ALLab Postdoc fellows

Previous Postdoc fellows

Daniel Ruiz-Serna

I’ve been trained as anthropologist in Colombia (Universidad Nacional), Belgium (Université Catholique de Louvain), and Canada (McGill University). During the last 15 years, I’ve been working with indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities from the Colombian Pacific coast, one of the most biodiverse places of the planet. My main interests are human and non-human relationships as well as the always porous borders between nature and culture. In my doctoral dissertation (When Forests Run Amok. Violence and its Afterlives in Indigenous and Afro-Colombian territories) I explore how decades of armed conflict have transformed the way these peoples relate with their forests and with the animals and spirits that live there. As a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia University’s Acts of Listening Lab, I’ll be affiliated with both the Center for Oral History and Digital Storytelling and the Department of Geography. Through ruins, forests, rivers, and animals I will explore the politics of peace and reconciliation between ethnic communities and environments comprised of non-human, sentient beings.

Mariana Marcassa

Mariana Marcassa lives in Montreal where she has been developing her art work and research. She is a Postdoctoral fellow in Fine Arts at Acts of Listening Lab and the SenseLab at Concordia University. She holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology in PUC-SP, and an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from the same institution as well as a major in Visual Arts at the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil. One of the founding members of the collective Grupo EmpreZa, with whom she worked with for a decade (2001-011), she participated in various encounters with artist collectives, having also been selected for the 2008-2009 RUMOS edition or the 29th Panorama of Brazilian Art. Since then she has been working as a solo performance artist exploring the affects of sound. She understands sound as an affect that by vibrating within our bodies, connects us with the forces of life. Hence her work proposes a fine-tuning of our ability for a qualitative listening as Suonare la Voce, (by Demetrio Stratos) as the par excellence mode for this connection. It is with and through the voice that an escape from meaning, communication and dialogue becomes possible, opening different paths for other modes of existence, expression and contact with the forces of the world. Her work has been shown in Brazil and internationally; Darling Foundry, Eastern Bloc – Montreal, MAM – Sao Paulo, Museu do Mar – Rio de Janeiro, MAC – Brazil, Matadero Madrid – Madrid, etc. Visit her website.

Rajni Shah

Rajni Shah is a British/Indian artist whose work leans gently but clearly across disciplines, countries, and thought structures, ranging from intimate encounters with passers-by in public space to large-scale performances in theatres and galleries. Key projects - always created alongside and in collaboration with others - include hold each as we fall (1999), The Awkward Position (2003-4), Mr Quiver (2005-8), small gifts (2006-8), Dinner with America (2007-9), Glorious (2010-12), Experiments in Listening (2014-15), Lying Fallow (2014-15), Song (2016), and Feminist Killjoys Reading Group (2016-ongoing). Rajni was an Artsadmin Associate Artist (2009-2013), an Honorary Research Fellow at The Centre for Contemporary Theatre, Birkbeck College, University of London (2012-2016), and is currently a Horizon Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia University’s Acts of Listening Lab, affiliated with the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling and the Department of Theatre. In 2019, Rajni’s first monograph will be published as a book and a series of zines within Palgrave’s Performance Philosophy series. See the archive of performance works.