STUDENT RESEARCH

Brice Ammar-Khodja is an artist and graphic designer working at the intersection of digital arts, material science, and anthropology. He is affiliated in co-tutelle with Concordia University and EnsadLab (Paris).
His research-creation problematizes the relation between form, matter, and function contextualized in smart and resilient cities. He focuses on creating dialogs between living matter, responsive materials, urban environmental data as well as soft robotic to question the symbolic, spatial, and sensory relations pertaining to materiality and intangible information.
Co-director of the graphic design magazine Pied de Mouche works have been exhibited at Biennale internationale du Design, la Cité internationale des arts, V2_Institute for Unstable Media, Musée historique de la ville de Strasbourg, Modulab and Dalan.

Thesis title: Frictions (Im)Matérielles

Supervisory committee: Alice Jarry, David Howes, Ursula Eicker, Samuel Bianchini

Fabio explores how we can move towards an economy that ensures every human can live decently. After leading projects for various organizations, he co-founded Breathing Games to encourage people to collectively develop libre games and hardware for health. In 2020, he released recommendations to improve cooperation during COVID19, as project manager for EUvsVirus. He now prepares a report on open sciences. Fabio holds a MAS in Human Systems Engineering, and was awarded Concordia Engaged Scholar.

Thesis title: Ending misery: how 1000s of people can put in commons their resources to achieve collective wealth.

Supervisory committee: Philippe Caignon, Marguerite Mendell, Satoshi Ikeda, Warren Linds

Jessica is a doctoral student in the Individualized Program, a recipient of SSHRC and the Quebec Indigenous Mentorship Network Doctoral Scholarship. Her research aims to co-create a culturally-responsive, trauma-informed yoga program led by Kwakwaka’wakw womxn and girls. The focus is empowerment through movement, ceremony, women’s teachings, and language revitalization. She is passionate about teaching yoga to Indigenous womxn and youth and supporting them to feel connected and empowered in their bodies. Jessica is Kwakwaka'wakw from the 'Namgis First Nation, a proud mother of two daughters, wife, Sundancer, Indigenous health advocate, yoga teacher and doula.

Thesis title: (Re)Connecting through women’s teachings, language and movement: Culturally-adapted yoga for First Nations Womxn and Girls.

Supervisory committee: Elizabeth Fast, Jason Lewis, Katsi Cook

Antoine Bellemare is a doctoral student of the Individualized Program. He completed his master's thesis in psychology, more specifically in music cognition at Université de Montréal under the supervision of Dr. Isabelle Peretz. His work focuses on perceptual components of the creative process, as well as on interactive artworks using biotic signals.

Thesis title: The creation of harmonic structures derived from biological signals and their use in a brain-machine interface for the reinforcement of pareidolia.

Supervisory committee: Eldad Tsabary, Karim Jerbi, Ricardo Dal Farra, Jean-Roch Laurence

Sheena Bernett holds an MA in Musical Theatre Performance from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and a BFA in Music Composition and Classical Voice from Concordia University. Her education also includes training from the American Musical & Dramatic Academy in New York and The National Ballet School of Canada. As an arts educator, she specializes in coaching private students and conducts workshops in voice, acting, musical theatre, ballet, as well as character analysis and audition preparation.

Thesis title: Composing with the Event—Performance Practices that Move Toward Neurodiverse Perception/Sensation.

Supervisory committee: Erin Manning, Eldad Tsabary, Georges Dimitrov

Bruno is from Brazil and his background combines a Bach degree in Graphic Design, a Specialization in Design Management, and a Master’s Degree in Design and Hypermedia.
He has 8+ years teaching experience in Design related courses, including Infographics, Information Design, Digital Illustration, Image Processing, Script and Storyboard, Publication Design, Digital Marketing and Branding and others.
He is currently a full time faculty under the Graphic and Web Design faculty at Heritage College, in Gatineau, QC.

Thesis title: Playfographics: A Playable Infographic Design Approach.

Supervisory committee: Jonathan Lessard / Rilla Khaled / Christopher Moore

Supported by SSHRC, Tina Carlisi’s doctoral artistic research explores the interaction between communal living, learning and artistic expression. Her inquiry involves case studies of communities founded on squatted land in Copenhagen, London and Barcelona. She investigates how such milieus can cultivate conditions that inspire modes of living, learning and making that integrate materiality and social formations in transformative ways. Through art practice, she explores, imagines and expresses these ideas through poetic consideration of the social and material intimacies involved in utopic visions.

