Pénélope Chandonnet

Pénélope Chandonnet is a first-year PhD student in Communication Studies. Her main research interest centres on how girls participate and integrate popular culture in every day life. She is also concerned about ethics and methodologies in girls’ studies. For her M.A. Thesis, she wanted to have a better understanding of the meaning that teenage girls give to a serialized fiction that addresses youth suicide, especially in the context of moral panic. To do so, she focused on the series13 Reasons Why, which was followed by a polemic in the media after its arrival on Netflix. For her PhD Thesis, she is working under the supervision of Monika Gagnon. Pénélope Chandonnet wishes to understand how, from early childhood, girls from diverse ethnic and cultural background make sense of Disney Princesses’ cultural products in their everyday lives, including the movies, series, websites, toys, clothes, etc.

Marie-Claude Dupont

Marie-Claude Dupont is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies, journalist and documentary filmmaker. She worked more than 12 years for Radio-Canada, conducting research in Burundi, East Africa, and Côte d’Ivoire, on electoral and democratization processes. Reporting from Senegal, Mali, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, she specialized in understanding how peoples’ empowerment can lead to social change through diverse modes of communication. As a multidisciplinary explorer, her research interest lies at the junction of citizens’ participation, political engagement and digital Technology.

In 2013, her documentary DEMOKARASI, about the 2010 elections in Burundi, received a special mention from the jury at Festival Vues d’Afrique in Montreal, and was part of the film market at Vision du Réel Festival in Nyon, Switzerland. She holds a BA in Art History and a post graduate degree in International Journalism from the University Laval in Quebec City.

Mark Filipowich

Mark Filipowich is a PhD candidate in communications at Concordia university. His research interest is in how narratives in popular fiction treat racist history as an aberration to Enlightenment logic of self-creation as a form of eluding white guilt. His other projects include curating and coordinating games criticism for Critical Distance and maintaining his own blog at bigtallwords.com

@thecybersteam

Arwen Fleming

My research concerns the intersections of memory, archival photography, and landscape in the aftermath of urban displacement and redevelopment. Specifically, I consider how archival photographs of Montreal’s Griffintown and Goose Village neighbourhoods signal the ways in which the exclusion and displacement of these neighbourhoods continue to haunt, retroactively, the futuristic visions of Expo 67.

Sarah Ganzon

Sarah Ganzon is a Phd student in Communication Studies at Concordia University. Her research revolves mostly around the areas of game studies and digital fandom. Currently, she is writing her thesis on Japanese maiden games (otome games) in English, and their players. She holds an MA in English Literature from Cardiff University and a BA in English Studies from the University of the Philippines, Diliman. Prior to starting her doctorate, she taught courses in literature and the humanities at the University of the Philippines, University of Santo Tomas and Far Eastern University. Apart from spending countless hours playing visual novels and RPGs, she enjoys dressing up as a Jedi, watching an unhealthy amount of Let’s Play videos, reading out-of-print nineteenth century novels, looking for well-written fan fiction, and keeping an eye out for disappearing blue police boxes.

Felicity Tsering Chödron Hamer

Felicity Tsering Chödron Hamer began amassing photographs at an early age. Perplexed by her own emotional relationship to these images, she ventures to understand the complex ways in which photographic portraits function as place marker for the absent, extending our relationships beyond physical death. Within this context, Felicity examines the therapeutic potential of photography associated with death rituals and of Victorian-era Spirit Photography in particular. Other research interests include: memory and imagination through photography; emotional relationships to photographs; paranormal, supernatural, magical and miraculous imagery; and intersections of religion and photography.

Antonia Hernández

Antonia Hernández is a media artist and SSHRC-supported PhD student. Using a dollhouse as her research device, she is looking at how domesticity and labor are entangled in amateur sexcams. With a BA in Graphic Design and a MA in Media Studies, her professional work mixes media practice and theory, facilitating the communication of research projects. She is a founder member of MAT3RIAL, a collective of researchers, designers and developers.

