Marilyn Arsem

Marilyn Arsem has been creating live events since 1975, ranging from solo performances to large-scale, site-specific works incorporating installation and performance.  Based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, Arsem has also presented work in 30 countries, at festivals, alternative spaces, galleries, museums, universities, and conferences in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Oceania, and Asia.

Christine Bellerose

Christine (cricri) Bellerose is a somatic-based movement performance as research, scholar and artist. She obtained her PhD from York U in 2021 ("I Dance Land: an Apprenticeship with Wind and Water") and now teaches Performance Theory at U of Ottawa en français. Her research attends to depatterning somatic amnesia, settler colonial Canadian culture, and the repatterning of ecosomatic senses. In addition, Cricri is active in wellness initiatives. She is the founder of the three-strand mentorship program with the Canadian Association for Theatre Research (CATR), co-founder of the Somatic Engagement working group at CATR, and member participants with various land-based mindfulness/ecology and performance research groups in Canada, Québec, the U.S., the U.K. and France. Cricri regularly trains in movement performance art action with the Québécoise artist Sylvie Tourangeau.

Amanda Gutierrez

Trained and graduated initially as a stage designer from The National School of Theater (Mexico City), and currently, a PhD student at Concordia University in the HUMA program, Gutierrez explores the experience of political listening and gender studies by bringing into focus soundwalking practices. She uses various digital media tools to investigate everyday life aural agencies, and collective identities.

For The Institution of Knowledge she has developed an installation with the Sono-(soro)ridades Collective: Freya Zinovieff (see below); Gabriella Aceves Sepúlveda, a media artist, author of the award-winning book Women Made Visibly: Feminist Art and Media in post-1968 Mexico (2019), and Associate Professor at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at SFU, where she directs cMAS; Laura Balboa, an independent researcher, radio producer, and host of Bulla Radio a platform for participatory activist documentation of experimental sound practices produced by female and nonbinary artists in Mexico; Ana Alfonsina Mora, a pianist, researcher and teacher at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla (MX), doctoral student in arts at INBAL, and collaborator in Musexplat and producer of Minga (Radio CASo); Victoria Polti, a flutist, anthropologist, and doctoral candidate at the University of Buenos Aires.

Arun Jacob

Arun Jacob (he/him) is a doctoral student at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. He completed his Master of Arts in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory and Master of Arts in Work and Society at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, and his Master of Professional Communication from Toronto Metropolitan University. He shares his origin story with the number zero; born in India, raised in the Middle East, and having to prove one’s value to white people. Arun's doctoral work unites media genealogy, intersectional feminist media studies, and critical university studies to explore how contemporary university data management techniques and information management systems shape our socio-cultural relations, experiences, and knowledge. Arun is the first recipient of the Stéfan Sinclair Memorial Scholarship from the Canadian Society of Digital Humanities for his work on critical digital humanities.

Won Jeon

Won Jeon is a PhD student in the History of Consciousness department at UC Santa Cruz. Won’s research situates the epistemology, ontology, and methodology of cybernetics—most notably in Gregory Bateson’s work—in a larger discourse of the philosophy and history of science. She is broadly interested in tensions between theory and practice across biological, psychological, and conceptual domains, centering around the problem of the actionability of scientific ideas within contexts of political violence and economic injustice. Her work encounters metaphysical questions of uncertainty, contingency, probability, and entropy in physics, biology, philosophy, and the social sciences. Won attempts to present an integrated standpoint of scientific, aesthetic, and theological concerns pertaining to an ecological view of the self, other, and the world. Originally from South Korea, Won grew up in Edmonton, Alberta and completed her BA Honors in Visual and Critical Studies at OCAD University in Toronto as the recipient of the Governor General’s Academic Medal and her MA at The Center for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University, London, ON.

Kevin Kee

Kevin Kee is Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ottawa. He started his academic career at McGill University, where he served as Assistant Professor, and Director of Undergraduate Programs (Department of Integrated Studies in Education). He has also served as Project Director and Director at the National Film Board of Canada, and Associate Vice-President Research (Social Sciences and Humanities) at Brock University, where he held a Canada Research Chair. Since his appointment as Dean in 2015, the Faculty of Arts has launched an Institute for Indigenous Research and Studies, opened new buildings and spaces, (including LabO, a $10 million theatre and learning space, in partnership with the City of Ottawa), strengthened teaching programs (including in Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Social Innovation), and improved research funding. He recently Chaired the President’s Advisory Committee on Mental Health and Wellness at the University of Ottawa.

