Below the Radar

About Below the Radar

Amplifying ideas that fly below the radar. We talk environmental and social justice, arts, culture, community-building and urban issues with featured guests. This podcast is produced by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement as a part of our Knowledge Democracy Project @ 312 Main — encouraging the meaningful exchange of ideas and information across communities. Hosted and currently produced by: Am Johal Joey Malbon Julia Aoki Kathy Feng Samantha Walters Visit our website for archived audio and video recordings of our public events: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/library.html

Publisher

SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement

Category

education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

5 Nov 2018

Latest episode

19 Jun 2026

Latest episodes

301 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   19 Jun 2026

   John Price

   In this episode, we are joined by Professor John Price (University of Victoria), who leads the Canada–China Focus project. We discuss how Canada–China relations are debated in ways that can intensify anti-Asian racism and Sinophobia, and how Canada–China Focus works to reframe public conversation. We use Price’s submission to the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference as a stand-alone case to think through how “security” discourse can produce racialized harm, and we close by reflecting on what Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January 2026 visit to Beijing signals for the next phase of Canada–China relations—and what short- and long-term work is needed to sustain anti-racist public awareness alongside serious foreign-policy debate. Resources: John Price: https://www.uvic.ca/research/centres/globalstudies/people/associate-fellows/pricejohn.php Canada-China Focus: https://www.canadachinafocus.ca/ Submission to the Honourable Marie-Josée Hogue, Commissioner of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions.: https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/ccf/wp-content/uploads/sites/6776/2024/08/Hogue-Commission-JP.pdf Bio: John Price is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Global Studies. He retired in 2018 after teaching history at UVic for twenty-one years. He retains an active research and writing program, however, with special focus on Canada-China relations and Indigenous-settler relations in the Pacific Northwest. With faculty members Nicholas XEMŦOLTW̱ Claxton (HSD) and Christine O’Bonsawin (History), he was recently awarded a SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant to promote Indigenous Ecological Knowledge with the environmental organization, Dogwood. His historical research spans the history of Japan, transpacific migrations, Asian Canadian histories, and Indigenous-Settler relations in the Pacific Northwest. He is the author of Japan Works: Power and Paradox in Postwar Industrial Relations (Cornell, 1997), Orienting Canada: Race, Empire and the Transpacific (2011), and, with Ningping Yu, the biography A Woman in Between: Searching for Dr. Victoria Chung (2019). He is a co-author of the recent Challenging Racist “British Columbia”: 150 Years and Counting (2021) and co-editor of a special volume of BC Studies: Unsettling the Islands: Race, Indigeneity, and the Transpacific (204, Winter 2019/20). He is a founding member of Canada-China Focus and has recently published a series on Canada-China relations and another on Canada-US militarization of the Pacific. When not in the library or writing at home in Vancouver, he is looking after his three grandchildren, or on bike trips with his partner of forty-six years, Margaret McGregor.

2. 

   19 Jun 2026

   Henry Yu

   In this episode, we are joined by Professor Henry Yu from University of British Columbia. We discuss Vancouver’s Chinatown as a living archive of anti-Asian racism, and what it reveals about the persistence of racism after the acute pandemic period. We also use Yu’s essay “The white elephant in the room” to reflect on why naming white supremacy matters, and what coalition-building—including national forums on anti-Asian racism—can and cannot accomplish. Resources: Henry Yu: https://acam.arts.ubc.ca/henry-yu/ The white elephant in the room: anti-Asian racism in Canada: https://beyond.ubc.ca/henry-yu-white-elephant/ Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America: https://academic.oup.com/book/47996 Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia: http://www.cchsbc.ca/ Chinatown Reimagined: https://www.chinatownreimagined.ca/ Bio: Professor Henry Yu was born in Vancouver, B.C., and grew up in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island. He received his BA in Honours History from UBC and an MA and PhD in History from Princeton University. After teaching at UCLA for a decade, Yu returned to UBC as an Associate Professor of History to help build programs focused on trans-Pacific Canada. Yu himself is both a second and fourth generation Canadian. His parents were first generation immigrants from China, joining a grandfather who had spent almost his entire life in Canada. His great-grandfather was also an early Chinese pioneer in British Columbia, part of a larger networks of migrants who left Zhongshan county in Guangdong province in South China and settled around the Pacific in places such as Australia, New Zealand, Hawai’i, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, the United States, and Canada. Prof. Yu’s book, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2001) won the Norris and Carol Hundley Prize as the Most Distinguished Book of 2001, and he is currently working on a book entitled How Tiger Woods Lost His Stripes: Finding Ourselves in History. Currently, he is the Director of the Initiative for Student Teaching and Research on Chinese Canadians (INSTRCC) and the Principal of St. John’s College at UBC, as well as a Board Member of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia (CCHSBC).

3. 

   10 Mar 2026

   Evaluating Community Engagement — with Lauren Wendling

   On this episode of the Below the Radar B-Sides, our host Am Johal is joined by Lauren Wendling, Director of Institutional Success at Collaboratory. Together, they chat about community engagement in higher education, how she got involved in the work, and the evaluation and evolution of the field. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/btr-bsides-lauren-wendling.html Resources: Collaboratory: https://cecollaboratory.com/ Carnegie Classification: https://cecollaboratory.com/carnegie/ Lauren’s website: https://laurenwendling.wixsite.com/laurenwendling Bio: Dr. Lauren A. Wendling is a scholar-practitioner whose work focuses on integrating community engagement, institutional policy, and data to drive cultural change in higher education. In her role at Collaboratory, she guides institutions in capturing and utilizing engagement data to inform assessment, institutional decision-making, and the broader institutionalization of community-engaged scholarship. Prior to joining Collaboratory, Lauren worked within the IU Indianapolis Office of Community Engagement, where she built structures to track collective impact and improve campus-wide reporting. Her scholarship focuses on the institutionalization of community engagement and the evaluation of faculty work across diverse campus contexts. Lauren earned her Ph.D. in Higher Education from Indiana University Bloomington, with a focus on urban education. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “Evaluating Community Engagement — with Lauren Wendling.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, March 9, 2026. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/btr-bsides-lauren-wendling.html.

Who has been a guest on Below the Radar

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Irene Gammel
• Jason Wang
• Viola Tian

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

7 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 57 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

80

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

85