Eileen Mary Holowka

Eileen Mary Holowka is a writer, editor, and PhD student who also makes games and music. Her current research focuses on feminist social media practices, "sick women," and vulnerable acts of resistance. She has published on self-imaging, Instagram, online affective labour, and the intersections of media and trauma. For her master's thesis, she created a digital narrative called circuits about the act of narrating sexual trauma within institutional spaces. Eileen also has plenty of experience working in theatre, including an intensive week-long workshop in London, England with ZUUK where she created a project that explored the intersections of performance and games. The same team has also performed multiple experimental shows in Montreal. In 2017, she worked in a team to create a playable art project (Place des ALTs) for Montreal's largest ever public art event, KM3.

Katherine Kline

Katherine Kline is interested in links between the psychoanalytic unconscious and nonhuman ontologies, and the intersections of material and immaterial registers. Her research centers on the metapsychology of W.R. Bion, relational psychoanalysis and field theory, in conjunction with materialist, ecological scholarship. She asks how these fields might challenge and transform one another, and whether an ethical praxis might emerge from their encounter. Currently, Kline's research explores human relationship with non-humans entities of all kinds through practices of channeling and mediumship. In addition to her research, Kline is a psychotherapist and makes music in Montreal.

Ashley McAskill

Ashley McAskill is currently in her third year of her PhD in Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. She has a BA in Theatre and Film Studies and English, and a MA in Communications and New Media from McMaster University. For her doctoral work Ashley is researching disability and ethical theatre practices, specifically within mixed ability groups whereby artists with and without disabilities work together. One of her biggest ventures for her doctoral project (and overall artistic hope) will be the creation of a permanent mixed-abilility theatre collaborative in Montreal. Other research interests include gender and beauty practices, the spectacle of public performativity, feminist media studies, and performance art.

Vanessa Meyer

Vanessa Tolkin Meyer is a researcher, video-maker, and part-time music-maker. Her research is practice-based and fundamentally interdisciplinary, taking shape at the intersection of experimental film, documentary, autoethnography, feminist philosophy, and critical theory. Her current thesis work is a research-creation project that explores the construction of mother-daughter relationships in self-reflexive documentary and experimental autoethnography. She has worked in documentary production and television in Montreal and New York for over ten years.

Anna Nguyen

Anna Nguyen is a second-year PhD student who combines literary and sociological sensibilities with co-productionist science and technology studies. Her main object of investigation is food, in which she employs it as a metaphor to interrogate discourses of rights and expertise, the scientification of food writing, and conceptions of democracy and inclusivity. Additionally, her long-term research interest is on the role of academic writing as a critique of hidden institutional values and practices. She holds an MLA in Gastronomy from Boston University and a BA in English Literature and European Studies.

Kumar S. Pathak

Kumar S. Pathak is a Doctoral Research Scholar at Concordia University. He brings with him more than a decade of experience in academic and policy research, writing and public interventions. Focusing on the issues of nuclear disarmament, nuclear safety, environmental sustainability, alternative media, online democracy, and human rights, Kumar has been writing for journals, magazines, newspapers and many prominent websites.

Kumar has been an Asia Leadership Fellow of the International House of Japan and a recipient of the prestigious Takagi Fellowship for Citizen Scientists. He has done his M.Phil. in Disarmament Studies from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

As a researcher and campaigner, Kumar has been associated with major civil society platforms such as the Nobel-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons(ICAN), Greenpeace India, Indian Pugwash Society, and Asia Progressive. DiaNuke.org, a website founded by him after the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, is a major online platform for nuclear-related resources, updates, and public dialogues. DiaNuke is a key partner of the ‘Don’t Nuke The Climate’ campaign, an international coalition of grassroots environmental movements.

Sâmia Pedraça

Sâmia Pedraça is a Brazilian journalist, ex-entrepreneur, ex-reporter, ex-press officer consultant and, currently, a PhD student in the Communication Studies Program at Concordia University. She holds an MA in Humanities Computing at University of Alberta and a BA in Journalism at Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Vitória-Brasil. Her previous research affiliations include GRAV (UFES/Brasil), Edmonton Pipelines Research Group and VITAlab (UofA), and Digital Humanities Initiative (Hamilton College/NY-US). Sâmia’s current research interests involve the procedural manifestation of culture and ideology in digital games. Along with the academics duties, she divide her time with movies, music, digital sculpture and 3d modeling, and video games.

