Faculty List View

Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster has been working in theatre, film and television for nearly 20 years. She is a a founder of the collective The Howland Company, former Assistant Artistic Director at Tarragon Theatre, and was a resident artist with Soulpepper Theatre Company for 7 years. Courtney has performed with the Shaw Festival, Soulpepper, Public Recordings, Canadian Stage, Citadel Theatre, Blue Bridge Repertory, Cahoots, Native Earth, Tarragon and beyond.

Her theatre direction includes Three Women of Swatow (Tarragon, 4 Dora nominations), The Home Project, (Howland Company/Native Earth/Soulpepper, 5 Dora nominations), The Wolves (Howland/Crows – Outstanding Ensemble Win, Toronto Critics Awards, Outstanding Production – MyEntWorld), 52 Pick-Up (Howland – Best of Fringe), and Everybody (York University).

Courtney directed Ins Choi’s audioplay Casting at Factory Theatre as well as projects for CBC’s PlayMe Podcast and Tarragon Acoustic. She co-directed the Expect Theatre audioseries Tunnel Runners and co-created Stillwater School for Mosquitos, a musical podcast for children. Her onscreen credits include shows like Love et Lajoie, Hudson and Rex, SurrealEstate, Transplant Murdoch Mysteries, films like the the NAC Orchestra/CBC project Undisrupted, The Drawer Boy and the feature Silent Planet.

Courtney is an alumna of the Loran Award, has been shortlisted for the John Hirsch Directing Award, the Gina Wilkinson Directing Award and the Pauline McGibbon award, has been nominated for numerous Dora Awards including outstanding direction and has received two for outstanding ensemble. She has twice been named a top ten theatre artist by NOW Magazine, and holds a BFA from UBC and an MBA (Social Enterprise) from MUN.

Emilia White (she/they) is an assistant professor and program coordinator of Integrative Arts in the Department of Computational Arts. Previously, they taught at the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design as one of the core faculty of the Interarts Performance program.

White holds a BFA in Theatre & Original Works from Cornish College of the Arts, and an MFA in Studio Arts from the Stamps School of Art & Design. Her current research focuses on an autoethnographic exploration of female embodiment and motherhood. They use humour to approach the grotesque, drawing from her background in theatre, playwriting, puppetry, video and animation.

White is currently working on a video animation based on their live performance 40 Year Old ZIT, which explores the awkward and humbling experience of aging, and a DIY publication about pregnancy loss and maternal health titled The Ugly Placenta.

White’s work has been presented throughout North America and abroad, primarily in Taiwan and Indonesia. A selection of venues includes Collar Works, Defibrillator Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Planet Ant Theater, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Dumbo Arts Festival, Chicago Women’s Funny Festival, Gallery Salihara, Lembaga Indonesia Perancis and Taman Budaya. She previously co-curated The Performance Laboratory in Detroit and was an active member of the political arts collective Taring Padi in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. White was born in Northern California, USA, and is the parent of two wonderful kids.

Matthew I. Thompson is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Arts at York University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto in 2020. He is currently working on a book project under contract with the University of Minnesota Press entitled On Life Support: The Dystopian Environmentalism of 1970s Ecocinema. On Life Support uses 1970s science fiction ecocinema as a lens through which to view the early environmental movement, a lens that exposes many of the assumptions that continue to influence environmental politics to the present. Other areas of interest include Indigenous futurism, critical animal studies, and film philosophy. Matthew has published in the journals Spectator, World Picture, and The New Review of Film and Television Studies.

Fabio Montanari is a filmmaker and scholar who has written a number of series for top networks including Netflix, HBO and National Geographic. He is the creator of an original international fiction TV series that is currently being filmed for Amazon Prime Video.

As a Screenwriter and Director, Montanari’s independent work has been screened in over 50 film festivals around the world including Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, and São Paulo, where he was awarded Audience Favorite. He has created content in multiple markets including in the U.S., Argentina and Venezuela, as well as for Canadian companies like Banger Films and BBDO Agency. His mixed media stories have garnered awards including eight Cannes Lions, the CLIO and The One Club. Montanari holds an MFA in Film from Columbia University in New York (Fulbright scholar) and a BA in Journalism from the University of São Paulo. He also serves as a Mentor for Being Black in Canada (BBIC), Canada’s largest mentorship and training program for Black filmmakers.

Canadian Mezzo Soprano, Melissa Davis is an active concert soloist, vocal professor, choral director and vocal clinician.

Awarded the distinguished Krannert Debut Artist Award by the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Illinois, Davis has guest soloed with Grammy and Juno-award-winning choirs and orchestras throughout North America including the Buffalo Philharmonic and Thunder Bay Symphony orchestras.

A dynamic concert soloist, she has played principal roles in various concert and opera productions throughout Canada, the United States, France, the UK and the Caribbean. As the Canadian premiering artist of Peter Ashbourne’s Jamaican classical art song cycle, “Fi Mi Love Have Lion Heart,” Davis released her live solo debut album, City Called Heaven: An Evening of Songs and Spirituals, including the cycle in 2015.

Davis has served as vocal director for prominent theatre productions, vocal masterclass clinician and guest lecturer for numerous national and international conferences.

With a DMA in Vocal Performance and Literature from the University of Illinois, an alumna of York University (BFA, Honours, Vocal Performance), she returns to York U as the newly appointed Assistant Professor of Vocal Performance.

Jackie Chau has designed over 200 productions and her work as a set and costume designer has toured across Canada and internationally.  She has worked on many new and diverse Canadian plays and has done production design and art direction for film and television. The most recent short film she designed, One Small Visit – a true story of an immigrant Indian family who unexpectedly passes through the tiny Midwest hometown of Neil Armstrong in the wake of the ’69 moon landing – was screened at the Smithsonian, NASA and the Cannes Film Festival.  Some of the theatre companies with which she has collaborated include Theatre Aquarius, Native Earth Performing Arts, One Little Goat, New Harlem Productions, Capitol Theatre (Port Hope), Can Stage, Factory Theatre, Fu-Gen, Prairie Theatre Exchange, GCTC, Buddies in Bad Times, Second City Chicago/Toronto, CBC Kids/Expect Theatre, ARC Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Soulpepper, Stratford Festival, Tapestry Opera, Soundstreams and Luminato.

Sue Johnson is filmmaker and cinematographer who works primarily in long-form narrative and documentary film. A member of both I.A.T.S.E. 667 and the Canadian Society of Cinematographers, Johnson has been working at the intersection of industrial and independent production for over twenty years. Production credits include shows for Netflix, Disney, StarZ, and CBS, while her documentary and feature work includes credits with NFB, CBC, White Pine Pictures and Al Jazeera. She approaches frames with an eye to the emotive, tactile and thematic, and is always exploring how new technologies can creatively aid the craft of cinematography.

Johnson’s directing practice combines documentary subjects with experimental modes of presentation, often exploring topics pertaining to artistic choice and queerness. She is currently releasing a feature-length documentary about Canadian experimental animator and activist James MacSwain, and in 2019, thirteen of her Super 8mm short films appeared at 8FEST. Currently she is researching the authorship and preservation of several film archives that show early depictions of drag and gender play, and working on a series of short films about queer beach culture.

Johnson holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Fine Arts from Mount Allison University, and a Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Media from Toronto Metropolitan University. She has taught previously at Toronto Metropolitan University, been a guest lecturer at both NSCAD and Mount Allison University, as well as hosted workshops for organizations such as Charles Street Video, Inside Out Film Festival, Centre for Art Tapes, Struts Gallery, and Planet in Focus.

Sihwa Park is a sound interaction designer, media artist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Computational Arts at York University. His research interest lies in interactive audiovisual software art, exploring the possibilities of computational algorithms and emerging technologies in designing novel audiovisual interfaces. His art practice focuses on representing the relationship between humans and machines entwined with data and algorithms, employing interdisciplinary approaches spanning from data visualization/sonification, generative art and machine learning. His current work explores the creative and critical use of ML/AI for generative audiovisual art and interactive installation art.

His work has been presented at international venues including the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), the IEEE VIS Arts Program (VISAP), SIGGRAPH, the SIGGRAPH Asia Art Gallery, the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), the Ars Electronica Festival and the Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) Workshop on Machine Learning for Creativity and Design.

Daniella Vinitski Mooney, PhD is an artist-scholar with an emphasis in experimental performance and intersectional identity. Daniella’s recent manuscript, The Immersive Theatre of GAle GAtes (Routledge), is a descriptive narrative of the Brooklyn-based company described by Dr. Marvin Carlson as the “true innovator” the immersive theatre movement so popular today. As a scholar, she has published with Bloomsbury, Ecumenica, International Journal of Performance and Media, Routledge, Theatre History Journal, Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Ugly Duckling Presse, and has presented for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Philadelphia Theatre Research Symposium, Mid-American Theatre Conference, and the University of Toronto FOOT Conference. As an artist, Daniella has also had the pleasure of working with Pig Iron Theatre (grant writer), the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (assistant director, dramaturg, performer), Skeleton Rep (performer), The Tank NYC (actress/playwright), PlayPenn (dramaturg/performer), Iron Age (playwright/performer), as well as with 6-Viewpoints founder Mary Overlie, (performer) and has collaborated closely with the University of Colorado MFA dance program as well as the former Naropa University MFA program in performance. Daniella has also guest taught, lectured, and created curriculum for York University, the University of the Virgin Islands, the University of Colorado, the Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design, Temple University, Penn State, Bristol University, Pomona College, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Since relocating back to Ontario, Daniella participated as Honored Guest at the Director’s Lab North held at the Tarragon, and dramaturgs for the Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre. Daniella’s MFA thesis project at York University is The Pearl, an autoethnographic multidisciplinary performance study centering on the intersection of disability, institutional erasure, and artist identity, recognized through an Ontario Graduate Scholarship as well as a Dorothy and Ian H. MacDonald Award. As a proponent of visible parenting and the arts, Daniella is a two-time grant review member for PAAL (Parent Artist Advocacy League), has been a guest speaker on parenting, dramaturgy, and the pandemic for Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas as well as the Canadian Association for Theatre Research, and has a chapter on motherhood and the theatre for a late 2023 anticipated Routledge anthology. Daniella is trained through the NYU Tisch School Experimental Theatre Wing and the Royal Academy in London. daniellavinitski.com

Shayna is an award-winning strategist, documentary producer and founder of the Haddon Strategy Agency in Toronto. Equally inspired by business strategy as well as charitable/non-profit work, Shayna is known for her commitment to uncovering the next bold move for her clients- both in the for-profit and non-profit space. Haddon Strategy’s reputation for long standing relationships, first-to-market products and industry disruption have often made national headlines and produced large scale impact. Shayna was awarded the BravoFact! grant for her short film starring Nelly Furtado and was part of the documentary team that won the Bell New Media fund for the series Get Involved! on TVO. Shayna’s work has aired on CTV, MTV, Much Music, TVO, CP24, ABC and 60 Minutes. Her clients range globally from across Canada, US, Saudi Arabia to France. When she is not running Haddon Strategy, building technology solutions or launching brands for clients, Shayna is an avid youth mentor and volunteer for Covenant House, a mentor for young entrepreneurs, speaker and fundraiser for non-profits globally. Shayna is a graduate of York University’s Theatre program and a proud mom to her son.

As an artist, Hector’s focus is on the aesthetic potential of immersive digital sound, visual and interactive experiences that seek to engage the audience into a reflection of existence, place relationship and the phenomenology of place. Among his artistic activities are national and international presentations of multi-channel sound art, interactive installation art, live sound and video performances, virtual reality experiences, virtual cinematography (virtual production), and virtual photography.

As a software and interactive system developer and designer, he has worked on virtual and augmented reality interactive experiences, video game mechanics and simulation systems, hardware sensors and micro-controller interactive systems for art installations, and spatial audio software tools. The organizations he has been involved with include New Adventures in Sound Art (as Technical Director), Impossible Things (as Technology Director) and for multiple independent interactive media artists.

As an academic, Hector has taught courses on theory and production techniques of digital media art at OCADU (Digital Futures), George Brown College (VFX, Interaction Design and Video Design) and Sheridan’s SIRT (Virtual Production).

Trina McQueen is Co-Director of the Arts, Media and Entertainment program at Schulich School of Business, where she has developed and taught courses for the program. In her professional career, she was Head of CBC Television News (where she launched and oversaw the development of Canada’s first news channel), founding President of Discovery Channel and President and COO of CTV, where she played a major role in the sale and integration of CTV to BCE.

She has served on numerous media boards, including CBC,Telefilm, McLelland and Stewart; Banff World Media Festival, Historica Canada, TVOntario and the Canadian Journalism Foundation. In the arts, boards included Canadian Opera Company, Canadian Stage, Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards and Tafelmusik, and in education, the University of Waterloo and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, as well as advisory boards at Queen’s, Ryerson, UBC, Carleton and University of Regina.

She is an Officer of the Order of Canada and has received four honorary doctorates, from York University, University of Waterloo, Carleton University and Mount St. Vincent University. Other honours include the CBC News Hall of Fame, the Playback Film and Television hall of Fame, Crystal Awards from Women in Film and Television, and honourary membership in the Directors Guild of Canada.

Mia Nielsen is the Director of Art Toronto, Canada’s art fair.

With a keen interest in developing art and cultural experiences for public space she has curated and produced exhibitions, performances, and collections for a wide range of sites including galleries, festivals and public spaces across Canada and beyond. Most notably, she built The Drake’s culture program over 12 years, curating exhibitions, the permanent collection and performances from the Queen Street flagship to a group of 6 restaurants and hotels, including the Devonshire in Prince Edward County.

She is thrilled to support Dean Bey-Chang’s work at York University’s School of AMPD and over the years has contributed to boards and committees at Gallery 44, Canadian Art Foundation and MOCA Toronto. She currently sits on the curatorial advisory board at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston.

 Jolene Cuyler is a Canadian artist based in upstate New York.

Her professional reputation was established working as a designer, art director, and ultimately, creative director, at important publications in New York City when print magazines were at the height of their cultural influence. The titles Cuyler worked on, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, and Modern Painters among them, were all recognized for their excellence.

Of particular note is a special series of six magazines Cuyler art directed for The New York Times Magazine in 1999 to mark the millennium. For one of the issues she commissioned contemporary artists to reimagine scenes from the last thousand years: the African Diaspora (Kara Walker), the Crusades (Carol Dunham), the Columbian Exchange (Catherine Chalmers), and had Ed Ruscha create an artwork for the cover. The six issues, alongside other objects documenting life on Earth during the 20th Century, have been welded into a time capsule designed by Santiago Calatrava and installed on the grounds of the American Museum of Natural History. The time capsule will remain sealed until the year 3000.

An authority in her field, Cuyler has been a juror for multiple design awards and has reviewed student portfolios for graphic design programs at Parsons, SVA, and RISD. Her design work has received numerous international awards and has been published in the annuals of: The Advertising & Design Club of Canada, D&AD (UK), and US organizations including the Art Directors Club, ASME (National Magazine Awards), The Society of Publication Designers, and both the Illustration and Photography annuals of Communication Arts. 

Cuyler holds a BFA from York University. In 2001 she received a Masters degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU. Red Burns, the program’s Dean, remarked of Cuyler’s thesis projects, one of which was an emotionally charged, interactive memorial for veterans of WWII, that they made her “proud to be Canadian.”

Cuyler’s artwork has been in gallery exhibitions in New York and Houston Texas. In 2007 she curated “Handmaking: The Work of Art in the Age of Triage” for the Abington Art Center in Philadelphia. The exhibition featured 22 artists whose work combines craft and technology.

In addition to her artwork, Cuyler is working on a memoir, a humorous reminiscence of her travels.

Carolyn, aka “Cal” as she is known in the Biz, graduated from YORK UNIVERSITY in 1984 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre and a minor in Dance therapy. She established herself in the early days of the Toronto film industry as a creative force in Production Design. Her filmography includes Set Decorator of such tent pole features as Batman vs Superman, The Incredible Hulk, Total Recall, Robocop, Finding Forrester, Midway, plus the 2nd and 3rd Fifty Shades trilogy – to name just a few.

In her 25 plus years, Carolyn has often found herself one of few woman at the executive table with Producers, Directors and Production Designers. She is motivated to change that dynamic; Carolyn has sat for over 5 years on the Set Decorators Steering Committee at IATSE Local 44 Los Angeles. Their mandate has been to expose intrenched disparities by creating National pay equity studies in the film industry, develop inclusive Mentorship programs for new and aspiring members, and to create educational awareness and opportunities for students by developing and and promoting careers in Set Decoration. She has assisted with Professional negotiation training clinics for Set Decorators to improve the perception of the role of the Set Decorator and to improve their life |working conditions. Carolyn was a member of the Local 44 (Los Angeles) first Women’s Committee established in 2019. As a member of IATSE 873 in Toronto, she was a long time member of the Set Decorators committee who worked to improve the professional craft of Set Decoration and its significance in the film making process.

In 2016, Carolyn became a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS). She actively participates annually as a judge for international and student films. She has also been a member of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television with 2 Genie nominations for Best Art Direction | Production Design in 2003 for Phillip Saville’s The Gospel of John and 2005 Adam Egoyan’s Where The Truth Lies.

In 2020 Carolyn was a founding partner/ creator of the Burning Sofa podcast to celebrate the art and work of the Set Decorator and the world of production design in film. The podcast’s first season launched with interviews of Scott Chambliss -Star Trek, Guardians of the Galaxy, Tiffany Zappulla – House of Cards, Ra Vincent -JoJo Rabbit, Tina Jones – Game of Thrones, Jeff Melvin – Shape of Water.

Carolyn has adjudicated the UCLA Design Showcase West which is the only national entertainment design showcase in the West Coast featuring the work of graduate students from the nation’s top university design programs. In support of her commitment to promote Set Decoration, she has spoken often at Ryerson Film School, Centennial College School of Communications, Media Arts & Design, DeLaSalle College’s graduating students and Verity, a private Womens Club in Toronto. In 2016 she participated in a panel spotlight “The Silent Art Of Storytelling” for the Downtown Los Angeles DTLA Film festival.
As a board member of the SDSA (Set Decorators Society of America) in Los Angeles, Carolyn proudly chaired and was Master of Ceremonies for the first Annual Awards night to celebrate the SDSA’s 25th Anniversary. It featured the Visions Award given to Bonnie Bruckheimer best known for her activism and feminist glass ceiling breaking career as a long time producer of All Girl Productions with partner Bette Midler.

Carolyn continues to work passionately as a Set Decorator around the world with some of the most creative film professionals in the business today. She has just recently completed a Netflix project in Thailand and is currently working on a Marvel project in Atlanta Georgia. Her trusty steed Argyle, a Westie, travels with her to find the best hiking adventures along the way.

Weyni Mengesha is a Canadian film and stage director known for her ground-breaking work and community engagement. Mengesha has directed plays that have gone on to break box office records, tour nationally and internationally, and have been developed into television shows playing on CBC, Global, and Netflix. She made her U.S debut in 2016 at Theatre @Boston Court directing Bars and Measures which received three Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award nominations and an NAACP nomination for her direction. She went on to make her New York debut with Martin Zimmerman’s Seven Spots from the Sun at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, along with the Off-Broadway debut of the critically acclaimed Kim’s Convenience. In 2019 She became artistic director of Soulpepper theatre in Toronto, a celebrated artist driven company that offers year-round programming and training for artists from across the country. She is also cultivating a tv/ film career with numerous award-winning short films and episodic TV shows under her belt and a feature in development.

She is also a committed educator, mentor of new talent, and a producer of youth arts initiatives. She was the co-director of the acclaimed A.M.Y Project (artists mentoring youth) since its inaugural showcase in 2005 until 2011. She also Co-founded Sound the Horn in 2004 and was artistic director of the organization for seven years providing a training and a performance platform to hundreds of young artists from Ethiopian and Eritrean communities across North America.

She continues to be a guest teacher for artistic training programs across Canada, including the National Theatre School of Canada, Canadian Film Centre (CFC) and The Soulpepper Academy. In 2018 Mengesha was named one of The 50 most influential Torontonians by Toronto Life magazine.

Vanessa Wang is a senior technologist and author who innovates and builds education and technology programs, and creates scaled initiatives to empower underrepresented communities. She co-founded Code for Good Week and San Francisco HTML5, which connect people with civic open source projects and web technology education.

Chief Executive Officer, Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television

Beth Janson is the Chief Executive Officer of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television. With over two decades of experience in the film, television and cultural sectors in both Canada and the United States, Beth has been the creative force behind some of the most innovative and meaningful developmental programs in the industry today.

Since joining the Academy in 2016, Beth has strived to make the Academy a place for emerging and established on-screen content and its creators to be supported, promoted and celebrated; she has been instrumental in the creation of several programs, including the Canadian Academy Directors Program for Women, Women in Post, and the WarnerMedia x Canadian Academy Global Access Writers program, and has transformed Canadian Screen Week into an annual industry hub with the introduction of the Members Lounge.

From 2009 to 2014 Beth served as executive director of the Tribeca Film Institute, where she oversaw all facets of the organization including fundraising, public relations and programmatic direction. Beth joined Tribeca in 2003 and was behind the development of its signature programs, including the TFI New Media Fund, a partnership with the Ford Foundation and the first-ever fund for independent transmedia work in the U.S.; and the Tribeca All Access, a grant and networking program for minority filmmakers. Previously, Janson was the programming director of the Newport International Film Festival.

A tireless supporter of inclusivity, Beth was the founding director of Rent the Runway Foundation’s Project Entrepreneur program, providing women with access to the tools, training, and networks needed to build scalable, economically impactful companies. She was also nominated for an Emmy in 2017 for her work as Co-Executive Producer on Meet the Patel’s, and was honoured by Women in Film & TV Toronto with the Crystal Award for Outstanding Achievement in Business.

Beth holds a BFA in Theatre Studies from York University. She was a Ford Foundation fellow at the Harvard Business School’s Owner and President’s Management Program, and also completed a certificate program led by Michael A. Porter at HBS called Creating Shared Value: Competitive Advantage Through Social Impact.

A designer, urbanist, and spatial justice activist, Liz is a global expert on engaging and transforming unjust urban environments. From designing shelters for immigrant day laborers in the U.S. to a water and health social enterprise for low-income Kenyans, Liz has a long history of working with communities in need to leverage the power of design to catalyze community healing and foster environments that support people’s capacity to thrive. She is Founder and Principal of Studio O, a multidisciplinary design consultancy that works at the intersection of racial and spatial justice. In addition to her practice, Liz has held academic appointments at several institutions including at UC Berkeley, Stanford’s d.school, and the University of Virginia. She also previously served as the Droga Architect-in-Residence in Australia, investigating urban marginalized populations and community development practices in the country.

Liz has written for and been profiled in publications such as The New York Times, Bloomberg (formerly The Atlantic) CityLab, and the Journal of Urban Design. Her projects have been featured in museum exhibitions and received numerous design awards globally. Her honors include IDEO.org Global Fellow, TEDWomen Speaker, Aspen Ideas Scholar, Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council, and one of Public Interest Design’s Top 100. She earned architecture degrees from Wellesley College and Harvard University.

Mariel is an interdisciplinary artist and tech entrepreneur based in Toronto, Canada. She is a core member of the Toronto/Brooklyn experimental performance collective bluemouth inc. The company’s latest work, Cafe Sarajevo, premiered January 2020 at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival and toured to Toronto’s Progress Festival in February 2020.

Mariel started coding back in 2015, and has been invested in the intersection of art and technology ever since, exploring innovative ways that artists can harness or hack technologies for live performance.

Mariel co-founded the performing arts intelligence company StagePage in August of 2019. The company specializes in building decision support systems for the performing arts, specifically working to connect audiences to performing arts experiences through discovery and matching solutions. She is also a co-organizer of the Performing Arts Information Representation Community Group at the W3C, an international group dedicated to community-sourcing the foundational infrastructure to power the next generation of AI tools and software for the arts.

Mariel has a degree in Theatre Studies from York University and is a graduate of the devised theatre specialization.

Toronto-based Lisa Jackson is an Anishinaabe filmmaker (Aamjiwnaang) whose documentary and fiction films and VR work have garnered two Canadian Screen Awards, been nominated for a Webby, broadcast widely, and screened at top festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Berlinale, and HotDocs. Indictment: The Crimes of Shelly Chartier won best doc at imagineNATIVE and is one of CBC’s top watched docs. She recently launched Door Number 3 Productions currently in production on feature hybrid documentary Wilfred Buck. She was awarded the 2021 Documentary Organization of Canada’s Vanguard Award, is an ISO-MIT Fellow, has an MFA from York University, and is part of the NFB Indigenous Advisory as well as the Indigenous Screen Office’s Membership Circle. She’s an alumna of TIFF Talent and Writers Labs, as well as the CFC Directors Lab, and Playback Magazine named her one of Ten to Watch. See more at doornumber3.ca.

Lisa Jackson’s work has screened at SXSW, Berlinale, Hotdocs, Tribeca and London BFI, and aired widely on television. Her IMAX-shot short Lichen premiered at Sundance in 2020 and she’s made works ranging from VR to animation to a residential school musical. Indictment: The Crimes of Shelly Chartier won the 2017 imagineNATIVE Best Doc award and is one of the top watched docs on CBC. Her work has screened extensively in educational, community as well as museum and gallery settings and in 2020 she launched her production company Door Number 3 Productions (doornumber3.ca), currently in production on the feature documentary Wilfred Buck, supported by the NFB, Sundance, Sandbox Films, Telefilm, Bell Crave, CMF, the ISO, and winner of the Hot Docs Forum Best Canadian Pitch prize. Alongside Clique Pictures, Door Number 3 recently produced Hot Docs Citizen Minutes short docs on civic engagement, which premiered at the 2021 festival.

Her Webby-nominated VR Biidaaban: First Light premiered at Tribeca, exhibited internationally to 25,000+ people, and won a Canadian Screen Award (Canada’s Oscar), the second time she’s received this honour. Transmissions, a 6000-square-foot immersive multimedia installation and sister project to Biidaaban, premiered in Vancouver in 2019, and was featured on the cover of The Georgia Straight. In 2016, she directed the VR Highway of Tears for CBC Radio’s The Current which was nominated for a Canadian Association of Journalists award. In 2015 she was drama director for the APTN/ZDF docudrama series 1491: The Untold Story Of The Americas Before Columbus, based on the bestselling book by Charles C. Mann, which was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award. She’s made more than 20 films, including CTV doc Reservation Soldiers, 1-hour doc How A People Live, and shorts SAVAGE, Suckerfish and Snare.

She is mixed Anishinaabe (Aamjiwnaang) and settler descent, earned a BFA in Film from Simon Fraser University, an MFA in Film Production from York University (thesis prize), and lives in Toronto. She’s an alumna of TIFF Talent and Writers Labs, IDFA Summer School, and CFC Directors Lab. She is a well-known advocate for Indigenous screen sovereignty, the Documentary Organization of Canada awarded her their DOC Vanguard Award, Playback Magazine named her one of Ten to Watch, she is an ISO-MIT Fellow at the Open Documentary Lab, and she sits on the National Film Board’s Indigenous Advisory Board.

Ray Williams is a Father, Little League Coach and Entrepreneur who, starting in 1991, built Steinberg Canada, Music Marketing Inc., MusicXPC and XCHANGE Market Corp. – all companies in the music technology space. Ray has also been teaching music courses at York University in Toronto since 1999. In 2002, along with Thomas Wendt, Ray founded IMSTA – a non-profit trade organization for the worldwide music software industry, which advocates for the software industry and promotes piracy education. Today, IMSTA stages IMSTA FESTA consumer shows in New York, London, Berlin, Tokyo, Seoul, Los Angeles, Toronto, Chicago and Rio de Janerio. IMSTA has established fruitful strategic alliances with NAMM, Music China, AES, Musik Messe, SOCAN, GRAMMYs P&E Wing, Ryerson University, SAE Institute, Tokyo School of Music and the Beijing Film Academy.

In 2009, Ray founded XCHANGE Market Corp. which is the world leader in music software digital distribution, connecting more than 1,200+ Resellers with products from over 400+ Vendors in 68 countries. XCHANGE serves the largest companies in the industry like Guitar Center, Sweetwater, Avid, Yamaha, Roland, Thomann, FabFilter, Celemony, FL Studio, EastWest, Soundtoys, Hal Leonard, Antares and IK Multimedia to name a few. Ray has received many awards including a Technical GRAMMY, a Technical EMMY, a Harry Jerome Award and the Herb Trawick Innovation Award.

Ray love music, music-making, art, baseball, history, volcanoes, keeping fit and documentary films.

Christa Dickenson is the Executive Director & CEO of Telefilm Canada. She has three decades of experience spanning broadcast television, technology, telecommunications, and interactive digital media, having worked at CTV, CPAC, Rogers, and Interactive Ontario. Ms. Dickenson possesses an unparalleled talent for change management coupled with a strong business acumen. With brand advocacy expertise honed over many years, she is a highly effective screen-based industries advocate and spokesperson. In addition to a professional background spanning both the creative and business sides of the screen industries, Ms. Dickenson has a BAH and Masters of Fine Arts in Film Studies. She is the former Chair of the Board of Directors of CIAIC (The Canadian Interactive Alliance Interactive Canadienne), and currently sits on the

Board of Directors of the National Film Board of Canada. Christa Dickenson was recognized as “The 20 Most Powerful Women in Global Entertainment” by The Hollywood Reporter in October 2021, having propelled Telefilm Canada, a 50-year-old Crown corporation, into an era of modernization, while acknowledging and breaking down barriers to access.

Renu is the CEO of Imagebuilderz, an organization specializing in Public Relations, Media Relations, Marketing, Advertising and Events Management. As a PR and Communications specialist, she is responsible for strategy and business development and execution of various communications projects for several organizations. Some key clients have included the League of Canadian Poets, University Health Network (UHN), TD Bank, The Indo Canada Chamber of Commerce (ICCC) and Canada India Foundation (CIF).

Over the years, Renu has served as a Board Director of several non-profit organizations like the Indo Canada Chamber of Commerce, EIPROC, Peel Region Mentoring Program and the Equity Council for York Region.

Currently, she is VIce Chair of the Markham Arts Council (MAC) and a member of the Dean’s Advisory Committee, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD).

Renu has been honoured as one of the 20 Journeys that showcases the story of immigrants who have contributed to the vibrancy of the Toronto Region and was also awarded with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal presented to highlight the achievements of people dedicate themselves to service of family, community and country.

Director & CEO, Toronto Arts Council and Toronto Arts Foundation

Since Claire’s appointment to Toronto Arts Council and Toronto Arts Foundation in 2005, both organizations have experienced significant growth in funding and impact, innovation in strategy and delivery, and greater understanding of their roles in the community. Early in her tenure, Claire developed the direction Creative City: Block by Block, an overarching vision to have the arts accessible by all Toronto residents.

A graduate of McGill University in English Literature (Honours), Claire then spent approximately 25 years commissioning, developing and producing works of opera and theatre, and running several arts organizations. An agent of change, she was instrumental in moving contemporary opera from the outskirts of the field to the revitalised centre. Claire also invested considerable time and energy into developing support for and getting Canadian artists onto international stages. Her evolution into policy-maker and advocate – from arts producer – was a logical progression from her volunteer work as Founding Chair of Opera.ca, Vice-Chair of Opera America, and co-founder and President of Creative Trust. She is committed to the value of collaboration and to developing partnerships across sectors to deepen the impact of the arts.

Much of the impetus for Claire’s work in cultural policy is to understand and communicate the impact of the arts in society, and most particularly the vital role of that the arts play in city-building in the culturally vibrant city of Toronto. In May of 2001, Claire won the national M. Joan Chalmers Award for Arts Administration in recognition of her contribution to Tapestry New Opera and the arts in Canada. In 2006, she was recognized by Theatre Ontario with the Sandra Tulloch Award for Innovation in the Arts. She served as Co-Chair for the International Society for the Performing Arts 2011 Annual Congress in Toronto, which attracted the largest gathering of arts presenters in ISPA’s history.

Dr. Natasha Bissonauth teaches Visual Art and Art History at York University in Toronto. Prior to joining the department, she was Assistant Professor of Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the College of Wooster, OH. She received her Ph.D. in Art History at Cornell University and her research centers queer, trans, and feminist of colour contemporary art practice with expertise in South Asia and its multiple diasporas. Recent research interests expand on indenture studies, archival work, and material cultures. They are currently working on a book project that investigates aesthetic encounters with archival fragments in ways that creates passage between legacies of immigration and indenture. By threading ‘areas’ like South Asia, the Caribbean, and Mauritius, Black and brown seams within the discipline emerge. Select publications include “Sunil Gupta’s Sun City: An Exercise in Camping Orientalism” (Art Journal,  2019), “The Future of Museological Display: Chitra Ganesh’s Speculative Encounters” (in Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism, 2020), and “The Dissent of Play: Lotahs in the Museum” (South Asia Journal, 2020). Recent articles examine gender and indenture aesthetics in Kama La Mackerel’s poetry and Renluka Maharaj’s visual practice. Several exhibition catalog essays are forthcoming, on the artistic practices of Zanele Muholi, Chitra Ganesh, and Meera Sethi, respectively. Additionally, they will contribute an exhibition essay for Divya Mehra’s next solo exhibition, winner of the Sobey Art Award in 2022. Select artist interviews, exhibition reviews, and book reviews appear in  Art Asia Pacific, Art India, C Magazine,  and Women + Performance. Bissonauth is the current Reviews Editor for the peer-reviewed journal ADVA (Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas).