Thesis title: Social and Material Intimacies: Exploring Utopias Through Art Practice.

Supervisory committee: Kathleen Vaughan, Cynthia Imogen Hammond, Matt Soar

Piyusha Chatterjee hails from India and has a background in literature, journalism and oral history. Her research interests are in the fields of oral history, political economy of the city, sensory studies, media publics and media in the Global South. Her thesis topic investigates the figure of the busker as precarious labour in the creative city economy through an oral history project.

Thesis title: Busking as Precarious Labour: A study in the context of post-industrial transformations effecting Montreal.

Supervisory committee: Steven High, Norma Rantisi, Joshua Neves

Monica Dantas is researching food sustainability through community development. Her research focuses on a family farmer’s organization from the Northeast of Brazil that emerged from the Brazilian Landless. The research surveys the current circumstances of the solidarity economy in that region. In Montreal, she is part of community initiatives such as Incredible Edibles and Transition NDG. She is also founder of Season Jars a community-based, education initiative that uses food as a platform for community building, food security, inter-generational and intercultural learning.

Thesis title: Pursuing Sustainability in Food Systems through Community Development. A look into the Brazilian Northeast.

Supervisory committee: Satoshi Ikeda, Alan Nash, Marguerite Mendel

Skot Deeming is an artist, curator and scholar, whose research focuses on DIY and collector sub-cultures, curatorial practice and material historiography. From arcades and action figures to lectures and gallery shows, he has exhibited, curated and presented work around the world. He currently resides in Montreal where he is a doctoral candidate in the Individualized Program at Concordia University, and a graduate student member of the Milieux Institute, and the T.A.G.Research center.

Thesis title: Recasting Popular Culture: Mediations on Play, Appropriation and bootleg toy cultures.

Supervisory committee: Lynn Hughes, Bart Simon Mia Consalvo

Gabriel Dharmoo is a composer, vocalist, improviser and researcher. His works have been performed in Canada, the U.S.A, Europe, Australia, Singapore and South Africa. He was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Jules Léger Prize (2017) and Robert Fleming Prize (2011), the MusCan Student Composer Competition (2017), the Prix d'Europe composition prize (2011), as well as awards from the SOCAN.

Thesis title: Strategies for vocalists from the cultural diversity who seek to decolonize their artistic practice.

Supervisory committee: Sandeep Bhagwati, Noah Drew, David Howes

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Jean Doyon’s research, teaching, and social entrepreneurial work encompass the field of sustainability science and sustainable community development; food and agricultural (pre-)history, sustainable food systems, urban agriculture, permaculture, the transition movement, and; the heterodox, Polanyian, political and social(-ecological), community economy. Rooted in the inter-transdisciplinary, environmental social sciences, his thesis aims to advance a more comprehensive/operational perspective and praxis of regenerative sustainability that strives to cultivate and support the flourishing of social, environmental, and social-ecological systems.

Thesis title: Social-Ecological Thrivability: A First-Person Theoretical Inquiry toward the Conceptualization of an Inter-Transdisciplinary, Re-Generative Perspective of Sustainability (Science) and the Operationalization of Thriving Nature-Society Relations.

Supervisory committee: Satoshi Ikeda, Anna Krunzynski, Don de Guerre

Zeina El Omari has a background in Women Studies and in Sustainability, her research interests are in Human Geography, Sociology, Critical Refugee Studies, Food Studies, Women’s Studies, and community-based practices. Her research project explores the relationship between Syrian refugee resettlement to Canada and sustainable food systems. Building off of her relationship to the environment, she will be looking at how her culture and her politics have shaped her place and space through community economies, inter alia, through the creation of an edible forest garden in her backyard in the suburbs of Montreal. Concomitantly, she will explore the experiences of government assisted Syrian refugee women with an agrarian background in Canada and whether they have attempted to transform their environment in order to re-created a sense of home through the production of food. Zeina is also an active member at Bâtiment 7, she is involved in the development of an alternative food system, that includes, inter alia, vegetable gardens, an animal farm, a food forest, and a food transformation hub.