Treva Pullen

Treva Pullen is an interdisciplinary researcher, curator and artist from Toronto currently based in Montreal. Her research explores the playful and agentic capacities of media art through the lens of ‘whimsical bodies’; a term she uses as an evocative metaphor for the lively, humorous and often reciprocally engaging nature of media art objects. Her doctoral studies merge critical theory and curatorial practice based research to explore methods of display for the whimsical bodies presented through bio art; facilitating human nonhuman ‘interfacing’ in museum settings.

Pullen is a research member of the Speculative Life Cluster at Milieux, FluxMedia and Obx: Laboratory for Experimental Media. Her writings have been published in JAWS and AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples. She has also curated new media based exhibitions such as #NATURE (2016) and Influenc(Ed.) Machines at OCAD University. Pullen holds an MA from OCAD University in Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Art Histories, and a BFA from OCAD University majoring in Criticism and Curatorial Practice with a studio minor. Her recently published Master’s Thesis “Whimsical Bodies: Agency and Playfulness in Robotic Art” won OCAD University’s Outstanding Thesis Award in 2016.

Ryan Scheiding

Ryan Scheiding is a PhD student in the Communication Studies Program at Concordia. He is also affiliated with the Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) research lab at Concordia. Prior to joining the program he received MAs at the University of Waterloo in History and at York University in Communication & Culture and a graduate diploma in Asian Studies from the York Centre for Asian Research (YCAR). His research is primarily concerned with the collective memory of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as expressed through popular culture and video games. In his past studies he has focused on collective memory practices, legacies of propaganda in media and World War II Japanese history.

Katerina Symes

Katerina Symes is a PhD candidate working under the supervision of Krista Geneviève Lynes, a part-time instructor in Communication Studies at Concordia University and Humanities at Vanier College, and holds a Graduate Certificate in University Teaching. She is member of the Feminist Media Studio in Montreal, and her research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Her research engages with feminist and queer theory, sexuality and gender, and questions of spectatorship, desire, identity, and identification. Her current project entitled “Queer Crossovers: The Popularization of Queer Sexuality on Television” examines how television’s move toward online-streaming has contributed to the proliferation of programs engaging with queer and trans content (e.g., Orange Is the New Black, Transparent, Her Story). She is co-author (along with Krista Geneviève Lynes) of “Cyborgs and Virtual Bodies” in the Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory, and author of “Orange is the New Black: The Popularization of Lesbian Sexuality and Heterosexual Modes of Viewing” in Feminist Media Studies. Her forthcoming article “Orange Is the New Black: Menstruation, Comedy, and the Unruly Feminine” can be found in the special issue of Demeter Press: Feminist Publishing on Mothering, Reproduction, Sexuality and Family entitled Menstruation Now: What Does Blood Perform?

Quinn Valencourt

Quinn Valencourt is a first year PhD student (2018) working with Professor Charles Acland in his examination of contemporary live-streaming technology/ screen culture and digital media consumption. As a graduate of the MA program in Popular Culture from Brock University, his research background has traditionally been devoted to understanding cultural theory in its variety of mediated forms. These approaches have informed his understanding of popular culture as expressed through social media, advertising, music, cinema, sport, television, and video games, as well as non-mass mediated cultural forms such as fairs and festivals, food culture, or tourism and travel. In the past two years this interdisciplinary nature has enabled him to complete award-winning work on projects including: ‘“Tastes Like Chicken”: A Food Analogy for Concern, Ambiguity and Exoticism”, “Me, Myself, and (I)dentity Construction Online: Analyzing Self Presentation on Instagram”, and ‘“Oh my God! They Made Fun of Society Again!”… “You Geniuses?”’ South Park and Pop-Cultural Criticism in Today’s Television.” Quinn’s current research project and doctoral thesis work aims to identify a T.V IV era of media content consumption, grounded in ontological depictions of liveness, as they exist on live-streaming platforms such as Twitch.TV, or Facebook and Instagram live.

