Dr. Natalie S. Loveless is an artist and academic located at the University of Alberta’s Department of Art and Design, where she teaches in the History of Art, Design and Visual Culture, directs the Research-Creation and Social Justice CoLABoratory, and co-leads the Faculty’s Signature Area in Research-Creation. Dr. Loveless teaches contemporary art and theory with a focus on feminist art, performance art, conceptual art, activist art and art-as-social-practice. Her recent books, How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation and Knowings and Knots: Methodologies and Ecologies in Research-Creation examine debates surrounding research-creation and its institutionalization, paying particular attention to what it means – and why it matters – to make and teach art research-creationally in the North American university today.

Dr. Diane Conrad is Professor of drama/theatre education in the Department of Secondary Education, Faculty of Education. She is founder and director of the Arts-based Research Studio, a state-of-the-art research facility dedicated to the creation and dissemination of arts-based research. She teaches undergraduate curriculum and instruction courses in drama education and graduate courses in arts-based research and a graduate course in participatory research with a focus on participatory arts-based approaches.

Dr. Sourayan Mookerjea teaches in the Department of Sociology and is the research director of the Intermedia Research Studio.  Dr. Mookerjea teaches contemporary social and cultural theory, global sociology, political ecology and intermedia theory with a focus on the intermediations of cultural and class politics, activist movements against interlocking oppressions. Graduate and senior undergraduate seminars often include intermedia research-creation probes.

Dr. Danielle Peers is a Canada Research Chair in Disability and Movement Cultures within the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation. Using a range of methods including Research-creation, Arts-Based Research, and Foucauldian genealogy, their work focuses on how movement cultures of all kinds -- including dance, recreation, and sport -- can deepen or challenge social inequities. Their research builds off of their experiences as a  queer, disabled, non-binary paralympic athlete, coach, artist, and scholar. Danielle is the director of the Media in Motion Lab.

Dr. Scott Smallwood teaches music composition, sonic art, and technology in the Department of Music, and also co-directs the Experimental Improvisation Ensemble, which explores alternative modes of performance and score creation. He co-leads the Faculty of Arts Signature Area in Research-Creation, and is a past director of the Digital Humanities program. His creative work focuses on a practice of field recording, resulting in performative works as well as installation pieces, often involving custom software and hardware. He also creates experimental audio games and research through the EARS and Audio Games Lab. Scott co-directs the Electroacoustic Research Studio.

Dr. Kim TallBear is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Native Studies. She is Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience & Environment and leads the lab Indigenous Science, Technology and Society. She is also a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation (PETF) Fellow. Building on her research on the role of technoscience in settler colonialism, Dr. TallBear also studies the colonization of Indigenous sexuality, which shapes RELAB, a research-creation space that is grounded in Indigenous standpoints and in making “good relations”. Dr. TallBear’s PETF Fellowship funds in part the work of the RELAB. Dr. TallBear teaches one of the core Native Studies graduate courses, Theoretical Perspectives in Native Studies, as well as undergraduate courses that focus on Indigenous and feminist science studies (including animal studies and “new materialisms”), the politics of nature (Native Americans, nature, and culture; queer ecologies) and Indigenous queer theory and (de)colonial sexualities.
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Dr. Sheena Wilson is a professor at Faculty Saint-Jean and Associate Director Research for the Sustainability Council at the University of Alberta. She is the co-founder and co-director of the international Petrocultures Research Group, and she leads Just Powers, a national research project on climate and energy justice. Dr. Wilson's media, writing and literature courses are grounded in intersectional, decolonial, energy humanities; she supports students in and beyond the classroom to think through and act on climate and energy justice by mobilizing, where appropriate, research-creation methods and practices.

Fiona Nicoll is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta, where she holds a CRC in Gambling Policy with the Alberta Gambling Research Institute.

Eszter Rosta is an emerging performance and object artist based in Edmonton, Alberta [Amiskwacîwâskahikan, Treaty 6], and is the Events and Media Coordinator for the Research-Creation and Social Justice CoLABoratory and SPAR²C: Shifting Praxis in Artistic Research/Research-Creation. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a Minor in Gender and Women’s Studies, and a Bachelor of Education from York University. Eszter is currently an MFA Candidate [Intermedia] at the University of Alberta.

Amy Leigh (she/her) is a maker, agitator and cultural worker based in amiskwaciy. Her creative practices/praxis center around placemaking and community + capacity building through self-publishing, and printmaking. Since 2017 she has curated The Zine Machine Project - a roaming gold vending machine that distributes small zines. Amy holds a Diploma in Arts & Cultural Management from MacEwan University, and is currently working towards a BA in Art & Design at the University of Alberta. She is delighted to join the CoLAB / SPARC team!

Caitlin Fisher directs York University’s Augmented Reality Lab, dedicated to the future of storytelling. Caitlin held the Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture for the past decade and was a 2013 Fulbright Chair at the University of California, Santa Barbara working in the area of both AR and Data Visualization.

Lindsay Kelley’s art practice and scholarship explore how the experience of eating changes when technologies are being eaten. Her research activities include queering the anthropocene, laboring alongside tranimals, and ecosexuality, especially instances of bad or unfulfilling sex with the planet. Kelley is an International Research Fellow at the Center for Fine Art Research, Birmingham City University.

Eben Kirksey runs the Environmental Humanities program at UNSW (Australia). His research explores how “the human” has been formed and transformed amid encounters with multiple species of plants, animals, fungi, and microbes. 

Erin Manning holds a University Research Chair in Relational Art and Philosophy in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada). She is also the director of the SenseLab, a laboratory that explores the intersections between art practice and philosophy through the matrix of the sensing body in movement.

Chris Salter is Concordia University Research Chair in New Media, Technology and the Senses, Co-Director of the Hexagram network, Director of the Hexagram Concordia Centre for Research and Creation in Media Art and Technology and Associate Professor, Computation Arts in the Department of Design and Computation Art at Concordia University, Montreal.