PhD, York University; Master’s, University of Munich; Bachelor’s, University of Toronto.

Dr. Richard Moore (ethnomusicologist, percussionist, drummer, cimbalist) is an educator and performer who works in a variety of music genres, including: contemporary classical, band, orchestral, music theatre, world music, jazz, and pop/rock.

He performs regularly with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, National Ballet of Canada Orchestra, Hamilton Philharmonic, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Tafelmusik, Hannaford Street Silver Band, Toronto Concert Orchestra, Mirvish Productions, and Drayton Entertainment. As cimbalom soloist, Dr. Moore has performed with Boston Music Viva, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Canadian Opera Company, Esprit Orchestra, Quebec Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and New Music Concerts. He has also appeared as cimbalom soloist at the Lincoln Center in New York City, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.

Ongoing academic research projects include: the folk and classical repertoire of the Hungarian cimbalom; West African drumming, dancing, and singing (Ghanian/Ewe); folkloric music of Cuba; court music of Uganda; and music of the Shona peoples’ of Zimbabwe.

Dr. Moore has appeared on numerous CD projects and documentary films. As an in-demand cimbalom and hammered dulcimer specialist, he works with a variety of composers internationally in the video game and film industries. He has toured extensively in Germany, France, Lithuania, Finland, Switzerland, Canada and the US.

Performance, theatre and new media artist, filmmaker, writer, curator and educator Archer Pechawis was born in Alert Bay, BC. He has a particular interest in the intersection of Plains Cree culture and digital technology, merging “traditional” objects such as hand drums with digital video and audio sampling. His work has been exhibited across Canada, internationally in Paris France and Moscow Russia, and featured in publications such as Fuse Magazine and Canadian Theatre Review. Archer has been the recipient of many Canada Council, British Columbia and Ontario Arts Council awards, and won the Best New Media Award at the 2007 imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and Best Experimental Short at imagineNATIVE in 2009.

Of Cree and European ancestry, he is a member of Mistawasis Nehiyawak, Saskatchewan.

Dr. Marissa Largo (she/her) is a researcher, artist, curator, and educator whose work focuses on the intersections of community engagement, race, gender and Asian diasporic cultural production. She earned her PhD in Social Justice Education from OISE, University of Toronto (2018) and holds a Master’s degree in Art Education from Concordia University, and undergraduate degrees in Visual Arts and Education from York University.

From 2006 to 2020, Dr. Largo honed her love for teaching as a secondary visual arts educator. She has previously taught at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) University, where she was awarded the OCAD University Teaching Award for Continuing Studies and Non-Tenured Faculty in 2020. From 2020 to 2021, Dr. Largo was anassistant professor in Art Education, in the Division of Art History and Contemporary Culture at NSCAD University.

Her forthcoming book, Unsettling Imaginaries: Filipinx Contemporary Artists in Canada (University of Washington Press) examines the work and oral histories of artists who imagine Filipinx subjectivity beyond colonial logics. She is co-editor of Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos and Canadian Imaginaries (Northwestern University Press, 2017) and a guest co-editor of the Beyond Canada 150: Asian Canadian Visual Cultures, a special issue of the Journal of Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (Brill Press, 2018). Since 2018, she has served as the Canada Area Editor of the Journal of Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA).

Dr. Largo is the recipient of numerous awards and grants for her research and creative practice. In 2013, she was awarded the prestigious Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and is a recipient of the 2019 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Research on the Education of Asian and Pacific Americans (REAPA) special interest group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). In 2021, she was awarded an Ontario Arts Council Grant for Curatorial Projects: Indigenous and Culturally Diverse and a Canada Council for the Arts grant: Arts Across Canada Program for her curatorial project Elusive Desires: Ness Lee & Florence Yee at the Varley Art Gallery of Markham (September 2021 to January 2022). Elusive Desires was recognized by the 2022 Galeries Ontario/Ontario Galleries (GOG) Awards for best exhibition design and installation and best curatorial writing.  At present, Dr. Largo is part of a team developing the new Creative Technologies BFA program at the York University Markham Campus, which will open its doors in Summer 2024.

Her projects have been presented in venues and events across Canada, such as the A Space Gallery (2017 & 2012), Open Gallery of OCAD University (2015), Royal Ontario Museum (2015), WorldPride Toronto (2014), The Robert Langen Art Gallery (2013), Nuit Blanche in Toronto (2019, 2018, 2012 and 2009), and MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) (2007). She also collaborates with community organizations that connect policy engagement with creative and social practice.

Dr. Largo welcomes graduate students whose research falls within Asian diasporic cultural production, Filipinx studies, particularly in the visual art, decolonial aesthetics, radical curation, virtual curation, queer studies, community-based art education, and research-creation.

Danielle A.D. Howard joins AMPD as an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre. She recently taught within the University of California-Los Angeles’ School of Theater, Film and Television before coming to York University. Howard holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from UCLA and writes at the intersections of race, gender, performance, visual and sonic culture. She is currently working on a manuscript titled Making Moves: Race, Basketball, and Embodied Resistance that spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The project foregrounds Black basketball players’ virtuosic and improvisational movements as oriented towards a kinetic knowledge of freedom and akin to contemporaneous jazz aesthetics. An article excerpted from this work, “Dribbling Against the Law: The Performance of Basketball, Race, and Resistance” will appear in a forthcoming collection of essays titled Sports Plays. Other recent research includes the speculative lives of nineteenth and twentieth century Black performers. Her article “The (Afro) Future of Henry Box Brown: His-story of Escape(s) through Time and Space” won the 2020 TDR (The Drama Review) Graduate Student Essay Contest Award and will appear in their September 2021 issue.

Originally from the United States and trained in music, dance, and theatre, Howard’s move to Toronto inspires her continued pursuit of her artistic and intellectual curiosity by engaging art-based research practices. She is invested in improving the health and resilience of her communities through their participation in the collective making of artistic expressions with different forms of art. As a certified Social-Emotional Arts (SEA) Facilitator, she hopes to organize community programs that use dance, music, and theatre to facilitate healing, inner peace, and self-expression as well as inform the public on various topics.

Dr Rebecca Caines is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar, whose research crosses between creative technologies (including sound art, new media, and augmentation), and socially engaged art, with a special focus on improvisatory practices. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia; and completed two postdoctoral research fellowships at the University of Guelph, before moving to University of Regina to help build a new cross faculty program in Creative Technologies. From 2013-201 she was also the director of the Regina Improvisation Studies Centre, a partnered research site and faculty-based research centre at the University of Regina. She also serves on the executive of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, a long running, 2.5-million-dollar SSHRC Partnership.

Caines has completed large-scale community-based art and research projects in Australia, Northern Ireland, Canada, China, and the Netherlands. Her publications appear in journals such as Performance Research, Contemporary Music Review, The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Critical Studies in Improvisation, and M/C: Journal of Media and Culture. She also has chapters in several anthologies on performance, community-engagement, and improvisation, published by Duke, Routledge, and Bloomsbury. She is editor (with Ajay Heble) of Spontaneous Acts:  The Improvisation Studies Reader (Routledge, 2015).

Her recent projects include “ImprovEnabled”, a national art and research project with co-researchers and partners across Canada, Northern Ireland and Australia (see: http://improvenabled.ca/). This project investigates creative responses to social isolation and stigma surrounding people with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, utilizing improvised digital art and strengths-based participatory research. In 2018, she completed a British Academy Visiting Research Fellowship at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, exploring socially responsive immersive audio technologies. She is currently leading the national art project “multiPLAY” focussed on new forms of digital community engagement with Canadian improvising artists (https://multiplay.ca/).  Caines’ work investigates the role of art and technology in social justice, contemporary understandings of community, and the fragile promise of ethical connection offered through dialogic approaches. Caines looks forward to helping to build the brand-new Creative Technologies program at York University’s Markham Campus, opening Fall 2023.

An MFA graduate from York University’s Film and Media Arts Program in Toronto, Morgan currently works as a contract story/narrative consultant for FORREC ltd. Morgan has worked as a freelance script reader for 5×5 Productions and served as a first round judge for the Big Apple Film Festival’s screenwriting competition. He is the former Associate Producer for Resounding Media, and an award-winning filmmaker who’s many short films, in both documentary and fictional formats, have screened at prestigious film festivals worldwide, including NSI, CUFF, IDFA, LA Shorts, Canada Shorts, DOXA, Workers Unite! Film Festival, The Gimli Film Festival and on broadcast television on CBC. His latest short film Tick Tock won Best Drama at the Toronto International Short Film Festival. He has written and directed several commercials and worked as a ghost writer and story editor on novels, memoirs, and feature film screenplays. A core team member of the Biology of Story i-Doc since its inception, Morgan co-wrote, co-directed, and co-produced several short films for the project. Morgan has held private workshops in creative writing, screenwriting and storytelling and has taught these subjects at several post secondary institutions. His first feature film, Seether, is in pre-production.

Moussa Djigo is an award-winning director, screenwriter and producer with a background in journalism and cinema studies.

His research interests include Canadian Indigenous Cinema, African American Cinema, City symphony films, research-creation, and space in cinema.

He is the author of “Spike Lee: Aesthetics of Subversion in Do the Right Thing” (Paris, Acoria, 2009), a book that examines how images can use very specific formal tools to convey a political message.

He is currently working on another book entitled “Cinema and otherness: a perspectivist anthropology of Wapikoni Mobile”, where he explores the notion of “otherness” in films made by young Indigenous filmmakers.

He has written, directed and produced Obamas and Rosalie, two fiction features that have earned more than 20 awards, and have been screened in more than 60 venues around the world including Rome, Spokane, Palm Springs, Los Angeles, London, New York, Miami, San Francisco, Denver, Columbus and Montreal. Both films have aired on the TFO television channel in 2020 and 2021, and have been recently programmed as part of a retrospective at Cinematheque quebecoise.

Djigo previously taught in France (Jean-Moulin University Lyon 3 and Sorbonne Nouvelle University Paris 3) and in 4 different CEGEPS in Quebec (André-Laurendeau, Outaouais, Bois-de-Boulogne and Rosemont).

After undergraduate studies at the University of Ottawa and University of Toronto, James (Jamie) earned an MA and PhD in Philosophy, where his area of doctoral research was in the intersection of ethics, moral psychology, and behavioral economics. After a stint working in the ethically challenging field of government relations, he joined AMPD in 2011 as Research Officer. He has been the Manager, Faculty Governance & Policy since 2017.

Bill Robertson is an award-winning Toronto-based writer/director/producer, whose features include THE EVENTS LEADING UP TO MY DEATH, which premiered at TIFF in 1991 and won the award for Best Canadian Screenplay at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Bill wrote and directed his second feature comedy-drama APARTMENT HUNTING in 2000. Since then, Bill has worked as a writer/producer in television. He was a producer on History Television’s MUSEUM SECRETS, for which he won a Canadian Screen Award in 2014 (Best Factual Series). He continues to develop projects, including the romantic drama MIDNIGHT AT THE PARADISE (with the support of Telefilm Canada and The Harold Greenberg Fund).   Bill teaches Screenwriting Fundamentals to screenwriting majors at York, as well as third year screenwriting and production at Sheridan College. His goal is to support and develop the diverse voices of the next generation of storytellers.

Michelle Szemberg is a Toronto born, award winning film editor. She graduated from the Film and Video Program at York University in 2000. Upon graduation, Michelle spent years working as an assistant editor, which allowed her to collaborate with and be mentored by some of the leading forces in Canadian cinema. Michelle’s credits include the independent feature films Don’t Get Killed in Alaska (Dir. Bill Taylor), No Stranger Than Love (Dir. Nicholas Wernham), Full Out (Dir. Sean Cisterna), Kiss and Cry (Dir. Sean Cisterna) and Natasha (Dir. David Bezmozgis). In recent years, Michelle has been known for her work in the Serendipity Point Films produced feature, Below Her Mouth (Dir. April Mullen), which premiered at TIFF in 2016, and the Cuban/Canadian production Un Traductor (Dir. Rodrigo & Sebastian Barriuso), which premiered as part of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018, and became Cuba’s official entry to the 92 Academy Awards in the category of Best International Film.

In addition to her work in film, Michelle edited two seasons of the Netflix/Rogers TV series Between, created by Michael McGowan. She was the Supervising Editor on the Netflix/CBC series, Northern Rescue produced by Don Carmody Television, which earned Michelle DGC and CCE Awards for Best Editing in a Family Series. Most recently, Michelle edited an episode of the Amazon series, The Expanse, and the feature film, Queen of the Morning Calm (Dir. Gloria Kim), for which she received a nomination to the DGC awards in the Best Editing in a Feature Film category.

Over the years, Michelle has had the opportunity to train a number of assistant editors, many of whom are beginning to develop successful careers as editors. Teaching and mentoring has always been a passion for Michelle, who in 2020 embraced the opportunity to teach editing in the Cinema and Media Arts department at the School of Arts, Media and Performance & Design at York University.

Michelle is currently editing Michael McGowan’s latest feature film, All My Puny Sorrows, based on the critically acclaimed novel  of the same name written by Miriam Toews.

Matthew Miller holds a BFA (2003) and MFA (2016) from York University’s Department of Film.  He has established himself as one of Canada’s up and coming creative producers.  His films have screened and won top prizes at international festivals including TIFF, Sundance, HotDocs, Locarno and Busan. His 4^th year student short film, the darkly comedic fable THE SCHOOL was a smash hit on the international festival scene and was named the Best Canadian Short Film at the Atlantic Film Festival.  In 2007 he wrote, directed and produced his debut feature film SURVIVING CROOKED LAKE. The coming-of-age wilderness, survival story went on to win the Kodak Vision Award for Cinematography at the Slamdance Film Festival. In 2013 he produced THE DIRTIES directed by Matt Johnson. The found footage comedy about two misunderstood teens planning a school shooting burst onto the scene winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 2013 Slamdance Film Festival before being picked up by filmmaker Kevin Smith for his distribution label.  It was that same year that Miller and Johnson joined forces to form their production company, Zapruder Films. Their first project under their new banner was the feature film OPERATION AVALANCHE, a revisionist history, comedic-spy thriller that imagines a world where the CIA engaged Stanley Kubrick to help them fake the moon landing for NASA (World Premiere, Sundance 2016).  The film was distributed by Lionsgate and received 6 Canadian Screen Award nominations including Best Picture. Following that, they went into production on two seasons of their off-the-wall, truer-than-fiction television series NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW (VICELAND 2016-17) which was been nominated for 4 Canadian Screen Awards including Best Comedy Series.

Francisca Duran is an experimental media artist who creates films, installations and mixed media works about history, memory and violence. She moved to Canada following the military coup in Chile in 1973. Her experience of exile is integral to her artistic practice which centres on traces and lost or irretrievable things. Working with photography, film, digital video and many other media, she takes images and sounds apart and reassembles them to reveal the tactile qualities of media that are often thought of as ephemeral. Duran has exhibited her work internationally in film festivals, exhibitions and group screenings. Duran has a B.A.H. in Film Studies from Queen’s University and an M.F.A. in Film Production from York University and continues to receive professional development from artist run centres and collectives. She has been a recipient of grants from Canadian arts councils.
website: https://www.franciduran.art/

Tim joined York University in 1994 in the Faculty of Arts, then moved to the Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies in 1999. He joined the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design in 2002. His education includes a Bachelor of Engineering (Carleton), project management training (Schulich), Lotus and Novell certifications.

Samuel Chang is a Performance Facilities Theatre Technician with York University. He has proficiency in: set construction, rigging, technical lighting, and video projection in a various of theatrical orientations. He has worked in notable Canadian venues (Celebration Square, Meadowvale Theatre, Paramount Fine Foods Centre) while also working for reputable educational institutions in their theatre and film departments (McMaster University, Mohawk College, Keyano College). Relevant training: ETC Eos Level 3  Programming, Networking Fundamentals, DMX & RDM Theory and Troubleshooting, Working at Heights, and Elevated Work Platforms.

Aside from technical theatre, Samuel has credits in theatrical design, direction, and writing. He co-wrote and directed Nocturne which won VIEW Magazine’s Critics’ Choice Award during the 2013 Hamilton Fringe Festival, and was the light and set designer for the production of Here at Theatre Aquarius in 2014. Select credits include: The Girl in the Window (Cross Culture Productions), 10/10/10 Project (Toronto/Hamilton Fringe), The Boat People (Red Pocket Collective), and Swan (Little Black Afro).

Jason Merai has a compass for social justice and systemic change. He has dedicated a career to working with communities to empower their voices and experiences. Jason served as the Executive Director of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, a human rights organization addressing racism and anti-Black Racism through community orientated programming, outreach and policy recommendations. He also launched a television show on Rogers TV, called “Bullying, Battered & Bruised”, an in-depth discussion featuring stories of survivours addressing the underlining issues of violence, abuse, and finding resilience. Understanding the impact of policies on every day experiences, Jason has worked for the provincial government, including the Solicitor General, the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario, and the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities.

With a passion for student success, Jason taught post-secondary courses at the University of Guelph-Humber and Humber College students. He also led student leadership programs, including creating Humber College’s first Peer Mentoring-Dual credit student program, developing community engagement for Peer Educators for the University of Walter Sisulu in South Africa, and leading Humber College’s collaborative project to address gender violence prevention.

Presently, working with a dynamic Dream Team, Jason manages AMPD’s Office of Advising and Integrated Student Services (OAISS), Winters College staff, and a team of student mentors, to support student success: from admission to graduation.

Shelley Hornstein is Senior Scholar and Emerita Professor of Architectural History & Visual Culture at York University, Toronto, Canada. Themes she explores are located at the intersection of memory and place in architectural and urban sites, cosmopolitanism, nationhood and how architectural photography structures a conversation about place, citizenship and human rights. Her newest book will be released in November 2020: Architectural Tourism: Site-Seeing, Itineraries, Cultural Heritage (Lund Humphries). Hornstein is the recipient of the Walter L. Gordon Fellowship, Canadian and International research awards, and is on the advisory boards for several academic journals.  She holds the inaugural eLearning Award for the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design, York University, 2014.  Her other books include: Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place, (Ashgate, 2011), Capital Culture: A Reader on Modernist Legacies, State Institutions, and the Value(s) of Art (McGill-Queens, 2000), Image and Remembrance: Representation and the Holocaust (Indiana, 2002), and Impossible Images: Contemporary Art after the Holocaust (NY, 2003)

Professor Hornstein has taught at York University since 1985. Her courses include Memory and Place, Paris as Modernist Dream, The Celluloid City, No Place like Home, and The Metropolis Revisited. She is a member of York’s graduate programs in Art History, Culture and Communications, and Social and Political Thought. She has served as associate dean, co-director of the Centre for Feminist Research, and twice as Chair of Department of Fine Arts, Atkinson College.

Jane Tingley is an artist, curator and Assistant Professor at York University. Her studio work combines traditional studio practice with new media tools – and spans responsive/interactive installation, performative robotics, and telematically connected distributed sculpture. Her current artistic trajectory is interdisciplinary in nature and spans the intersection of art, science and technology. Her current work explores the creation of spaces and experiences that push the boundaries between science and magic, interactivity and playfulness, and offer an experience to the viewer that is accessible both intellectually and technologically.

She has participated in exhibitions and festivals in the Americas, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe – including translife – International Triennial of Media Art at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, Gallerie Le Deco in Tokyo (JP), Elektra Festival in Montréal(CA) and the Künstlerhause in Vienna (AT). She received the Kenneth Finkelstein Prize in Sculpture in Manitoba, the first prize in the iNTERFACES – Interactive Art Competition in Porto, Portugal, and has received support from a number of funding agencies, the provincial arts councils, the Canada Council for the arts, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Gabi Schaffzin is an artist, educator, and researcher based in San Diego. He recently completed his Ph.D. in Art History, Theory, and Criticism, Art Practice Concentration at University of California, San Diego. He holds a BS in Business Administration from Babson College in Wellesley and an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design’s Dynamic Media Institute. His dissertation project combines design history, disability studies, and a history of computing to trace the history of designed pain scales in the United States throughout the 20th century. He was a 2018–19 recipient of the Andrew V. and Florence W. White Dissertation Scholarship from the UC Humanities Research Institute and his writing has appeared in the Review of Disability Studies and PUBLIC. He is on the organizing committee for Theorizing the Web, an annual conference and non-profit organization focused on facilitating discourse on tech between scholars, activists, artists, and more.

Jamie has been a Toronto based professional artist since 1997 as an actor, director, producer, teacher and writer. Recent director credits include: Spanish Golden Age Period Study (George Brown Theatre), Copy That (Tarragon Theatre), Scotian Journey (Black Theatre Workshop), 365 Days/365 Plays (U of T Mississauga), She Stoops to Conquer and Romeo & Juliet (Guild Festival Theatre, also as Artistic Director). Select Theatre acting credits include: Four seasons with the Stratford Festival of Canada, Much Ado About Nothing/Measure for Measure (Canadian Stage), Risky Phil (Young People’s Theatre. Dora Award Winner, Outstanding Performance), Gas Girls (New Harlem Productions. Dora Award Nomination), Title role in Richard III (Metachroma Theatre. META Award nomination). Select Film/TV acting credits: Hudson & Rex (Rogers), Private Eyes (Global), Celeste in the City (ABC), Condor (AT&T). Jamie holds a Masters Degree in Theatre Directing/Teaching from York University, and has been a freelance instructor for University of Toronto Mississauga, George Brown College, and Armstrong Acting Studios.

Michael Darroch is Associate Dean, Academic and Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Arts in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design at York University. He previously served as Associate Dean, Partnership Development and Interdisciplinary Studies in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Windsor, where he taught courses in media art histories, visual culture, and urban ecologies in the School of Creative Arts. He has held a Visiting Fellowship at the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory (University of London, 2015), a Humanities Research Group Fellowship (University of Windsor, 2016-17), and a McLuhan Centenary Fellowship (iSchool, University of Toronto, 2016-18). He is Co-Director of the research-creation hub IN/TERMINUS focused on participatory art interventions and exhibition curation in the Windsor-Detroit urban borderlands. He co-edited Cartographies of Place: Navigating the Urban (MQUP 2014), an interdisciplinary collection that situates different historical and methodological currents in urban media studies. His SSHRC-funded research projects on histories of arts and media education played a critical role in re-issuing the landmark interdisciplinary media studies journal Explorations (1953-59) co-edited by Marshall McLuhan, Edmund Carpenter, and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt.

His 2019 SSHRC Connection grant Edgy Media: On Borders, Migrations, Media Studies and Media Arts facilitated the 4^th iteration of the international touring exhibition Feedback: Marshall McLuhan and the Arts, which he co-curated as a cross-border collaboration between the University of Windsor’s School of Creative Arts and Detroit’s College for Creative Studies, and the Edgy Media symposium featuring 30 scholars and artists addressing comparative border and media arts studies. He is Co-Investigator (with Lee Rodney) on the 2020 SSHRC Insight grant Sensing Borders: Mapping, Media and Migration, which seeks to extend discussions around mapping in media arts by engaging with the complex dynamics of contemporary bordering practices and migratory trends that have marked borderlands spaces in different ways over time. Recent essays engage with histories of Toronto School communication and media studies, urban media cultures, and borderlands visual cultures.

Robyn Cumming makes photographs and sculpture. Her research is driven by a fervent interest in representation, and a personal fascination with depictions of the human creature. Employing humour and wit as a strategy for boundary transgression, she often conjures the mask and clowning to probe the relationship between the actual and the symbolic.

Her previous academic positions include the Art & Art History Program at Sheridan/UTM, the Photography Program at OCADU and 10 years of teaching photography in the Image Arts Department at Ryerson University. There she held the position of Associate Program Director of the Image Arts Program and the Director of the school’s off-site gallery Ryerson Artspace, leading the gallery’s move to its new location in 401 Richmond.

Professor Tomcik has worked as a designer in Canada and the US. His work has been published or exhibited in Canada, USA, Great Britain, Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic, Finland and China. As well he has participated in numerous conferences on design education and design history. He also received the Ontario Federation of University Faculty Associations award for excellence in teaching.

Professor Scadding is a professional Registered Graphic Designer who, by love & training, focuses his teaching & research in the field of typography – its history, development and contemporary practices. He has over 30 years of experience in print-oriented and new media visual communication design. His professional work has been exhibited and published in Canada, the United States, France, China, and England.

He has been an invited speaker, seminar/workshop leader at numerous national and international conferences on design, new media and typography. He has received over 30 awards for his professional work and for his teaching – the most recent being the Dean’s Teaching Award from York University.

Don Newgren’s research interests focus upon user participation, either active or passive, during the inventory and planning part of the design process. These interests emerged from his development and implementation of unobtrusive data collection methodology for planning exhibitions while being the Director of Design at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. His professional design work in graphic design and exhibition design for firms such as IBM, US Steel, Eastman Kodak, Union Carbide, Bell Labs, United Airlines, General Motors, and Shell Oil has won numerous awards in North America. He has over 30 years of teaching experience, and has lectured in Japan, Europe, and the United States. In addition, he has 16 years of administrative experience at York University

Professor Janczak’s multidisciplinary professional practice, research and teaching include interactive media, exhibitions and signage systems design. Since the inception of the Internet he has specialized in developing and evaluating interaction design, information architecture, interface design and interactive information technologies in online education. His current research focuses on investigating the theories, practices and technologies involving intelligent physical environments, information spaces, interface design and time-based visual communication.

Professor Gittins is a jazz pianist and an experienced show conductor, arranger and accompanist for stage and recording artists. His scholarly research is in the field of music theory, particularly in jazz, and in the history of ideas.

Born in Lima, Peru, Marcos graduated from the Communication’s program at San Martin de Porras University in 1985. In Peru he worked as a journalist and photographer for the daily magazine “MARKA,” and the weekly magazine “AMAUTA”

Arriaga immigrated to Canada in 1987. He graduated from Sheridan College’s Media Arts Film Program in 1995 followed by a Master of Fine Arts degree in Film Production at York University in 2003. Arriaga has directed over a dozen films including WATCHING (1994); MARS (1995); EL BARRIO (1998); THE HARRIS PROJECT (1998); PROMISED LAND (2002); A LITTLE SQUARE HEAVEN (2003); 3X16 (2007); TALE OF WINTER (2008); ASSEMBLY (2012); MY GENTRIFICATION (2020); JATUN LLAXTA, NOH KAAH….(2020) and two medium length documentaries, MARICONES (2005) and LOOKING FOR CARMEN (2012).

Marcos’ visual project, “MANY YEARS LATER”, a solo Photography Exhibition (20 Silver Gelatin Prints) was featured at MayWork Festival 2011, Toronto Free Gallery.

Arriaga was the Director of Photography on several independent productions including: HONEY MOCASSIN (1998); DEEP INSIDE OF CLINT STAR (1999), which won a Gemini award for Best Social and Political Documentary (2000); the feature drama JOHNNY GREY EYES (2001), which won awards at Toronto’s Inside Out Film Festival and the Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles; ZERO: THE INSIDE STORY (2004); GOLDIROCKS (2003); and several shorts.

Marcos works as a Film Technician in the Department of Cinema and Media Arts at York University and lives in Toronto, Canada.

www.marcosarriaga.com

Dr. Amy Hillis joined the York Music faculty in July 2020. She was the Helen Carswell Chair in Community-Engaged Research in the Arts for three years during which she facilitated a research partnership between Community Music Schools of Toronto Jane & Finch and York University. Dr. Hillis currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Community Music, music history and music appreciation.

As a performer and educator, Dr. Hillis pursues opportunities to build community relationships using music inside and outside the traditional concert hall. As a violinist, she has commissioned Canadian works by Matt Brubeck, Fjóla Evans, Gabriel Dufour-Laperrière, Laurence Jobidon, Vincent Ho, Andrew Staniland, Jocelyn Morlock, Nicole Lizée, Carmen Braden, Randolph Peters and Jordan Pal. Her debut album titled Roots demonstrates the connections between select Canadian compositions and works from the traditional canon of classical repertoire. As part of the meagan&amy duo, Dr. Hillis performed this repertoire in ten Canadian provinces during the inaugural “Pan-Canadian Partnership” Recital Tour. She also toured Canada as winner of the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition. As artist-in-residence at La Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, she studied the relationship between French and Québécois repertoire. Dr. Hillis is also the founding member and manager of the prairie-based Horizon String Quartet with whom she has presented seven concert tours of interactive performances for schools across western Canada.

Dr. Hillis’ current research as a community music practitioner investigates the importance of a community’s “identity”. How can community musicians facilitate transformative music experiences by deepening a community’s sense of identity, whether this identity is geographical, racial, cultural or gender-based? Dr. Hillis continues to perform and promote music by underrepresented composers, particularly in the classical music genre, in order to empower the voices of marginalized communities. Learn more about her research here or visit her website here.

Dr. Noam Lemish is a pianist, composer, educator and scholar. He has appeared in numerous performances and conducted workshops across Canada, the US, Europe, Israel, and in Bhutan and has released multiple albums, including most recently Pardes (2018) and Sonic Truffles (2018). His teaching interests cover a wide variety of areas within jazz studies, as well as composition, Jewish music, polyidiomatic improvisation and the practice of Deep Listening. His research focuses primarily on transcultural jazz practices and improvisation pedagogy.

Professor Lemish is presently engaged in a diverse array of projects including the Noam Lemish Quartet, a co-led ensemble with oudist/guitarist Amos Hoffman, a duo with percussionist George Marsh as well as premiering and recording the piano music of composer W.A. Mathieu. His compositions include jazz works for small and large ensembles, chamber, choral, piano, and “The People’s King”: a commissioned transcultural suite in celebration the King of Bhutan’s 30th birthday composed while teaching music in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan in 2010.

As co-director of the Israeli-Iranian Musical Initiative (I=I), a multiple grant-winning collective of Israeli and Iranian performers, Lemish has brought Israeli and Iranian musicians and audiences together, in dialogue and celebration, challenging the formal political hostilities between Iran and Israel through critically acclaimed and sold-out concerts at major venues and festivals.

Professor Lemish is currently working on a monograph for Routledge’s Transnational Studies in Jazz Series based on his ethnographic research into the practices of Israeli jazz musicians who blend Israeli and non-Israeli musical influences with jazz in performances, recordings and composed works.

Lemish holds a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in Jazz Performance and a Masters degree in Composition from the University of Toronto. Before joining York University as Assistant Professor of Jazz Instruction and Pedagogy in 2020, he taught at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music and the University of Toronto-Scarborough’s Department of Arts, Media and Culture.

Vladimir Paskaljevic is an experiences filmmaker who teaches Screenwriting, Editing and Production at AMPD York University.

He also teaches Introduction to Video Production and Cinematic Language at Toronto Film School Online, since 2016. Vladimir also taught film-related courses at University of New Brunswick (2015-2016), Wilfrid Laurier University (2019), Lakehead University (2018) and John Naisbitt University (2009-2012).

He completed his BFA in Film and TV Directing at University of Arts, Belgrade, Serbia. His early short student film Dolphins Are Mammals (1997) won FIPRESCI special mention at Montreal World Film Festival in 1997.

Later he directed documentaries, edited features including Bitter Harvest (2001) by Goran Paskaljevic, a film that premiered competition program of Venice International Film Festival and TIFF. Paskaljevic also wrote screenplay for The Optimists (2006), premiered at TIFF.

After some years spent working as an Editor and Director for various TV productions, Vladimir completes his first feature length film Devil’s Town (2009) which was premiered at Karlovy Vary IFF, Rotterdam IFF, Montreal WFF and wins Honorable mention at Palm Springs IFF and First Prize at Trieste Film Festival, FIPRESCI at Athens Panorama of European Film. “Devil’s Town” reps a strong feature debut from writer-helmer Vladimir Paskaljevic… it is savagely funny yet frightening, plausible but absurd; a scorching expose of the national character. (Variety, 2009)

Absence Is Present (2015) is his master thesis docu-fiction about emotional experiences of immigrants film he made for his MFA in Film Production at York University. It won Best Film Award by Toronto Film Critics Association, as well as Master Thesis York Award.

Chris Romeike is an award winning and nominated cinematographer and filmmaker whose career ranges from documentary to drama, commercials and inventive multimedia projects. His work has allowed him to travel throughout the globe, inspiring his passion and sensitivity as a cinematographer and storyteller. With a BA in Media Arts from Ryerson University, an MFA from York U and a career of collaboration with some of Canada’s most distinguished directors, producers and broadcasters, Chris has developed a dynamic and diverse palate of image-making, mixing forms, genres and craft.

His early years were spent making music videos and short films while working at the progressive production house Cuppa Coffee Studios. During this time he lensed BDA award winning commercials, stop-motion shorts, show openers, as well as picking up a MMVA for best hip-hop video Musical Essence by K-OS.

For the last 17 years Chris has focused on cinematic documentaries with crossovers into drama, photographing over forty documentary films and sixteen television series. Clients and broadcasters include: CBC, Vice, History Channel, NFB, PBS, Discovery Channel, Arte, Channel 4, TVO, Sundance Channel and National Geographic, in addition to many independent production companies in Canada and abroad.

Recent cinematography credits of note include:  Numerous collaborations with Oscar nominated director Hubert Davis on such projects as the documentary feature Giants of Africa (2016, Netflix, ESPN), which garnered a CSA nomination for Best Cinematography in a Documentary Film, the feature Invisible City (2009), which won Best Canadian Feature at Hot Docs in 2009 as well as various short films and Cannes award winning commercial work. Other works of note include episodes of the VICE series RISE, The Faith Project Series for the NFB that Chris directed and shot. Episodes of the CBC series In the Making and The Nature of Things, the multi-award winning feature doc Hurt by Alan Zweig, Unsung: Behind the Glee by Moze Mossanen and the 2020 Hot Docs Top 5 audience award winning film 9/11 Kids.

Chris continues to strive to work with talented creators on inventive and conscious work as well as continuing to evolve his craft.

Syreeta Hector is a dance artist and educator in Toronto, Ontario. As a highly accomplished performer, Syreeta has worked for internationally recognized companies like Adelheid Dance Projects, Citadel + Compagnie, and Toronto Dance Theatre. She is a proud graduate of The National Ballet School’s Teacher Training Program, The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, and has achieved her Master of Arts in Dance Studies from York University.

Her solo work called “Black Ballerina” gained recognition at the SummerWorks Festival in 2019. Here, the piece won the Stratford Festival Lab Award for Research and Creation. At this time, the solo was also invited to undergo a residency with Workspacebrussels, and the Kaaitheater in Brussels, Belgium. Currently, the development of “Black Ballerina” is being supported through the RBC Creators in Residence Program at Canadian Stage.

Evadne Kelly is a dance artist and scholar with a PhD in Dance Studies from York University, an MA in Anthropology from McMaster University, and an Hon. BA in Women Studies, Equity Studies, and Anthropology from University of Toronto. She has presented and published on topics relevant to the fields of anthropology and dance studies with a focus on the political and social dimensions of trans-locally performed dance traditions. Publications of her research can be found in Pacific Arts Journal, The Dance Current, Performance Matters, and Fiji Times. Dr. Kelly was an invited participant of the 2015 Mellon funded Dance Studies summer seminar at Northwestern University, where she developed her book manuscript, Dancing Spirit, Love, and War: Expressing the Trans-Local Realities of Contemporary Fiji, currently under contract with University of Wisconsin Press. Research for her book received support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council doctoral award and builds on her 20 years of professional experience as a company member, teacher, and rehearsal director for celebrated choreographer, David Earle.

Dr. Kelly continues to work in (and advocate for) diverse areas of dance research. In 2016, she co-organized The Other “D”: locating ‘D’ance in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies in Canada, at University of Toronto. In 2017, she co-convened the World Dance Alliance Global Summit at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland, which critically engaged the social, political, and therapeutic aspects of community-engaged dance. Most recently, Dr. Kelly was under contract with the Canadian Museum of History, researching and writing about popular dances of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

Wesley McKenzie graduated from York University in 2014 with a BFA in Theatre Production. Since graduation, he has been designing light, sound and video for theatre and opera in Toronto.

Wesley works often with theatre companies such as the red light district (Lulu V2, the marquise of O—, Lulu V4) and Lester Trips (The Misunderstanding, Intangible Trappings). Wesley has also started working in Opera, having worked with the University of Toronto’s Opera Department (The Fatal Gaze) and Metro Youth Opera (The Rape of Lucretia). Wesley made his debut at Factory Theatre in March on their production of A Line in the Sand.

Suzanne Liska is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and researcher based in dance ethnography, practice-based-choreographic research, cultural theory, Asian dance theatre forms, improvisation and somatics. Suzanne has choreographed and performed works presented by CanAsian KickStart, DanceWorks CoWorks, Dusk Dances, Dance Matters, and Harbourfront Centre, receiving grants and awards through York University, the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts.  

Suzanne’s recent choreographic works question, transform and embody her diasporic mixed-Asian Canadian cultural background. Thread Bound – with Kathleen Rea, embodies the history of the Japanese Canadian Internment of her family. Re-Place – with Susan Lee and visual artist JJ Lee, investigates multi-ethnicity as Asian Canadian artists. Yume-Iro (Dream Colour) – with Takako Segawa and composer Heidi Chan, is a dance embodiment of Taiko (Japanese drumming) and Rokuro (The Wheel), is a live multi-media performance/installation with dance, music, video, staged Japanese-inspired garden and tea ceremony featuring Japanese tea bowls. Suzanne has also co-created/performed for Maxine Heppner, Pam Johnson, Karen Kaeja and company dancer for Kathleen Rea.

Suzanne has Bachelor Degrees in Arts and Education, Certified Alexander Technique Teacher, and an MFA in Dance Choreography. She has taught professional dancers, actors, community dancers/actors, and high school and elementary school students. Her areas of specialization include dance improvisation (Contact/Ensemble Improv), somatics (Certified Alexander Technique Teacher), Taiko (Japanese drumming), and Butoh. She is contract faculty in York University’s Dance department and in George Brown College’s Acting School and Digital Media department. www.suzanneliska.com

Nikolaos Markakis was first introduced to dance at the Cretan Association of Toronto Knossos, where he studied Cretan Folkloric dance. He was introduced to Western styles of dance in high school and followed his passion of movement to York University where he completed his BFA in 2013. Post his undergraduate degree, he has performed and choreographed with Half Second Echo and performed for; Susie Burpee, Valerie Calam, Marie-Josee Chartier, Alison Daley, David Earle, Hanna Keil, Shannon Litzenberger, Tracey Norman, and Peter Randazzo. Nikolaos completed his MFA at York University in 2016 where he researched the possibility of hybrid choreography between Cretan Folkloric and Contemporary dance practices. His main objective is to use his two embodied dance recourses in his creative practice to allow an organic approach and a cultivating environment for his two worlds of dance to live in his choreography.

Steve has been teaching Contemporary Improvisation as well as jazz piano at York University since 2003. In addition to teaching at York University, Steve has also conducted educational master classes in China, Japan, Colombia, Mexico, Barbados and Bahamas. In 1993 the Steve Koven Trio was established and have since toured extensively around the world and have released nine CDs.

Dr. Marlis Schweitzer is a theatre and performance historian who works at the intersection of material culture, visual culture, business history, and feminist historiography, with an emphasis on Anglo-American performance cultures from the eighteenth-century to the present. She is an award-winning author and co-editor of six books (three monographs, three edited collections); past editor of two peer-reviewed academic journals; recipient of numerous research grants and fellowships; and author of articles and essays on such wide-ranging topics as shipwreck narratives, American Girl Dolls, chorus girl suicides, and the Merry Widow hat. Inspired by the interdisciplinary dynamism of performance studies, her scholarship traces the migration and subsequent transmutation of theatrical objects, repertoires, performing bodies, and political ideas across boundaries of time and space.

Her first two books, When Broadway was the Runway: Theater, Fashion, and American Culture (Penn Press, 2009) and Transatlantic Broadway: The Infrastructural Politics of Global Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) collectively examine how advances in communication, technology, and display culture shaped Broadway theatre in the first decades of the twentieth century, from the department store showroom and magazine page to the decks of transatlantic ocean liners and the offices of theatre managers. Moving back in time, her most recent book, Bloody Tyrants and Little Pickles: Stage Roles of Anglo-American Girls in the Nineteenth Century (U Iowa, 2020), traces the theatrical repertoire of a small group of white Anglo-American actresses as they reshaped the meanings of girlhood in Britain, North America, and the British West Indies during the first half of the nineteenth century. In 2021, Bloody Tyrants and Little Pickles received the George Freedley Memorial Award from the Theatre Library Association.

Dr. Schweitzer’s current SSHRC-funded project, “Decoding the Lectures on Heads,” follows the exhibition of human heads on scientific and theatrical stages between the mid-eighteenth century and mid-nineteenth century. Beginning with George Alexander Stevens’s solo performance piece Lecture on Heads (1764) and continuing to the phrenological lectures of George Combe (c. 1817-1840s), this project investigates the material, dramaturgical, and ideological use of human heads (paper, wax, wood, papier mâché, plaster, bone, flesh) in performance during a period of ongoing crises and catastrophe marked by revolution, world war, imperial expansion, slavery, genocide, and the consolidation of scientific racism.

Beyond these solo-authored projects, Dr. Schweitzer has demonstrated research leadership as an editor. In 2018, she and co-editor Laura Levin received the Patrick O’Neill Prize for best edited book from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research in recognition for their collection, Performance Studies in Canada. Between 2019-20, she was the first Canadian to serve as the Editor of Theatre Survey, an international theatre and performance history journal published by Cambridge University Press. Looking ahead, Dr. Schweitzer is a co-editor on a 2023 issue of Canadian Theatre Review on the topic of “Casting and Race.”

Dr. Schweitzer’s major research awards include multiple SSHRC Insight and SSHRC Connection Grants as well as fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas, Austin), the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Lewis Walpole Library (Yale University). In 2019, she became a member of the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists, and in 2020, she was named a York Research Chair (Tier II) in Theatre and Performance History. In June 2022, she completed a four-year term as chair of the Department of Theatre & Performance.

Patricio Dávila is a designer, artist, researcher and educator. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Arts in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design, at York University. He is also core member of the Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA) project at York University. Patricio is also co-director of Public Visualization Lab (PVL). PVL is a networked lab (York U, OCADU, Ryerson U) and focusses on how visualization can operate as a critical design and media practice. A priority for the lab is to understand the ways that the representation of data is political as well as analytical, designerly and creative. A basic premise that guides PVL’s projects is that visualization is an assemblage that arranges people, things and processes and as such demands a commitment to ethics, accountability and meaningful participation.

Patricio’s research and practice focuses on the politics and aesthetics of participation in the visualization of spatial issues with a specific focus on urban experiences, mobile technologies and large-scale interactive public installations. His research focuses on developing a theoretical framework for examining data visualization as assemblages of subjectivation and power. In his creative practice he has created mobile applications, locative media projects, essay videos, new media installations, and participatory community projects including: Shadows!, Powers of Kin, Chthuluscene, Tent City Projections, The Line, and In The Air Tonight. His research and practice also includes curatorial projects such as Multiplex Essay Film Festival and the Diagrams of Power exhibition, research events and book published by Onomatopee Projects (NL).

Select Publications:  

Dávila, P., (Ed.). (2019). Diagrams of Power: Visualizing, Mapping, and Performing Resistance. Onomatopee Projects, Eindhoven, Netherlands; Dávila, P., (2017). Visualization as assemblage: Exploring critical visualization practice. Information Design Journal 23(1); Dávila, P., Colangelo, D., Chan, M., Tu, R. (2017). Expressive Cartography, Boundary Objects and the Aesthetics of Public Visualization. Leonardo 50(5).

publicvisualizationlab.ca
publicvisualizationstudio.co

Visual Communication, Typography
Creating a new visual literacy fuels professor, designer, and typographer Paul Sych’s identity. His work spans over two decades of graphic expression, innovation, and exploration. Paul’s creative design agency  Faith was founded as a chrysalis of design discovery producing prolific works in both digital and print spectrums.

Led by a penchant for distinctive typography and hand illustration, Paul’s unique approach to language and imagery has forged brand identities of compelling visual character and bold presence – manipulating the retention of concepts, ideas, and words, as well as refining the vocabulary of design in a company, piece, or publication.

Paul’s work has been published in over 100+ books and publications internationally. Highlights from his career include: winning 100+ design awards since 2010, selected by the New York Type Directors Club to judge the world’s most prestigious typography competition and being featuring by the design journal Graphis which named him one of the Ten Masters of Typography. In 2016, Paul’s work was featured in the book  The Typography Idea Book, Inspiration from 50 Masters by the renowned graphic design journalist, author, and critic Steven Heller. Most recently, Paul was inducted to the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) and was honoured as a fellow for his contributions to research in design, art direction, and typography.

Visual Communication, Information Design, Typography

Sandra Gabriele is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Master of Design Program. She attended Ontario College of Art in Toronto; School of Design (Schule für Gestaltung) in Basel and holds a MDes in Visual Communication Design from the University of Alberta and a MASc in Human Computer Interaction from Carleton University. In professional practice, she designed communications materials for a variety of clients: government organizations, corporations, small businesses and non-profit organizations in both print and digital media. Her research has a user-centred focus within the fields of human-computer interaction, patient safety, security and privacy and legibility in typography.

Visual Communication, Typography, History, Theory & Criticism
David Cabianca joined the department in 2005. He has taught typography, history, and theory at California Institute of the Arts, Cranbrook Academy of Art, OCAD and both architecture studio and theory and criticism at the University of Manitoba and the University of Michigan. At Michigan, he was the 1997–98 William Muschenheim Fellow and received the Donna M. Salzer Award for excellence in teaching. His research and scholarship interests have to date focused on typeface design, contemporary graphic design, issues of representation and disciplinary conflict. Initially designed while attending the University of Reading, his typeface Cardea was released by the Emigre Font Foundry in 2014. In 2012, he was one of the organizers of the AIGA Design Educators Conference, “Blunt: Explicit and Graphic Design Criticism Now.” His writing has appeared in Emigre, Idea, Design & Culture, Journal of Design History and Design Observer. His book, Ed Fella: A Life in Images (Unit Editions, 2021), was funded in part by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Kotama Bouabane has an MFA in Studio Arts, Photography from Concordia University, Montreal and a AOCAD from OCAD University. His work has been exhibited in many galleries including Centre A (Vancouver), The New Gallery (Calgary) and VU (Quebec City). His work has been published in Prefix Photo, Art Papers and Ciel Variable. He has received many awards and grants from the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council & the Canada Council for the Arts. He is also a sessional instructor at OCAD University and the Chair of the Board of Directors at Gallery 44 Centre of Contemporary Photography.

Visual Communication, History, Theory & Criticism
Professor Wendy S Wong has established an international reputation as an expert in Chinese graphic design history and Chinese comic art history. She served as Director of the Graduate Program in Design from 2015 to 2018, Chair of the Department of Design from 2006 to 2009, and as Associate Director of the York Centre for Asian Research from 2005 to 2009 at York University in Toronto, Canada. Dr. Wong was a visiting scholar at Harvard University from 1999 to 2000 and the 2000 Lubalin Curatorial Fellow at the Cooper Union School of Art, New York, USA. In 2009 and 2010, she was a visiting research fellow at the Department of Design History, Royal College of Art, and she served as a scholar-in-residence at the Kyoto International Manga Museum.

She is the author of Hong Kong Comics: A History of Manhua, published by Princeton Architectural Press, a contributor to the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design, and acts as a regional editor of the Greater China region for Bloomsbury Publishing’s Encyclopedia of East Asian Design. Her latest book, The Disappearance of Hong Kong in Comics, Advertising, and Graphic Design, was published by Palgrave Macmillan (2018). In addition, Dr. Wong has served as an Editorial Board member of the Journal of Design History from 2012 to 2017. Currently, she is serving as an associate editor for Design and Culture: The Journal of the Design Studies Forum since 2019.

David Gelb explores the potential of technology and pedagogical experimentation with a focus on ethical interfaces, artifact collaboration, and building design knowledge. David is co-leader of Interactive Art + Design Learning Modules which is supported through the Shared Ontario Course Fund and includes 10 researchers, artists and designers from across the province.  He also co-leads Looking to the Future: Building State-of-the-Art eLearning in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design, a multi-year project focused on technology-engaged teaching and learning across the faculty.

David was one of the organizers for  Edge Effects: Digitally Engaged Learning conference held in September 2018 at York University. He recently co-authored  The Design Process is a Research Process: Students and the Ethics of Inquiry, Bloomsbury Academic (2020). David teaches across the graduate and undergraduate spectrum with a focus on building user interfaces, design research methods, and interaction design history and theory.

Information Design, Visual Communication

Angela Norwood explores design as a practice for demonstrating knowledge and reflecting values. She is most interested in the potential for traditional knowledge systems to inform contemporary design practice and is currently co-developing such an approach to designing called Reciprocal Design, a mindset grounded in designers’ increased accountability in the pursuit of just and sustainable solutions. This approach has informed her career as an award-winning designer, educator, and researcher. Having designed systems-based corporate communications, ease of access for US voters abroad, and taught visual literacy to scientists, data analysts, and indigenous community groups, Norwood believes design is essential for addressing 21^st century challenges, and has much to learn from traditional knowledge in order to do so most effectively. Her work has been published in a range of scholarly and  industry publications and is included in the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) National Design Archives.

Tanya Berg is a Toronto-based ballet teacher, dance educator, and researcher. She holds a PhD in Dance Studies from York University and is a graduate of Canada’s National Ballet School Teacher Training Program. Tanya currently teaches in the Faculty of Education and the Dance Department at York University, as well as the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto. Her current book project, published by Canadian Scholars Press, deals with interdisciplinary arts-based pedagogy in K-12 education. Tanya’s other academic publications are found in multiple journals, as well as the anthology Ethical Dilemmas in Dance Education: Case Studies on Humanizing Dance Pedagogy. Tanya has presented her research annually at many international conferences. She is open to all platforms as a means to facilitate dancer education and she was recently interviewed on CBC radio, Facebook Live, and an online educational podcast. Follow IG: @dr.tanyaberg3

Drawing musical inspiration from a wide variety of training and styles, Shawn has enjoyed a diverse career as both a classically trained pianist and an electronic-based composer. On top of his affection for classical music, Shawn also began developing an ear for film and videogame scores and incorporating them into his repertoire.

In 2016, Shawn earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Specialized Honours in Music at York University, where he studied classical piano performance, accompaniment, and composition. He began his work as a Dance accompanist at York University that same year and has enjoyed playing for a wide variety of classes ever since.

Publications

Intergenerational Dialogue and Late Style in the Palestinian Diaspora: Nour Bishouty at Gallery 44

The Bodies that Scramble India’s Constitution

Postcolonialism Conference Description

Entangled Bodies: Art , Identity and Intercorporeality

Gavin McDonald has been a lighting designer and production manager for theatre, dance, music, exhibitions, events and opera for over 20 years, working with companies across Canada, including Canadian Stage, the Stratford Festival, the Canadian Opera Company, Citadel Theatre, Young People’s Theatre, MOonhORsE Dance Theatre, Ross Petty Productions, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, Countermeasure, the Ontario Science Centre, Luminato, Nuit Blanche, and Harbourfront Centre.  He has toured across Canada, the United States, and the UK.

Gavin is a member of the Associated Designers of Canada and a representative for York University with the Canadian Institute for Theatre Technology.

Aaron Kelly (Theatre BFA ‘01, MFA ‘19) has worked professionally in theatre production and design for 25 years, designing shows across North America, the South Pacific, and France. In addition to his design work, which primarily focused on dance, theatre, and event lighting, but has included set, projection and sound design, he has also worked extensively as a production manager and stage manager. Kelly was the production manager and technical director of Factory Theatre for nine years where he collaborated with and supported some of the most established theatre companies in the country and the most exciting and innovative companies forming in our communities. It was these experiences that led him to York to work with emerging theatre artist six years ago as a part-time faculty member and full-time staff. In 2019 he was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Theatre.

Based between Toronto and Heffley-Creek BC, Holly Ward is an interdisciplinary artist working with sculpture, multi-media installation, architecture, video and drawing as a means to examine the role of aesthetics in the formation of new social realities. Stemming from research of various visionary practices such as utopian philosophy, science fiction literature, Visionary Architecture, counter-cultural practices and urban planning, her work investigates the arbitrary nature of symbolic designation and the use-value of form in a social context.

During the academic year 2009-2010 Ward was the Artist in Residence at Langara College, wherein she commenced The Pavilion project, a 22’ geodesic dome serving as a catalyst for artistic experimentation involving artists, writers, designers and Langara College students. The Pavilion has since been moved to rural Heffley Creek BC, where it is currently under construction as a long-term, interdisciplinary life-as-art project, being performed in collaboration with artist Kevin Schmidt.

Ward has produced solo shows exhibitions at Artspeak, the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, the Or Gallery (all Vancouver), YYZ Gallery (Toronto), Volta 6 (Basel), and others.  She has participated in group exhibitions in Canada, Chile, England, Mexico, the US, Norway and South Korea.

Ward has previously taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Simon Fraser University, and the University of British Columbia Okanagan.

Jennifer Jimenez is a community engaged artist with an extensive career as a national and international scenographer for live performance. She holds an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, UK, a BFA in Theatre Production and Design, and BEd from York University. She has received an OAC Chalmers Award, has been twice nominated for the OAC Pauline McGibbon Award in Design, and is a member of the Associated Designers of Canada (ADC). Her research explores the intersection between participatory and inclusive performance, community development, and interdisciplinary practice. As Co-Founder/Executive Director of ADCID (Aiding Dramatic Change in Development) from 2008-2022, she worked towards sustainable community development, engaging groups locally and internationally, in participatory arts and dialogue. She has been a member of the International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR) and the Hemispheric Institute’s, Disability and Performance working groups, and the IFTR Scenography working group.

Dr. Shital Desai is an Assistant Professor in Interaction Design at the School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design and York Research Chair in Accessible Interaction Design at York University.  She heads the CFI funded Social and Technological Systems (SaTS) lab where she engages in research that focuses on UN Sustainable Development Goals of improving health and wellbeing of people. To that extent, she cocreates accessible technologies, services and governance policies for marginalised people and global health using Design Research methods. Her research is on developing human centered assistive technologies for seniors, people with dementia, and in general for health and wellbeing. A designer with almost 30 years of experience in industry and academia, she practices creative ways to incorporate STEAM in education, research and design practice.

Shital is a member of the WHO Dementia Knowledge Exchange peer review network where she shares her expert knowledge on dementia and technology in strengthening policies, service planning and health and social care systems for dementia. She engages with local and global communities through number of outreach programs and activities. She is passionate about training students in system centred and human centred design of technologies. She is the Vice-lead of the Training Committee for the Connected Minds program.

Shital is the recipient of several awards and grants, including NSERC Discovery, CFI, 2021-22 AMPD Research award, 2022-23 York Research award, Petro Canada Young Innovator Award. She is one of the 24 semi-finalists for the Longitude Dementia award, where she is working with researchers in Canada and Netherlands to develop a prototype for cueing people with dementia in everyday activities. She was nominated for the 2023 Postdoctoral Supervisor of the Year Award.

Yifat Shaik is an Assistant Professor in Computational Arts and an acclaimed game developer whose focus is on creating personal autobiographical work and the use of systems, data, and game mechanics in social interaction and political activism. Completing a her Master of Design in 2014 at OCAD University, her work explores the way “play” can become a powerful way to talk about and examine social structures especially using mechanics as the primary tools of subverting the meaning of well-established video game systems.

As an independent game developer, Yifat is currently working on Real Army Simulator, an anti-militarization game about the mundanity of military service, The Mattress of St. Dundas, a game about gentrification in Toronto (which is funded by Ontario Creates) and The Engine is the Message, a series of small experimental games which are done in nontraditional game engines. Her work has been exhibited and presented internationally in events like MIGS (in which she was keynote speaker in 2018), Indiecade, Full Indie, Qgcon and more and has received press attention from publications like Boing Boing, The Financal Post, and the Torontoist.

Since graduation Yifat has been working as an instructor and course director in such institution as OCAD University, Sheridan College, The Toronto Public Library and since 2016 she has been a course director (and later Assistant Professor) in York University’s computation art program . Yifat is co-director of Dames Making Games Toronto and is a member of the Different Games Collective and head organizer of Different Games Toronto conference in 2017.

Born in Bratislava and raised in Canada, Ingrid has produced fifteen feature films with premieres at TIFF, Rotterdam, Locarno, Busan, Slamdance, Whistler, Rome, Hot Docs, Karlovy Vary and MoMA in New York, amongst others. Ingrid received the WIFTS International Visionary Award, the Alliance of Women Film Journalists EDA Award for “Best Director” and the Jay Scott Prize awarded by the Toronto Film Critics Association with retrospectives in Ottawa at the Canadian Film Institute and Santiago, Chile at FEMCine. A Director member of the Directors Guild of Canada and participant in the inaugural TIFF Studio, Berlinale Talents, and Rotterdam Producer’s Lab, Ingrid has been a mentor at the Canadian Film Centre and Screenwriter-in-Residence at the University of Toronto. An advocate for gender parity, Ingrid initiated the pUNK Films Femmes Lab to foster narrative feature films written and directed by Canadian women, sponsored by Academy Award winner Melissa Leo. On April 1, 2020, she launched a collaborative feature film project, ONE(NINE) wherein 9 women filmmakers from different parts of the world (China, USA, Germany, Spain, South Africa, and across Canada) co-created a feature film and interactive web project, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Currently, Ingrid is in post-production on her latest feature, THIS FILM DOES NOT WANT A TITLE, which will begin its film festival tour in 2024. Research interests: DIY-based methodologies, collective creation, authentic leadership, hybrid cinema and new pedagogical modalities.

Dr. Sarah Bay-Cheng is an accomplished leader in the fields of arts, media, performance, and design, currently serving as the Dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD) at York University. With a demonstrated passion for cultivating creative excellence, Sarah has dedicated her career to shaping the future of arts education.

Since joining York in 2019, Sarah has successfully lead AMPD initiatives that drive artistic innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and academic excellence. These include the new AMPD Equity Plan, the Final Mile Club podcast, and the York Year of the Arts, among others. Her exceptional leadership skills and commitment to nurturing emerging talent have resulted in the development of a vibrant and inclusive community of students, faculty, and staff. Recognized as a staunch advocate for the arts, Sarah actively cultivates partnerships and initiatives that bridge academia and industry, emphasizing the societal importance of artistic expression.

With a robust academic background and an extensive research portfolio, Sarah’s expertise lies in the intersections of technology, media, and performance. Her work has garnered international recognition in the areas of theatre, performance, and media. Her publications include the books Performance and Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field (2015), Mapping Intermediality in Performance (2010), Poets at Play: An Anthology of Modernist Drama (2010) and Mama Dada: Gertrude Stein’s Avant-Garde Drama (2004) as well as articles, essays, and invited lectures. Prior to coming to York, she was a Fulbright Visiting Senior Scholar in Media and Cultural Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands (2015) and the founding director of the Technē Institute for the Arts and Emerging Technologies at the University at Buffalo (2012-2015). In 2016, she co-founded the podcast On TAP: A Theatre and Performance Studies podcast, sponsored by the Department of Theatre at York Unviersity. Sarah has also worked as a director and dramaturg with particular interest in intermedial collaborations and a fondness for puppetry. More information: https://sarahbaycheng.net

Jan Hadlaw is an Associate Professor in the Department of Design and cross-appointed to the Communication & Culture, Science & Technology Studies, and Interdisciplinary Studies graduate programs. Prior to completing her PhD in media history, she was a graphic designer in Montréal and worked with a diverse range of clients, including Alcan, the National Film Board, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, and independent galleries and artists across Canada.

Her research focuses on design and everyday life, especially the design of 20^th century technologies, their representation in popular culture, and their roles in advancing modern conceptions of time, space, and identity. Her book Communicating Modernity: Design, Representation, and the Making of the American Telephone (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming) is a cultural and business history that examines how the telephone was conceived, promoted, and ultimately integrated into modern imaginaries and practices of everyday life. A new research project examines practices of repair and maintenance in the telephone industry that influenced the design of the telephone and management of its ‘afterlife.’

She is presently co-editing Connecting Canada, an interdisciplinary collection of essays that examine the roles of communication, transportation, culture, politics, and the economy in constructing Canadian national identity. She also co-edited the collection Theories of the Mobile Internet: Materialities and Imaginairies (Routledge, 2014).

Recent publications include: “Design Nationalism, Technological Pragmatism, and the Performance of Canadian-ness: The Case of the Contempra Telephone,” Journal of Design History (October 2019); “‘Mysteries of the New Phone Explained’: Introducing Dial Telephones and Automatic Service to Bell Canada Subscribers in the 1920s,” in Imhotep-Jones and Adcock (eds.), Made Modern: Science and Technology in Canadian History (UBC Press, 2018); and “The Modern American Telephone as a Contested Technological Thing,” in Atzmon and Boradkar (eds.), Encountering Things: Design and Thing Theory (Bloomsbury, 2017). She has published articles in such journals as Design Issues, Space & Culture, Technology & Culture, Material Culture Review, and Objet et Communication.

Dr. Hadlaw is the member of executive committee of the International Committee on the History of Technology (ICHOTEC), and sits on the editorial board of ICON: International Journal of the History of Technology.

Taien Ng-Chan is a writer, media artist, and assistant professor in Cinema and Media Arts at York University. She holds a doctorate from Concordia University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CISSC). In addition to her scholarly work in such publications as Intermediality and Humanities, she has published four books and anthologies of creative writing, produced multimedia arts websites, written drama for stage, screen, and CBC Radio. Her digital media works have been exhibited in conference events, film festivals and galleries across Canada and internationally, including at the Biennale internationale d’art numérique in Montreal, the International Mobile Innovation Screenings in New Zealand, Waterloo’s Lumen Festival, the Art Gallery of Windsor, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

Dr. Ng-Chan is currently the York Research Chair in Marginal & Emergent Media, and is developing her studio-lab, Marginal MediaWorks, to explore research-creation in Extended Reality (or XR, an umbrella term that includes virtual and augmented realities, geo-located soundscape). She is Co-Director (with Prof. Carmela Laganse at McMaster University) of the Sari-Sari Xchange Project, which partners with the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Tangled Art+Disability, and Centre[3] for Social+Artistic Practice to explore community-building through XR media creation.

Representation and engagement with space and place forms another avenue of research for Dr. Ng-Chan. In order to expand the field of experimental mapping, performance and art, she serves as Chair of the Commission for Art and Cartography at the International Cartographic Association, and founded the artist-research collective Hamilton Perambulatory Unit (with artist Donna Akrey). She has received numerous grants from SSHRC, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. In 2019, she won the City of Hamilton Arts Award for Media Arts, as well as the AMPD Junior Faculty Teaching Award; in 2022 she was awarded the President’s Emerging Research Leadership Award. She is currently working on an immersive, interactive media piece that blends concepts around self-representation, critical care, and karaoke.

Dr. Mary Bunch is an Assistant Professor In Cinema and Media Arts and affiliated with Theatre Studies, and Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA). She earned her PhD in Theory and Criticism at Western University in 2011. Dr. Bunch’s teaching and research interests include interdisciplinary and collaborative critical disability, feminist, queer studies and critical theory, research creation and arts-based methodologies. She works at the intersection of the political imagination and its visual / sensory expressions. Her current project on Ecstatic Freedom engages theoretical, activist, and arts epistemologies as these re-envision the forms that democratic participation, political belonging and justice take. She has published articles in the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies; Feminist Theory; Culture, Theory and Critique; and the Canadian Journal of Human Rights. Dr. Bunch has taught at McGill University, the University of Toronto and Western University.

