Reinekke Lengelle

Reinekke Lengelle, PhD is the MA-IS faculty member who founded the journal with a group of MA-IS student volunteers in 2009-2010. She is an associate professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Athabasca University. Her book “Writing the Self in Bereavement” (Routledge, 2021) won two international awards and was recently translated into Greek.

On the first morning of this academic year, we heard the devasting news that Priscilla McGreer had been murdered in Edmonton on August 30, 2025. Priscilla was a longtime Journal of Integrated Studies editor and a graduate of the MA-IS program. The news quickly spread among JIS volunteers and to the university’s faculty, sending a shockwave through us all.

In late September, attending her memorial service with hundreds of others, I was reminded of our interconnectedness. Celebrating Priscilla’s life and mourning her death happened in a church full of her family, friends, and those she’d worked with her at Norquest colleague and The Learning Centre: Literacy Association in St. Albert. Priscilla was part of an extended web of kindreds. She had cultivated many connections, was deeply appreciated, and pursued her intellectual growth in dialogue.

In honour of Priscilla’s contribution to JIS, my editorial will be in the form of a letter and a poem, in the spirit of her collaborative attitude and way of working. This sharing is intended to remind us that our work in writing, research, and publishing is a co-creation born from our rich sharing and dialogue and that we never work in isolation.

The loss of a student and colleague with whom we speak, write, edit, and work is a loss for all of us. It not only touches those who knew that person but rips painfully into the fabric of life: there are students who will no longer learn from Priscilla; there are conversations about justice that will miss her vision; there are new writers who could have been companioned by her; there are articles and books she would have written that are left blank. And there are professors, like me, who will remain sorrowful that we will no longer see Priscilla blossom further. I am haunted by the knowledge that she had so much more to offer. And simply put, I miss her.

24 October 2025

Dear Priscilla,

I remember the first time we met. It was online at one of our JIS editorial meetings. You joined us as a volunteer. You seemed a bit shy and were just embarking on your MAIS studies. You had responded to one of our annual calls for new student editors.

You surprised me when you said you wouldn’t mind learning the layout portion of the Open Journal Software program. Our founding MAIS director Mike Gismondi had said that at times it was a “bear” of a platform but could do what we needed it to do.

I never learned all aspects of it in the 12 years I was the faculty coordinator for the journal – to be honest, even the term “style sheets” made me uneasy. But you were unperturbed and became a longtime member of our team. I remember too how you came by city bus on a rainy day in June to pick up the poster boards so we could showcase the journal at the student graduate conference in Edmonton. Others learned of the journal from you, and you worked with many volunteers over the years, editing articles, improving the journal’s layout, and doing so with enthusiasm.

You and I would meet for a cup of coffee a few times a year at Rosso’s pizzeria near the High Level Bridge and talk shop and life. You borrowed books on Dialogical Self Theory and therapeutic writing. During one of those afternoon meet-ups, you met another JIS volunteer who came to join us. She encouraged you to explore working with Norquest college, which you did.

I remember your good cheer and can-do attitude. And your great smile, which to me expressed joy but also the appreciation you had for life’s absurdities, hardships, and challenges.

The stereotype of the lone writer working quietly and with deep concentration at their desk is a paradox. You told me how your views on this changed as your own writing deepened and your research expanded. Your work with the Journal brings this point home: you understood that we write and create in community. And you worked in ways that your students, friends, colleagues, professors, and JIS colleagues could feel this as well. Thank you for that.

Mourning and honouring someone is often best done in a poem, so here is one that wanted to be written today in your memory.

We write in community

Maybe it is fair to say writers
only act lonely, rugged, and neurotic
Underneath all the guises and characters
and the ideas we wrestle with
is the deeper truth
we were never alone
there was always someone there
someone like you who would
lend an eye, a pen, an ear

At school we are taught that
someone helping us
someone correcting our mistakes before we handed things in
was cheating
Only later did we realize every word is a co-creation
every writer needs an editor
every thinker needs a dialogue
every editor needs someone who will layout the words
and while we are feasting on all of that
our readers come to tell us what the feast was all about.

With deepest appreciation,
Reinekke