The UAAC-AAUC Award (established in 2022) for the Advancement of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility is intended to recognize and celebrate the achievements of those whose work in our fields foster change and build an equitable, diverse, inclusive, and accessible community in Canada. The outputs of such work may look like many things, such as: building a more inclusive, equitable, diverse, and accessible practices and working environments; increasing diverse representation; promoting research and insights relating to Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity and Accessibility; leadership and engagement in addressing systemic inequality.

UAAC-AAUC Award for the advancement of equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility, recognizes and celebrates the achievements of those whose work in our fields foster change and build an equitable, diverse, inclusive, and accessible community in Canada.

Eligibility: This award recognizes and celebrates the achievements of those whose work in our fields, foster change and build an equitable, diverse, inclusive, and accessible community in Canada.

UAAC member at any career stage with a demonstrated contribution to:

• building a more inclusive, equitable, diverse, and accessible practice / working environment
• increasing diverse representation
• promoting research and insights relating to Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity and Accessibility
• leadership and engagement in addressing systemic inequality

Prize: $1000 prize + 1 year subscription to RACAR

The 2025 recipient is Carla Taunton

Dr. Carla Taunton, a white-settler scholar, is an Associate Professor in the Division of Art History and Contemporary Culture at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD). She is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the department of Cultural Studies at Queen’s and in the department of Graduate Studies at Dalhousie University, and also serves on graduate committees at Carleton University and University of British Columbia Okanagan. Dr. Taunton holds a MA in Canadian Art History from Carleton University (2006) and a PhD in Art History from Queen’s University (2011). Her PhD research titled, Performing Resistance/Negotiating Sovereignty: Indigenous Women’s Performance Art in Canada won the Governor General’s Gold Medal in 2012.

Dr. Taunton’s research focuses on arts-led interrogations of settler colonialism systems, institutions, and logics. Her research contributes to scholarly and curatorial activations of arts-based critiques of settler colonialism, Indigenous arts and methodologies, contemporary Canadian art and activism(s), museum and curatorial studies, as well as theories of decolonization, inter-cultural collaboration, anti-colonialism and settler responsibility. Her recent publications include the co-edited Routledge Companion to Indigenous Art Histories of the United States and Canada (2023). She works as an independent curator and was a curatorial team member for the 2019 Abadakone: International Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada.