Participating Scholars

Dr. Steven Barnes

Dr. Steven Barnes is the Associate Head, Undergraduate Affairs for the Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia. He is particularly well known for his work related to learning technologies, such as MOOC design and the design of innovative online learning technologies. He is also involved in several initiatives aimed at improving the mental wellbeing of students by examining the relationship between learning environments and mental health. He is also an accomplished artist–his current art practice is centered around the production of new media pieces that aim to inspire dialogue on the ways we think about and use modern technologies. He is co-author of the 10th edition of a best-selling textbook on Behavioural Neuroscience, Biopsychology (Pearson).

James Charbonneau

James Charbonneau trained as a theoretical physicist under the supervision of Ariel Zhitnitsky. He now applies that training working on ways to improve physics teaching and learning. His interests primarily involve taking physics education research and applying it to course and curriculum design. His current research has two main focuses. One is the development of learning software called ComPAIR. This is an implementation of Adaptive Comparative Judgement and does a very simple thing: it allows a student to compare two assignments submitted by their peers and decide which is “better”. It’s simple, flexible and robust, allowing instructors to design assignment activities that lean on the pedagogical theory that people learn best through direct comparisons. His second focus is on Transdisciplinarity and how genuine interactions between disciplines form. He’s currently assessing whether or not interdisciplinary programs like Science One can break down the pre-existing silos of knowledge that students may possess and move students towards transdisciplinary thinking. He has created instruments that measure attitudes towards interdisciplinarity in science, as well as the development of new ways of organizing knowledge.

Randy Lee Cutler

As an educator, writer and artist, Randy Lee Cutler investigates the emergence of new cultural forms through an exploration of the intersections of gender, art, science and technology. She has a PhD in Cultural History from the Royal College of Art, UK where she examined the subversion of the sciences in the surrealist enterprise. She contributes essays to journals, catalogues and art magazines. Open Wide: An Abecedarium for the Great Digestive System, her ebook on digestion as a metaphor for experience was launched on itunes in March 2014. Whether through performance art, experimental video, curating or creative/critical writing, Randy’s practice takes up themes of interdisciplinarity, collaboration, materiality and sustenance. Working with printed matter, collage, video and performance, she has shown work at numerous venues nationally and internationally. Randy is a Professor at Emily Carr University in the Faculty of Art on the unceded Coast Salish territories also known as Vancouver, Canada.

Dr. Henry Daniel

Professor of Dance, Performance Studies & New Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, scholar, performer, choreographer, and Artistic Director of Full Performing Bodies, Dr. Henry Daniel’s research concentrates on strengthening notions of Practice-as-Research, Arts-based-Research, and Research/Creation in Canada. He has a PhD from Bristol University and an MA from the Laban Centre London.

Daniel began his career as an actor with James Lee Wah’s San Fernando Drama Guild and Derek Walcott’s Trinidad Theatre Workshop. He was also a founding member of Astor Johnson’s ground-breaking company, the Repertory Dance Theatre of Trinidad and Tobago. In the USA he was a member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Centre Workshop, Pearl Primus African American Dance Company, Frank Ashley Dance Company, Asakawalker Dance Company, the Bernhard Ballet, and soloist with the José Limón Dance Company of New York. In Germany he founded and directed Henry Daniel and Dancers while continuing to work as a member of TanzProject München, Tanztheater Freiburg, and Assistant Director, Choreographer, and Dancer for Tanztheater Münster with Birgitta Trommler. In the UK he founded and directed the performance group Full Performing Bodies.

Denise Ferreira da Silva

Denise Ferreira da Silva (PhD) is Professor and Director of The Social Justice Institute (GRSJ) at the University of British Columbia. She is also a Visiting Professor of Law at Birkbeck-University of London (UK) and Adjunct Professor of Curatorial Practice at MADA-Monash University (Australia). Her academic writings and artistic practice address the ethical questions of the global present and target the metaphysical and onto-epistemological dimensions of modern thought. Academic publications include Toward a Global Idea of Race (University of Minnesota Press, 2007) and the edited volume Race, Empire, and The Crisis of the Subprime (with Paula Chakravartty, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). She has written for publications of the 2016 Liverpool and Sao Paulo Biennales as well as for the 2017 Documenta 14 and Venice Biennale. Her artistic work includes collaborations, such as the films Serpent Rain (2016) and 4Waters-Deep Implicancy (2018), with Arjuna Neuman, and the play Return of the Vanished Peasant (with Rosalind Martin) as well as events and texts which are part of her Poethical Readings and the Sensing Salon practices, in collaboration with Valentina Desideri. She was an advisor to Natasha Ginwala, curator of the Contour 8 Biennale (Mechelen, 2017).

