.

Areas of Expertise:

Student Engagement and Educational Development
Student engagement and active learning; curriculum and course design; digital pedagogy; enhancing student learning through the effective use of academic technology; eportfolios; universal design for learning (UDL). For further information on my educational development and academic leadership work, please visit paulwmartin.ca/portfolio.

Literary and Canadian Studies
The literatures and literary histories of Canada; postcolonial literatures and theory; twentieth and twenty-first century literature in English and French; music and literature; Canadian Studies; the history of literary studies as a discipline, particularly at universities in Canada; hockey and Canadian culture; sport and literature.