Thesis title: Feeling at Home: How Syrian Refugee Women from an Agrarian Background Transform their Environment Thanks to their Embodied Knowledge and their Relationship to Food Production in Quebec.

Supervisory committee: Gada Mahrouse, Natalie Kouri-Towe Satoshi Ikeda, Alan Nash

I completed a MA in Education after working in the field of computer graphics for television and cinema. I'm teaching 3D animation and creativity at UQAT (Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue) in Montreal while developing my art practice and research-creation.

Thesis title: Self-techniques and digital technologies: investigation of the artist's immediate cultural environment through the virtualization and interpretation of the 3D photographic object from a scriptwriting perspective based on autofiction.

Supervisory committee: Jonathan Lessard, Luigi Allemano, Christine Jourdan

A multimedia artist engaged in questions about identity, I have exhibited in Canada, Jamaica, the USA, Brazil, Germany, Norway, Austria, France, Switzerland, and the UK. I completed a Photography MA (London College of Communication, 2010). Building on my own experience as a white Euro-Jamaican, and past research in the portrayal of my hybrid identity within contemporary Jamaican culture, I’m exploring how this can be represented in VR.

Thesis title: My research-creation project is provisionally entitled: "Virtual ISLANDs, postcolonial hybrid identities in Virtual Reality." Building on research in the central role of water in Caribbean cultures, my project is informed by the violent histories of transatlantic slavery and Atlantic modernity, through the framework of Paul Gilroy’s notion of the “Black Atlantic.” This project invites a reading of VR practices towards aesthetic/artistic aims through the exploration of submersion as an alternative notion to describe VR’s immersive experience.

Supervisory committee: MJ Thompson, Lynn Hughes and Alice Ming Wai Jim

Molly-Claire Gillett is an INDI PhD Candidate, working with faculty members in the Departments of Art History, Design and Computation Arts, and Art Education, and in association with the School of Irish Studies. Her SSHRCC-funded doctoral work investigates the complex colonial relationship materially evidenced by the production of lace in Ireland and its consumption in England during the nineteenth century, and is guided and shaped by a research creation practice in lacemaking and engagement with contemporary Irish lacemaking groups. She has worked in community arts programming in Canada and Northern Ireland.

Thesis title: Meaning in Materials: the changing contexts of Irish lace production, 19th century and now.

Supervisory committee: Elaine Cheasley Paterson, Rhona Richman Kenneally, Kathleen Vaughan

Julia Ginsburg's research focuses on developing and testing the effectiveness of environmental and sustainability education curricula. Before coming to Concordia, she worked as a graduate research assistant at the Respecting Children and Teachers Research Group at Smith College in Massachusetts, where she conducted intensive qualitative interviews with early childhood environmental educators. Julia has been invited to present her research the Jean Piaget Society, the Society for Research in Child Development, and the American Psychological Association.

Thesis title: Developing Best Practices for Pro-Environmental Sustainability Education.

Supervisory committee: Natasha Blanchet-Cohen, Holly Recchia, Damon Matthews, Mindy Carter 

I am a researcher at Project SOMEONE and for the UNESCO Co-Chair for the Prevention of Radicalisation and Violent Extremism, teacher at PACC Adult Education Centre, founder/president of Communité and board member at Head & Hands. My experience and passions for the past decade lie in advocating for at-risk youth and communities, and in supporting them online and offline to gather and express themselves freely.

Thesis title: Creating and implementing measurable trauma-informed and inclusive practices for at-risk emerging young adults in different educational and professional spaces in Montreal.

Supervisory committee: Vivek Venkatesh, Sandra Chang-Kredl, David Waddington, Ghayda Hassan

Morteza Hazbei’s research considers ornamental patterns as an element that conveys cultural meaning. These patterns in the building envelope not only act as an energetic function but also perform as an expressive role in communicating context and history. He holds a Master of Architecture degree from the Art University of Isfahan and a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Joundi Shapur University of Technology. His master thesis was about designing cultural spaces with an emphasis on Iranian motifs and patterns.

Thesis title: Rethinking Parametric Architecture by Reconciling Ornamental Patterns and Energy Performance.