CURRICULUM VITAE

Manfred Becker, PhD
Associate Professor & Filmmaker
AMPD, Department of Cinema and Media Arts, York University
(416) 998 4903, bmanfred@yorku.ca

DEGREES:
2017 PhD, Joint Graduate Program Communication & Culture, York University &
Ryerson University, The Frankenbite – Ethics in Factual Programming
2011 Masters, Graduate Program in Interdisciplinary Studies, York University
Capturing the Platform – Public Relations and the Olympic Games
1984 (Pre-) Bachelor, Journalism & Film, Universität Dortmund, West Germany

ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:
2018 – 2022 – Assistant Professor, Department of Cinema & Media Arts (CMA), York University
2017 – Course Director, RTA School of Media at The Creative School, Ryerson University
2014 – 2018 – Course Director & Thesis Advisor, Documentary Media Graduate Program, Ryerson University
2013 – 2018  – Course Director, School of Image Arts, Ryerson University
2011 – Course Director, School of Media Studies, Humber College
2010 – 2017 – Instructor, Documentary Institute, Seneca College
2005 – 2018 – Course Director, CMA, York University

PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
2000 – 2022 – Independent Documentary Writer and Director
1984 – 2014  -Independent Sound, Film and Video Editor

HONOURS AND AWARDS
2020 Nomination, Donald Brittain Award for Best Social/Political Documentary Program, Canadian Screen Awards – In Search for a Perfect World (Director)
2014 Special Jury Award, Best Canadian Documentary, Hot Docs When the Last Curtain falls (Editor, Co-writer)
2014 Nomination, Best Documentary Editing, Canadian Cinema Editors (CCE) – When the Last Curtain falls
2015 ­Grimme Online Award – The Polar Sea (Co-Director)
2013 Best Documentary Series, Canadian Screen Awards – The Photograph (Director, Writer)
2013 Webby Award – Official Selection; One Show Interactive Competition & Prix Numix – Official Selection; Prix Boomerang – Grand Prix;  FWA Site of the Day – At Home/Chez Soi (Co-Director)
2012 Nomination, Golden Sheaf Award, Yorkton – Dark Tourism (Director, Writer)
2011 Special Jury Award, Hot Docs Festival – Guantanamo Trap (Editor, Co-Writer)
2011 Nomination, Best Feature Documentary, Genie Awards – Guantanamo Trap
2007 Best Documentary, Directors Guild of Canada – Hitler’s Children (Director, Writer, Editor)
2007 Nomination, Best Historical Documentary, Gemini Award – Hitler’s Children
2007 Best Social Documentary, Donald Brittain Gemini Award – Hitler’s Children
2007 Nomination, Directors Guild of Canada Award – Hitler’s Children
2007 Chris Award, Columbus International Film & Video Festival – fatherland (Director, Writer, Editor)
2007 Best Documentary Series, Gemini Awards – Diamond Road (Co-Director)
2005 Nomination, Directors Guild of Canada Award – fatherland
2005 Gold Camera Award, US Film & Video Festival – fatherland
2005 Chris Award, Columbus – The Siege (Director, Writer, Editor)
2004 Best Biography and Best Documentary Series, Gemini Awards) – Diamond Road
2004 Nomination, Directors Guild Award – Neighbours (Director, Writer, Editor)
2004 Best Direction, Hugo Awards, Chicago – Neighbours
2004 World Film Fest Award, Houston – Neighbours
2002 Nomination, Canadian Directors Guild Award – Death of a Warrior (Director, Co-Writer, Editor)
2002 Best of Festival, World Film Fest, Houston – Death of a Warrior
2002 Finalist, BASC, Australia – Death of a Warrior
2001 Donald Brittain Award for Best Social Documentary, Gemini Awards – Breakaway (Editor, Co-Writer)
1999 Nomination, Best Editing, Gemini Awards – Thin Ice (Editor)
1997 Best Feature Documentary, Genie Awards – A place called Chiapas (Editor, Co-Writer)
1996 Best Editing and Best Biography, Gemini Awards – Wrestling with Shadows (Editor)
1995 International Emmy Award – Gerrie and Louise (Editor)
1995 Donald Brittain Award for Best Social Documentary, Gemini Awards – Gerrie and Louise
1990 Nomination, Best Short Documentary, Genie Awards – Who Gets In (Editor)

ACADEMIC DISTINCTIONS
2017 Faculty of Graduate Studies Dissertation Prize, York University

PROFESSIONAL CONTRIBUTION & STANDING IN DEVELOPMENT:
Goose Boat – Multi-channel installation by Visual Arts Professor Emerita Katherine Knight, seeking a multifaceted portrait of this singular object – a boat designed for hunting waterfowl.
Father – Videographer on Prof. Moussa Djigo’s personal hybrid film on his family in Senegal & Mauretania.
Smoke and Gifts – Story editor on feature length documentary on the alternative music group Broken Social Scene, directed by Stephen Chung, produced by Fathom Films.
Chai – Audio-visuals on an augmented book of photography on the Shoah by Edward Burtynsky, Steidl Verlag, Germany.

BOOK PUBLICATIONS
2021 Creating Reality in Factual Television: The Frankenbite and Other Fakes. Monograph, print and e-book. London, UK: Routledge (refereed).

ESSAY PUBLICATION
2023 Lying the Truth in Story Architecture, Media, Politics, Society (AMPS) Applying Education, Conference Proceedings (accepted).
2023 Vaccine Against Fake News Critical Media Literacy – Literacidade Mediática Crítica – Literacidade Crítica da Mídia edited by McGraw Hill-Aula Magna (Q1 in SPI). (contributor).

ACADEMIC FUNDING
2023 Co-Applicant, Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant – Who is free to do what they love? Digital Platform Work and Leisure (submitted).
2023 Co-Applicant, with Prof. Julia Creet, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant – Digital Afterlives (received).
2021 Principal investigator, SSHRC Insight Development Grant – A Vaccine against Fake News (received).
2021 Ahmad F (PI), Morrow M (Co-PI), Becker M, Bohr Y, Daftary A, Flicker S, Gaetz S, Hankey J, Gorman RS, Orbinski J, & Weiss J. – Community-engaged Research for Health Equity (CeRHE). Submitted to Catalyzing Interdisciplinary Research Cluster, Office of VPRI, York University. (to be resubmitted)

CREATIVE/ARTISTIC ENDEAVOURS

Director/Writer/Editor
2019 Saving Rabbit – Process documentary on a young homeless man wanting to beat his fentanyl addiction, for CBC’s ‘POV’ strand. Director/Writer. Media Headquarters. https://gem.cbc.ca/cbc-docs-pov/s03?autoplay=1
Rabbit’s story displays the contradictory approaches available in the crisis from helping users change their lives completely, as opposed to keeping them safe while they fight to do it themselves. Perhaps the best way to understand the crisis is to go beyond the statistics and help those in the middle of it tell their stories. CITY News
2019 The Divided Brain – Feature length documentary about neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist’s monumental work, The Master and his Emissary, featuring the Archbishop of Canterbury and John Cleese. Director. Matter-of-Fact-Media, https://www.tvo.org/video/documentaries/the-divided-brain
The Divided Brain is a very powerful documentary that has not shied from including critical voices. It conveys, with great clarity and conviction, the immeasurable dangers of the colonisation of the brain by the left-brain hemisphere. Sunil Kumar, former Dean, London School of Economics
2018 In Search for a Perfect World – International Co-production between the CBC and ZDF on the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, with Peter Mansbridge. Director and Writer. Primitive Entertainment. https://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/specials/in-search-of-a-perfect-world-1.5086982
2017 No Joke – feature length documentary on a singer/songwriter who is saved from his traumatic past by music. Director/Writer. Lofty Sky Media https://loftysky.com/projects/nojoke/
No Joke doesn’t condemn bullies, rather it attempts to open up conversation. It explores how fear divides us into the powerful and the powerless. What began as a documentary about a song becomes a compelling, thoughtful film about empathy. Millicent Thomas, Fim Stories.
2013 The Photograph – portrait of the 1942 Toronto Hurricanes football team which lost more men in WW II than any other professional sports team, as part of the CTV “Engraved on a Nation” series. Director/Writer. Infieldfly Productions. https://www.infieldflyproductions.com/the-photograph
The lot of a TV critic is not a happy one. I spend my evenings in the dark relentlessly searching for something passable on my flickering TV set. And then something as evocative as The Photograph comes along. Surely, it’s one of the best Remembrance Day specials I have seen. The Photographplays like an old-time movie…masterfully directed by Manfred Becker. – Jim Bawden, television critic
We all know the adage ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ Well, The Photograph is worth a lotmore than that—and it also serves as a timely reminder of what a poppy stands for in this country. –Stu Cowan, Montreal Gazette
2012 Dark Tourism – vérité documentary on the phenomenon of tourists seeking out places of conflict and fear. Director/Writer/Editor. History Television https://vimeo.com/50454616
Dark Tourism is made for thoughtful fans of non-fiction. This sober meta- travelogue makes you wonder if the documentary genre itself is guilty of the same voyeurism as the gawking tourists. It’s an irresistible, if repellent sight. – Bill Staments, Chicago Sun
A fascinating examination of the phenomenon revealing that there is a good deal of confusion and conflict. – John Doyle, Globe and Mail, Dark Tourism raises some unsettling questions. Have people already forgotten their history? It’s a worthwhile, and unsettling, question. – Rick McInnis, Metro News, Manfred Becker’s eerie, thought-provoking documentary is a morality tale. Montreal Gazette, Hot Box—TV worth talking about.– Toronto Star – One of three to see. – Alex Strachan, Financial Post, Welcome to the dark side! – Lisa-Marie Brennan, TV Guide
2006 Fatherland – feature-length personal essay documentary on history, memory and fatherhood, History Television. Director/Writer/Editor. https://vimeo.com/734970450/62ec480d98
Intense, substantial and satisfying. Difficult emotional moments and disturbing images. Profoundly intimate portrait of the relationships between fathers and sons. – Henrietta Walmark, Globe Television, Opens a poignant landscape. One of those few truly great films that jumps right out at you. –  Jim Bawden, StarWeek, Tough questions are asked, tough answers are given, and what emerges is a deeper understanding of personal and collective guilt. – Peter Howell, Toronto Star, Uncomfortable and raw. – RickMcGinnis, Metro News, A profoundly intimate portrait. – Lynne Fernie, HotDocs,  Enlightening. A stirring look. You won’t find a better program to watch this Father’s Day weekend. – Andrew Borkowski, TV Guide, A lyrical drama that illustrates the illustrates the question how complicated the question ‘What did you do in the war’ can get. – Eye Weekly,  Sobering and provocative. Top pick of festival. – Globe and Mail
2004 Hitler’s Children: Germany in Autumn 1977 – Historical documentary on the Baader-Meinhof urban guerilla group that challenged West German democracy. Director/Writer/Editor. History Television. https://vimeo.com/194907995, pw:Baader
Becker manages to bring both terrorists and victims together. A fascinating blueprint for dealing with future terrorist threats. – Bill Brioux, Toronto Sun, Becker has scored a real coup. Nothing could be more relevant. Explains where terrorism comes fromand how states should react. The must-see program of the week. – Jim Bawden, Starweek.
2003 The Siege – Historical documentary on the 1999 siege of a UN compound in East Timor. Director/Writer/Editor.  History Television, https://vimeo.com/68796683
Becker has an eye for personal detail and an ear for the way people talk and think. Exceedingly wellmade…a living, breathing record…paced like a thriller, the result is both sobering and thought-provoking filmmaking that puts most dramatized re-creations to shame…a relentless drive that puts viewers right inside. Surprisingly clear-headed and objective. – Alex Strachan, National Post, Deftly paced and dramatic without overdoing either the heroism or the horror, a fine insight into what happened in a part of the world that was failed by journalism and the world’s most powerful countries. – JohnDoyle, Globe and Mail, This is one of TV’s surprises…amazing…a major work. – Jim Bawden, Starweek, The one to catch! – Toronto Star, Dramatic, with powerful lessons for today’s conflicts. – Ann Marie McQueen, Ottawa Citizen
2003 The Life of Me – Vérité documentary following the workshop of a play for the “Madness in the Arts Festival,” featuring actors with mental illness. Director/Writer/Editor. TV Ontario https://vimeo.com/255067412
Heartbreaking. – John Doyle, Globe and Mail,  Intimate and challenging. – Henrietta Walmark, Broadcast Week
At times it is almost impossible to believe that these rehearsals will ever result in a positive outcome in the documentary. – Network Magazine
2002 Neighbours – Historical documentary on the fin-de-siècle Vienna of Sigmund Freud and Adolf Hitler. Director/Writer/Editor. History Television https://vimeo.com/234313564
In my eyes, both Hitler and my grandfather were false prophets of the 20th century. – Sophie Freud, granddaughter, Boston. Becker uses archival and new material with masterful editing touch. – John Goodman, Vancouver N. ShoreNews, Freud goes up in smoke. – Judy Gerstel, Toronto Star – Definite irony. – Catherine Monk, Georgia Straight, Riveting. – Jewish Tribune, Pick of the week. – Now Magazine.
2001 Death of a Warrior – Documentary about the bombing of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents. Director/Co-Writer/Editor. History Television https://vimeo.com/68798181
A crisply made, clear-eyed look at a tale full of intrigue and courage…gripping, full of suspense and hidden surprises. Remarkable, paced like a thriller. Proves that a well-made documentary can trump allother forms of visual storytelling. A must see. – Alex Strachan, National Post, An excellent documentary. In Becker’s well-crafted program all the twists and turns of the murky eventsare made clear. – John Doyle, Globe and Mail Film tracks the thriller-like hunt for the saboteurs, the diplomatic skullduggery and the bittersweet outcome of the case. – Olivia Ward, Toronto Star, In the vein of a true-crime detective story, unraveling the mystery. – Taos Talking Pictures, Saga unfolds like a pulp spy novel, a fine recap of the investigation. The film makes one uneasy in a post-9/11 world. Required viewing. – Andrew Ryan, Globe & Mail

Co-Director
2018 From the Vaults – Six-part series of the CBC Music Archives that tell the history of Canada. Banger Films. Co-Director with Adrian Callender, Sam Dunn, Nicolina Lanni and Ann Shin. https://www.cbc.ca/television/fromthevaults
There’s some amazing music on the show. It’s where you can see blues jam, Joan Baez playing an anti-warsong at the height of Vietnam, a young cowpunk k.d. lang being critiqued by a present-day k.d. lang, Jackie Mittoo and Oscar Peterson writing new languages for Canadian reggae and jazz. Now Magazine
2015 Satan Lives – Feature length theatrical documentary on the collective hysteria that gripped North America in the 1980s, HBO Canada. Co-director with Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen. Banger Films. https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/141675158 pw: satanisreal
2014 The Polar Sea – 10-part series on the effects of climate change in Canada’s North, ARTE and TV Ontario. Director Of Episode 6 Surviving Civilization & Episode 7 Arctic Crossroads. Primitive Entertainment – http://www.primitive.net/the-polar-sea.html
The Polar Sea—a 10-part TV series beginning Monday on TVO—is a thrilling epic that takes us on a magical 10,000-kilometre mystery tour through the legendary Northwest Passage. Hugely entertaining andmind-bogglingly educational at the same time, it instantly stands as one of the landmarks in the long and rich history of Canadian documentary filmmaking. – Martin Knelman, Toronto Star
By personalizing the problem, the brilliant 10-hour documentary manages to make us understand the enormity of the situation. Made on a mammoth scale, the Polar Sea is instead an intimate look at the changing world of the north, beautifully photographed and crisply edited. All of which indicates to meTVO has seized the initiative from CBC in showing and celebrating where public television should beheaded. – Jim Bawden, television critic, Fascinating with a firm point of view but no preaching. – Kate Taylor, Globe and Mail – A brilliant three-parter … a must-see of the fall season. – Jim Bawden, Starweek
2013 At Home/Chez Soi – Interactive website about the “largest social experiment in the world” – housing the homeless. Director of 10 Toronto segments. National Film Board of Canada https://www.nfb.ca/interactive/here_at_home/
2009 Diamond Road – 3 x 1-hour HD documentary series on the global diamond industry, Discovery Times & HD, ARTE, ZDF, NHK, ABC Australia. Co-Director with Nisha Pahuja. https://kensingtontv.com/index.php/2007/09/20/diamond-road/

Editor/Co-Writer
2014 Before the Last Curtain Falls Theatrical documentary on experimental dance performed by aging homosexual and transsexual actors. (credited as ‘dramaturgy’) Director: Thomas Wallner. https://vimeo.com/121639102
2013 The Defector Feature-length documentary on the odyssey of North Koreans escaping their country.  TV Ontario. Director Ann Shin https://www.fathomfilm.ca/the-defector
2011 Guantanamo Trap – Theatrical feature documentary about four people’s lives that connect during the War on Terror. Director Thomas Wallner. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6lkgA9ThgE
2001 Breakaway – Portrait of two brain-injury survivors. CTV. Co-Writer with Director Mathew Welsh https://vimeo.com/524002844/994a669739
A visionary piece of factual filmmaking. – Take One Magazine, I found it extremely potent and powerful and I could not take my eyes away from it for a second. – Shelagh Rogers, CBC Radio, A fascinating portrait of power, love and psychological obsession. Strongly recommended…this is the raresort of film that does not come around very often. – Library Journal.
1999 Out of Orbit – Biography of Marshall McLuhan, CBC. Director Carl Bessai  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvpPb89ChM0
1996 A Place Called Chiapas – Feature-length documentary about the Zapatista uprising in Mexico. Director Nettie Wild, https://www.kanopy.com/en/torontopl/video/5322086
Electric, alive, commendable, coincidentally surreal. A humorous, awkward, imperiled cat’s cradle of history, fury and injustice. Bold ways of showing unexpected sides of a story that sometimes has the transcendent urgency of a luscious and troubled agit-prop fable. – Wesley Morris, San Francisco Examined,  Exquisitely shot and edited. – Jon Gralick, Boston Phoenix, Wild and her crew bring out an affecting intimacy rare in documentaries with a news sensibility. Inspiring and chilling point bang glimpse leaves powerful impressions. – Peter Stack, San Francisco Chronicle

Story Editor
2022 To Kill a Tiger – Feature length documentary on masculinity in India. National Film Board. TIFF Diverse Voices Award 2022. Canadian Screen Award 2023. Director: Nisha Pahuja.
2022 Undeniably Young – Animated Short on Six-Day racer Nora Young. Director: Julia  Morgan, Evoke Films.
2020 Road to Roxham – CBC  short documentary on a road travelled by refuges to escape the US and enter Canada. Consulting Producer. Director: Cristian Gomez
2015 Shadow Girl – Feature-length documentary on a filmmaker’s journey into blindness. Director: Maria Teresa Larrain.
2014 Fractured Land – A charismatic First Nations chief in British Columbia takes on the oil and gas industry and coming of age, CBC. Directors: Fiona Rayner and Damien Gillis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe591PtCfa0
2014 Lost and Found – Objects swept into the ocean by a tsunami in Japan are washed up on the beaches on the Pacific West Coast. Directors: Nicolina Lanni & John Choi
2013 Chi – Actress Babz Chula battling cancer, Director: Ann Wheeler https://www.nfb.ca/film/chi_en/
2012 Spring & Arnaud – Two artists and their shared life. Directors: Marcia Connelly & Katherine Knight, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzXR0CUEze0&abchannel=S1T3M3D1A
2012 Buying Sex – on the debate between the legalization versus a criminalization of the sex trade the sex trade, NFB. Directors: Teresa MacInnes and Kent Nason. https://www.nfb.ca/film/buying_sex/
2012 Occupy Love – part III of Director Velcrow Ripper’s documentary trilogy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cTBlGcZCeA
2011 A Sorry State – Director Mitch Miyagawa’s filmic essay on the meaning of government-issued apologies, TV Ontario, https://vimeo.com/50831235
2010 Kids in Jail – NFB documentary on children who kill. Director: Larry Lynn http://www.nfb.ca/film/kids_in_jail/trailer/kids_in_jail_trailer/
2008 Griefwalker – Tim Wilson’s portrait of Stephen Jenkinson, the palliative care counsellor at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, NFB. https://www.nfb.ca/distribution/film/griefwalker
2008 Fierce Light – Velcrow Ripper’s theatrical documentary on finding spirituality in places of darkness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh5Qvv3UIEg
2006 That’s my Time – Adamm Liley’s portrait of comedian Irwin Barker’s life with terminal cancer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcIEHYDk0c8
2005 Scared Sacred – Velcrow Ripper’s spiritual search for places of darkness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSx68p7ItDk
2002 Fix – Nettie Wild’s feature-length documentary about drugs and resistance on Vancouver’s East Side, NFB, https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thenettiewildcollection/288057487
Political struggle is emotionally grounded by two very different yet similarly stubborn, rabble-rousing personalities whose loyal alliance is like a quarrelsome marriage. – Variety

EDITOR
2014 The Polar Sea – 2 D editor on the 360 VR component of the 10-part series. Producers: Irene Vandertorp & Thomas Wallner, https://littlstar.com/videos/66276b4a
2010 Prosecutor – Feature-length documentary on the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, for the BBC and TVO. Director/Writer: Barry Stevens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04s_Y1zCxQc
2008 Biodad – Follow-up feature-length documentary on the search for the biological father of the filmmaker, CBC. Director/Writer: Barry Stevens
2001-04 Blue Murder–  4×13 prime-time dramatic series, Global Television. Senior picture editor. Executive Producers: Laszlo Barna and Steve Lucas
2001 Offspring – Documentary on the search for the filmmaker’s biological father, CBC. Director/writer: Barry Stevens, https://vimeo.com/128603400?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=27168387
1999 Lola – Theatrical fiction film, Invited to Sundance and Berlin, Toronto and Vancouver Film Festivals. Director: Carl Bessai, https://vimeo.com/13211692
1999 Obachan’s Garden – feature-length docu-drama on the Japanese immigrant experience, NFB Pacific  Centre. Supervising Editor. Director/Producer: Linda Ohama https://www.nfb.ca/film/obachans_garden/
Ohama’s emotionally exhilarating with dozens of emotionally wrenching and uplifting scenes. – LouisHobson, Canoe.ca,
Obachan’s Garden is a film to be watched again and again, a reminder of the impressive depth of ability in Canadian documentary filmmakers. Highly Recommended. – Deborah Begoray, University of Victoria
1998 Thin Ice – Biography of Bruce McCall, Canadian-born New Yorker magazine illustrator, NFB. Director: Laurence Green. https://vimeo.com/142279795 , pw: brucemccall
A subtle investigation of the processes of colonialization and psychology of need, Thin Ice is a film about one expatriate Canuck’s strangely desperate desire for American affirmation. – Tom McSorley, Take One
1997 Johnny – Theatrical fiction. Toronto, Vancouver and Thessalonica Film Festivals.  Director/Producer: Carl Bessai, https://vimeo.com/4540260
1996 Machine Gun – 3-part documentary series on the history of the 19th and 20th centuries viewed through the barrel of a machine gun. Discovery US and Canada. Supervising Editor. Director: Steven Silver
1997 Wrestling with Shadows – Feature-length study of a modern-day hero in the world of professional wrestling, BBC, ARTE, TV Ontario and A&E. Director/Producer: Paul Jay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3wZhA5s3kI
This is one whale of a tale! – Newsday,  A classic story of a modern-day hero, one of the most riveting Canadian films in years. – Eye Magazine,  Jay, along with seamless editing by Manfred Becker, tracks this progression all the way to its bitter, bitter end. Watching Wrestling With Shadows is still great entertainment. In fact, it’s a knockout. – Antonia Zerbisias,Toronto Star, Like great art, its essence lies not in the subject matter at hand, but in the universal themes that drive it—loyalty, betrayal, jealousy, revenge. You must see the great doc.- Grant McIntyre, Broadcast Week, A tale as bizarre as Kafka and tragic as Shakespeare…riveting. – T. Atherton, Ottawa Citizen
1996 Gerrie and Louise – Feature-length documentary about the relationship between a South African soldier of apartheid and an investigative journalist. Director: Sturla Gunnarsson. https://vimeo.com/154442032, pw: niagara
That sense of the indelible presence of awful memories is heightened by the film’s use of skillfully selected footage heightening the sense of their subjectivity at the same time as underscoring for the viewer what is meant by the euphemistic and evasive terms used by Hugo and other former apartheid agents and victims in the film. – Simon Lewis, Charleston College
1995 Whispers in the Air – Biography of the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, A&E, TV Ontario. Director: Tom Perlmutter.
1999 Who Gets In? – Documentary on Canadian immigration, NFB/CBC co-production. Director: Barry Greenwald. https://www.nfb.ca/film/who_gets_in/
1987 The Journey – 14.5-hour Global Peace film. Co-editor with Director/Producer Peter Watkins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmFxcTIzUog
I went expecting a great movie. What I got was more information, emotion, despair and transcendent hope thanI ever dreamed a mere length of celluloid could possibly convey. – New Zealand Herald, Extraordinary, spellbinding and ultimately filled with hope. – The Raleigh Times

Consultant
2022 rebel angel – feature length portrait of Canadian poet and teacher Ross Woodman. Director: Christopher Lowry, Ecotone Productions.
2014 Biology of Story –  interactive website by Professor Amnon Buchbinder https://biologyofstory.com/#/

CONFERENCE PAPERS PRESENTED (R = refereed)
2024 Learning. Life. Work. Pedagogy Series. San Francisco R (invited)
2023 Teaching Beyond the Curriculum, Focus on Pedagogy, Virtual: UK, USA, China R (invited)
2023 Nord Media Conference, Bergen, Norway. “Vaccine Against Fake News” R
2023 Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences Congress, Toronto. “Vaccine Against Fake News” R
2023 AMPS (Architecture, Media, Politics, Society) Applying Education, Toronto. “Vaccine Against Fake News” R
2023 World Literacy Summit, Oxford, UK. “Vaccine Against Fake News” R.
2023 Global Media Education Summit, Vancouver, BC, “Vaccine Against Fake News” R.
2022 Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas, Oakland. “Vaccine Against Fake News” R.
2019 Visible Evidence XXVI, Los Angeles. “Ethics in the Edit rooms of Factual Television” R.
2019 Media Ecology Conference, Toronto. “Ethics in the Edit rooms of Factual Television” R.
2019 The European Conference on Media, Communication & Film, Brighton, UK “Ethics in the Edit rooms of Factual Television” Invited
2019 International Association of Media & Communication Research, Madrid, Spain “Ethics in the Edit rooms of Factual Television” Invited
2019 4th Intern. Conference on Communication & Media Studies, Bonn, Germany “Ethics in the Edit rooms of Factual Television” Invited
2015 C.I.L.E.C.T. conference on post-production. The Frankenbite  Chicago. R.
2011 New York City Jewish Heritage Museum, Screening of Fatherland. R.
2009 Centennial College, Culture and Heritage Institute conference. Screening of War Tourism R.
2009 Canadian Psychiatric Association conference. Screening of Hitler and Freud’s Vienna Toronto. R.
2008 Worldviews Conference on Media and Higher Education, TIFF Lightbox. On Documentary Film R.
2008 in flagrante depictor New York University, Law and Film Conference Children of Perpetrators symposium, Cardozo School of Law. Screening of Fatherland R.
2008 The Holocaust: Children of the Perpetrators Confront Their Parents Nazi Past symposium, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Screening of Fatherland. R.

FILM/MEDIA INDUSTRY PRESENTATIONS

2022 Music Conservatory of Toronto, German Film history post WWII
2014 Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC) Industry breakfast on data visualization
2013 L.I.F.T. Toronto, Panel on New Media
2010 Toronto District School Board, Professional development
2008 Documentary Association of Canada conference on post-production, Innis College, U. of Toronto, (keynote speaker)
2008 Filmhaus Bremen, Germany
2009 Documentary Association of Canada, Masters Series
2008 Reel Diversity Program, NFB Montreal

WORKSHOP PRESENTATIONS
2018 Belleville Doc Fest (workshop leader)
2013 Docs North Workshop, Thunder Bay (workshop leader)
2012 Toronto International Film Festival Film Circuit, Masters Workshop, Kingston
2011 Documentary Summit, Ryerson University
2007 Docs North Workshop, Thunder Bay (workshop leader)
2007 Hot Docs Film Festival, Toronto (workshop leader)
2007 Saskatchewan Motion Pictures Association, Regina (workshop leader)
2005 Inspired Workshop Series, NFB Atlantic Studio
2001 NIFCO – Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers Cooperative (workshop leader)
2002 Yorkton Film Festival (workshop leader)
2001 Moving Images Group, Halifax, 3-day workshop on story editing

PANEL CHAIR
2015 Visible Evidence XXII International Conference, Toronto (invited)

PROFESSIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO SERVICE
Festival Programmer
2004-2012 Rendez-Vous with Madness Festival (also panelist and presenter)
Juror
2022 Ethics Bowl, Ontario High Schools
2007 – 2017 Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, also jury chair
2011 Hot Docs Film Festival, also workshop facilitator and panel moderator
2010-2014 Bishop Marrocco High School, Toronto

Board Member
2021 The News Analysis Organisation, a charitable podcast to provide unbiased news reporting, investigation and academic historical Inquiry, produced by Paul Jay

Magazine Editor
1996 DOC Magazine POV, co-editor & contributor with Geoff Bowie and Petra Valier

Professional Associations
2005 – 2017 Documentary Association of Canada presenter & panelist
1992  Canadian Film Caucus (CIFC). Executive Board member

MEDIA APPEARANCES
2021 News Point 3
2020 Interview York YU file
2013 CTV morning radio I/V
2007 & 2013 CBC Metro Morning I/V
2007 Capturing Reality, NFB documentary, I/V subject
2004 Edgecodes – The Art of Motion Picture Editing, documentary, I/V subject

TEACHING
York University
UNDERGRADUATE
       2022-2023

• FA/FILM 3002 Documentary workshop

2018-2019

• FA/FILM 3130 Introduction to Picture Editing I
• FA/FILM 4130 Intermediate Picture Editing II
• FA/FILM 4135 Advanced Picture Editing III
• FA/FILM 1020 Introduction to Filmmaking

2017-2018

• FA/FILM 3130 Introduction to Picture Editing I
• FA/FILM 4130 Intermediate Picture Editing II
• FA/FILM 4135 Advanced Picture Editing III
• FA/FILM 1020 Introduction to Filmmaking

2016-2017

• FA/FILM 3130 Introduction to Picture Editing I
• FA/FILM 4130 Intermediate Picture Editing II
• FA/FILM 4135 Advanced Picture Editing III
• FA/FILM 1020 Introduction to Filmmaking

2015-2016

• FA/FILM 3130 Introduction to Picture Editing I
• FA/FILM 4130 Intermediate Picture Editing II
• FA/FILM 4135 Advanced Picture Editing III
• FA/FILM 1020 Introduction to Filmmaking

2014-2015 F

• FA/FILM 3135, Postproduction
• FA/FILM 4135 Advanced Picture Editing III

2013-2014

• FA/FILM 3130 Introduction to Picture Editing I
• FA/FILM 4130 Intermediate Picture Editing II
• FA/FILM 4135 Advanced Picture Editing III

2012-2013

• FA/FILM 3001/4001 Documentary Production (co-instructor)
• FA/FILM 3130 Introduction to Picture Editing I,
• FA/FILM 4130 Intermediate Picture Editing II
• FA/FILM 4135 Advanced Picture Editing III

2011-2012

• FA/FILM 3130 Introduction to Picture Editing I
• FA/FILM 4130 Intermediate Picture Editing II
• FA/FILM 4135 Advanced Picture Editing III

2010-2011

• FA/FILM 3130 Introduction to Picture Editing I
• FA/FILM 4130 Intermediate Picture Editing II
• FA/FILM 4135 Advanced Picture Editing III

2009-2010

• FA/FILM 3130 Introduction to Picture Editing I
• FA/FILM 4130 Intermediate Picture Editing II
• FA/FILM 4135 Advanced Picture Editing II

2008-2009

• FA/FILM 3130 Introduction to Picture Editing I
• FA/FILM 4130 Intermediate Picture Editing II
• FA/FILM 4135 Advanced Picture Editing III

2007-2008

• FA/FILM 3130 Introduction to Picture Editing I
• FA/FILM 4130 Intermediate Picture Editing II

2006-2007

• FA/FILM 3130 Introduction to Picture Editing I
• FA/FILM 4130 Intermediate Picture Editing II

2005-2006

• FA/FILM 3130 Introduction to Picture Editing I (co-instructor)

2006-2019

• Supervisor for Independent Studies (various)

GRADUATE

2023 – 2024

• FA/FILM 5010 Production
• FA/FILM 6251 Essay Film

2021 – 2022

• FA/FILM 5010 Production
• FA/FILM 5400 Graduate Seminar

2020 – 2021

• FA/FILM 5200 Selected Topics in Production
• FA/FILM 5400 Graduate Seminar

2019 – 2020

• FA/FILM 5400 Graduate Seminar
• FA/FILM 5600 Art of Event

Freya Björg Olafson is an intermedia artist who works with performance, video, audio and painting. Her creative practice engages with identity and the body, as informed by technology and the Internet.

Olafson’s work has been presented internationally at venues such as the Bauhaus Archiv (Berlin/Germany), SECCA – Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (North Carolina), Ochoymedio (Quito, Guayaquil and Manta/ Ecuador), Canada’s National Arts Centre (Ottawa), and Onassis Cultural Center (Athens/Greece). Her video work has screened widely in festivals and galleries, and is distributed by Video Pool Media Arts Centre, Winnipeg. Her artist residencies include EMPAC – The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (New York), Oboro (Montreal) and Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida). With support from San Francisco’s CounterPulse , she is currently developing a project incorporating virtual reality, slated to premiere in 2018.

Alongside her university studies, Olafson advanced her training with the Professional Program of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Springboard Danse Montréal.  Leading artists with whom she has studied and collaborated include Charles Atlas, Coco Fusco, Tedd Robinson, Shawna Dempsey/Lorri Millan, Wanda Koop and Sarah Anne Johnson, among others. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, her honours include the Buddies in Bad Times Vanguard Award for Risk and Innovation at Toronto’s SummerWorks festival. Her work CPA [Consistent Partial Attention] was selected by an international jury to be part of Team Canada at Les Jeux de la Francophonie in Côte d’Ivoire, Africa in July 2017.

As a freelance performer Olafson has worked in dance, film and theater. Teaching, lecturing, and mentoring highlights include her work with Saw Video (Ottawa), Syracuse University (NY), and MAWA – Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art and Plug In ICA (Winnipeg). Upcoming publications include a score/script of her performance work AVATAR as part of Canadian Playwrights Press’ 2021 anthology on Digital Theatre in Canada.

