On Queer Futures in Education

This event is a gathering of students and educators committed to imagining more just, inclusive, and liberatory educational spaces. Featuring presentations from Marbella Carlos, Emma Corosky, Adela Czyzewska, Katie Hamill, Megan Hill, Casey Burkholder, and others, the event highlights critical research and creative work at the intersections of gender, sexuality, and pedagogy. Together, these talks explore how queer and trans perspectives can reshape educational futures, challenging normative assumptions and opening space for more expansive ways of learning and being.

This event also serves as a political intervention--providing a platform for sharing research that was accepted for presentation at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference in Los Angeles in April 2026. However, in light of the increasingly transphobic, racist, anti-migrant climate and broader militaristic and exclusionary policies shaping the United States, we made a decision not to attend. JOYLab members raised concerns about the ethics of traveling within and materially supporting these conditions, particularly through the use of public funds. In this sense, the JOYLab's "On Queer Futures in Education" becomes not just an academic space, but a site of refusal and redirection—prioritizing accountability, solidarity, and critical engagement over participation in institutions and contexts that contradict the values at the heart of this work.

How can you participate? Join us online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca

Marbella Carlos

Marbella Carlos (she/her) is a queer, first-generation immigrant born in the Philippines, raised in Alberta, and now based in Montreal. She is a PhD student at Concordia University in the Individualized Program in Fine Arts where her research looks at the healing and liberatory properties of neo-burlesque for queer and racialized communities in Canada. Marbella uses an interdisciplinary approach that merges creative arts therapies, performance, and social justice.

Emma Corosky

Emma Corosky (she/her) is a Master's student in Educational Studies at Concordia University. Her research interests involve exploring how systems and institutions function to either support or suppress agency, well-being, and flourishing in the contexts of education and health. 

Adela Czyzewska

Adela Czyzewska (she/her) is a PhD Student in Education at Concordia University. She recently completed a master's thesis about the impacts of parental rights legislation and religious doctrine in Alberta’s Catholic schools on 2SLGBTQ and allied students and educators (McGill, 2025). She hopes to explore the effects of anti-gender movements and conservative policies on advocacy and inclusivity in the classroom. Previously, Adela worked as a high school English teacher in Alberta. In her spare time she loves to binge read, eat ice cream, and hang out with her dog, Mazzy. 

Katie Hamill

Katie Hamill (she/they) is a visual artist and doctoral student. In all of her work, Katie explores how art can create help community through self-expression, while simultaneously demonstrating the intersectional ways in which we experience our surrounding environment. Katie writes and makes art on the unsurrendered and unceded traditional lands of the Wolastoqiyik peoples.

Megan Hill

Megan Hill (she/they) is a PhD candidate in Education at Concordia University. Her doctoral research is about intergenerational knowledge exchange between elders and children within the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. She recently completed her master’s at Trent University, where she wrote a SSHRC-supported thesis titled “Queer Crip Generativity”. Megan is an active member of the Aging Activisms collective as well as a research assistant on Pride/Swell+. In her spare time, Megan works at a queer youth summer camp developing accessible and joyful programming.

Casey Burkholder

Casey Burkholder (she/her) is a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Social Justice in Youth and Child Studies and an Associate Professor at Concordia University. Casey's research centers justice and equity. Part of this work mobilizes research funding from external bodies and invests these funds in her community through the redistribution of resources. In choosing a research path at the intersection of resistance and activism, gender, sexuality, DIY media-making, art production, queer joy, and participatory archiving, Casey engages in research for social change through participatory visual approaches to local issues with 2SLGBTQ+ youth, adults, elders, and teachers. She is the primary investigator of SSHRC-funded projects, including: Pride/Swell+, SexualityNB, and her CRC funded project, the JOYLab. 

Organized by The JOYLab