Supervisory committee: Carmela Cucuzzella, Nawwaf Kharma, Bruno Lee, Richard Foltz

A Public Scholar, with over 20 years of international experience working in the child welfare sector, Zeina has contributed to international initiatives promoting family strengthening and participated in the drafting of UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care for Children. Zeina has co-written a book chapter on the challenges facing indigenous youth coming of age out of care in Canada and created oral history performances. She has published many articles on the reform of the child welfare sector. She is a board member of COHDS for 2019-2020.

Thesis title: The Life stories of individuals’ who experienced transnational/transracial adoption.

Supervisory committee: Elizabeth Fast, Steven High, Ursula Neuerburg

Having a background in Architecture and Urban design, I am integrating the knowledge from the fields of urban ecology, engineering, and design to understand how built and green elements of cities can better promote urban "walkability," with a particular focus on thermal comfort.
My research falls within the Next Generation Cities cluster. I joined Concordia's Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Communities and Cities, IDEAS-BE, and Ziter lab to pursue the same goals: enhance the well-being of communities, protection the environment, and investments in future generations.

Thesis title: Investigating the role of the built environment and street-level greenery to improve walkability through the lens of pedestrian thermal comfort.

Supervisory committee: Ursula Eicker, Carmela Cucuzzella, Carly Ziter

Taylor Kann is a doctoral student in the Individualized Program in Humanities. Taylor holds an MA in Digital Innovation in Journalism at Concordia University and a B.Sc. in Journalism from Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts. Taylor’s PhD research focuses on media portrayals of the clinical applications of synthetic biology and the resulting impact on audience opinions and perceptions of the synthetic biology field.

Thesis title: Patients, Redesigned: An Analysis of News Coverage of Clinical Applications of Synthetic Biology.

Supervisory committee: David Secko, Elyse Amend, Steve Shih

Alexandra Kenefick is an INDI PhD candidate whose work challenges patriarchal paradigms in design by establishing a feminist, more-than-human approach to making-with diverse voices, perspectives, species, and praxes. Making/Meat/Matter uses such an approach to expose inequities found in contemporary animal production/consumption systems by prodding at the tangled and messy relationships humans contend with meat consumption. By recognizing the intimate subtleties, personal narratives, and situated experiences that further one’s decisions to eat or not to eat other animals as salient qualities toward mindful consumption patterns, her work explores how individual consumers can become capable of response, and agents in the collective redesigning of destructive systems and their embedded injustices.

Thesis title: Toward mindful meat consumption through critical fabulation.

Supervisory committee: Rhona Richman Kenneally, Mark Watson, Jordan Lebel

Kite aka Suzanne Kite is an Oglala Lakota performance artist, visual artist, and composer raised in Southern California, with a BFA from CalArts in music composition, an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School, and is a PhD student at Concordia University. Her research is concerned with contemporary Lakota mythologies and epistemologies and investigates the multiplicity of mythologies existing constantly in the contemporary storytelling of the Lakota through research-creation, computational media, and performance practice. Recently, Kite has been developing a body interface for movement performances, carbon fiber sculptures, immersive video & sound installations, as well as co-running the experimental electronic imprint, Unheard Records.

Thesis title: Indigenous Epistemology: Contemporary Lakota Mythologies.

Supervisory committee: Jason Lewis, Heather Igloliorte, Joanna Berzowska

Recipient of the SSHRC and of a Nelson Mandela award, Geneviève Grégoire-Labrecque is a PhD candidate with a Master in anthropology interested in children’s rights, participation, everyday life and wellbeing. She is working on the way youth participation unfolds in a school context in Montreal through participatory ethnographic methods. She has worked on diversity in education, health care and social services; in knowledge mobilization and as an intercultural trainer in health care and education settings.

Thesis title: The transformational potential of everyday participation for young people in high schools in Montreal.

Supervisory committee: Natasha Blanchet-Cohen, Warren Linds, Miranda D’Amico, Monica Ruiz-Casares

Mel is a métis, nehiyaw, nakota, saulteaux, french, and irish mother, community worker, researcher, writer, visual artist, traditional tattoo practitioner and phd student at concordia university focused on healing, decolonization, and (re)connection for Indigenous 2SLGBTQIA+ and Indigenous women. working closely with the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal, mel is vice president of the board, advocating for the safety of Indigenous people as well as Indigenous representation, education, and employment.