Olafson has served on the curatorial committee for the núna (now) festival since 2006 and as president since 2010, overseeing and facilitating projects in dance, theatre, visual and public art. Since 2012, she has also served on the board of the Video Pool Media Arts Centre, and from 2013 to 2016 was a member of ISPA – International Society for Performing Arts through the Canada Council Legacy Program. She is currently a member of Projetbk/8 DAYS and a research collaborator with the Canadian Consortium for Performance and Politics in the Americas.

Professor Olafson joined the faculty in the Department of Dance at York University in 2017.

For composer Randolph Peters, music is a passport, a way to explore the world. His work includes commissions from the Canadian Opera Company, and the Winnipeg, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton Symphony Orchestras, Kronos Quartet, Hannaford Street Silver Band, Elmer Iseler Singers, and Orchestre Symphonique du Québec among others. Although he has composed in a number of different genres, Peters especially enjoys telling stories through his work in opera and film music.

Peters has composed over 100 film and television scores including The Diviners (1993) and Lost in the Barrens (1990). He was composer-in-residence for the Canadian Opera Company (COC) from 1990-93, during which time he composed Nosferatu, his first opera. In 1999, the COC premiered his most successful opera to date, The Golden Ass, with an original libretto by Robertson Davies.

Professor Joel Ong is a media artist whose works connect scientific and artistic approaches to the environment, particularly with respect to sound and physical space.  Professor Ong’s work explores the way objects and spaces can function as repositories of ‘frozen sound’, and in elucidating these, he is interested in creating what systems theorist Jack Burnham (1968) refers to as “art (that) does not reside in material entities, but in relations between people and between people and the components of their environment”.

A serial collaborator, Professor Ong is invested in the broader scope of Art-Science collaborations and is engaged constantly in the discourses and processes that facilitate viewing these two polemical disciplines on similar ground.  His graduate interdisciplinary work in nanotechnology and sound was conducted at SymbioticA, the Center of Excellence for Biological Arts at the University of Western Australia and supervised by BioArt pioneers and TCA (The Tissue Culture and Art Project) artists Dr Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts.  In his doctoral studies, he was mentored by Dr Edward Shanken, author of the canonical “Art and Electronic Media” published by Phaidon Press in 2009, and was his Research Assistant in the “Systems” publication in the Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art series.  Since 2014, Professor Ong has been a visiting artist at the UCLA ArtSci Center.  His works have been shown at festivals and conferences around the world including Ars Electronica, Currents New Media Festival, the Ontario Science Centre, ISEA and Siggraph.  Previously he has held residencies at locations such as the Coalesce Centre for Biological Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Toronto, and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Professor Ong’s research agenda includes multimodal expressions of Creative Data Aesthetics, focusing primarily on environmental sensing technologies to facilitate transactions of elements such as the wind through Ambisonic technologies of sound spatialization, mixed reality visualizations and physical computing.   Working from the lens of media ecology, Professor Ong’s work aims to cast contemporary eco-media in a triptych of forms – in vivo, in vitro and in silico – symptomatic of the way computational creativity is becoming an indispensible resource for scientific visions of the environment.  Specific lab based exploration in this stream have included transgenic manipulations of bacteria, physical manipulations of yeast, and computational augmentation of microfluidics done primarily through transdisciplinary collaborations with scientists.

Professor Ong is the PI for an AIF-funded pan-faculty Makerspace where he is working on incorporating cutting edge digital fabrication into faculty curriculum across AMPD.  He is also working on incorporating DIYBio technologies into the workflow.  Professor Ong is also working on several community-based projects in digital literacy and community music technologies (with the Regent Park School of Music) through grants funded by SSHRC, York University’s Catalyst program and the Helen Carswell Chair in Community Engaged Research in the Arts.

His creative work can be found at www.arkfrequencies.com

Jennifer Fisher is an art historian, critic and curator specializing in contemporary art and curatorial studies. Her research focusses on exhibitions, display practices, contemporary art, feminist performance, affect theory and the aesthetics of the non-visual senses. She is co-founder and joint editor of the Journal of Curatorial Studies.

Her writings have been featured in anthologies such as Artist Curators, The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Culture, The Senses in Performance and Caught in the Act I & II; and journals such as Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry, RACAR, Performance Research, Art Journal, Border/Lines, C magazine, n-paradoxa and Visual Communication. She has authored numerous catalogue essays, exhibition reviews and interviews.

Professor Fisher is a founding member of DisplayCult, a curatorial organization for creative and interdisciplinary projects in the visual arts, where her practice encompasses a range of interventional artist-curator projects. Images and descriptions of exhibitions are available at: www.displaycult.com.

Dr. Fisher was Contemporary Art Fellow at the Canadian Centre for the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Canada, and has held research affiliations at the Society for Fellows in the Humanities at Cornell University and the Department of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She joined York University’s Visual Art and Art History Department in 2004.

Michel Daigneault’s art practice has for many years focused on Investigating what constitutes abstraction today and thereby exploring how abstraction relates to larger social forces.

A key for understanding his recent work lies in what is unstated, but implied, in the titles, eg: It was once abstract.. and Don’t look at me like that! If it was once abstract what is it now? How is it still? Similarly, the imperative tone of Don’t look at me like that! challenges and critiques opticality as the dominant visual model for abstraction.

Michel Daigneault has exhibited his paintings in numerous solo and group shows across Canada, in the US and France. His work is represented in many public collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Musée de Joliette and the Canada Council Art Bank. His most recent exhibitions have been at Rodman Hall Arts Centre, Brock University, St. Catharines; Art Gallery of Outremont, Outremont; and Trois Points Gallery, Montreal.

Professor Daigneault held teaching appointments at Ohio State University, Nova Scotia School of Art and Design, Emily Carr School of Art and Design and University of Lethbridge before joining York’s Department of Visual Arts in 2002. He has also guest-taught at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières and École nationale d’art de Cergy Pontoise, France.

The work of intermedia artist Marc Couroux is firmly rooted in experiences developed while active as a contemporary music pianist. His early (piano performance) works were centered around a reformatting of the audience-performer dialectic, challenging the orthodoxies of transmission and reception within the sociopolitical confines of the public event. Case in point: in 2000, le contrepoint académique (sic) (a tactical intervention into the concert ritual) was presented at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, a work described as “controversial”, “demented” and “illuminated”. Rockford – Keep on Rolling, a three-screen video performance, reflects a Los Angeles plunged into rolling blackouts and was presented in a number of international festivals, including Club Transmediale in Berlin in 2006 and Portland’s PDX Fest (Peripheral Produce) in 2009.

In 2006, Watergating (Selected Hearings), a large-scale audio-video performance work was presented at the Vasistas festival in Montreal; in this work, the concepts of hearing (acoustical phenomena) and listening (socially or politically mediated hearing), were investigated through the lens of the Watergate scandal.

In 2007, Couroux presented two offshoots of Watergating: Carpenters et al, Downey Lyrical Holdings, a Real-Time System as of March 29, 2007 was concerned with exploring concepts emanating from and associated with technology, through non-technological means (such as delay), and was performed by neither/nor in Toronto; The Fetishization of Music and the Regression in Listening, (with Juliana Pivato) presented in Edmonton in 2007 as part of Latitude 53’s Visualeyez festival of interdisciplinary art, was a performance intervention designed to operate a form of Situationist détournement on the muzak environment.

In 2010, Couroux presented The Following, Episode 1 (Modified Limited Hangout) with Special Guest Star Robert Webber (a meditation on the legislative capacities of formulaic TV structures), Executive Summary (on the irreconcilability of visual and acoustic spaces), Strange Homecoming, A Structural Comedy (a digression on the tune-running-thru-the-head in the age of mechanical reproduction), and sections of In a Sedimental Mood (an investigation of background and foreground music through an unfolding of repetition and difference in the wake of Satie’s musique d’ameublement) as part of a solo show at Toronto’s experimental video series Pleasure Dome. The latter two works were later installed during the celebrated Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound in Kitchener.

The artist is currently at work on a television intervention series (online) entitled We Know What You’re Looking For, comprised entirely of altered commercials; a two-room installation collapsing durational onsite performance with environmental Muzak; a coffee shop / bookstore sound installation troping on the perceptual contingencies of technological failure and an extended work for disco band. Curatorial enterprises are also forthcoming: retrospectives of the work of the Television Recuperation Unit (1977-82) and video artist Oswald Store are planned for 2012-13. Couroux and Pivato will be artists-in-residence at Threewalls in downtown Chicago in May-June 2013, where they will present six collaborative works-in-progress, involving daily tasks distilled from a long-standing conversation, involved with attempts to re-situate art-making in light of the pervasive effects of a viral, techno-centric culture. Through sound, video, drawing, notation and live performance, their work examines the everyday tropes and patterns that determine to a large extent the conditions by which art can effectively function: hybridization and recombination, legibility and saturation, reduction and spin, distraction and fragmentation, repetition and difference.

Couroux founded and directed Ensemble KORE (1997-2010) in Montréal with composer Michael Oesterle in order to recreate a living relationship between the composer and the listener. He has lectured on music and video art at the Dartington College of Arts (UK), Princeton University, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the Eastman School of Music, The University of York (England), the Royal Conservatory (The Hague), McGill University (Montréal) and Concordia University (Montréal). Couroux joined York University’s Faculty of Fine Arts in 2006.

Professor Balfour is a print media and interdisciplinary artist who has exhibited and given lectures across Canada, and in the USA, UK, France, Germany, Spain and China. She has been a member of two artist collectives, the Toronto based Spontaneous Combustion and the Montreal based Venus Fly Trap. In the field of professional printing, she has worked for artists including Leon Golub, Komar and Melamid, and David Rabinowitch. Other activities involve artist residencies, conference papers, critical writing, and curatorial projects, including the two-volume publication and group exhibition at Open Studio entitled À la recherche (in search of practice-based research); the essay “Spectral Apostrophe” in PUBLIC 51: special issue on colour; and Carry-On Santander, a portable exhibition of artists’ books and multiples shown in Santander, Spain.

In addition to working in print installation, artist’s books, and multiples, Balfour has engaged with text-based art practices and print’s relationship to multiplicity. Her art practice began as an inquiry into the representation of women within medical discourse and an examination of the relationship between soma and psyche. Ongoing research involves reproduction, reproducibility, and the representation of the body within abstraction. Her most recent artist’s book is The Inkiest Black, a reflection on David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Current research considers representations of mourning and mortality.  Balfour endorses an expanded understanding of print media in the twenty-first century and believes that reports of the death of print have been greatly exaggerated.

Balfour joined the faculty of the Department of Visual Arts in 1999 . She previously taught print media, interdisciplinary studies, and feminist studio/theory courses at Concordia University. At York, she has developed two Critical Issues courses – Repetition, Reproduction, and Reproducibility and Artists’ Writing/Writing Artists. She teaches Lithography, Artists’ Books and Multiples, and Extended Print Practice in the Print Media Area, and has also taught Image and Object in the Drawing Area. From 2014-17, she served as the Graduate Program Director for the MFA/PhD Visual Arts Program. In 2016, she was appointed as Full Professor.

David Scott Armstrong is a visual artist interested in the entwining of things, natural phenomena, and the act of looking. Early experiences on his grandparent’s farm in south-west Saskatchewan and his later University studies, taught by Tim Lilburn, Liz Ingram, Walter Jule, Lyndal Osborne, were foundational.

As an artist he is attentive to materiality and metaphor— the way things are in themselves and the way things resonate with other things. The creative constraints of art, and in particular image-making, are expressive of eros— what he calls “a desire, to see and be with, which opens the eyes.”

His prints and folios, drawings and bookworks have been exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group/juried exhibitions in Canada, the US, Estonia, Portugal, Russia, Japan, Korea and Brazil.

Teaching at the undergraduate level has focused in print media, a medium which he celebrates as having “a widening circumference with no fixed centre.” What is print? he asks. Its identity is more like a kind of non-identity. And this is good. Print is otherwise, a hybrid medium of evolving combinations: hand—machine—art—design—drawing—markmaking—photo—digital—book—sheet—image—text—object—the one—the many—. In the Department of Visual Art and Art History he supervises graduate students across all studio disciplines at the MFA and PhD level. Beyond his home department he has worked with graduate students in the Department of Design, and the Graduate Programme in Interdisciplinary Studies (with thesis projects spanning literature, cinema, animation, music and cognitive studies).

Professor Armstrong joined the faculty in York’s Department of Visual Art and Art History in 2003.

Professor Adler’s areas of research include the history of art writing, modern and contemporary sculpture, German modernism, Frankfurt School theory, conceptual art, and the theory and history of contemporary art. He teaches courses in 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century art, with particular interests in 19th-century European painting, French and German Dada, and the development and reception of the conceptual art movement.

Dr. Adler’s most recent publication is Tainted Goods: Contemporary Sculpture and the Critique of Display Cultures (Routledge, 2018), which explores modern and contemporary tendencies toward assemblage.  He considers how these works incorporate tainted materials – often things left on the side of the road, according to the logic and progress of the capitalist machine – and offers a range of aesthetic models through which these practices can be understood to function critically. The book’s main chapters focus on a single exhibition by a different artist: Geoffrey Farmer, Isa Genzken, Rachel Harrison, and Liz Magor.

Dr. Adler’s other books include the monograph Hanne Darboven: Cutural History 1880-1983 (Afterall Books/MIT Press, 2009). He co-edited (with Mitchell Frank) German Art History and Scientific Thought: Beyond Formalism (Ashgate Press, 2012) and co-edited (with Janine Marchessault and Sanja Obradovic) Parallax: Stereoscopic 3D in Moving Images and Visual Art (Chicago: Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press, 2013). Recent catalogue essays include those on the work of Bill Burns, Hanne Darboven, Kristan Horton, Kelly Mark, Liz Magor, and Michaela Meise. A former senior editor of the Bibliography of the History of Art at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, he has published in the journals Art History and CAA’s Art Journal, and regularly contributes reviews to Artforum, C Magazine, and Border Crossings.

In addition to his formal university studies, Dr. Adler is an alumnus of the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program. In 2016, he co-curated (with Lesley Johnstone) a Liz Magor retrospective exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal , which traveled in 2017 to the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich; the Kunstverein in Hamburg; and the Musée d’Art Moderne et contemporain in Nice, France (the accompanying catalogue, Liz Magor: Habitude, was published by JRP Ringier). His other curatorial credits include the exhibitions “Francis Bacon and Henry Moore: Terror and Beauty” (2014) held at the Art Gallery of Ontario and “When Hangover Becomes Form: Rachel Harrison and Scott Lyall” (2006), held at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE).

In 2019, Dr. Adler began researching modern and contemporary histories of sculpture in Japan, on a grant from the Japan Foundation and the Ishibashi Foundation, Tokyo. He is currently working on a short book about the assemblage sculptures of Nakanishi Natsuyuki, a member of the Tokyo-based collective High-Red Center in the 1960s. In addition, he is researching the book-length project Object Oriented: Hanne Darboven’s Installations, which focuses on large-scale works that the German conceptualist produced later in her career. The Darboven project, which draws upon archival material, is supported in part by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service).

Graham Wakefield joined York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design in 2014. He is appointed to the Department of Computational Arts, and holds a Canada Research Chair in Computational Worldmaking. He is the founding director of the Alice Lab in AMPD, a facility dedicated to the development of computationally literate art practice and  creative coding software for the construction of responsive artificial worlds experienced through rapidly emerging mixed/hybrid reality technologies. Dr. Wakefield is also a Core Member of the VISTA program.

Dr. Wakefield is an artist-researcher whose contributions include both scholarly research and the creation of works of art. His research-creation is founded upon a trans-disciplinary academic training in interactive art, music, virtual/augmented reality, mathematics and philosophy, partnered with extensive professional practice in software engineering for creative coding in audio-visual, interactive and immersive media. 

Graham is an internationally exhibited artist of immersive and mixed-reality art installations, including the series Artificial Nature, an ongoing collaboration since 2007 with artist/researcher Haru Ji. These artworks present experiences of nature as it could be, through interactive worlds in which participants become one more component of an ecosystem, linking the generative open-endedness of biology and computation through aesthetic experience. The installations have been exhibited in numerous venues and events internationally including La Gaîté Lyrique/Paris and ZKM/Germany, and have been recognized in peer-reviewed publications as well as organizations such as SIGGRAPH and VIDA. 

Dr. Wakefield’s research is documented in numerous leading conferences, including a best paper award at NIME, journals including IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies and Computer Music Journal, as well as popular texts such as O’Reilly’s Beautiful Visualization. Graham played a central role in the development of software systems and authoring content for the AlloSphere: a three storey spherical multi-user immersive instrument in the California Nano-Systems Institute. Graham is also a software developer for Cycling ’74, co-authoring the Gen software used by tens of thousands in the media arts environment Max/MSP/Jitter. 

Artist website

Alice Lab website

Doug Van Nort is an artist, scholar and composer/improviser of experimental and electroacoustic music. He regularly performs and presents his work internationally, with notable past venues including Casa da Musica in Porto, Betong in Oslo, Cafe OTO in London, Skolska28 in Prague, Liebig12 and QuietCue in Berlin, Ongaku no tomo hall in Tokyo, The Smithsonian in Washington D.C., Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, The Tang Museum in Saratoga Springs, the [SAT] and Casa del Popolo in Montreal, WNUR in Chicago, The Red Room in Baltimore, Studio Soto in Boston, The Guelph Jazz Festival, The XAvant Festival in Toronto, Roulette, Harvestworks, the Flea Theatre, Socrates Sculpture Park, the New Museum, the Miller Theatre, Experimental Intermedia, Issue Project Room Town Hall, and the Stone in NYC, at EMPAC in Troy, NY, at the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA), New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), the NYC electroacoustic music festival, and many other festivals and events across the U.S., Asia and Europe.

He has performed, collaborated and recorded with dozens of artists including Pauline Oliveros, Francisco López, Composers Inside Electronics, Kim Cascone, Stuart Dempster, Malcolm Goldstein, Al Margolis (If, Bwana), Chris Chafe, Ben Miller, Alessandra Eramo, David Arner, Anne Bourne, Eric Leonardson, Viv Corringham, Judy Dunaway, Katherine Liberovskaya, Paul Hession, Jefferson Pitcher, Francois Houle, Jonathan Chen, Sarah Weaver, Gerry Hemingway, Min Xiao-Fen, Ray Anderson, Miya Masaoka, Franz Hackl, Mark Helias and Dave Taylor among many others.

As a scholar Van Nort has published over 50 peer reviewed articles and book chapters that engage sound, experimental music, deep listening, interactive performance systems, telematic music, human/machine improvisation and related topics. He previously served as an editor for the Computer Music Journal (MIT Press).

Van Nort is Canada Research Chair in Digital Performance, and directs the DisPerSion (The DIStributed PERformance and Sensorial immersION) Lab, which serves as an incubator for his research/creation collaborations and training of students.

For more information please visit his personal website: www.dvntsea.com

Nell Tenhaaf is an electronic media artist and theoretician with extensive publication, lecture and exhibition credits across Canada, in the US and in Europe. Her practice focuses on the intersection of art, science and technology, using digital media to integrate elements from these different fields. She is represented in Toronto by Paul Petro Contemporary Art.

In 2005 Professor Tenhaaf was awarded a major grant through the New Media Initiative, jointly funded by the Canada Council and the National Science and Engineering Research Council, for a collaborative project with Professor Melanie Baljko in York’s Department of Computer Science. The Lo-fi project uses art and science to create interactive installations in which humans interact with artificial agents. The interactive sculptures Push/Pull (2009) and WinWin (2012) are outcomes of this ongoing project.

Professor Tenhaaf has published numerous reviews and articles that address the cultural implications of biotechnologies and of Artificial Life (an area of research that studies dynamics in nature through computational models as well as software or robotic agents with lifelike behaviours). She was a jury member for the Madrid-based Vida art and artificial life competition from its inception in 1997 until it wrapped up in 2014.

Professor Tenhaaf is cross-appointed to Digital Media and Visual Art & Art History. She has served as associate dean and as coordinator of the Digital Media Program in AMPD. Prior to joining York University in 1997, she taught at Concordia University, the University of Ottawa and Carnegie Mellon University.

Michael Longford’s creative work and research activities reside at the intersection of photography, graphic design and digital media. He has exhibited and presented his work at national and international exhibitions and conferences.

Professor Longford is a co-principal investigator for the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN), a national research network developing technology and media rich content for mobile devices. He is a founding member of Hexagram: Institute for Research and Creation in Media Arts and Technologies and served for three years as director for the Advanced Digital Imaging and 3D Rapid Prototyping Group. Currently he serves as director of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology, a research centre based in York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design that supports cross-disciplinary work in application and content creation, artistic and scientific inquiry, policy development and critical discourse in digital media arts.

Mark-David Hosale is a computational artist and composer. He is an Associate Professor and Chair of Computational Arts in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance, and Design, at York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has given lectures and taught internationally at institutions in Denmark, The Netherlands, Norway, Canada, and the United States. His solo and collaborative work has been exhibited internationally at such venues as the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery (2005), International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA2006), BlikOpener Festival, Delft, The Netherlands (2010), the Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF2012), Biennale of Sidney (2012), Toronto’s Nuit Blanche (2012), Art Souterrain, Montréal (2013), and a Collateral event at the Venice Biennale (2015), Currents New Media (2017), among others. He is co-editor of the anthology, Worldmaking as Techné: Participatory Art, Music, and Architecture  (Riverside Press, 2018).

Dr. Hosale joined York University’s Faculty of Fine Arts in 2011.

Don Sinclair’s interests and creative research encompass physical computing, wearable computing, interactive sound art, laptop performance, web art, database art, interactive dance, video projection, cycling art, sustainability, green architecture and choral singing.

Professor Sinclair’s web/data art work Variations/Variantes, included in a retrospective of net.art in Canada since 2000 by the Centre International d’Art Contemporain de Montréal (no 32 / 2008), is part of a series of works based on oh, those everyday spaces, a database of over 25,000 images captured during a 15 month period while cycling in and around Toronto. Work from this series has been exhibited at the Images Festival (Toronto), T-minus Festival of Time-Lapse Video (New York), no-org.net (Jerusalem), SINTESI : Festival Delle Arti Elettroniche (Napoli), RestCycling Art Festival (Berlin) and Toronto Bike Week Bike Art Showcase.

Professor Sinclair has worked with choreographers and dancers to create works that explore movement-based manipulation of sound and image. His collaborators include Holly Small (a journey toward the end in the shape of air, Draw a Bicycle, Night Vision – Nyx), Susan Lee, Yves Candau/Nur Intan Murtdaza and Karen Kaeja/Diana Groenendijk (Stable Dances at Nuit Blanche 2008).

The exploration of the sonic world is important to many of his works, and he has collaborated with numerous sound-based artists to create audience-focused interfaces. They include Andra McCartney (Journées Sonores, Canal de Lachine, interaction / rétroaction / feedback, Toronto-Norwood-Toronto); Chantal Dumas/Christian Calon (around radio roadmovies); and Darren Copeland/New Adventures in Sound Art (Toronto Island Sound Map, Mississauga Sound Map).

Current projects include the development of several physical computing-based works. The Cyclist Comfort Visualizer is a wearable computing piece designed to be worn by a cyclist in traffic. Making Conspicuous Consumption is a set of works that display aspects of a building’s energy consumption. He is also part of a SSHRC-funded team holding a research creation grant, engaged in a project titled Reflections of the Unimaginable; a Multimedia Rendering of Three Cities Hosting the Holocaust.

Professor Sinclair has taught new media in the Faculty of Fine Arts at York since 1990. He was the primary designer of the Faculty’s new media courses and was instrumental in the development of York University’s inter-Faculty Specialized Honours BA Program in Digital Media in conjunction with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Department of Communication Studies. An enthusiastic participant in collaborative teaching, he  has developed innovative cross/interdisciplinary courses in interactive dance with Holly Small (Dance) and physical computing with Wojtek Janczak (Design), as well as working on technology-enhanced learning initiatives with Renate Wickens.

Mary Jane Warner has extensive teaching experience at all levels, from elementary to graduate school. She was the founder of the historical dance group Entrée Dance, which performed Renaissance and Baroque dance in schools and other community settings in the American Midwest, and directed the dance program at Kirkland College in Clinton, New York for six years before returning to Canada in 1980.

At York University, she has taught courses in dance history, notation, repertory, movement analysis, ballet and dance education. She has served as Chair of the Dance Department, director of the Graduate Program in Dance and associate dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts. Her expertise in dance pedagogy brought her onto the development team for the Province of Ontario high school dance curriculum.

Dr. Warner is a Fellow of the International Council of Kinetography Laban and a certified notation teacher and author of Laban Notation Scores: An International Bibliography, Volumes I – IV. She has provided certified checking for notation scores including works by Anna Sokolow and Leonide Massine, and has reconstructed works by Doris Humphrey and Marion Scott. She was the primary organizer and administrator of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute for Movement Studies Program at York University.

An authority on Canadian dance, Professor Warner published the bookToronto Dance Teachers: 1825-1925 as well as numerous articles on dance in Toronto. With colleague Norma Sue Fisher-Stitt, she developed a CD titled Shadow on the Prairie an interactive multimedia dance history tutorial that was released on the York Fine Arts recording label in 1997 – the first dance history CD-ROM ever published. Working in collaboration with York dance professor Selma Odom, she completed Canadian Dance: Visions and Stories, an anthology of Canadian dance published by Dance Collection Danse. She recently completed a SSHRC grant documenting the work of several senior choreographers. She was instrumental in the establishment of Toronto Heritage Dance, an ensemble with a mandate to raise awareness of our modern dance tradition through performance, educational and preservation activities. She has received funding through the Ministry of Health Promotion to place students in community centres to teach dance to older adults as part of the Healthy Communities Fund.

Areas of Research and Academic Specialty: Dance history, notation, repertory, movement analysis, ballet technique, dance education

Selma Odom is a dance historian and writer. Recruited to York University in 1972, she was founding director of the MA and PhD programs in dance and dance studies, the first offered in a Canadian university. She was awarded the Faculty of Graduate Studies’ Teaching Award in 1998 in recognition of her contributions to the advancement of academic excellence and the quality of graduate teaching at York University. As Professor Emerita and Senior Scholar, she continues to teach graduate seminars and serves as Adjunct Associate of the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies of the University of Toronto.

Dr. Odom’s research focuses on dance, music, education and gender. With a background in English literature and theatre history, she has published many articles and reviews since the 1960s in books, academic journals, reference works, magazines and newspapers. She frequently presents in international symposia and conferences, and is invited to lecture in universities and schools in Europe and the United States. She has done extensive work for scholarly and professional organizations, curated exhibitions and film festivals, advised publishers such as Oxford University Press and consulted for various cultural agencies. She is a Member of the Board of Directors of Dance Collection Danse, Canada’s national dance archives and publisher dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of Canadian theatrical dance history.

Dr. Odom co-edited Canadian Dance: Visions and Stories, an anthology of thirty-five essays on Canadian dance and dance artists published by Dance Collection Danse in 2004. She is currently writing a book based on her long-term research on practice, identity and oral transmission in Dalcroze Eurhythmics.

Areas of Research and Academic Specialty: Dance History; Dance Writing

Karen Bowes-Sewell is a Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner and member of the Feldenkrais Guild of North America. She is a senior scholar in Dance at York University where she taught ballet, conditioning for dancers, and somatic education for many years as an associate professor. Karen was a principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada and brings her rich experience as a performer, teacher and researcher to her therapeutic movement practice. She established Feldenkrais Movement for All in 2005, working extensively with Pivot Sport Medicine & Orthopaedics, the Artist Health Centre Foundation, and the Feldenkrais Centre in Toronto. Karen has a private practice in the Grand Bend area of southwestern Ontario where she focuses on integrative movement health to address issues of chronic pain and neurological dysfunction, and to refine performance skills for athletes and artists.

Areas of Academic Specialty: Conditioning for dancers; Feldenkrais

Professor Amegago is a specialist in West African Performance arts with broad interest in the field of cultural studies, interdisciplinary music dance and theatre performance, cross-cultural aesthetics, curriculum development and implementation, arts and education philosophy, West African and African Diaspora ceremonies and festivals. He began performing music and dance and ceremonies at a very early age and led many music and dance groups in communities and institutions of Ghana.

In 1982, in his native Ghana, he founded the Dunenyo cultural group that specialized in the Anlo-Ewe music performance traditions and served as the group’s artistic director, choreographer, master drummer, poet and playwright. He also founded and directed Nutifafa African Music and Dance Ensemble in Vancouver in 1994 and toured extensively with the group throughout USA and Canada. He served as a drummer in Alpha Yaya Diallo and Bafin, a Vancouver based contemporary Guinean band, led by Alpha Yaya Diallo. He had also performed with renowned artists, such as Dido Morris, Albert Saint Albert, Glen Velez, Trichy Sankaran, Sal Ferreras and Themba Tana in Vancouver.

He directed the Anlo-Hogbetsotso festival in the southern Volta Association of Toronto (in 2005 and 2006), and served as a curator of the Performing Diaspora initiated by Prof. Danielle Robinson in collaboration with the Harriet Tubman Institute on Research on Global Migrations of African Peoples at York University (in 2011 and 2012). He is currently serving as artistic director of Nutifafa Afrikan Performance Ensemble and leading the group in performances in the various communities, schools and theatres in Canada and USA.

Dr. Amegago has taught in the School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana, Accra, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, the University of Arizona, Tucson and Arizona State University. He joined the faculty in the Department of Dance at York University in 2004.

Areas of Research and Academic Specialty: Dance Ethnography, West African Performance arts, Dance Writing

Recipient of the President’s University-Wide Teaching Award for the senior full-time faculty category,

Dr. Patrick Alcedo is a dance ethnographer, a specialist on Philippine traditional dances, and an award-winning documentary filmmaker. He is the Chair of and a Professor in the Department of Dance at York University, the most comprehensive department of its kind in Canada.

The Office of the President of the Republic of the Philippines, through the Commission on Filipino Overseas, recognized him in 2022 with the Pamana Presidential Award. Meaning “legacy and heritage” in the Tagalog language, Pamana is “conferred on overseas Filipino individuals, who, in exemplifying the talent and industry of the Filipino, have brought the country honour and recognition through excellence and distinction in the pursuit of their work or profession.”

Among Dr. Alcedo’s many recognitions are an Early Researcher Award from the Government of Ontario, a Selma Jeanne Cohen Award for International Dance Scholarship from the Fulbright Association of America, and Filipino-Canadian Making a Difference Honour from Philippine Festival Mississauga, a federation of community organizations in the Greater Toronto Area. From among more than 300 nominees, he was named one of Canada’s Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Awardees in 2022.

His PhD in Dance History and Theory is from the University of California, Riverside, under the auspices of the Asian Cultural Council’s Ford Foundation Grant. While pursuing doctoral work, he studied Baroque dance, performing in Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at Stanford University. His postdoctoral fellowship is from the Southeast Asia: Text, Ritual, and Performance (Seatrip) program at UC Riverside. In 2007, he took residence at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. as a Rockefeller Humanities Foundation Fellow.

He received his BA in English: Language from the University of the Philippines, Diliman, where after graduation he taught as full-time instructor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature.  At this state university, he performed for many years with the Filipiniana Dance Group, and with this group represented the Philippines at various international folklore festivals in France and Germany in 1992.

His documentary film, A Piece Of Paradise, won both Best Canadian Film and Best First Feature Film at the 2017 Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival. His They Call Me Dax had its world premiere at the Cannes International Independent Film Festival and received Best Foreign Short Documentary Film at the San Francisco Short Film Festival (2021) and Best Documentary at the Toronto Shorts International Film Festival (2021). In addition, it won Best Director, Best Documentary, and Best Cinematography at the New York City Independent Film Festival (2021).

His next feature-length documentary, A Will To Dream, was an official selection at the 2021 Los Angeles International Film Festival and won Asia’s Best Documentary Film at the All Asian Independent Film Festival that same year. In 2023, it received the Prize for Best Documentary Film or Video from the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance. His first short documentary, Boxing In The Shadow Of Pacquiao about lives of underprivileged boxers, some of who were his boxing coaches in his home province of Aklan on the island of Panay in the central Philippines, was published in the New York Times (November 12, 2009).

His written publications have appeared in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies and in anthologies from Palgrave MacMillan, Playwrights Canada Press, and Northwestern University Press. He edited the anthology, Religious Festivals in Contemporary Southeast Asia (Ateneo University Press, 2016), along with Sally Ann Ness, his doctoral supervisor, and Hendrik M.J. Maier, his postdoctoral mentor.

By way of documentary films, print publications, and live performances, he continues to flesh out cultural identities of Filipinos through Philippine dance and movement practices as embodied by Filipinos both in the Philippines and in the various elsewhere where they have settled.