Natalie Loveless

Natalie Loveless is a Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory in the History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture division of the Department of Art & Design at the University of Alberta, located in ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Amiskwacîwâskahikan) on Treaty Six territory, where she also directs the Research-Creation and Social Justice CoLABoratory, and co-leads the Faculty of Arts’ Signature Area in Research-Creation. Loveless is author of How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation (Duke UP 2019), editor of Knowings and Knots: Methodologies and Ecologies in Research-Creation (University of Alberta Press 2019), and co-editor of Responding to Site: The Performance Work of Marilyn Arsem (Intellect Press 2020).

Stephanie Loveless

Stephanie Loveless is a sound and media artist whose research centers on listening and vocal embodiment. Recent works include an apothecary of listening prescriptions for audience-identified ailments, and sound works that channel the voices of plants, animals, and other beings. Loveless’ sound, video and performance work has been presented widely in festivals, galleries, museums and artist-run centers in North America, South America, Europe and the Middle East. She currently lives and works in upstate New York, on the shores of the Mahicannituck, the river that is never still, where she is a Lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the Department of Arts, and Director of the Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer. Loveless’ co-edited volume, Situated Listening (forthcoming in 2024), is a collection of essays on theories and practices of embedded, contextual, and critical listening.

The Love Songs to End Colonization Collective

Peter Morin is a grandson of Tahltan Ancestor Artists. His work is informed by dreams, Ancestors, Family members, and performance art as a research methodology. He holds a tenured appointment in the Faculty of Arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto.

Jimmie Kilpatrick is a musician, educator, and interdisciplinary artist who works as a Sessional Instructor at Brandon University, in Brandon Manitoba. He has been releasing records on Toronto’s You’ve Changed Records since 2009.

Tomas Jonsson is a curator, writer, and visual artist. He currently resides in oskana ka-asastēki (Regina), where he is Curator of Moving Image and Performance at the Dunlop Art Gallery.

Sourayan Mookerjea

Sourayan Mookerjea is a Kule Scholar of Climate Resilience and research director of the Intermedia Research Studio in the Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, in Treaty Six Territory where he specializes in intermedia research-creation, critical social theory, global sociology, and political ecology. His research addresses questions of ecological and climate debt, the cultural and class politics of renewable energy system change, and critically engages with eco-feminist degrowth and commons theory, specifically on the question of how to delink from the colonizer’s model of the world and from the world-ecologies of racial capitalism. He is co-director of Feminist Energy Futures Powershift and Environmental Social Justice and iDoc: Intermedia and Documentary as well as a co-investigator on the research-creation collaboration, Speculative Energy Futures.

Lisa Ortiz-Vilarelle

Lisa Ortiz-Vilarelle specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century multiethnic and inter-American literature and autobiographical studies with specific interest in narratives of colonialism, exile, immigration, and dictatorship throughout Canada, the United States, and Latin America. In her more than two decades at the College of New Jersey, she has taught courses in literary theory, autobiographical studies, and Latinx literature in both the undergraduate and graduate programs. She has been a Visiting Scholar in the Center for Biographical Research at the University of Hawai’i, at Manoa (2018) and in the Departments of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies and English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Edmonton (2020). Dr. Ortiz-Vilarelle has recently published Américanas, Autocracy and Autobiographical Innovation: Overwriting the Dictator (Routledge, 2020); her next book is In the Spaces Provided: Women’s Academic Career Narratives as Autobiography (Routledge, forthcoming). She is editor of a/b: Auto/biography Studies journal (Taylor and Francis).

Paola Poletto & David Gauntlett

Paola Poletto is Director of Engagement and Learning at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and is working towards a practice-based PhD at Toronto Metropolitan University. Poletto’s work shifts between DIY and institutional-based practices. In both cases she is interested in the representations of collaborative productions where visual constructions are rigorous narratives, exercising multiple points of view. Paola’s studio work includes photography, drawing, sculpture, painting, writing and creative direction.

David is Canada Research Chair in Creative Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is the author of ten books, including Creative Explorations (2007), Making is Connecting (2011, second edition 2018), and Creativity: Seven Keys to Unlock Your Creative Self (2022).

For the Institution of Knowledge, Paola and David have made a score from which they interpret the words creativity, wonder, knowledge, curiosity, and joy. 

