The Gender in Civic Leadership Archive is a public collection of interviews, research, and profiles documenting the experiences of women and gender-diverse civic leaders.
Through student scholarship, the archive preserves the stories of individuals who have shaped their communities through municipal government, public administration, arts, education, advocacy, community organizations, and public service.
Together, these stories create an enduring record of leadership that is often overlooked in traditional political and civic histories while offering valuable insights into how local democracy is experienced, practiced, and sustained.
The archive grew out of the Gender and Women in Civic Leadership course at King’s University College at Western University. The course offers women and gender-diverse students a unique opportunity to become engaged in civic leadership and community-building by working directly with accomplished women-identifying civic leaders.
Rather than learning about leadership solely through textbooks, students build professional relationships with mentors and conduct qualitative research to produce public profiles that connect academic scholarship with lived experience.
Through this process, students gain first-hand insight into the opportunities, challenges, and barriers facing women and gender-diverse people in public leadership while developing practical skills in qualitative research, interviewing, writing, and community engagement.
As an experiential learning initiative, the archive is grounded in David Kolb’s model of experiential learning. Students move through a cycle of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. They engage directly with mentors and community organizations, critically reflect on those experiences, connect them to academic literature and theory, and apply their learning through research, writing, and public knowledge mobilization. The result is scholarship that is both academically rigorous and deeply connected to community practice.
Each year, the course explores a different question about gender and civic leadership.
2024
In 2024, students examined leadership during turbulent times.
2025
In 2025, the focus shifted to emotional labour and technological change.
2026
In 2026, during London’s municipal election, students will investigate how women and gender-diverse civic leaders engage with the city before, during, and after an election.
While the themes evolve from year to year, they share a common purpose: to understand how leadership is practiced in response to changing social, political, and community challenges.
The course approaches leadership through an intersectional and feminist lens, recognizing that experiences of public leadership are shaped by gender alongside race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, class, geography, and other dimensions of identity. Students explore how these intersecting experiences influence political participation, representation, community organizing, advocacy, and public decision-making. By connecting individual stories to broader political and social questions, the archive highlights both the diversity of leadership experiences and the common commitment to strengthening democratic communities.
The Gender in Civic Leadership Archive is intended to serve multiple audiences. It provides a resource for students, educators, researchers, journalists, community organizations, and anyone interested in the changing nature of civic leadership in Canada. At the same time, it honours the generosity of the women and gender-diverse leaders who have shared their stories, ensuring that their experiences become part of the historical record and remain available to inspire future generations of civic leaders.