Celia Vara

Celia Vara is a feminist psychologist, visual artist and PhD candidate at Communication Studies. She has been working as a psychologist in Spain in a pioneering institute about gender based violence. She has participated in numerous research programs and projects on international cooperation, feminism and art in Europe, Canada and the Caribbean. In 2013, her master’s thesis, Early Feminist Video Art in Spain (1970-1980) won the 1st Prize/Award in Gender and Research at Jaume I University in Spain. She has been a practicing visual artist since 2005 and has had international artist residencies and collective and solo shows in Spain, Canada, Cuba and Dominican Republic. She is an active member of a feminist collective in Spain that does research on patriarchal strongholds on different aspects of the self. She also is a member of Feminist Media Studio, Hexagram and La Centrale Gallery Power House (Feminist Artist Run Centre). Her research interests are feminist media and culture, and the transnational dimensions of feminist video, collectives and activism, focusing specifically in Spain and Latin America. Her current project centers on how the strategies of the self in video performance present a possibility not only for self-exploration but for feminist liberation.

Nic Watson

Nic Watson is a second-year PhD student in Communication. He is interested in digital game studies and has a background in anthropology and computer science. His current work focuses on the use of ethnographic methods to study computer game modding, fan content creation, and participatory culture.

Nimalan Yoganathan

Nimalan Yoganathan is a first-year PhD student whose current research interests include anti-racist sonic activism, the ethics of field recording, and intersectional approaches to soundscape studies. His doctoral thesis work will explore the politics of listening and field recording within contested urban spaces and marginalized communities. More specifically, Nimalan will examine audio media creators who record and compose with environmental soundscapes as a counter-hegemonic critique of mainstream news media narratives. Nimalan holds an MA in Media Studies and BFA in Electroacoustic Composition both from Concordia University. As a practicing sound artist, his creative work interweaves hip-hop, dub, and soundscape composition concepts and techniques. He has participated in research-creation and field recording residencies in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest and Inukjuak, Nunavik.

Patricia (Trish) Audette-Longo

Patricia (Trish) Audette-Longo is a PhD candidate and Canada Graduate Scholar supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Her research focuses on how First Peoples create and negotiate media in response to bitumen extraction and development efforts, and she works with Dr. Lorna Roth. Trish has an MSc in Media, Communication and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Bachelor of Journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa. Before undertaking doctoral studies in 2012, Trish worked as a newspaper reporter for nearly a decade; she has covered crime and justice, Alberta politics, and the environment, and her work has appeared in the Edmonton Journal, National Post, Ottawa Citizen, Alberta Views magazine, and the St. Catharines Standard.

Isabel Macdonald

Isabel Macdonald's research focuses on emerging forms and practices of journalism. Drawing on a range of critical approaches from fields including sociology and cultural studies, her research is particularly concerned with the cultural dimensions of journalism that have long been elided by journalists' standard language about "reporting the facts". She is also very interested in the social and political implications of recent changes in the media landscape, including the rise of digital and online platforms that privilege visual forms of communication, as well as the phenomenon that has been dubbed "big data".

As a PhD candidate in Concordia's Communication Studies program, her current research focuses on an emerging visual media form known as "comics journalism," which combines journalism's standard methods for reporting facts with a medium (drawn comics) that implicitly works to call attention to issues of representation that scholars have long faulted journalists for neglecting. She is particularly interested in the opportunities and challenges this peculiar media form might present for a more self-reflexive journalism approach. As part of her SSHRC-supported doctoral work in Communication, she has been testing out comics journalism's potential as a self-reflexive research methodology, by experimenting with the methods of this emerging visual form of reportage in a camp for people displaced by the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Based on the findings of this research, she is currently writing, illustrating and designing an original work of comics journalism on the issue of displacement in Haiti.

Marilou St-Pierre

My principal research interests are journalism, sports, and the place of gender in these two domains. I’m interested in gender studies, feminist studies, and the political economy of the media. I also had the chance to work on the media history in the province of Quebec, a domain I hope I will still have the opportunity to work on in the future. In my thesis, I want to look at the professional practices of female sports journalists who have worked in the field at different moments since the 1970s. This project is a continuation of my Master’s degree in communication, completed at Laval University in 2012.