Thesis title: Traditional tattooing: Research creation as radical care and (re)connection for urban Indigenous 2SLGBTQIA+ and Indigenous women.

Supervisory committee: Elizabeth Fast, Jason Edward Lewis, Mary Wilson

Donna Legault is an artist and researcher currently based in Montreal. Her research investigates opportunities afforded by technology to explore human-non-human relations through gesture and resonance. This research is disseminated through modalities of motion and sound via electronic installation, sculpture, drawing and performance. She holds degrees in Art History from Carleton University, in Visual Arts from the University of Ottawa, an MFA in Intermedia from Concordia University and is currently pursuing an INDI PhD in Fine Arts.

Thesis title: Learning from Organisms: The sympoiesis of bio-artistic technology.

Supervisory committee: Lynn Hughes, Muthu Packirisamy, Alisa Piekny

Enric Llagostera studies alternative game controllers and how they can foster reflection and make political critique. He develops experimental games and has been involved with organizing alternative games events in São Paulo, Brazil. Enric has worked as a lecturer teaching game development. In 2012 he completed his MSc. in Games at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He has a background in programming and social communication and a keen interest in experimental arcades and public play.

Thesis title: Critical controllers: how alternative game controllers foster reflective game design.

Supervisory committee: Rilla Khaled, Pippin Barr, Lynn Hughes

Emanuel Lowi is a Montreal-born writer and photographer. He earned a BA in English and Political Science at Brandeis University, a degree in Education from McGill and a Master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University in New York. His work as a journalist focusses on Indigenous peoples -- especially the Inuit -- as well as the Middle East, where he's lived with the Sinai Bedouin. Emanuel has worked for National Geographic magazine, for CBC Radio and for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. He teaches currently in Concordia's First Peoples Studies program.

Thesis title: Aupaluk Joins the Global Village

Supervisory committee: Heather Igloliorte, Mark Watson, Sandra Gabriele

Holding a BSc Mathematics, Stuart MacDonald’s discovery of Fanon’s Les Damnés de la Terre during his Philosophy MA inspired an interest in colonialism and brought him to South Africa. Further globetrotting motivated studying Civil Engineering to pair creating tangible change with geopolitical nous. After subsequently completing an M.Sc. Geography (Data Science), his goal in the INDI PhD program is to establish a progressive theory of development engineering that encourages the change he wants to see.

Thesis title: What is Teaching Development Engineering?

Supervisory committee: Govind Gopakumar, Tanya Tajmel, Fuzhan Nasiri

We love to speak our minds out! But how do we? And why only us? Sayantan Mandal has a background in theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics and computational science. His research involves understanding the computational properties of Natural Language, the constrains placed on them by general laws of nature, and their neural implementations. He works broadly within the framework established by Chomsky, Marr and Fodor, and specifically on Substance-Free Phonology developed by Hale and Reiss in Concordia.

Thesis title: Phonological Theory: Computationalism in Biolinguistics

Supervisory committee: Charles Reiss, Mark Hale, Roberto de Almeida, Alan Bale

As a textile designer for fashion for over twenty years, Vanessa Mardirossian is concerned about the polluting impact of her industry. Her research, combining art and science, focusses on developing a design ecoliteracy, namely a better understanding of the impact of our productions on ecosystems. She studies sustainable ways of designing materiality. Her research-creation leads her to develop natural and non-toxic dyes from bacteria that feed on food waste.

Thesis title: The hidden side of materiality: an ecoliteracy of clothing through a biomimetic approach to color leading to a sustainable textile design practice.

Supervisory committee: Alice Jarry, Martin Racine, Yves Gélinas

Fatemeh Mehrzad, she has background in Architecture and Restoration. Her research interests are Reorganization and rehabilitation with sustainable approach, Sustainable Cities & Urban Regeneration. She investigate a method that is tested and validated for assessing sustainability in urban regeneration with a focus on environment, economic, social, and physical factors in specific cities which can be used by developers and users.

Thesis title: Urban regeneration in valuable neighbourhoods to protect the capabilities of urban spaces, case study: Paris, Montreal and Tehran.