Montreal born, Toronto and London (England) trained, Michael Leach is a pianist, organist, musical director and choral conductor of long standing who has performed widely in Canada, the United States, England, France and Italy. In the world of Musical Theatre and Dance, he has directed the music and played for more than 170 different productions.  As a pianist for  dance, Michael has worked with, amongst many others, The National Ballet of Canada, Toronto Dance Theatre, Les Grands Ballets, Les Ballets Jazz, American Ballet Theatre, The Milton Myers Dance Company, The Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, and Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. As an organist, Michael maintains a position of Organist and Director of Music at an uptown Toronto church and is a published composer of sacred choral music. Michael has been a member of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Dance, since 1983.

Erik has been with York University’s Department of Dance for twelve years using piano, percussion and his voice. He has recorded a CD’s for ballet class, and contributed to various performances in dance. Erik’s experiences involve diverse styles and original composition as a soloist, and within an ensemble. He is known for his versatility and sensitivity in collaborating with other artists.

Professor Smukler has been voice coach with major theatres and drama schools in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Netherlands. His coaching experience includes classical theatre (Stratford Ontario Shakespeare Festival, Royal Court Theatre London, Canadian Stage Company), opera (Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the English Opera Group), alternative theatre (the Open Theatre, Mump and Smoot, Pochsy). He has served as dialogue coach on over one hundred and fifty works for film and television. Recent coaching has included working on Norman Jewison’s Hurricane, Boondock Saints, Cover Me (a CBC series), and Remember Me, Resident Evil #2 and The Road to 9-11. Recent coaching for the theatre includes Theatre and Company (Kitchener) and 4th Line Theatre Company (Peterborough County) and the Birmingham Conservatory at the Stratford Festival. For the Royal Shakespeare Theatre’s 50th Anniversary celebration, Professor Smukler was the Canadian representative. Recent acting work includes film: One Good Reason. Recent stage work includes: Sorin in The Seagull and Grandfather in Theatre Rusticle’s Peter and the Wolf.

Professor Smukler regularly conducts professional classes at Equity Showcase Theatre and leads workshops across the country. He supervises the Voice Teacher Training Program in the Graduate Program. He is the founder and director of Canada’s National Voice Intensive, which is held in Vancouver each year attracting actors, teachers and directors from around the world.

Dorothy de Val is a musicologist and pianist whose research interests include Scots Gaelic song, the first English folksong revival, pianos and pianism, and Haydn reception in England. Particular research interests include early 20th-century collectors and arrangers of folksong, particularly Broadwood and Grainger, and collectors of Gaelic song (Tolmie, Broadwood, Murray and Kennedy-Fraser).

Dr. de Val is the author of  In Search of Song: The Life and Times of Lucy Broadwood, published by Ashgate in July 2011.  She is a contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and many music reference works including The Haydn Companion, and is a regular reviewer for the journal Music and Letters. With Patricia Debly of Brock University she organized a conference on Haydn in 2009, sponsored by York University, SSHRC and The Wirth Institute. She is also a member of the North American British Music Studies Association, whose conference she organized at York in 2008.

Professor de Val’s research extends into the field of dance, focusing on English social dance and Morris dance (especially Mary Neal and the Esperance Club). She co-organized a conference at York on English country dance in the summer of 2010, and performs regularly as pianist for English country dances with her group, Playford’s Pleasure, with a focus on the life and times of Jane Austen. Her most recent project involves performing music from Jane Austen’s own collection, featuring composers such as Pleyel, Sterkel, Storace and Kotzwara.

Dr. de Val has taught at the Royal Academy of Music (London), Oxford Brookes University and the University of Oxford, and served as assistant curator of musical instruments at the Royal College of Music (London). She joined York University’s Department of Music in 1999 and served as Associate Dean in the Faculty of Fine Arts from 2004 to 2007, and as Graduate Program Director in Dance from 2009 to 2011.

Mark Chambers is a conductor, cellist and early music specialist. He studied cello with Martha Gerschefski, Lubomir Georgiev and David Miller, and has performed extensively in the United States and Ontario as both a chamber musician and orchestral player.

At York, Dr. Chambers is the Cello/Viola da Gamba instructor and conducts the York University Symphony Orchestra. He performs in a trio with his faculty colleague and clarinetist Patricia Wait and York alumna and pianist, Elizabeth Acker.  He is also very active as a clinician and adjudicator throughout southern Ontario.

A former Theodore Presser Foundation Fellow, Dr. Chambers’ research interests include Baroque music, period instrument performance practice, the ‘Tartini Tone’, and scordatura, altered tunings for strings. He has authored several articles for the American String Teachers Journal and is a contributor to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Prior to his appointment at York, Dr. Chambers taught for nine years at Eastern Kentucky University, where he performed as a member of the Faculty Piano Trio and the Faculty String Quartet. He joined York’s Department of Music in 2005.

Dr. Chambers recently released his first solo CD, “Canadian Voices: Works for Solo Cello” featuring unaccompanied cello works by Canadian composers, David Lidov, Al Henderson, Brent Lee and Stephen Brown.

Professor Coghlan has extensive professional credits as a composer, performer, conductor, record producer, and music director. He has worked in a wide range of musical genres and techniques, from medieval and classical to jazz, popular and world music, and computer-based music. A specialist in digital music production, he is known nationally for his work in the development and use of contemporary music technologies in artistic and pedagogical practices. He has designed and led numerous digital music conferences and workshops for music educators and professionals, and frequently acts as consultant to the industry.

Professor Coghlan currently serves as director of the Graduate Program in Music, a role he previously held from 2006 to 2011. He chaired York University’s Department of Music from 1998 to 2007.

Lisette Canton is a choral and orchestral conductor, vocal coach and technician, guest conductor, adjudicator, workshop leader and early music specialist. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of the JUNO-Award winning Ottawa Bach Choir (OBC), and is also Associate Professor and Head of Choral Music at York University in Toronto, where she conducts three ensembles (Chamber Choir, Concert Choir and Men’s Chorus) and is in charge of the graduate program in choral music.

Prior to joining York’s Department of Music in 2004, Dr. Canton taught and conducted at Carleton University, the University of Ottawa, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and McGill University. She has been a guest conductor at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York City, and, in addition to directing a large concert series in Ottawa, has taken the Ottawa Bach Choir on four successful European tours (2014, 2009, 2007 and 2005), including an invitation as the first Canadian choir to perform in the prestigious Bachfest Leipzig, in 2014. Dr. Canton has conducted numerous concerts in London, Paris, Venice, Leipzig, Lübeck, Stuttgart, Bayreuth, Vienna, Salzburg, Prague, Amsterdam, Groningen, Ypres, Passchendaele, Mexico City, at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, the Winspear Centre in Edmonton, and across Canada; and has prepared choirs for Franz-Paul Decker, Johannes Ullrich, Pinchas Zukerman, Helmuth Rilling and John Rutter. She was also invited to perform in the International Choral Festival at the University of Caen, France, in conjunction with the 60th anniversary of D-Day, in 2004. She has taken the York University Chamber Choir on two international tours (2015, 2012), and has conducted performances with the Ottawa Bach Choir in the prestigious Meet in Beijing international festival in Beijing and Shanghai, China, in 2016. Dr. Canton was named the Artistic Director of the Canada International Choral Festival, partnering with the China International Chorus Festival for concerts, tours and collaborations in Canada and China. She was invited to conduct Fauré’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall in New York City in May 2019 with the New England Symphonic Ensemble, and will conduct at Bachfest Leipzig, with the OBC and the Leipzig Baroque Orchestra, in Leipzig, Germany, in 2022.

Lisette Canton has recorded for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and Radio-Canada radio and television, and has been the guest conductor of numerous ensembles worldwide. Her latest recording with the Ottawa Bach Choir, Handel: Dixit Dominus; Bach & Schütz: Motets, on the ATMA Classique label, with Ensemble Caprice Baroque Orchestra and countertenor Daniel Taylor, won the JUNO 2020 Award for Classical Album of the Year: Vocal or Choral, as well as the Outstanding Choral Recording 2020 Award from Choral Canada. Dr. Canton is a strong advocate of music education and has undertaken a number of outreach initiatives, bringing choral music to children and students from diverse backgrounds in several communities. These have included concerts and workshops in over 50 schools.

Dr. Canton has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Choral Conducting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master of Music degree in Choral Conducting from the Eastman School of Music and a Bachelor of Music degree in Performance from McGill University. She has studied conducting with Donald Neuen, Don Moses, Fred Stoltzfus, Ann Howard Jones, Chet Alwes and Paul Vermel; voice with Jan Simons, Lorie Gratis and James Bailey; and piano with Esther Master and Dorothy Morton. She is a member of numerous professional associations, and has collaborated with several musicians and arts organizations worldwide.

Recordings

Handel: Dixit Dominus; Bach & Schütz: Motets, Ottawa Bach Choir (ATMA Classique) – 2019 (JUNO 2020 Award, Classical Album of the Year: Vocal or Choral)

‘Twas But Pure Love, Ottawa Bach Choir – 2016

Cantate Domino, Ottawa Bach Choir – 2011

Jesu, meine Freude, Ottawa Bach Choir – 2008

Requiem pour Mathieu, Ottawa Bach Choir – 2007

Songs for All Seasons, Carleton University Choir – 2005

A Christmas Story/Conte de Noel, Ottawa Bach Choir/Caroline Leonardelli, Harp – 2005

Festival Baroque, Ottawa Bach Choir – 2005

• Personal Website and Portfolio
• Toasterlab
• Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts

Ian Garrett is designer, producer, educator, and researcher in the field of sustainability in arts and culture.

Ian is Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University and Graduate Program Director for Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies. He is Producer for Mixed Reality Performance collective Toasterlab; and director of the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, a think tank on sustainability in arts and culture. He maintains a design practice focused on the integration of ecology, technology and scenography.

Recent work includes I am a Child of… with Keaja d’Dance at the Harbourfront Centre, the exhibition design for World Stage Design 2022 in collaboration with Patrick Rizzotti, and the most recent versions of the locative immersive media projects Parkway Forest Time Machine and STEPS’ From Weeds We Grow both in Toronto Parks. Other XR projects include multiple works with DLT Experience, including: Spectators Odyssey at TO Live, The Right Way at the Venice Biennale and The Stranger 2.0 at the Columbus Centre Toronto. His documentary with Toasterlab, Groundworks, looks at four of the contributing artists to the locative and site-specific performance of the same name presented on Alcatraz on San Francisco’s first Indigenous People’s day with Dancing Earth Creations. It continues to screen at festivals and was broadcast nationally on PBS in the US through October and November 2022.

Notable projects related to EcoScenography include the set and energy systems for Zata Omm’s Vox:Lumen at the Harbourfront Centre and Crimson Collective’s Ascension, a solar 150’ wide crane at Coachella. With Chantal Bilodeau, he co-directs the Climate Change Theatre Action. His writing includes Arts, the Environment, and Sustainability for Americans for the Arts; The Carbon Footprint of Theatrical Production in Readings in Performance and Ecology, and Theatre is No Place for a Plant in Landing Stages from the Ashden Directory. He has been involved with hundreds of theatre productions as a lighting and media designer, having received the 2006 LA Weekly Theater Award for best lighting for Permanent Collection at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, and having been the lighting designer for Song of Extinction with Moving Arts, which won the 2008 LA Weekly Theater Award for Production of the Year.

He also works as a producer having worked on the premier of Richard Foreman and Michael Gordon’s What to Wear at REDCAT, the Prague tour for Torry Bend’s puppet adaptation of Aimee Bender’s Loser, two dozen shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe including the physical theater piece on aging and memory At Sundown, and the city-scale geolocated AR project Transmission. He was an associate producer on The Medea Project, a cross-cultural production of Medea in Athens and Los Angeles.

Before coming to York, Ian taught at California Institute of the Arts, and developed curriculum for the University of Houston. He has been a visiting instructor at the National Theatre School where he teaches courses on sustainability in design and production. He previously served as the Executive Director of the Fresh Arts Coalition, an arts service organization focused on awareness and marketing in Houston, TX, and as consultant and staff for the LA Stage Alliance. He has also been on staff at Stages Repertory Theatre (Houston), DiverseWorks Art Space (Houston), and the Will Geer Theatricum Botancium (Topanga, CA), and in the lighting departments of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and the Public Theatre in New York.

Ian received dual MFAs in Lighting Design and Producing from CalArts, and has a BA in Architectural Studies and Art History from Rice University.  He serves on the Board of Directors for Associated Designers of Canada, and the theatre Company the Only Animal. He was the Curator for the US for the 2019 Prague Quadrennial, and the Digital Curator for the US for the 2015 and 2013 editions of the PQ, as well as co-chair and coordinator for EcoScenography for World Stage Design 2022 in Calgary.

Gwenyth Dobie, a certified Alexander Technique teacher and Yoga practitioner, teaches movement for actors and devised theatre in the Department of Theatre at York University. She is the co-founder and artistic director of Out of the Box Productions, a performance fusion company that creates original works integrating spoken text, dance, music and interactive technology. Her producing and directing credits include Opera Erotique, which toured in BC and was remounted in Toronto; The Third Taboo, which toured western Canada; Prior Engagement at Belfry Studio Theatre in Victoria, BC; Sound in Silence, which premiered at the Belfry in Victoria and the Theatre Centre in Toronto; and Bugzzz ~ A Cautionary Tale at Toronto’s Theatre Direct.

In my most recent creations, Is That You?, Chromesthesia, Disrupting Solitude and Rallentando, I have explored diverse methodologies of immersive, digital interactivity; while investigating the ecological and social influence of a natural setting on the creative process.

In September 2020, I completed the creation of an Artist Residency on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. With the research, development and creation of this Artist Residency, I aim to provide enormous opportunities to my students and colleagues at York, in Canada and internationally. This sanctuary will provide time and space to develop new works- supporting innovative design ideas, testing of music, movement and text ideas… pondering the effects of nature on art. All while residing in a place of beauty and peace.

To learn more: Visit www.outoftheboxproductions.ca

Professor Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston is an anthropologist, performance theorist and theatre director. Her research interests include experimental, imaginative and performance ethnography; ethnographic storytelling; political/activist performance; political anthropology; environmental anthropology; gender and ethnicity; international relations; violence and terrorism; migration; ageing; socialism/postsocialism; and the Roma people. She is a co-founder of York University’s Centre for Imaginative Ethnography (CIE), a project committed to advancing critical and politically conscious research.

Dr. Kazubowski-Houston’s research has explored performance as an ethnographic research methodology and representation. She worked on performance ethnography projects with Romani minorities in Poland, Nazi-Holocaust survivors in Canada and Poland, and low-income residents in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Her research has also bridged bioethics, policy and gerontology. She collaborated on a study that investigated theatre as a method of public engagement in health policy development regarding the use of reproductive technologies. Her current research examines dramatic storytelling as an affective and reflexive ethnographic research methodology in the study of ageing and migration.

Her book Staging Strife (McGill-Queens University Press 2010) was awarded both the 2011 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry Outstanding Qualitative Book Award and the Canadian Association for Theatre Research Ann Saddlemyer Book Prize. Staging Strife explores the challenges of collaboration and activism in performance ethnography by analyzing a politically charged theatre production undertaken with a group of Romani women in Poland.

Dr. Kazubowski-Houston’s other publications include journal articles in Social Science & Medicine, Text and Performance Quarterly, Anthropologica, Canadian Theatre Review and West Coast Line. She is currently writing her second monograph on imaginative ethnography, dramatic storytelling and fiction, which is under book contract with McGill-Queens University Press.

Professor Kazubowski-Houston trained as a theatre director with prominent Polish theatre/visual artist Józef Szajna and has worked as a professional theatre director, performer and playwright in Canada and Poland.

In recognition of her contribution to excellence in teaching in the Department of Theatre, she was the 2014 recipient of the Junior Faculty Teaching Award of York’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design.

Ken Rogers is Associate Director of the MBA Program in Arts Media and Entertainment. He is the author of The Attention Complex (Palgrave Macmillan 2014) and has published on the social and cultural impact of art, media art, and emerging media technology. His current research focuses on the fields of cultural policy, media policy, and media industry studies.

A member of the City of Toronto’s Film, Television and Digital Media Board, Ken is also on the steering committee of Digital Media at the Crossroads (DM@X), and a member of York University pan-faculty Strategic Entrepreneurship Council at Innovation York. He is a founder and a core faculty member of AMPD’s new BFA in Media Arts. Ken is chair of the advisory board for York @ Cinespace, a 6,000 square-foot film studio at Cinespace’s Kipling facility, an industry-academic partnership offering world-class job shadowing and experiential education opportunities in the screen industries to York students.

Michael Davey is a sculptor and installation artist who employs photography, drawing and video and whose work often includes cast materials and found objects.  His interests in landscape, industrial technology and the built environment find their way into his pieces which have been shown and collected throughout Canada, the U.S. and overseas.  His most recent initiative is the establishment of M9 Contemporary Art  Centre on the Bruce Peninsula, Ontario  where he exhibits along with guest artists on an annual basis.

Exhibitions

Selected Solo Exhibitions

Collections

• Art Bank of Canada, Ottawa
• Damma Incorporated
• First Marathon Securities
• Guild Electric
• Art Gallery of Hamilton
• Rogers, Bereskin and Parr Barrs.
• Royal Bank of Canada
• Scottish Arts Council Edinburgh, Scotland
• Scottish Museum of Modern Art, Edinburgh
• Toronto Dominion Bank
• Tory, Tory, Deslauriers and Binnington Barrs.
• Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
• Windsor Art Gallery
• York University

Kevin Turcotte is universally recognized as one of Canada’s major trumpet talents with an impressive list of recording and touring credentials as a prominent player with the elite of many Canadian jazz ensembles.

Kevin Turcotte has been regarded as one of Canada’s most proficient performers for nearly two decades. He studied music at the prestigious Banff School of Fine Arts and later, at the University of Toronto, where he joined the faculty in the 1990s. He has performed on over 75 recordings and in countless club and concert appearances. He has toured extensively throughout North America as well as with the Dave McMurdo Jazz Orchestra on the band’s 1991 Russian tour, in South America with Time Warp, with Don Byron in Italy.

Irene Markoff is an ethnomusicologist and performer who received her PhD in Music (Ethnomusicology) from the University of Washington (Seattle) following M.A. studies in Bulgaria, and undergraduate studies in Western music at the University of Toronto. Irene teaches studies courses, directs the Balkan Music Ensemble, and teaches private lessons in Balkan singing and Turkish bağlama (long-necked, plucked lute) at York. She also contributes to the Graduate Programs in Music and Anthropology.

Irene’s research interests involve aspects of traditional and popular music of Bulgaria and Turkey in the homeland and diaspora as well as Islamic mysticism and expressive culture as articulated by Alevi-Bektashi communities in Turkey, Bulgaria, and Canada. She contributed to the Middle East volume of the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music as a consulting editor and wrote articles dealing with Turkish folk music theory and Alevi expressive culture. One of her latest publications is the chapter “Articulating Otherness in the Construction of Alevi-Bektashi Rituals and Ritual Space in Transnational Perspective” found in the book Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam, published by the University of Texas Press (2018). Outside of the university, Irene directs and performs with the Toronto-based band Meden Glas, the Bulgarian women’s folk choir Ot Izvora, and the Turkish music ensemble Ezgi.

Academic Specialties: Improvisation, Guitar (Jazz/Folk/Classical), Klezmer, Classical Guitar Ensemble, Music for Health and Wellness.

Brian has been teaching a wide variety of subjects for the York U. Music dept. since 1994. Mr. Katz is an internationally acclaimed guitarist, composer and educator, and a highly skilled pianist and vocalist. As a performer and composer he is noted for bringing classical and world music influences to modern jazz and is highly regarded as a “free” (open) music improviser, where he blends many of his influences into coherent musical statements.

Multiple Juno-award winning saxophonist, composer and educator Kelly Jefferson has a Bachelor of Music degree from McGill University in Montreal and a Masters degree from Manhattan School of Music in New York City.  He has performed with the The National Arts Centre Orchestra, The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Maria Schneider, Christian McBride, Kenny Werner, Phil Woods, Clark Terry, Al Jarreau, Michel LeGrand, Nicholas Payton, Brian Blade, as well as Ray Brown, Sonny Fortune, Randy Brecker, Renee Rosnes, Johnny Mathis, Russell Malone, Joey DeFrancesco, and Dee Dee Bridgewater, among others.

Kelly has toured extensively in Canada, the United States, Japan, Thailand, Europe, South Korea and China, including a nine-month tour with legendary trumpeter Maynard Ferguson.  The Kelly Jefferson Quartet release Next Exit, was nominated for a 2011 Juno Award.  Mr. Jefferson has also adjudicated at music festivals across Canada and has given numerous workshops throughout Canada, the United States and China.  An active freelance musician, Kelly performs regularly with groups that include the William Carn Quintet, Emilie-Claire Barlow, The Shuffle Demons, the Chris Tarry Group, and Barry Romberg’s Random Access.

Mike’s passion for guitar began at the age of nine. His training was initiated by such notable teachers as Bobby Edwards, Adrian Pellew, and Warren Greig and has also studied with acclaimed vocal instructor Bill Vincent. Numerous performances have allowed Mike to gain experience encompassing a broad spectrum of musical genres, which in turn, has contributed to his multifaceted approach. His skill as a jazz musician was firmly established at York University under the direction of John Gittens, Phil Dwyer, and Lorne Lofsky where he received degrees in both Fine Arts and Education. Mike also studied jazz arranging and composition with Professor David Mott and composer/trombonist Terry Promane before composing the musical score to “Relative Motion,” a short, independent film by Maria S. Abbruzzese. Mike has completed a Master’s Degree in Jazz Composition at York University, composing in the modern Jazz Orchestra idiom and is currently pursuing his PhD in Ethnomusicology at York in Jazz Studies. In addition, he has presented his research at various conferences including the Canadian University Music Society and the Harvard Graduate Music Forum Conference.

Mike Cadó is also an active music educator who has taught both privately and in the public sector. Several of his students have performed at venues throughout Toronto including the Ford Centre for Performing Arts, Burton Auditorium, The Rex, The Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival and Mel Lastman’s Square. Mike continues his teaching career as a current faculty member at York University where he teaches composition, several jazz workshops, directs the York University Jazz Orchestra, as well as, guitar lessons, musicianship and various music education courses in the Faculty of Education.

Mike Cadó has performed in various musical settings throughout Toronto for quite some time. He has acted as leader, as well as, sideman at such venues including the Barrie Jazz and Blues Festival from 1996 to 1999, the Beaches International Jazz Festival from 1995 to 1998, the Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival, the Ottawa Jazz Festival, the Markham Jazz Festival, Port Hope Jazz Festival, The Sound of Toronto Concert Series at the Ontario Science Centre, The Montreal Bistro, The Pilot Tavern, Quigley’s, The Black Swan, Chicago’s Diner, The Bamboo, and Roy Thomson Hall to mention a few. Mike also leads the group MC & Company, a versatile musical ensemble catering to both private and corporate functions and has recently produced a recording with jazz vocalist Sherie Marshall entitled The Sweetest Sounds that features Pat Collins, Guido Basso and various other jazz notables. The Mike Cadó Tentet features a collection of Toronto’s finest musicians that performs the music of Phil Nimmons, as well as compositions by various group members. The ensemble’s critically acclaimed debut recording, entitled Nimmons ‘n’ Nine…Now, was released in October, 2008. The host of numerous jazz, blues, and rock jams across the city, his technical ability, as well as, versatility have afforded Mike the honour of performing with such distinguished musicians as Alan Henderson, Conrad Maynard, Don Thompson, Chase Sanborn, Barry Romberg, and David Mott. His influences include Ed Bickert, Howard Roberts, Oscar Peterson, George Benson, Stan Getz, Eric Clapton and B.B. King.

Ms. Schechter is a Gemini-award winning screenwriter.  She was born in Newark, N.J. and attended the University of Chicago for one year before emigrating to Canada, where she completed her studies in the social sciences at York University.

Her career as a screenwriter took off in 1987 with the feature film “Taking Care.”  Since then, she has written primarily for television.  She has been a writer on many of Canada’s high-profile drama series, including Blue Murder,  Degrassi: The Next Generation, Riverdale, Side Effects, North of 60, ENG and Street Legal.   She was showrunner of the one-hour dramas  Side Effects and Riverdale.

In 2006, she developed and became showrunner of the first season of CBC’s ½ hour blockbuster comedy, Little Mosque on the Prairie.  In 2011 she returned to Mosque to run its 6^th and final season.

Ms. Schechter also served as president of the Writers Guild of Canada from 2004 to 2010.  She is currently developing several television series, as well as teaching screenwriting in the Film Department of York University.

Steve Munro MPSE, began making films and experimenting with sound at a very early age. Making his first film in grade school. He studied Motion Pictures at Ryerson in Toronto. Since that time he has been responsible for the sound design on many of Canada’s finest feature films and documentaries. He has worked with a myriad of directors and producers from around the globe. He has been recognized at home and abroad for his sound work being honoured with awards from the Academy of Canadian Cinema, Hot Docs, Yorkton, MPSE, FESPACO and the Directors Guild of Canada. Steve continues to work in the industry and teaches sound for film in the Cinema & Media Arts department, School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design at York University and has lectured on the subject both here and abroad He has been invited to speak at prestigious The School of Sound Symposium in London England. Steve is also on the executive board of the Directors Guild of Canada and a member of the MPSE.

Carol McBride joined the Film and Video Department in 1997 as a Course Director with over 15 years of professional film and television production experience. She has worked as director, associate producer, production manager, story consultant, sound technician, assistant editor and assistant director on feature films, television series and short projects. Her own short films have screened at Toronto International Film Festival and internationally. She is currently developing a feature-length DV project to be shot in Brazil and Canada.

As field representative and training consultant for the Ontario Directors Guild of Canada, Carol McBride researched and delivered entry-level training modules for six key departments. She recently acted as consultant to ACTRA – Toronto to evaluate their CLIPP program for low-budget productions.

A member of Toronto’s independent film scene, Carol McBride has taught and facilitated over 100 workshops in various settings, including Ryerson, Humber College, IMAGES and Centennial College. She continues to mentor emerging filmmakers and is the founder of The Drama Lab, an independent workshop setting which hosts directing/acting workshops.

Gillian Helfield began teaching at York University in 1997 after completing her Ph.D. in Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick. Her dissertation focused on Quebec Cinema of the Quiet Revolution, which remains an important subject in her teaching, research and writing.

Helfield also teaches courses in Canadian Studies, Cultural Studies, National Cinemas, Middle Eastern Cinemas and Rural Cinemas. Her book, Representing the Rural: Space Place and Identity, in Films About the Land, was published in 2006 by Wayne State University Press.

As an early adapter to online teaching, Helfield is involved in eLearning initiatives at York University. In 2017 she received the AMPD eLearning teaching award, in recognition of her work in this field. She has designed several large-enrolment online film courses, which have earned international awards, and which have served as models for other instructors and eLearning practitioners. She is part of a growing community of academics, instructional designers, and educational developers at York, dedicated to the advancement of eLearning pedagogy and technology, and to future curricular developments in remote teaching and learning.

Before starting her Ph.D., Helfield worked in the Canadian film and television industry for Atlantis Films, the Insight Production Company, Scholastic Television, Global Television, the CBC, and The Canadian Film Centre.

Maureen Dorey has taught Feature Screenwriting at York since 2010. She is a free-lance story editor, analyst and mentor who helps writers find their voices, shape their stories and renew their inspiration.  Her production credits include: SIDDHARTH, written by Richie Mehta (2013, TIFF Selection, Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay), BLACKBIRD written by Jason Buxton, winner of the Claude Jutra Award, (nominated for Canadian Screen Award, Best Original Screenplay), produced by Marc Almon (2012); IN DARKNESS (2011), written by David Shamoon, directed by Agniezka Holland and produced by The Film Works, (nominated for an Oscar and three Genies, including Best Screenplay); and AMAL, written by Shaun and Richie Mehta (2007, also nominated for 6 Genies, including Best Screenplay) .  Her television work includes Moccasin Flats, Season II, and Random Passage, an eight-hour mini-series directed by John N. Smith, produced by Passage Films and Cité-Amérique for broadcast on CBC and RTE (Eire). She is also proud to have been Story Editor Mentor to the Canadian Film Centre’s Writers Lab for the past 14 years.  She acted as story editor on several Canadian Film Centre Feature Film Projects, including NURSE.FIGHTER.BOY (produced 2008, nominated for 10 Genie Awards, including Best Screenplay.)

Susan Cash is a dancer and choreographer who has been performing and presenting her own work for more than two decades on the alternative theatre circuit and in formal performance venues across Canada and parts of the United States. Most recently she performed in Prague and Toronto and her choreography has been performed in England, New York and Guatemala.

As a Certified Movement Analyst (CMA), she is part of the core faculty in the Laban/Bartenieff & Somatic Studies International Program in Canada and has taught in Toronto and Vancouver.

Before coming to York University to teach she was Artist-In-Residence at the University of Waterloo, where she received a Distinguished Teacher Award. Professor Cash teaches in the graduate and undergraduate programs at York University in the area of movement analysis, composition, repertoire, choreography, contemporary dance technique and improvisation. From 2003 – 2011 she was Artistic and Managing director of the York Dance Ensemble (YDE), a repertory company comprising advanced dancers in the Department of Dance.

Associate Professor Susan Cash is the Chair of the Department of Dance.

Areas of Academic Specialty: Modern Technique, Laban/Bartenieff and Somatic Studies

Darcey Callison is a choreographer and dance scholar who has worked extensively with Authentic Movement, the physical voice, Viewpoints and post-modern theatrical dance. His creative studio-based research integrates new media and cultural studies with postmodern dance methodologies. He is also a physical trainer whose Personal Body Work workshops focus on diverse improvisational techniques and somatic investigations for personal creativity and authentic physical expression.

Dr. Callison is the artistic director of Da Collision, a dance company he founded in 1990. His choreographies have been produced by Da Collision, DanceWorks, T.I.D.E and others, and have been seen across Canada and in Mexico. With an expansive choreographic interest that ranges from formal explorations of the physical to character-based narratives, his works include In the Belly of the Whale (1991), Shellac (1992), Where Were You When the Chair Hit You (1993), With the Moon Falling from Your Eyes (1994), The Mourning of Queens (1995), Albrecht: Personal Deviations on Giselle and Other Romantic Conflicts (1998), Revisiting the Sandbox (2002), Reconstructing John (2007), and (Re) Tracing Fred (2009).

Dr. Callison’s doctoral dissertation in Communication and Culture focused on Hollywood’s choreography for men. Analyzing the physical codes and movement signatures used to dance masculinity for Hollywood, he researched the construction of a gendered whiteness that Hollywood disseminated to preserve the patriarchal apparatus that forms and informs the utopian patriarchy of the ‘America Dream’.

Professor Callison has combined his scholarly findings with his studio-based creative research to develop a methodology for choreographically researching the danced languages constructed for male performers in Hollywood films. Grounded in this research are his two of his most recent choreographic creations: Reconstructing John, which explores John Travolta signature disco solo from the film Saturday Night Fever, and (Re)Tracing Fred, an original dance/media work that deconstructs and re-interprets the ‘traces’ of Fred Astaire’s movement vocabulary within many of Hollywood’s male dance stars, from Gene Kelly and Elvis Presley to John Travolta and Jon Heder’s Napoleon Dynamite.

Dr. Callison’s studio research, creation and production of (Re) Tracing Fred were supported by the Creative Research branch of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. His choreographic work has also won support from the Canada Council, Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Laidlaw Foundation.  An editorial board member for the Society of Dance History Scholars publications and for the  journal Choreographic Practices, Dr. Callison continues to pursue the fusion of studio and scholarly research as a dance artist.

Areas of Research and Academic Specialty: Contemporary Choreography, Dance Dramaturgy, Gender Studies, Culture and Communication

A “Masterful choreographer” (Globe and Mail), Keiko Kitano is an independent dance artist with a unique style influenced by her study of Butoh and Japanese dance. She has been a guest artist at numerous festivals, has worked with many artists in Tokyo and abroad. In 2001, she co-founded The Tokyo Dance Collective along with multimedia artist Rick Thomson and composer TAMURAN Music, with the aim of unifying dance, music and multimedia by creating new interactive pieces for dance, media, and music.

A resident of Toronto since 2003, Keiko has collaborated with many local artists such as Parmela Attariwara, Aki Takahashi, Nagata-Shachu, Rick Thomson and others, as well as international artists such as TAMURAN Music and costume designer Shingo Tokihiro. Her choreography has been presented at various venues and festivals. As a dancer, she has worked with many local choreographers including Holly Small, Sashar Zarif, Susan Cash, Maxine Heppner, Viv Moore, and Emily Cheung.

Keiko always enjoys working with artists from different disciplines and cultural backgrounds yet with similar sensibilities. Her interests are in forms of Japanese dance and Butoh both for study and dance  creation. She holds a Master’s degree in Dance, was a full-time faculty for the Japan Women’s College of Physical Education (Dance Major 1991 – 2003) teaching Modern Dance Technique, Improvisation and other various disciplines associated with modern dance. Since 2006, Keiko has been a part-time faculty for the Department of Dance at York University and continues to create and perform around the Toronto area.

