Rachel Horst

Dr. Rachel Horst is a full-time lecturer in the Master of Educational Technology program at the University of British Columbia. Her research, teaching, and creative digital praxis examine meaning-making and communicative practices in an era of generative AI and digital saturation. Drawing on posthuman and postdigital perspectives, she employs arts-based and digital methodologies alongside participatory approaches to collective meaning-making—foregrounding collaboration and imagination amid technological transformation and shifting notions of expertise. These shifts expose and unsettle established hierarchies of authority, legitimacy, and power across education, technology, and society, opening space for critique, reimagination, and resistance. Her doctoral research—recognized with the 2025 Dissertation Award by the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies—examined how digital and creative methodologies can help teacher candidates cultivate futures literacies while disrupting deterministic accounts of technology and the future. Building on this foundation, Dr. Horst’s current scholarship foregrounds agency, glitch, drift, and creativity to propel justice-oriented pedagogies that disrupt linear, deterministic narratives of technological progress and open space for more plural, speculative, and transformative educational futures. As the developer of the MET AI Literacy Hub—an open educational resource for educators and practitioners—she continues to teach and speak on AI literacy, with a current focus on her Entangled Dimensions of AI Literacy framework. This work foregrounds the socio-technical, ethical, affective, and more-than-human dimensions of learning with and about AI in educational contexts. Her scholarship explores how emerging technologies are mutually entangled and co-productive with contemporary meaning-making in recursive and relational ways that are both generative and harmful—demanding vigilance, humility, and care as we collectively articulate their place in educational futures.