Supervisory committee: Carmela cucuzzella, Thomas J.Walker, Kregg Hetherington

Christiane Meyer is a pharmacist with working experience in hospital pharmacy. She joined the Concordia University in 2018. As a PhD student, she is currently exploring the effects of misaligned circadian rhythms (shift work). In an interdisciplinary approach combining methods from the fields of chemistry, molecular biology, and psychology, her research focuses on the female organism as an entity to better understand the complex rhythm-dependent interaction of endocrine and metabolic pathways and how disturbances of these fine-tuned systems affect the incidence of mood-related disorders.

Thesis title: How does internal desynchrony affect hormone homeostasis, metabolism, and mood in females?

Supervisory committee: Shimon Amir, Wayne Brake, Dajana Vuckovic

Persian born concert pianist, interdisciplinary composer, artist-researcher, educator, Anoush Moazzeni enjoys a performing career that has, frequently, taken her around the world. The development of her creative music practice ( focused on interdisciplinary performance designs for piano and new technologies) incorporates interaction between artistic interpretation and scholarly reflection. Particular areas of her interest in research-creation include Philosophy on stage and artistic research. Ms. Moazzeni has received multiple awards and nominations and has been constantly collaborating as jury member, performer-composer and scholar with various organizations and communities around the globe.

Thesis title: Artistic Research: Epistemic Self-reflexivity to the Human Machine Relationship within an Unconventional Piano Performance Practice.

Supervisory committee: Ricardo Dal Farra, Mark Corwin, Eldad Tsabary, Tasos Zembylas

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Damoon Nasseri is a PhD student who has background in urban planning. He is interested in the fields of segregation, urban inequalities, gentrification and community development. He has searched on the physical and spatial separation in urban neighborhoods and the impacts of physical renovation actions on residents' sense of place. He is trying to learn more about economic, social and political contexts of the cities so as to play a role in building more resilient local communities.

Thesis title: Gentrification and its impact on network inequality.

Supervisory committee: Carmela Cucuzzella, Norma M. Rantisi, Amy R. Poteete

Firdous Nizar is an INDI PhD student and her research aims to explore and valorize the potential of online architecture blogs as pedagogical tools in architecture and design education, with a focus on open access publishing and digital scholarship. She completed her Master of Design degree in 2020 from Concordia University and her research was titled, “Retracing Spatial Design Processes: Developing a Pedagogical Tool for Architecture". She is an architecture alumni from National Institute of Technology, Calicut, India (2013-2018) and has experience working in the AEC industry, particularly in the conception and design of residential and recreational spaces.

Thesis title: Reflecting on Architecture through Creative Journalism: Blogging as a Design Thinking Model.

Supervisory committee: Carmela Cucuzzella, Jean-Pierre Chupin, Elyse Amend

Nathalie Pelletier earned a Bachelor’s Degree (Hons.) in French translation at Queen’s University and a legally oriented Master’s Degree in Terminology and Translation at Université Laval. For many years, she worked as a legal translator in the securities field. In 2017, she opted to somewhat change her career path and enrolled in the Individualized Program as a doctoral student. Her research focuses on the democratization of knowledge in the securities field giving small investors greater financial and discretionary power.

Thesis title: Pairing of plain language with Quebec securities law in the context of English to French translations of the information documents of listed companies.

Supervisory committee: Philippe Caignon, Judith Woodsworth, Pier Pascale Boulanger

Véronique Picard is Huron-Wendat from Wendake that grew up in Gatineau, Québec. She obtained her BA in 2014 and her MA in 2016 in Criminology at the University of Montréal. Her practice is oriented in community-care and her professional experiences in different Indigenous organizations helped in guiding her on this new academic path at Concordia University, in the Individualized PhD program. Her values are deeply rooted in her Indigenous and Wendat identity and she’s a strong believer in bringing them into her work and research processes. Her research interests are Indigenous youth empowerment and leadership, and she’s interested in exploring ideas of decolonial structures that allows for youth voices to be heard in meaningful, creative, inclusive and culturally-safe ways.

Thesis title: Youth Reclamation of Power and Space in Quebec Indigenous Communities and Organizations.