She has been excited to be a part of Toronto’s “First Impression Campaign” and looks forward to her upcoming projects in March 2011  with her new solo piece for the Green Tea Collective, a group she co-founded.

Academic Specialty: Performance, Contemporary/Modern Dance

Julia Sasso is a choreographer, teacher, mentor, performer and the Artistic Director of Julia Sasso dances. She began dancing in 1960 in Detroit, Michigan where she trained with Cecchetti ballet master, Rose Marie Floyd. In her teens she was a scholarship student at the American Dance Center (Joffrey Ballet, NYC) and an apprentice with the Harkness Ballet (NYC). Sasso attended York University’s Dance program from 1974-1976. Throughout her professional career she has developed her artistry through ongoing training in the Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT), Improvisation, Authentic Movement, theatre, voice, Pilates, ballet and contemporary dance techniques. 

Sasso performed internationally with Toronto’s Dancemakers (1984-2000) and was Assistant Artistic Director and principal company teacher for a dozen years. She was a featured performer in original works and repertoire by Carol Anderson, Serge Bennathan, Anna Blewchamp, Christopher House, James Kudelka, Bill James, Lar Lubovitch, Tom Stroud and Doug Varone, among others. Sasso has appeared as a guest artist with Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault, Toronto Dance Theatre, Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers and in the work of choreographers, Conrad Alexandrowicz, Sarah Chase, Murray Darroch, Sasha Ivanochko and Claudia Moore among others.

Sasso has created extensively for the concert stage, for theatre, feature film and television. Her choreography has been commissioned and presented throughout Canada, in the United States and abroad by Harbourfront Centre, Canada Dance Festival, Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada, Toronto Dance Theatre, Dancemakers, Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers and DanceWorks, among others. Feature film credits (choreography) include Boy Meets Girl (1998) and The Life Before This (1999). Film treatments of her pieces have been screened on television and at film festivals worldwide. Sasso has created works for all of Canada’s recognized Professional Training Programs (PTPs) in contemporary dance and countless works for The School of Toronto Dance Theatre’s PTP. Independently and as Artistic Director of Julia Sasso dances, Sasso has created, produced and presented five full evening length dance works. NOW magazine nominated Sasso Toronto’s BEST CHOREOGRAHER in 2013 and 2014.

Highly regarded as a teacher of contemporary dance techniques, Sasso has taught internationally at distinguished learning centres including UCLA, Cornell University, Canada Dance Festival, Le Groupe Dance Lab, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, Dancemakers, Volcano Conservatory, Canada’s National Ballet School, Régroupement Québécois de la Danse (RQD), Ryerson and Simon Fraser Universities; in Budapest, Mexico, England, Wales, Scotland, Austria and Germany. An internationally Certified Teacher of the Skinner Releasing Technique™, Sasso is a core faculty member (since 1995) in the School of Toronto Dance Theatre’s PTP and (since 2006) teaches in the Department of Dance at York University.

Sasso has received awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Chalmers Foundation, Laidlaw Foundation, Metcalf Foundation, John McKellar Foundation, Dancers’ Transition Resource Centre (DTRC), Skinner Releasing Institute, York University, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Royal Winnipeg Ballet PTP, Joffrey Ballet, Harkness Ballet and The Cecchetti Council of America.

Sasso is currently engaged as Artistic Associate with Forcier/Norman (DanceWorks/NextSteps) and as a creative collaborator/performer with Sore for Punching You/Allison Cummings.

Julia Sasso is recognized as “one of the foremost dance artists in the country.” – The Dance Current

An established choreographer, performer, master teacher and artistic mentor, Julia Sasso began dancing in 1960 in Detroit (USA) where she trained with Cecchetti ballet master, Rose Marie Floyd. In her teens she was a scholarship student at the Joffrey Ballet School (NYC) and an apprentice with the Harkness Ballet (NYC). Her artistry has been shaped by curiosity, investigation and investment and continues to evolve through ongoing training in the Skinner Releasing Technique™, Improvisation, Authentic Movement, theatre, voice, Pilates, ballet and contemporary movement techniques.

Sasso performed internationally with Toronto’s Dancemakers (1984-2000) and was the company’s Assistant Artistic Director and principal teacher for a dozen years. She was a featured performer in original works and repertoire by Carol Anderson, Serge Bennathan, Christopher House, James Kudelka, Bill James, Lar Lubovitch, Jean-Pierre Perreault and Doug Varone among others. She has appeared as a guest artist with the companies of Toronto Dance Theatre, Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers, blackandblue dance projects and the Contemporary Civic Ballet (USA) among others and in the work of notable independent choreographers including Sarah Chase, Murray Darroch and Claudia Moore. “one of perhaps a dozen contemporary modern dancers in Canada who is simply breathtaking in motion.” –The Ottawa Citizen.

Sasso continues to perform in the works of others as well as her own, and has choreographed extensively for the concert stage as well as for feature film, theatre and television. Her choreography has been commissioned and presented throughout Canada, in the United States and abroad by Harbourfront Centre, the Canada Dance Festival, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada, DanceWorks, Dancing on the Edge, Toronto Dance Theatre, Dancemakers, Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers, Workshop Foundation and Monika Laszlo (Hungary), Gearshifting Performance Works, Crooked Figure Dances, Four Chambers Dance Projects, HOWDARESHE productions, Contemporary Civic Ballet, du Maurier World Stage, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Theatre Centre, Factory Theatre, Dancers for Life, Peterborough New Dance and Edward Day Gallery among others. Her contribution to professional theatre and concert dance has been acknowledged with eight Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations. Sasso has created choreography for all of Canada’s professional contemporary dance training programs and since 1995 she has created numerous pieces for The School of Toronto Dance Theatre’s PTP where she is a faculty member.

SPORTING LIFE was commissioned by the CanDance Network in 1995 and was presented in Ottawa and Toronto. In 1998, Sasso was the Canadian commissioned by the PanAmerican New Creation series (a series of international co-productions between Canada, Mexico and the United States) and created MAA for a company of interpreters from all three countries. Co-commissioned by Harbourfront Centre, the Canada Dance Festival and nightswimming in 2002, Beauty was Harbourfront Centre’s first dance commission in more than a decade. Sasso has collaborated on a number of projects with the developmental theatre company nightswimming including Brian Quirt’s stage adaptation of Jane Urquhart’s, The Whirlpool (2000), Beauty (2003), Andrew Massingham’s award winning solo show Rough House (2005) and the betrayal project (2006).

She created choreography for the Volcano/Art of Time Ensemble’s award winning production of Mauricio Kaegel’s,Variété in 2004. In 2005 she trained and coached the company and created movement for Peter Hinton’s acclaimed production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada. In 2009 Sasso choreographed and directed Túl a folyón (Beyond the River). An international co-production between Hungary, Slovakia, Canada and Czech Republic, the full-evening length work for two dancers and an actor premiered at Hungary’s National Dance Theatre (Budapest) and in Bratislava, Slovakia later that year. Sasso created choreography for the feature films, Boy Meets Girl (1998) and The Life Before This (1999). Film treatments of her pieces SPORTING LIFE, DUST, SCHMERZEN (IN THE HOTHOUSE) and It was like this have been screened on television and at film festivals world wide. She created choreography for the hit HBO television series, Queer as Folk.

Julia Sasso dances was established and incorporated (as THE DANCE CREATION GROUP) in 2000 as a project-to-project based company. Finding the incorporated company model cumbersome it was dissolved in 2006 following the creation and presentation of the company’s two highly acclaimed full-evening length productions, Beauty (2003) and the betrayal project (2006). As an independent artist Sasso continues to choreograph and direct commissioned work, self-generated and collaborative movement based projects.

Highly regarded as a teacher of contemporary dance techniques, Sasso has taught at distinguished learning centres worldwide. She is a faculty member of York University’s Department of Dance where she has designed and delivered courses in Composition, Choreography, Improvisation, Repertory and Contemporary Dance Techniques at both the Graduate and Undergraduate levels. She is also a faculty member of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre’s Professional Training Program.  Sasso is an internationally Certified Teacher of the Skinner Releasing Technique™(SRT) and one of Canada’s few active certified facilitators. She has regularly and in recent years increasingly taken on the role of dramaturg, mentor, outside eye, facilitator and rehearsal director for myriad artistic projects.

Sasso’s work has been recognized and honoured with awards, grants, scholarships and bursaries from among others, the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Chalmers Foundation, Laidlaw Foundation, Metcalf Foundation, John McKellar Foundation, Dancers’ Transition Resource Centre, Skinner Releasing Institute, York University, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Royal Winnipeg Ballet Professional Program, Joffrey Ballet School, Harkness Ballet and The Cecchetti Council of America. Her biography is included in Who’s Who of Canadian Women (U of T Press Inc.).

An active participant in the local, national and international dance communities Sasso is a member of CADA/CDA, DTRC, Dance Ontario, Toronto Arts Coalition, SCDS and SDHS. She served as co-chair of the Dancers for Life Organizing Committee, has served on numerous boards, juries and advisory committees and lends mentorship and support to countless dance related initiatives.

Areas of Academic Specialty: Repertory, Contemporary/Modern Dance

Biography – Lisa Sandlos, PhD, MA, CMA, EMA

Dr. Lisa Sandlos has been a faculty member at York University since 1998, teaching in the Department of Dance, the School of Kinesiology and Health Sciences, the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, and the Faculty of Education.

Dr. Sandlos holds a PhD in Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies and an MA in Dance at York. She is qualified as a Certified Movement Analyst (CMA) through the Laban Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS) in New York and as an Expressive Movement Analyst (EMA) at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). These certifications equip her to work with a diverse range of students in educational or coaching contexts.

Building on her doctoral thesis, a main trajectory of Dr. Sandlos’ research focuses on the sexualization of young female dancers and the impacts of this trend on dance education, public perceptions of dance, and girls’ psychological and social development. Another branch of her work is accomplished through Soma-City, an organization that uses interdisciplinary methods of research and teaching to explore topics at the intersection of human movement and landscape design.

An enthusiastic presenter of her academic research and the various embodied movement/dance modalities that she practices, Dr. Sandlos has been invited to share her expertise at various conferences, festivals, and educational and training programs in international locations including Theatrum Mundi in Paris, France; The University of El Paso, Texas (UTEP); The University of California Polytechnic, Pomona; The University of the West Indies, Bridgetown, Barbados; The University of Porto, Portugal; and Etobicoke School of the Arts (ESA) in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on her extensive experience in facilitating inclusive, community-based dance, she is the co-director of two eco-somatic arts education projects: Global Water Dances (Hillsburgh, ON chapter) and Sonic Kinesthetic Forest.

Together with her husband, Dave, children, Maya and Zachary, and dog, Elsa, Dr. Sandlos enjoys dancing, playing music, and living close to nature at their home near Erin, Ontario, Canada.

John Ottmann’s career as a dancer, choreographer, teacher, rehearsal director and artistic director has spanned 27 years. He has garnered a reputation as a highly versatile, powerful dance artist,  choreographer and inspiring mentor known for pushing and crossing the boundaries of ballet and contemporary dance. As a performer Ottmann danced with several companies including the National Ballet of Canada, Ballet BC, Mascall Dance, Fortier Danse Créations, Holy Body Tattoo and co-founded the collective, Quorum.

As the Artistic Director of the Quinte Ballet School of Canada he implemented his progressive approach to teaching and mentoring. Ottmann has also taught and/or rehearsal directed for organizations including: Cirque du Soleil (“ZAIA”), Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, BJM Danse, La La La Human Steps, Coleman Lemieux Company, Compangnie Marie Chouinard, O Vertigo Danse, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Toronto Dance Theater, Ballet BC, Dutch National Ballet, Transformation Danse, Vancouver Ballet Society, Anna Wyman School of Dance Arts, Main Dance Bridging Program, Simon Fraser University, LADMMI.

Ottmann has created over 20 choreographies. His work has been shown at The Canada Dance Festival, the Vancouver International Dance Festival, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Danse Cité –Traces Interprétes, The Fringe Festival Montreal, Dancing on the Edge Festival, and the National Ballet of Canada choreographic workshop.

Newly transplanted to Toronto, Ottmann is a course director at York University and rehearsal director for Coleman Lemieux Company.

Area of Academic Specialty: Ballet Technique

Tracey Norman (she/her) is a driving force in her community, spending her time as a choreographer, educator, performer, outside eye, researcher, writer and mother of two young children. Based in Tkaronto, her love of movement developed in childhood while running through corn fields and jumping from haylofts on her family’s farm. Tracey’s choreography has been commissioned by numerous organizations including, DanceWorks Mainstage, Dance Ontario’s Creative Partnership Program, Dance Matters, Guelph Dance, Kinetic Studio, and Hart House, performed in numerous festivals including, Nuit Blanche, Montreal Fringe, Toronto Fringe, fFIDA, and Festival de Danse en l’Atlantique, as well as self and co-produced on stages across North America. Her work has been described as “refreshing and original” (The Globe and Mail) and nominated for a Frankie Award for Most Outstanding Choreography (Montreal, 2018). Tracey is a resident artist of the Intergalactic Arts Collective (IGAC) and has recently written articles for publications including The Dance Current and Journal of the Motherhood Initiative. Tracey has been on faculty in the Department of Dance at York University since 2010, following the completion of her MFA in Choreography and Dramaturgy. She has created six pieces over the years with the York Dance Ensemble. www.traceynorman.com

Blake Martin holds a PhD in Kinesiology and a Graduate Diploma in Neuroscience from York University, B.F.A. and M.A. degrees in dance, and a bachelor of education. His doctoral research was in neural mechanisms of attention when trying to perform more than one movement at a time. Blake has danced with choreographers Allen Kaeja, Tom Stroud, Holly Small and Richard Haisma, and is a founding board member of the Pulse Ontario Youth Dance Conference, a province wide initiative uniting secondary  dance educators and students with professional dance artists.

Blake teaches in York University’s Dance Science Diploma program, as well as speaking provincially, nationally and internationally on issues related to yoga and the brain, arts and the brain, anatomy, and classroom management.  He is a respected teacher in Traditional Thai Massage, a long distance runner, and a martial artist for more 30 years. If it moves and thinks, he likes it.

Areas of Research and Academic Specialty: Dance and the body, Dance Education

Terrill Maguire is an award-winning, long-standing senior member of the Toronto dance community.  Originally from California, where she began her career, she also lived and danced in New York for several years.

She is the 2022 recipient the Canadian Artists Network Robert Johnston “Visionary Artist” Award; and previously received the Chalmers Award for Choreography, a Chalmers Senior Arts Award from the Ontario Arts Council, and was a a Dora Choreography Award finalist, among other grants and awards.

She has been commissioned to create works by Dance Ontario for Dance Weekend, The School of Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers, Toronto’s Music Garden, Art in Outdoor Spaces; the National Capitol Commission/Canada Dance Festival, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council,  Arraymusic, Ryerson Dances, Sound Symposium (St. Johns, Newfoundland); and by composers Ann Southam, Mark Sepic, and Gordon Phillips; among many others.

Her work has been presented by the Art Gallery of Ontario, York University, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Harbourfront Centre, the Royal Ontario Museum, Centre de la Danse (Paris, France), Abbey Theatre (Dublin, Ireland) P.S. 1, Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival, Wave Hill/Touchstone Foundation (New York), The Women’s Center (Los Angeles), Simon Fraser University, Dancing on the Edge (Vancouver), Banff Centre for the Arts, (Alberta) The Yard (Massachusetts) and many more venues.

Maguire has been creating for theatrical, alternative, and site-specific, outdoor- based spaces since the earliest days of her career. She originally hails from Los Angeles, California, where she danced in the ocean, in parks, mountains, trees and other locations almost as often as she did on stages.  She spent a seminal time performing simultaneously with the Graham-based Marie Marchowsky Dance Company; and Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo street-theatre troupe. Her non-traditional work has continued in churches, art galleries, museums-and nature.

She has been a part-time faculty member of Toronto’s York University Dance Department for over 20 years, and has devoted substantial time to community arts and educational outreach. Maguire has offered workshops, performances, and residencies in schools and their surrounding neighborhoods; in urban and rural locations, including the far northern communities of James Bay, Ontario.  Mentorship and creative support for both artists and non-professionals has been a consistent theme in her work.

For the benefit of the arts community and audiences, Maguire created the Inde Festivals of New Dance and Music, to facilitate collaboration between artists of different disciplines. and to offer outreach opportunities for observers.  The Festivals partnered variously with The Music Gallery, Arraymusic, and Harbourfront Centre, between 1985-1991.

Her film and theatre choreography have been seen on the CBC Journal, in Duke Redbird’s “Totem Impulse” for the Imaginative Film Festival, and on the stages of the National Arts Centre, Factory Theatre, and Workman Arts.

Her long-standing project, the full evening “Bloodsongs,” is a dance/music collaboration for 10 performers.  Drawing inspiration from Middle Eastern music and dance of both Islamic and Jewish origins, “Bloodsongs” represents themes of love, community, and reconciliation.
It was presented in November, 2018, by the Aga Khan Museum, at Rosedale Heights School of the Arts, and Heliconian Hall, where she was the 2018-2019 Artist-in residence; in Toronto.

“Bloodsongs” is now a documentary/performance film created by Christopher Sumpton, through the Canada Council’s “Digital Originals” program.

Recently, Maguire and her Grove Collective colleagues Julia Aplin, John Gzowski, and David Langer were recipients of a National Arts Centre CanadaPerforms commission, for their site-specific, live-stream, forest-based work, “Grove.”  They continue to create community and nature- based works; with projects projected for the Algonquin Highlands, and Muskoka regions of Ontario in summer of 2023. Maguire and Aplin were also part of UrbanVessel’s Rivermouth project in August of 2022, creating and performing in wooded areas of Humber River Valley Park.

Helen Jones began dance classes in her home town in Wales when she was four. She was accepted into the Royal Ballet School full-time program in London when she was ten. Following graduation from the RBS upper school she continued her training in classical ballet, and in contemporary dance, with master teachers in London. Brussels, and New York.

Over a lengthy performing career Helen danced with companies and choreographers, at events, and in film and television, in Europe and North America. Notably, she was a member of the Martha Graham Company with whom she toured extensively and performed on Broadway and at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, a guest artist at Bejart’s “Mudra” in Brussels, and was a featured dancer with Toronto Dance Theatre.

Helen has had a parallel career as a teacher of professional and pre professional dancers, and currently is faculty at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and York University’s Department of Dance.

Her interest in dance in the community is presently focused on her dance program for children, youth and adults, in rural Grey Highlands in the County of Grey, Ontario, where she also holds a summer dance arts day camp, runs an intergenerational dance program in a long term care facility, and brings professional caliber performances to the area.

Helen has a BSc in Psychology (UT), and Diploma in Adult Training and Development (OISE/Ontario Council for Leadership in Educational Administration). Other professional development studies include courses at the National Ballet School’s Teacher Training Program.

Catherine began her training as a teacher of Classical Ballet at The Canadian College of Dance, Ryerson Theatre School (now Toronto Metropolitan University). She then studied at Canada’s National Ballet School under the directorship of Betty Oliphant. After graduating from the Teacher Training Program, she spent nearly two decades as Manager of the Ballet Program at the Claude Watson School for the Arts in Toronto and was a faculty member at The Etobicoke School of the Arts. Catherine then accepted an invitation to join Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet School as a full-time member of the Artistic Staff. Under the directorship of Arlene Minkhorst, she taught in the RWB School’s Professional Division, Teacher Training Program and the Recreational Division, Intensive Training Program.

After a number of years in Winnipeg, Catherine returned to Toronto and directly accepted a part-time faculty position in the Department of Dance at York University. Additionally, she joined the faculty of Canada’s Ballet Jörgen (George Brown Dance), after contributing to their programs for many years as a guest teacher and adjudicator. In addition to teaching in these post-secondary programs, Catherine has been a supply teacher for Canada’s National Ballet School. In this capacity, she provides syllabus and pedagogy classes in the Cecchetti method of ballet within the Teacher Training Program.

A dynamic member of Cecchetti Canada, Catherine has served as an elected director on the National Administrative Council; has acted as treasurer on the Ontario Committee; and is currently the Toronto Central Examinations coordinator. She is a member of the esteemed Advisory Panel for the Margaret Saul Scholarship Fund (a grant that assists experienced classical ballet teachers in Canada to further their education and research). Catherine has become a highly respected consultant across Canada and continues to prepare dancers and teachers for Cecchetti professional examinations through mentoring and private coaching.

As a guest artist, Catherine has taught for Canada’s Ballet Jörgen Company; Jörgen Dance Academy; Quinte Ballet School of Canada; The National Ballet of Canada, In Studio; Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet School; Saskatchewan School of Performing Arts; and Cecchetti Canada. She has been an adjudicator for Etobicoke School of the Arts (Ballet, Modern); Randolph College for the Performing Arts (Ballet, Pointe); George Brown Dance (Ballet, Pointe, Modern, Jazz); and Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet School (Ballet, Pointe, Pas de Deux, Modern, Character). She has delivered presentations at Canada’s National Ballet School Teachers’ Conferences and has been a panelist at On the Move Conferences held in Toronto.

Bridget Cauthery (PhD) is a dance and cultural studies scholar focusing on the impacts of post/neo-coloniality and the processes of globalization on contemporary and popular dance practices in the Global North. In June 2022, she embarked on a multi-year SSHRC Insight-funded project to resituate and reinvest in In the Land of the Spirits, a ballet first produced by John Kim Bell (Mohawk) in 1988. The grant will fund a minimum of three Indigenous graduate research assistants in the visual and performing arts and consider the systemic reasons that prevented In the Land of the Spirits from enjoying sustained national and international recognition.

Her first book, Choreographing the North: Settler affinities in contemporary dancemaking, examines eleven contemporary settler dance works that take the Far North as source and inspiration, analyzing the colonial imaginations and long-standing paradigms that Orientalize northern people, lands and narratives. In doing so, her work brings the Nordic theory of arcticism (Ryall et al 2010) into conversation with dance studies.

Together with Jonathan Osborn, Bridget is co-editor of a special issue of the journal PUBLIC entitled “Return to the Body,” a collection of writing and performance art photography that reminds readers to situate the body as a reflexive, knowledge-producing entity that can neither be overlooked nor conceived as secondary, inferior or false.

In addition, recent publications include peer-reviewed chapters on Indigenous and diasporic subjectivities in the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet (2021) and Moving Together: Dance and Pluralism in Canada (2021) as well as a review of Immer Collective’s short experimental dance film “100 Years of Cinematic Solitude” for PUBLIC 67 (2023).

Bridget is the founder of the Somatics Working Group at York University, bringing together graduate students, faculty and emerging and established international somatics scholars to disrupt logo- and ocular-centric research and dissertation praxis. In April 2023 she organized a three-day graduate symposium featuring dance scholars engaging with critical race studies from Canada, the United States and Mexico, and which brought together students from Dance and Theatre & Performance Studies. Her successful SSHRC Knowledge Mobilization grant will fund a three-week residency for choreographer Florent Nikiema (Burkino Faso), the screening of Zab Maboungou’s 2023 autobiographical documentary Maboungou: Being in the World, and an artist panel on the future of African diasporic dance practice in Canada.

Professor Cauthery has won two York University awards for her teaching (President’s University-Wide Teaching Award in 2018; AMPD eLearning Award in 2014) and is an active supervisor and committee member of MA and PhD committees in Dance, Theatre & Performance Studies, Anthropology, Education, Communications & Culture, and Interdisciplinary Studies.

An art historian, curator, cultural policy specialist and academic administrator, Joyce Zemans served as dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts (1985-88), acting director of the Graduate Program in Art History (1994-95) and chair of the Department of Visual Arts Department (1975-81) at York University.

She also held the Robarts Chair in Canadian Studies (1995-96) and was acting director of the MBA Program in Non-Profit Management and Leadership (2000-01). She currently directs the MBA Program in Arts and Media Administration in the Schulich School of Business at York.

Professor Zemans served as director of the Canada Council for the Arts from 1988 to 1992. She holds honorary doctorates from the University of Waterloo and the Nova Scotia of Art and Design and is an Honorary Fellow of the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Joyce Zemans was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 2002 in recognition of her contributions to Canadian arts and culture. In 2010, she was chosen to receive The Canadian Conference of the Arts’ Diplôme d’honneur for sustained contribution to the cultural life of the country.

Professor Zemans currently serves on the board of the Institute for Studies in Canadian Art at Concordia University and of the Advisory Boards of the Toronto Arts Council, the Creative Trust, the Magnetic North Theatre Festival and the Asia Pacific Journal of Arts and Cultural Management.

Among her other activities, she is a member of the Culture and Communications Committee of Canadian Commission for UNESCO and of the steering group for the Centre of Expertise on Culture and Communities, for the Creative City Network of Canada. Previously she has served as president of the Laidlaw Foundation, as a member of the Prime Minister’s Canada-Japan Forum, a member of the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Expert Advisory Committee on the Convention on Cultural Diversity, and a member of the Japan – U.S. Comparative Cultural Policy Project (U.C.L.A.): Cultural Policy Advisory Committee.

Professor Zemans’ research focuses on art history and cultural policy with specific reference to the Canadian experience and international comparative cultural policy.

Her publications include Museums after Modernism, Strategies of Engagement, co-editor with Griselda Pollock (Blackwell, 2007); Making Change: A History of the Laidlaw Foundation, co-editor with Nathan Gilbert (ECW Press, Toronto, 2001); The Revenants: Long Shadows: The Paintings of Tony Urquhart (University of Waterloo Art Gallery, 2002); Art Gallery Handbook III, editor (Ontario Association of Art Galleries, 2001); Comparing Cultural Policy: A Study of Japan and the United States, co-editor with Archie Kleingartner (Sage Press, 1999); Where is Here? Canadian Cultural Policy in a Globalized Environment (Robarts Centre, York University, l997); New Perspectives on Modernism in Canada: Kathleen Munn & Edna Tacon (Art Gallery of York University, Toronto, 1988);Jock Macdonald (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1985); Christopher Pratt(Vancouver Art Gallery, 1985); J.W.G. Macdonald: The Inner Landscape (Art Gallery of Ontario, 1981).

Book chapters include: “The History of Abstract Painting in English Canada”, in 20th Century Art in Canada, Oxford ( 2007); “What the Group of Seven would Say” (2000) and “Establishing the Canon: Nationhood Identity and the National Gallery’s First Reproduction Program of Canadian art” (1995) inBeyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity and Contemporary Art (McGill Queen’s Press, 2007); “One Hundred Musicians: Youth Arts Policy in Canada,” in Robin Wright, ed. Publication on youth arts (Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2007); “Considering the Canon” in Choice Matters(Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2005); “First Fruits: The Paintings” in Bertram Brooker and Emergent Modernism (Provincial Essays, Vol. 7, 1989); “Varley, An Appreciation” in Fred Varley (Key Porter Press, Toronto, l997).

Robert Witmer is a bassist and ethnomusicologist with research interests in North American and Caribbean music. A former member of the Vancouver Symphony, he has also been active as a jazz and commercial musician.

Professor Witmer has written on a variety of North American and Caribbean music topics for journals, anthologies and music dictionaries. He is the author of The Musical Life of the Blood Indians (1982), editor of Ethnomusicology in Canada (1990) and co-editor of Canadian Music: Issues of Hegemony and Identity (1994).

In 1995, Professor Witmer received the inaugural Faculty of Graduate Studies’ Teaching Award in recognition of his contributions to the advancement of academic excellence and the quality of graduate teaching at York University.

Professor Westcott is a pianist, composer, arranger, musicologist and music theorist specializing in African-American and classical music of the 20th century.

A piano player from the age of eight, William “Bill” Westcott studied blues piano with “Little Brother” Montgomery, a major blues-recording artist of the 1930s and of the later blues revival, alongside his formal university training in music. This experience confirmed him in his life-long interest in early blues and jazz piano styles.

While working occasionally as a soloist and accompanist in classical performance, Professor Westcott has performed as a band member in various rock, Dixieland, country and western, ragtime, jazz and blues ensembles for more than 40 years. He has appeared as pianist and singer in Canadian and American music festivals as well as Canadian radio and television broadcasts. Orchestras in Canada, the United States and Eastern Europe have performed his original compositions and arrangements.

Professor Werren has composed electronic music for film, mime, dance and theatre as well as instrumental and vocal works. He has conducted extensive research into electronic and computer applications in music composition and teaching.

Paula Thomson has choreographed for a variety of dance companies as well as some of Canada’s premier theatre companies, including the Stratford Festival and the Canadian Stage Company. She has served as artistic director and choreographer for Northern Lights Dance Theatre. She has also been guest teacher/choreographer at numerous professional training institutions, notably the Banff School of Fine Arts and the Juilliard School of Music, and has served as movement coach for the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio. She also works in private practice as a psychotherapist.

Anthony Stephenson is a member of Actors’ Equity and ACTRA, and a founding member of the Guild of Canadian Musical Theatre Writers. In addition to many articles on theatre, he has also written several well-received mystery novels under the name of Anthony Quogan.

Professor Singer is a professional actor who has appeared in many feature films, television series and commercials. He has also worked extensively as a director and producer for theatre, film and television.

As a director, Professor Singer has over 30 professional theatre productions to his credit. He has served as director of Actors Workshops at the Stratford Festival, artistic director of Young Companies at the National Arts Centre, Ottawa, and associate director of Toronto Arts Productions at the St. Lawrence Centre.

Ron Singer’s credits as producer include his work as assistant head of theatre for Expo ’67 in Montreal, executive director of Television Cable Network, Group W in Los Angeles, producer of City Pulse News at Citytv, Toronto, and executive producer of the television series Jake and the Kid for Global. He is currently producing two television series for the CBC, Life and Fox networks: the reality-based Class Act, and Life’s Little Miracles, chronicling the experiences of families and staff at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.

Professor Singer taught acting in York University’s Theatre Department from 1972 to 2003.

David Rotenberg has founded two theatre companies and directed extensively throughout Canada and the United States. His directing credits include two Broadway shows — The News and 1940’s Radio Hours — and half a dozen Canadian premieres. As visiting artist at the Shanghai Theatre Academy in 1994, he directed the first Canadian play ever to be produced in translation in China with a Chinese cast and creative team: George Ryga’s drama The Ecstasy of Rita Joe.

David Rotenberg’s visit to China set the stage for his critically-acclaimed first novel, the thriller The Shanghai Murders: A Mystery of Love and Ivory (1998), followed by four more in his mystery series:The Lake Ching Murders (2002), The Hua Shan Hospital Murders (shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel of 2003), The Hamlet Murders�(2004) and The Golden Mountain Murders (2005). His most recent book is Shanghai, a critically-acclaimed historical novel about the Chinese metropolis.

David Rotenberg’s work in film and television includes serving as acting coach for My Secret Identityand Friday the 13th and private acting coach for The New Kung Fu on CBS. He edited and directedMissing Treasures for Global Television and has written the ‘bible for the tv shows … and Smell the Coffee for Sunrise Productions and Gateway for Don Kurt Productions. Five of his film scripts have been optioned by film companies. He serves as artistic director of Professional Actors Lab in Toronto.

Personal website

Bruce Parsons is a painter and installation artist whose work has been exhibited in major Canadian centres. Strongly influenced by ancient art forms, his research has led to extensive travels in Egypt, Mexico, Guatemala and most recently, China. He has had several shows in China, initiated a faculty and student exhibition exchange, and brought several leading Chinese artists to York as artists-in-residence.

For many years, Professor Parsons was the moving force behind York’s annual Mural Competition, commissioning site-specific public art works from York students for placement on campus.

Professor Otto has studied a wide variety of world music cultures. An experienced performer on the Japanese koto, his research interests include the Muranao kakolintang of the southern Philippines, the music of Greece in relation to its neighbouring cultures, and music of Toronto’s immigrant groups.

Professor Mott is a saxophonist and composer whose work draws on western art music and jazz traditions as well as the musical styles of Asia and Eastern Europe. He was a founding member of the contemporary music ensemble Sound Pressure and also performed extensively with the saxophone quartet 40 Fingers and the contemporary jazz ensemble Chelsea Bridge. Well-known for his solo performances, he has also collaborated with York music professor, pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico and a host of other artists, including bassist John Geggie, pianist David Lopato, pianist Marilyn Lerner and bassist Victor Bateman. He performs with concert accordionist Joseph Petric as the duo Erosonic.

Personal website

Dr. Metraux is an art historian and archaeologist whose research interests include Greek and Roman art, architecture and urban planning; relationships between the visual arts and literary and social developments in antiquity; and the intersection of art and science in Greek and Roman art history.

Dr. Metraux’s numerous scholarly publications include writings on Greek city-planning and political space in Greece and Rome as well as articles and monographs on the archaeological excavations of which he has been a member, in Turkey (Sardis), Italy (Francolise) and Tunisia (Utica and Carthage). His book on Greek medical science and art, Sculptors and Physicians in Fifth Century Greece, was awarded the Raymond Klibansky Prize by the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation. His most recent publication is The Art of Citizens, Soldiers, and Freedmen in the Roman World, a collection of essays on “ordinary” Roman art, to which he contributed an article on Walter Benjamin and the commercial arts in late Roman times.