Geoffrey Rockwell

Geoffrey Martin Rockwell is a Professor of Philosophy and Humanities Computing at the University of Alberta, Canada. He received a B.A. in philosophy from Haverford College, an M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto and worked at the University of Toronto as a Senior Instructional Technology Specialist. From 1994 to 2008 he was at McMaster University where he was the Director of the Humanities Media and Computing Centre (1994 - 2004) and he led the development of an undergraduate Multimedia program funded through the Ontario Access To Opportunities Program. He is the project leader for the CFI (Canada Foundation for Innovation) funded project TAPoR, a Text Analysis Portal for Research, which has developed a text tool portal for researchers who work with electronic texts and he organized a SSHRC funded conference, The Face of Text in 2004. He has published a book "Defining Dialogue: From Socrates to the Internet" with Humanity Books.

Oliver Rossier

Oliver Rossier works in the Research Office of the College of Social Science & Humanities at the University of Alberta, where he supports research by helping create safer spaces for complex conversations. Oliver has a BA in History and Political Science and an MA in Communications and Technology. He has more than 20 years of post-secondary administrative experience - and has served on the University of Alberta Board of Governors and Senate, as well as several other local and national committees. Fun fact: Oliver is only ichi nensei (Grade 1) in Japanese, but can fold an origami bird behind his back.

Toni Samek

Toni Samek is a Professor at the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta. Her books include: Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility in American Librarianship 1967 to 1974; Librarianship and Human Rights: A twenty-first century guide; She Was a Booklegger: Remembering Celeste West; Information Ethics, Globalization and Citizenship: Essays on Ideas to Praxis; and, Minds Alive: Libraries and Archives Now. Toni is recipient of the 2013 University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Library and Information Studies Distinguished Alumna Award, the 2017 Library Association of Alberta’s President’s Award, and 2018 honorary membership into the Golden Key International Honour Society University of Alberta Chapter in recognition of her academic and career achievements, as well as the ability to build strong connections between the School of Library and Information Studies, the University of Alberta and students. In 2022, Toni was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal for service to the Alberta library community.

Carrie Smith

Dr. Carrie Smith is the inaugural Vice-Provost (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) at the University of Alberta; she previously served as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Arts and as Department Chair. Her research covers topics in critical university studies, feminist leadership practices, digital feminism, and German Studies. She is author of two monographs, including the co-authored Awkward Politics: Technologies of Popfeminist Activism (2016) and has coedited eight peer-reviewed collections, most recently Transverse Disciplines: Queer-feminist, Anti-racist, and Decolonial Approaches to the University (2022) and Indigenous & German Studies (2019). She has been co-managing editor of three international journals and co-directs the Digital Feminist Collective research group.

Zoe Todd

Dr. Zoe Todd (Red River Métis) is a practice-led artist-researcher who studies the relationships between Indigenous sovereignty and freshwater fish futures in Canada. As a Métis anthropologist and researcher-artist, Dr. Todd combines dynamic social science and humanities research and research-creation approaches – including ethnography, archival research, oral testimony, and experimental artistic research practices – within a framework of Indigenous philosophy to elucidate new ways to study and support the complex relationships between Indigenous sovereignty and freshwater fish well-being in Canada today. They are a co-founder of the Institute for Freshwater Fish Futures (2018), which is a collaborative Indigenous-led initiative that is 'restor(y)ing fish futures, together' across three continents. They were a 2018 Yale Presidential Visiting Fellow, and in 2020 they were elected to the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars

Sheena Wilson

Sheena Wilson is a Professor of Media, Communications, and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta, co-founder & director of the international Petrocultures Research Group, and research lead on Just Powers. Her research interests involve: an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to studying how the extractivist world-view that has contributed to climate change through the exploitation of land and resources, likewise allows for the exploitation of gendered, classed and racialized bodies, and the erasure of knowledge held by those bodies. Wilson’s publication highlights include Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Cultures w/ Imre Szeman and Adam Carlson and (MQUP, 2017); "Traffiking in Petronormativies" (2020); "Energy Imaginaries: Feminist and Decolonial Futures" (2018); "Petro-Mama: Mothering in a Crude World"(2016); "Gendering Oil: Tracing Western Petrosexual Relations” (2014). With Dr. Angele Alook, she co-directed Pîkopayin: It is Broken (2022), a documentary film created as part of a partnership between Just Powers and Bigstone Cree Nation. Her forthcoming monograph is called Deep Energy Literacy: Transitioning to Decolonized Feminist Futures.

Freya Zinovieff

Freya Zinovieff is a sound artist, researcher and curator currently completing her PhD at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University. She holds a first-class honour degree from Cambridge School of Art at Anglia Ruskin University, and an MFA from University of New South Wales, Sydney. Freya’s research explores theoretical and practice-based approaches to listening in the context of borders, coloniality, and crisis. Her current research tracks the radical right in Canada to understand better narcissistic nationalism in relation to the fetishization of cis-heteronormativity.