Supervisory committee: Elizabeth Fast, Catherine Richardson and Natasha Blanchet-Cohen

Tracy Qiu is an ornamental horticulturist and public garden professional, researching how botanical gardens reckon with coloniality while tackling issues of diversity and inclusion. Her Masters of Science at the University of Delaware explored racial diversity in public garden leadership from the perspective of critical race theory and critical museology. A recipient of the Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, she aims to create critical and collaborative research with practical applications for the field of botanical gardens.

Thesis title: Rooted in Coloniality: Decolonizing and De-centering Botanical Gardens.

Supervisory committee: Katja Neves, Jill Didur, Selvadurai Dayanandan

Negar Rahimi is an architect, interior designer and visual artist. Holding an architecture Master degree with specialization in architectural technology, she is now carrying her PhD research through Individualized program at Concordia University. Having researched on smart buildings, parametric design, bionic architecture, and responsible facades, she came up with an interdisciplinary approach to propose a new design method for openings in smart façades, which helps the architects not only find the best daylighting provision solution, but also achieve the energy efficiency for any kinds of buildings.

Thesis title: Study on Parametric Optimization of Daylighting and Energy Efficiency by Utilizing Double-Skin Façade.

Supervisory committee: Carmela Cucuzzella, Ursula Eicker, Hua Ge

Mohsen Rasoulivalajoozi is a PhD student in the Individualized program at the Department of Fine Arts. He did his graduate course in Master of industrial design at University of Tehran (UT) and Bachelor of Visual Communication. Also, Mohsen got professional research experience (as a guest Researcher) at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).
His research interests include Medical Design, Medical Anthropology, Research Methodology in Product Design, Visual Communication and Visual Analysis in design.

Thesis title: Designing a Medical Service/ System for some societies with Medical Misbehaviour.

Supervisory committee: Carmela Cucuzzella, Brandiff Caron, Tsz-Ho Kwok

Nisa Remigio Nisa Remigio is an oral history performer and first-year PhD student. Her research explores themes of identity and sense of belonging, memory and place, walking as art, and performing in non-traditional performance spaces. She is presently working on Decolonizing my walk: revisiting my Québécois Appalachian Trail hike in search of Indigenous stories, an arts-based research/creation sensorial and digital map set addressing the absence of references to Mi’kmaq presence on the Appalachian Trail official guide.

Thesis title: Santana Airfield, the cows pl(ai/ne)s: linking place, identity and memories through performance.

Supervisory committee: Warren Linds, Luis Carlos Sotelo-Castro, Sébastien Caquard

Keroles B. Riad develops new materials for stereolithography 3D printing addressing the stability of 3D-printed parts in sunlight, as well as their mechanical properties. His research develops new catalysts that are sensitive exclusively to light outside the solar sepctrum. Additionally, he is exploring the ability of graphene oxide to self-assemble using light. His research is supported by NSERC.
Keroles also leads the "Waste Not, Want Not" compost collaboration, which has doubled Concordia's organic collection, halved contamination in compost bins, and reduced overall waste per Concordian by 16%.

Thesis title: 3D-Printing Graphene Oxide Composites.

Supervisory committee: Paula Wood-Adams, Suong Hoa, Jerome Claverie

Anne-Marie Rivard holds a master’s degree from Concordia University in Translation Studies. Her doctoral research, supported by the FQRSC, focusses on the translation of various discourses related to abortion in Canada in order to determine if the issue of abortion has been presented differently in English and in French and, concurrently, to assess whether these different representations have impacted access to abortion. Research interests are the agency of the translator, political translation, discourse studies, and post-Morgentaler abortion rights in Canada.

Thesis title: Analyse discursive multitextuelle du droit à l’avortement au Canada depuis 1988.

Supervisory committee: Pier-Pascale Boulanger, Viviane Namaste, Francesca Scala

christian scott is an artist, designer, researcher, and urbanist based in Montreal/Tio'tia:ke.
They study cities and people, and focus on urban play, gentrification, and place-making practices—through the use of research-creation methods and multiple media.
As a PhD student at Concordia University they collaborate at the Performative Urbanism Lab (PULSE), LeParc (Milieux's Performing Arts Research Cluster), and the Dramaturgical Ecologies research group.

Thesis title: Play-Driven Urbanism: critical approaches to placemaking through play as a tool to conceive of more resilient, just, and diverse cities.