From 1992 to 1997, Dr. Metraux served as associate director of the Carthage project, Corpus des mosaiques de Tunisie, a program of archaeological field work and research on the Roman mosaic pavements at the ancient site of Carthage in Tunisia. A discovery he made during that excavation is the focal point of his study on the Christian destruction of ancient art in the Roman world 300 – 600 A.D., for which he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002.

Publications

Selected Publications

Books

The Art of Citizens, Soldiers, and Freedmen in the Roman World, co-editor Eve D’Ambra (Oxford, Archaeopress, 2006).

Corpus des mosaiques de Tunisie, IV, Carthage, Fascicule I, Les mosaiques du Parc archeologique des Thermes d’Antonin, with M.A. Alexander, A. Ben Abed, C. Kondoleon, A. Gonosova, F. Miller et al (Tunis, Ceres, 1999)

Sculptors and Physicians in Fifth Century Greece  – A Preliminary Study, (Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995)

The Villa San Rocco at Francolise, with M.A. Cotton (London and New York: British School at Rome and Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, 1985)

Western Greek Land-Use and City Planning in the Archaic Period, (New York: Garland Press, 1978)

Corpus des mosaiques antiques de Tunisie, I, Utique, Fascicules 1 and 2, with M.A. Alexander and M. Ennaifer, eds. (Tunis, Ceres, 1973-1976)

Articles

“Ancient Housing. Oikos and Domus in Greece and Rome,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 58:3-4 (1999) 392-405.

“Villa Rustica Alimentaria et Annonaria,” in A. Frazer, ed., The Roman Villa: Villa Urbana [First Williams Symposium on Classical Architecture] (Philadelphia, The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1998) 1-19.

“Mosaics, Liturgy and Architecture in the Basilica of Dermech I, Carthage,” Actes du VIIIeme Congres international de l’Association international pour l’etude de la mosaique antique (Bulletin de l’AIEMA18, Paris 1998).

with M.A. Alexander and A. Ben Abed, “The Corpus of the Mosaics of Tunisia: Carthage Project, 1992-1994” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 50 (1996) 361-368.

“Patronage and Style in the Mosaics of the Villa San Rocco, Francolise,” Bulletin de l’Association internationale de l’etude de la mosaique antique X:I (1985) 139-149, figs. 1-8.

“Agora and Forum: Civic Spaces in Antiquity,” Cultures: An International Journal 5:3 (1978) 11-26.

Personal website: davidlidov.com

Professor Lidov has composed many works for orchestra, chamber ensemble and voice. His scholarly research focuses on the semiotics of music and musical analysis, including computer-based research on music and expressive gesture. His most recent book is Is Music a Language?published by Indiana University Press (2004).

Compositions

Publications

Antonin Lhotsky’s professional credits include more than 100 productions, mostly in cinematography but also as producer and director in documentary and theatrical films and television commercials. He has also worked on several multi-screen projects; one such project, Taming of the Demons, made for EXPO `86 in Vancouver, was awarded a special Genie for Outstanding Film Achievement.

Professor Lhotsky’s most recent projects include cinematography for the feature-length NFB documentary My Father’s Camera, conceived and directed by York Film & Video alumna Karen Shopsowitz, which won a prestigious George Foster Peabody Award in 2002, and cinematography for three short 35mm films: Island, The Offering, and sancesse. The Offering has been shown at more than 180 film festivals around the world and has garnered 26 awards, including five for cinematography.

Professor Lhotsky recently completed a short experimental film titled Last Year at Killaloe and is working on a docudrama, The Last Illusion.

A former student of Arthur Lismer and Louis Dudek, Professor LeRoy is a sculptor whose work has been exhibited widely across Canada and is found in many private collections. Among his major commissions are sculptures for the Justice Building in Ottawa and at the Banff Centre. In recent years he has had a series of annual solo shows at Toronto’s Olga Korper Gallery.

Hugh LeRoy’s 1972 work Rainbow Piece, installed on the York University campus grounds, is part of the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of York University.

Professor Fothergill is a playwright, critic and theatre historian. His drama, Detaining Mr. Trotsky, about the internment of Leon Trotsky in a prison camp in Nova Scotia in April 1917(Canadian Stage Company, Toronto, 1987), won a Chalmers Award and several Dora nominations.

Public Lies (Tarragon Theatre, Toronto, 1993), also nominated for a Chalmers Award, addresses issues of truth, propaganda and media manipulation by dramatizing episodes in the Canadian career of John Grierson, documentary film pioneer and founder of the NFB.

Borderline, set in a refugee camp on the border of Rwanda and Tanzania, won second prize in the 1999 Herman Voaden Canadian Playwriting contest and was professionally workshopped under the direction of Bill Glassco. It was mounted at Toronto’s SummerWorks theatre festival in 2004.

Rob Fothergill’s most recent play is The Dershowitz Protocol, an examination of the ethics of torture in the context of the current ‘war against terror’. The Dershowitz Protocol was presented at the SummerWorks festival in 2003 and received its U.S. premiere at the Downstairs Cabaret Theatre in Rochester, New York, in June 2006.

Other writings include Private Chronicles (Oxford 1974), a critical study of English diaries, and a chapter on Radio and TV Drama in Volume 4 of the Literary History of Canada (University of Toronto Press, 1990).

Teaching dramatic literature and criticism, Professor Fothergill was a long-time member of the English Department at York University’s Atkinson College before joining the Department of Theatre in the Faculty of Fine Arts 1994. He served as Chair of the Theatre Department from 1994 to 1999.

Dr. Dodge is a specialist in late medieval and Renaissance art and architecture, and the historical study of artists’ techniques. A former curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, she developed and taught York’s art history courses in Florence, Italy. Her research centres on technical and iconographic issues in 14th and 15th century Italian art and on the roles and representations of women in Western historical art. Her publications include articles on 14th century Italian fresco painting, the artistic impact of Petrarch’s Triumphs, six articles in the International Dictionary of Art and Artists, and numerous book reviews.

A documentary filmmaker with experience in both film and television, Professor Fisher retired from teaching production at York University in 2012.  Beginning as an undergraduate student in one of the early classes of the York Film Department,  he has worked at Film Arts, CITY-TV Toronto, Maclean Hunter, and CKVU-TV (now CITY-TV) Vancouver.

Professor Fisher taught production at York University for over thirty years and during his tenure served as Department Chair and Production Area coordinator.  He was the founder of the York-Sheridan Joint Degree Program, the student exchange with Northumbria University in Newcastle, England, and the Department’s internship program.  For one year terms, he was a teacher and technical coordinator on the York-Jamia Mass Communications Project in New Delhi, India, and a consultant and teacher in the Film, Sound and Video program at Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore.

In retirement he is working on family history projects and mowing the lawn.

Jill Courtney began her professional career as a classical dancer with companies in Chicago, New York and Washington D.C. and in Montreal with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. She then made the transition to movement, mime and non-verbal communications in theatre as a teacher and coach for actors.

A graduate of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland’s postgraduate program, Professor Courtney is a certified practitioner of Zero Balancing – the aligning of body energy with body structure. Her research focuses on the therapeutic benefits of energy flow and energy balancing in the body, the uses of the universal mask, Gestalt Therapy, and their applications in the arts and how the performer can connect and utilize these processes in character development for performance.

Professor Clarkson has published numerous articles and reviews in the fields of medieval, Renaissance and contemporary music, as well as a book on the pianist and educator Reginald Godden. He is currently working on a critical edition of the music of the 20th-century composer Stefan Wolpe.

Professor Cameron retired from teaching in 2008 having for over forty years taught screenwriting, design and production in Canada, England and the United States while attending to the historical and philosophical roots of the crafts. Four students who studied screenwriting, design or production with him have won Academy Awards and nominations, three have won other Academy Award nominations and six have won both Student Academy Awards and nominations. Upon retirement, he relinquished as well his cross-appointments to the graduate programs in Philosophy and in Cultural Studies. A growing collection of his lectures and essays may be found within the ‘Evan Wm. Cameron Collection’ of YorkSpace. Onsite overviews of his philosophical and cinematical predilections may be found in the essays “Filmmaking, Logic and the Historical Reconstruction of the World”, Film & Philosophy II (1995, pp. 88-104); and “From Plato to Socrates: Wittgenstein’s Journey on Collingwood’s Map”, Canadian Aesthetics Journal, Vol. 10 (Fall/Autumn 2004).

Professor Buck has worked extensively in arts administration and development in both the public and private sectors. He served as development coordinator for the Shaw Festival and managed several performing arts facilities and theatre companies. At York, he was for many years manager of the University’s Performing Arts Series. He also managed a professional wind quintet and served as theatre design consultant for the Leah Posluns Theatre in Toronto and the Oakville Centre.

Shirley Ann Brown is a medievalist whose teaching and research interests include Medieval Art and Architecture of the British Isles, the History of Stained Glass/Stained Glass in Canada, and Art History Methodology. She taught previously at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, and at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

Shirley Ann Brown is a medievalist whose teaching and research interests include Medieval Art and Architecture of the British Isles, the History of Stained Glass/Stained Glass in Canada, and Art History Methodology. She taught previously at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, and at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. She has lived and travelled extensively in Europe, reading English medieval History with Denis Bethel at University College, Dublin. She spent an additional year in research at the Institut fur Kunstgeschichte in Munich. Prof. Brown is the founding Director of the Registry of Stained Glass Windows in Canada. During Winter Term 2007, Prof. Brown was Visiting Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

Publications

Books

The Bayeux Tapestry: History and Bibliography (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1988).

Articles

“The Influence of German Religious Stained Glass in Canada 1880-1941”, RACAR (Revue d’art canadienne/Canadian Art Review), vol.21, no.1 – 2 (1994), 21-31 (appeared Nov.1996)

“Wilhelmina Geddes’ Ottawa Window”, Irish Arts Review vol. 10 (1994), 181-188.

“The ‘Adelae Comitissae’ of Baudri of Bourgeuil and the Bayeux Tapestry”, co-authored with Michael W. Herren, in Anglo-Norman Studies XVI. Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1993, (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1994), 55-73.

“Massey Hall’s Hidden Glass Treasures”, Rotunda vo. 26 no. 2 (Fall 1993), 28-33. “The Ringed Crosses of the Celts”, Rotunda vol.25, no.1 (Summer 1992), 29-35.

“A Regal Landmark in Stained Glass”, Rotunda, vol.25, no.3 (Winter 1992), 30-35.

“The Bayeux Tapestry: Why Eustace, Odo and William?”, Anglo-Norman Studies XII. Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1989, (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1990), 7-28.

“Christ Healing the Sick Child: A Treasure in Stained Glass”, Rotunda, vol. 23, no.3 (Winter 1990) 11-17.

“The Bayeux Tapestry: History or Propaganda?”, The Anglo-Saxons, Synthesis and Achievement, J.D.Woods and David A.E.Pelteret, eds. (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1985), 11-25.

“The Bayeux Tapestry and the `Song of Roland'”, Olifant, vol.6, nos.3 & 4 (Spring & Summer 1979) 339-350. (Proceedings of Roncevaux 778-1978, Pennsylvania State University, 1978.)

Reviews

“The Role of Art in the Late Anglo-Saxon Church by Richard Gameson (Oxford, 1995)”, American Historical Review, (April 1997)

“The Archaeology of Early Medieval Ireland by Nancy Edwards (London, 1991)”, Speculum, vol.68, no.3 (July 1993), 753-755.

“The Bayeux Tapestry by David M.Wilson (London, 1985)”, RACAR, (Spring 1988), 72-74.

Professor Bradley taught extensively in the areas of theatre production and stage management at York.

Professor Boice is a costume historian, designer and cutter, and a collector of period costumes. He developed the curriculum for the study of costume in York’s Theatre Department, and established the costume archive used in Theatre @ York productions. His professional credits include costume design for the National Ballet of Canada, Stratford Festival and the Toronto production of Phantom of the Opera. He is currently working on a book: The Cut and Construction of Women’s Costume for the Stage ca 1500-1790.

Sculptor Ted Bieler has extensive exhibition credits throughout North America. His commissioned works include sculptures for Expo ’67 in Montreal and for public spaces throughout Ontario, notablyTetra in Kingston, and Canyons in the Wilson subway station and Triad on Front Street at University Avenue in Toronto. His monumental outdoor sculpture Wave Breaking can be seen on the grounds of the Canadian chancery building in Tokyo. His most recent commission, Tower Song, is installed at the Windsor Sculpture Garden.

Prior to York, Professor Bieler taught at the Albright-Knox Art School of the University of Buffalo and in the Department of Art and Archaeology of the University of Toronto, where he initiated courses in both the history and the practice of sculpture. He has served on the boards of directors of the Toronto Sculpture Garden and the Power Plant gallery at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre.

The founding Chair of York University’s Department of Music, Professor Beckwith is a musicologist, an experienced choral conductor and vocal coach, and a professional singer. A specialist in the field of Russian music, his scholarly interests include intellectual and cultural history and the psychology of music. His longstanding interest in the electronic and experimental arts is reflected in his extensive research on new technology applications in the arts, particularly in the areas of music composition and analysis. Professor Beckwith also taught in the Humanities Division in York’s Faculty of Arts and is Senior Associate of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Toronto.

Professor Zryd’s research interests include

• Experimental cinema and media, including video art and installation
• Experimental film & media artists (e.g., Hollis Frampton, Craig Baldwin, Luke Fowler, Su Freidrich, Philip Hoffman, Ken Jacobs, Jonas Mekas, Midi Onodera, Ruth Ozeki, Michael Snow, Stan VanDerBeek, Joyce Wieland, among others)
• History of cinema and media studies as a discipline
• Documentary film theory
• American genre cinema & television, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marvel Cinematic Universe, DC Universe, musical, science fiction, romantic comedy
• American populism in film and media
• videographic criticism / video essays

Current major research projects:

• SSHRC-funded research project,”Expanding the History of Film and Media Co-ops in Canada since 1967″
• Co-Director (with PI Janine Marchessault) of Archive/Counter-Archive

Zryd has curated or co-curated Hollis Frampton  Magellan retrospectives in Toronto, New York, Karlsruhe and London, and has lectured in Canada, United States, Germany, Spain, UK and Argentina.

Zryd co-founded (with Prof. Robin Blaetz, Mount Holyoke College) the Experimental Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group at SCMS and, with Prof. Sharon Hayashi (York University), the Toronto Film & Media Seminar. He has served as archivist of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) and on its Fieldnotes Committee (2017-20), and the SCMS Board of Directors 2008-11; as president of the Film Studies Association of Canada (FSAC) 2005-06; and as chair of the board of directors of the Images Festival 2004-05.

At York, Professor Zryd has taught courses on film history, theory and aesthetics; methodology; experimental film and media; American cinema; early cinema; and the musical. He was awarded the Faculty of Fine Arts Senior Faculty Teaching Award in 2011 and the Faculty of Graduate Studies Teaching Award in 2020.

Professor Zemel joined the faculty in the Department of Visual Arts in 2000. Prior to York, she taught at Concordia University, Temple University (Philadelphia), Dartmouth College and the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she chaired the Art History Department from 1997-2000.

Professor Zemel’s areas of research and publication include 19th and 20th-century European art, the modern art market, feminism in the arts, Jewish visual culture and diaspora studies. An authority on the work of Vincent Van Gogh, her books include The Formation of a Legend – Van Gogh Criticism 1890-1920 (UMI Research Press, 1980) and Van Gogh’s Progress: Utopia and Modernity in Late Nineteenth-Century Art (University of California Press, 1997). Her articles have appeared in The Art Bulletin, Art History, Artscanada, Art in America, Jong Holland and several scholarly anthologies. She served as co-editor of RACAR (Revue d’art canadienne/Canadian Art Review) from 1995-98.

In 2000/01, Dr. Zemel was a Fellow at the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, engaged in completing a book titled Graven Images: Visual Culture and Modern Jewish History. With Professors Shelley Hornstein (York University) and Reesa Greenberg (Concordia University), she is co-founder and co-director of Project Mosaica, a web-based exploration of Jewish cultural expression in the arts.

Belarie Zatzman’s research focuses on issues of history, identity, and memory in Drama and Arts Education. She specializes in exploring Holocaust Education through the Fine Arts. In addition, Zatzman teaches Theatre for Young Audiences, with a special focus on the Canadian context, and has written and edited study guides for professional theatre companies. She has been invited to conduct workshops and presentations across Canada and abroad, in such venues as Young People’s Theatre; Stratford Festival of Canada; Toronto District Board of Education; Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre of Toronto; Facing History and Ourselves Canada; Council of Ontario Drama and Dance Educators; American Association of Theatre in Education; British National Drama; International Drama Education Research Institute; and the International Drama EducationAssociation. Zatzman’s publications include: “Difficult Knowledge in Theatre for Young Audiences: Remembering and Representing the Holocaust” in Theatre and Learning (2015); “The Poetry of Terezin” in Voices into Action (2014); “Drama Education and Memory” in Key Concepts in Theatre/Drama Education (2011); “Fifty-one Suitcases: Traces of Hana Brady and the Terezin Children” in Canadian Theatre Review (2008); and “The Monologue Project: Drama as a Form of Witnessing” in How Theatre Educates (2003).

Suzie S.F. Young is a film scholar and cultural theorist specializing in Asian cinema, the horror genre and feminism and popular culture. Originally from Hong Kong, she has lectured on a variety of cultural topics including the New Wave Cinemas of the three Chinas, television and exilic identities of the Chinese diaspora in Canada, and the oeuvre of Canadian director David Cronenberg. Dr. Young has taught cultural studies, film theory and history at Trent University, Ontario, the University of Manitoba and the University of California, San Diego. She joined York’s Department of Film in 2000

Professor Yates’ art practice and research revolves around creating sculpture which functions like film stills: objects that hold space like a “pause” so the viewer can examine and inspect them. He creates installation experiences which confound the expectation of knowing-through-seeing, setting the stage for a perpetual mystery. He is particularly interested in crime scenes, in the cold relationship that exists between the tragedy on screen and the scrutiny of the viewer. To echo this gaze, his work often takes the form of highly realistic miniatures. These miniature objects are experienced both as real physical objects but because of their inaccessible scale, they also read as an image.

Before joining the Department of Visual Art & Art History at York, Professor Yates held positions at the University of Oregon, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and University of Victoria. He has exhibited his work throughout Canada and the US.

Louise Wrazen is an ethnomusicologist with a background in musicology and education. Her research concerns music and dance in transnational contexts and global networks; music and gender; music, place and memory – with a focus on the Tatra mountain region of southern Poland. New research projects include music and (dis)ability; discourses of musical diversity in Toronto; humour and music of the Tatras in transitions to a new Europe.

Professor Wrazen is currently working on a monograph on ethnographic and narrative interventions in music life stories. She co-edited the volume Performing Gender, Place, and Emotion (University of Rochester Press, 2013). Her articles have appeared in the journals Ethnomusicology, Yearbook for Traditional Music, Intersections, The Anthropology of East Europe Review, Canadian Journal for Traditional Music (now MUSICultures) and Asian Music, and she has contributed to the edited volume Women Singers in Global Contexts and The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, among others.

Active with international and national scholarly music societies including the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), the International Council for Traditional Music, and the Canadian Society for Traditional Music, Dr. Wrazen has served as chair of the SEM 21st Century Fellowship committee, which recognizes exceptional dissertation fieldwork, and is currently a member of the SEM Council. In addition to previous teaching appointments at Queen’s University, the University of Toronto and the Ontario College of Art (now OCADU), she has also taught in Toronto’s public school system and has been involved in programming for children with special needs. Trained in classical piano, she has performed Balkan and Polish Tatra music with Toronto-based groups.

Following completion of her studies with the Professional Division at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School, Claire danced professionally with the Alberta Ballet Company. She is a graduate of the Teacher Training Program at Canada’s National Ballet School and has taught and has adjudicated extensively throughout Canada. Claire is an instructor with Dancing with Parkinson’s Canada, which offers movement classes for those living with Parkinson’s Disease. Claire recently certified as an instructor of 3-D Workout^TM, an integrated fitness program based on the work of Bartenieff and Laban, developed by Dr. Dianne Woodruff. In addition to her teaching, Claire is also an experienced rehearsal director and an avid music student.

Claire’s research interests have evolved from years of studio-based, student-centred work, and include dance feminism, radical dance pedagogies and dance as emancipatory practice. She has taught at York University since 1990, joining the full-time faculty in the Department of Dance in 2004 and holding the role of Department Chair from 2010-14. Claire retired from full-time teaching at York in 2019 and returned to freelance work.

For the past few years, Claire has been a member of the Pulse Ontario Dance Conference Steering Committee, a biannual conference providing high school students and their teachers with a 3-day immersive dance experience. She has served on the boards of Dance Media Group/Groupe Danse Média, which publishes The Dance Current, and CORPS de Ballet International (Council of Organized Researchers for Pedagogical Studies).

Areas of Academic Specialty: Contemporary Ballet Technique, Community Dance, Dance Education

Howard Wiseman won the Writers Guild of Canada Screenwriting Award in 2004 for his radio adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s novel, Barney’s Version, and received a Gemini nomination as co-writer of  the 2007 CBC TV miniseries adaptation of Richler’s novel, St. Urbain’s Horseman. As a playwright, his credits include The Iron Curtain, Mother Of Pearl, and most recently, The Year of The Flood starring Gary Farmer.

Professor Wiseman has written many hours of Canadian television drama and has directed over 25 half-hour episodes for television. He was nominated for a Gemini for directing for his work on the crime series EXHIBIT A. He co-wrote the screenplay and appeared in the US/Russian comedy My Family Treasure, and was involved in the early development of the feature film Dance Me Outside for executive producer Norman Jewison. His feature screenplays have been optioned to some of Hollywood’s leading independent producers, including the producers of Dead Poets Society, Mad TV,The Squid And The Whale and Dead Ringers.

Professor Wiseman joined the full-time faculty in the Department of Film at York in 2008.

Mark Wilson has extensive performance credits in theatres across Canada, including productions with the National Arts Centre, Canadian Stage Theatre, Workshop West (Edmonton), Theatre New Brunswick, the Globe Theatre (Regina), and the Vancouver Playhouse. He received a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for Outstanding Actor in The Dumb Waiter (Wordsmyth Theatre) and appeared in little tongues (the blood projects) at the Toronto Fringe Festival, which NOW magazine selected for Outstanding Production and Outstanding Ensemble. Most recently, he played the role of Tom Solloway in Damian Tarnopolsky’s The Defence (winner of the Voaden Prize for Best Play 2019) at the Village Playhouse in Toronto. He also played Salieri in W.A. Mozart’s Requiem with members of the Canadian Opera Company and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for the Toronto Beach Chorale and the Mississauga Choral Society.

Directing credits include Road (Theatre@York), This Is It (the blood projects), Disciples (SummerWorks), Cabaret (Toronto Youth Theatre), Mister Invisible (Resource Centre for the Arts, St. John’s), Caribou Song (Red Sky Performance), Romeo & Juliet (Theatre By The Bay), The Threepenny Opera (George Brown Theatre School), Road (George Brown Theatre School/Equity Showcase Theatre), and The Snow Queen (Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus). He received a Canadian Comedy Award nomination for best direction for That Dorothy Parker at the Berkeley Street Theatre.

An Associate Professor of Theatre at York University and a former Associate Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, he also taught at George Brown Theatre School, the Randolph Academy for the Performing Arts, Equity Showcase, and the American Community Schools of Athens Summer Institute (Greece).

The holder of both the Faculty of Fine Arts Dean’s Teaching Award and the first Spotlight on Fine Arts (SOFA) Teaching Award for FACS, Professor Wickens is widely recognized for her research innovations in blended course development and is a frequent writer/speaker on issues pertaining to student activated non-linear learning technologies. She is currently working with two AIF grants: one within the Faculty of Fine Arts and the other with the combined Faculties of Health, Fine Arts and Education.

In addition to her research in pedagogical innovations, Dr. Wickens’ areas of expertise include cultural history and theory with special reference to the relational culture of the cinematic and photographic image. Much of her research focuses on the relationship between history, memory, image and text. To that end, Professor Wickens is currently completing an extended interdisciplinary undertaking in Germany and Austria for which she (along with three other artist-researchers) is the recipient of a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Research/Creation Grant in Fine Arts. The four-year research grant spans film, new media and photography.

Jazz musician and composer Ron Westray is best known for his work as lead trombonist with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra directed by Wynton Marsalis and his collaborations with Wycliffe Gordon.

He launched his professional performance career in the early 1990s, recording and touring nationally with the Marcus Roberts Septet. He has appeared in concert with such luminaries as Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Stevie Wonder, Benny Carter, Dewey Redman, Roy Haynes, Randy Brecker and a host of other pre-eminent artists. A regular on the New York City club circuit, he has played premier jazz venues such as the Village Vanguard, Blue Note, Sweet Basil’s, Iridium, Jazz Standard and Smalls, and is a standing member of the Mingus Band.

In addition to his concerts and recordings with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Professor Westray has recorded as a sideman on such major labels as Columbia, Sony Classical and RCA Novus. His latest CD as leader is Medical Cures Cures for the Chromatic Commands of the Inner City (Blue Canoe Records 2008). He co-leads with trumpet player Thomas Heflin on his most recent recording, Live in Austin (Blue Canoe Records 2011).

As a composer, Professor Westray’s personal catalogue comprises dozens of original compositions and arrangements for big band and mixed ensembles. His commissions for the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra include the monumental score “Chivalrous Misdemeanors – Select Tales from Don Quixote” (2005) and arrangements of the works of Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman. His charts have been published by Walrus Music.

Professor Westray was an assistant professor in the Jazz Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin prior to his appointment at York University. He joined York’s Music Department in 2009 as the Oscar Peterson Chair in Jazz Performance, a position endowed by the Government of Ontario to commemorate legendary Canadian jazz artist Oscar Peterson.  He teaches in the jazz program and co-directs the York University Jazz Orchestra with Professor Al Henderson.

Professor Wait is a clarinetist with extensive performance credits as a soloist, orchestral and chamber musician. She has appeared with many leading Canadian artists and ensembles, including pianist Anton Kuerti and clarinetist James Campbell; the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Prague String Quartet and Purcell String Quartet; and the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra. She is also an active clinician and adjudicator.

Colleen Wagner’s writing interests include screenplays, stage plays, poetry and short fiction. Her work has garnered numerous awards nationally and internationally, including the Governor General’s Literary Award. Her plays have been translated into numerous languages and produced in many countries, including China, Rwanda, Romania, France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Portugal, England, the U.S. Selected stage credits include The Living, Audience Choice award at SummerWorks 2015; The Monument, GG winner and currently touring in China; Home, premiere in Halifax (2010); down from heaven, premiere in Montreal (2009) nominated for a MECCA award; The Morning Bird, toured NB in French and English (2005-6); Sand, shortlisted for best international play at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, England. Her work has been published by Playwrights Canada Press, Scirocco Drama, Talonbooks and are found in several anthologies. She co-founded and was co-artistic director of The NotaBle Acts Theatre Company, Fredericton, NB from 2002-2007.

She wrote and directed a documentary film Women Building Peace, and an interactive website (www.thelivingplay.com), supported by a SSHRC research creation grant. The film screened in Rwanda, the Vancouver Film Festival and SilverWave Film Festival (best documentary award 2016); and a short film, Remembrance Day.

She has written a number of filmscripts for various producers and is currently working on new film script, a new play and a prose work. More info can be found at her website: www.colleenwagner.ca

Publications

Sundar Viswanathan is a jazz woodwind player, composer, vocalist and international touring artist with extensive performance and teaching experience in the US and Canada. His compositions are informed by Brazilian and Indian musical styles. His scholarly research interests include the music of tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson.

Professor Viswanathan leads his own quartet and performs and records with the world music ensemble Jaffa Road. He has also appeared with many other groups, including the Charles Tolliver Big Band, Avataar and Ensemble Uniqua, and with leading artists such as Billy Hart, Jim McNeely, Jeanne Lee, Joe Lovano, Clark Terry, Al Martino and Kenny Wheeler.

He has toured Europe, South Africa and Japan. Professional appearances closer to home include the Lincoln Center, the Count Basie Invitational Jazz Festival and leading New York City jazz clubs such as the Blue Note and Birdland.

Dr. Viswanathan taught at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Brooklyn College and Manna House Workshops in New York, and Toronto’s Humber College before joining York’s Music Department in 2001.

Brandon Vickerd is a sculptor whose site-specific interventions, public performances and object-based sculptures act as a catalyst for critical thought and engagement with the physical world. Purposely diverse, his studio work straddles the line between high and low culture, acting as a catalyst for critical thought and addressing the failed promise of a modernist future predicated on boundless scientific advancement. Whether through craftsmanship, the creation of spectacle, or humor, the goal of his work is to provoke the viewer into questioning the dominate myth of progress ingrained in Western world views.

Vickerd’s current research engages in enriching public spaces through the development of public art that challenges citizens to reflect on our notions of public space. Projects such as Dance of the Cranes (Edmonton and Washington DC) transform the cityscape through choreographed dances executed by high-rise construction cranes perched upon condos developments. Most recently Vickerd was awarded a commission for a permanent installation for 12th Street S.E. Bridge Public Art Project in Calgary. The resulting artworks was titled Wolfe and the Sparrows and resulted from a three-month collaborative process with the citizens of Inglewood and the City of Calgary. Wolfe and the Sparrows consists of a traditionally rendered monument that appears intact from a distance; however, as the viewer moves closer, the upper body of the sculpture transforms into a flock of sparrows scattering into the distance. Cast in bronze and positioned on a traditional raised pedestal, this sculpture utilizes the language and aesthetic of traditional statuary to actively subvert the authority of public monuments.

Professor Vickerd is principal investigator for the CFI-supported Digital Sculpture Lab at York University, dedicated to studying the convergence of the digital and the physical in art by translating digital code into physical reality.” Vickerd has received numerous awards and grants from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Council.

A practicing guitarist, Professor Vander Woude is currently researching the improvisational practices of jazz guitar players in the immediate post-World War II era.

Professor Vander Woude has taught courses on European Art Music and on Popular Music at York University, the University of Guelph, and the University of Waterloo.

Temenuga Trifonova is Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies. She has previously taught at the University of California Santa Cruz and at the University of New Brunswick. Trifonova is the author of The Figure of the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2020), Warped Minds: Cinema and Psychopathology (Amsterdam University Press, 2014) and The Image in French Philosophy (Rodopi, 2007), and editor/contributor of Screening the Art World (forthcoming from Amsterdam University Press, 2021), Contemporary Visual Culture and the Sublime (2017) and European Film Theory (2008). Her articles have appeared in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory, Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, Cinema & Cie, CTheory, SubStance, Space and Culture, Rivista di Estetica, Studies in Comics, The European Journal of American Culture, Studies in European Cinema, Cineaste, Film and Philosophy, CineAction, Scope, Postmodern Culture etc. She is a member of the College of Expert Reviewers, European Science Foundation.

Research and teaching interests
European Cinema, Cinema and Migration, Philosophy of Film, Film Theory, Film Criticism, Cinema and Psychopathology, History and Theory of Photography, Film Adaptations and Remakes, Continental Philosophy, Aesthetic Theory, Cinema and the City, Screenwriting, Creative Writing (fiction)

Fellowships and artist residencies
University of Cambridge, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, 2022
Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna, 2021
Le Studium Centre for Advanced Studies, France, 2018/2019
Waseda Institute for Advanced Studies (Tokyo), 2019
NYU Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, 2017
American Academy in Rome, Visiting Scholar, 2015
Dora Maar House, France, 2013
Fondation des Treilles screenwriting residency, 2013
Pushkinskaya 10 Art Centre, St. Petersburg, 2013
Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna, 2012

Novels
Tourist (Black Scat Books, 2018)
Rewrite (NON Publishing, 2014)

Films
Tourist, Winner Best Feature at Mostra del Cinema di Taranto, 2018
The Art of Book Reviewing, Winner Best Screenplay at the Strand Books & Nitehawk Lit on Film Fest, New York (2018); finalist in the 2017 Notting Hill Editions Film Essay Prize
A Museum Guard, 27^th dokumentART, Neubrandenburg, 2018
La Mort en la mineur, First Prize in the Short Film Contest Cinéma Premiers Crimes organized by the Bibliothèques de la Ville de Paris, 2015
Man of Glass, Winner of the Cinematic Vision Award at the 2013 Amsterdam Film Festival

William Thomas is the conductor of the York University Wind Symphony. A former Drum Corps International adjudicator, he has arranged music for more than 40 marching bands and drum and bugle corps in Canada and the US. He has served on the board of the Ontario Music Educators’ Association and is much in demand as an adjudicator and clinician.

Prior to joining York University’s Department of Music, Professor Thomas taught for more than two decades with the York Region District School Board, principally as head of the music department at Markham District High School. His performing groups have won many accolades and awards including the Jazz Report Award for High School Program of the Year. He was awarded an Ontario Band Association award for conducting excellence in 2008.