Katherine Gillieson

Katherine Gillieson’s practice, research and writing is concerned with visual language, diagrammatic representation and complex systems as epistemological and communicative formats. Her past work has dealt with patterns, symmetries and visual order in cultural production and different socio-cultural contexts, and the intersection of practice and theory. She is currently focussing on the theme of interdisciplinarity in practice-based research, engaging larger themes of art and design ‘ways of knowing’, and the nature of visual literacy. Gillieson moved to Vancouver to join Emily Carr University of Art and Design as an Associate Professor in 2013 after many years based in London, UK.

Sanem Güvenç-Salgırlı

Sanem Güvenç-Salgırlı is a Vancouver based scholar working on science studies inspired by social and political theory.  She currently teaches at ECUAD as a non-regular faculty member.  She has an MS in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Middle East Technical University (Turkey) and a PhD in sociology from SUNY Binghamton University, where she specialized in STS and wrote her major comprehensive on the same subject.  Her dissertation focused on eugenics in 1930s Turkey, which was followed by an archival research into the epidemiology and philosophy of diseases.  She published articles in journals such as Social History of Medicine, Journal of History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, and Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.  She is the co-editor of a forthcoming book that focuses on history and philosophy of science in Ottoman and Republican Turkey.  Currently, she is working on the concept of emergency, and the resulting practices of experimentation in zones of exclusion, such as Chernobyl where she recently returned from a field trip.

Tara Ivanochko

Tara Ivanochko is a Senior Instructor and Director of Environmental Science in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at UBC. Her research background focused on marine paleoclimatology and the reconstruction of environmental systems on timescales from 10,000 to 100,000 years. Currently she is focussed on developing a multi-year curriculum to actively engage undergraduate students in authentic environmental science experiences. Ivanochko is interested in expanding the students’ understanding of the role of scientists in society. To this end, she has introduced learning portfolios and two-term, collaborative, community-based projects as requirements of the Environmental Science major at UBC.

Giorgio Magnanensi

Described by acclaimed composer Franco Donatoni as “a composer, musician and conductor of great talent and one of the most interesting personalities of the Italian generation”, Giorgio Magnanensi has gained an international reputation winning numerous composition awards and serving as conductor for a number of esteemed Canadian and international new music ensembles. He taught composition in Italy (1984–1999), at the School of Music of the University of British Columbia (2000–09) and currently he is lecturer at the School of Music in the Vancouver Community College. Besides his renowned work as artistic director of Vancouver New Music where he has been programming and producing innovative music events, concert series, and festivals fostering a wide and experimental curatorial approach, he has become “an increasingly influential figure in Vancouver’s developing classical/jazz crossover culture” (Alex Varty). From 2005 he has been regularly invited as Faculty member at the Music & Sound Department of the Banff Centre, and in 2009 he was the recipient of the prestigious Paul D. Fleck Fellowship. In 2007 he founded the LABORATORIO Arts Society to actively engage in creative work within and for the communities of the Sunshine Coast where he resides with his family.

Sadira Rodrigues

Sadira Rodrigues is an educator, curator, writer and administrator. From social-profit enterprises such as artist-run-centres and public galleries, to museums, grant funding and higher education, she has assembled deep knowledge of the arts and culture sector in Canada and beyond. Over the last fifteen years, she has developed and delivered new programs and courses across undergraduate, graduate and non-credit curriculum. She has been the recipient of numerous grants to support both her curatorial and academic research activities. In addition to institutional roles, she has kept an independent curatorial practice, organised conferences and cultural events, lectured, and participated on numerous society boards. Her work is committed to examining decolonisation and Canadian cultural institutions. She is currently the co-director of Coppermoss, a new retreat space on the Sunshine Coast that considers decolonisation and the land, and how it may inform settler politics on the westcoast. She splits her time across unceded Coast Salish territory, sometimes in Vancouver and other times in Sechelt.

Shelly Rosenblum

Shelly Rosenblum is Curator of Academic Programs at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Her role at the Belkin is to conceive and organize programs that increase diverse forms of academic, public and civic engagement in the UBC and the wider Vancouver communities. Rosenblum received her PhD at Brown University and has taught at Brown, Wesleyan and UBC. She is active in professional associations related to academic museums and cultural studies and sits on the Board of Directors at the Western Front, currently serving as Board President.

Alice Wang

Alice Wang is a writer, researcher, and collaborator at large. She creates and produces work in a variety of capacities: from art, science, and visual culture projects to federal investigations. In 2019, she received her Master of Arts in Art History from the University of British Columbia. Her thesis examined how the practice of art-science collaboration drew from World War II camouflage research, and explored the politics of science and technology registered therein. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Anatomy and Cell Biology from McGill University, and performs as a civil servant with the Government of Canada on issues of labour.