Supervisory committee: Shauna Janssen, Rilla Khaled, Silvano De la Llata

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Aristofanis Soulikias is a film animation artist and architect with a BArch from McGill University, an MA in Building Conservation Studies from the University of York, UK, a BFA (Honours) from Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, and professional experience in architecture in Greece and the UK. He works primarily with stop-motion, handmade silhouette animation, and researches the possibilities of his medium in representing the built environment, its materiality, atmosphere, and histories.

Thesis title: Sensing the city through handmade film animation.

Supervisory committee: Carmela Cucuzzella, Luigi Allemano, Cynthia Hammond

Roozbeh Tabandeh is an Iranian composer, architect and artistic director of interdisciplinary stage works. Having a Master's degree in architecture and a Specialisation in music composition, he is now conducting his PhD research in the framework of the individualized doctoral program at Concordia University. His works have been consistently supported by Academic and professional organizations including Concordia University, Conseil des arts et des Lettres du Québec, Société Québécoise de Recherche en Musique, Canadian New Music Network, Anáhuac University of Mexico, etc.

Thesis title: Poetics of Space in Iranian Music and Architecture.

Supervisory committee: Sandeep Bhagwati, Shauna Janssen, Cynthia Hammond

Joe Thibodeau is an artist-researcher and PhD student in Concordia’s Individualized program. His work investigates the relationship between sensorial interactions and the sense of self. He probes the supposed boundaries of sensation and embodiment using artificial agents that concretize philosophical and scientific notions of selfhood, evoking different ways of sensory understanding through technological alterations of our sensory experience. Joe implements his work with a combination of interface design, audio production, live performance, machine learning and hardware hacking.

Thesis title: Sensoria Symbiotique

Supervisory committee: David Howes, Alice Jarry, Michael Montanaro, Virginia Penhune

Ida Toft is a PhD candidate at Concordia University. They work on the intersections of digital games and media art and has been involved with experimental game communities across Europe since 2007. Ida’s current research investigates machine touch and vibration patterns in games; what might multiplayer games look like if they stage vibration patterns as the primary mode of computational expression? And what might this design challenge teach us about games as a media for art practices?

Thesis title: Variations of Machine Touch

Supervisory committee: Lynn Hughes, Chris Salter, Bart Simon

Pamela Tudge is a PhD candidate exploring critical design and public pedagogy as a methodology to investigate food-based waste. Her writing and teaching for over 15 years has spanned food studies, environmental science, new media and social movements. Pamela has worked in the fields of cartography, climate science, education and the arts. She holds a MA in Geography and a BA in Geography and Environmental Studies from UVic.

Thesis title: Encounters: Making food-based waste visible through a critical design public pedagogy

Supervisory committee: Rhona Richman-Kenneally, Elizabeth Miller, Anya Zilberstein

Stephen Venkatarangam, MA, MTA is an INDI PhD student, music therapist, educator, and musician. His research interests include how listeners perceive, contextualize, and process music through artistic, and neurophenomenological media. As multi-instrumentalist, he has toured nationally and internationally with Tala and Polaris nominees Elephant Stone.  He is currently playing modular/digital synths/guitar in arc, while pursuing his training in Hindustani classical sitar. He is a recipient of Concordia’s PERFORM Graduate Scholarship in Preventive Health Research (2020/21).

Thesis title: Participants’ Experiences of Raga Music Therapy Listening Experiences in Mindful States of Awareness: A Neurophenomenological and Arts-Based Research Initiative.

Supervisory committee: Guylaine Vaillancourt, Christine Beckett, Sandeep Bhagwati, Sumathy Sundar

Following his MA in Theological Studies, Joseph’s research has focused on the relationship between Christian thought and literature. His INDI PhD applies an interdisciplinary approach exploring the influence of medieval theology and literature on the popular works of fiction by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, with special attention given to the role of love

Thesis title: Mere Love: Christian Images in the Fiction of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Supervisory committee: Jean-Michel Roessli, Paul Allen, Tobias Gittes

Garnet Willis is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist, audio engineer, composer and instrument builder. He combines his disparate skills as, designer, wood and metal-worker, sound engineer and electronics geek to produce multivariate artworks that tend to revolve around sound. Garnet’s interests bring him to Concordia, where his PhD research investigates the crossroads between sensation, form over time, and material agency in order to develop sculptures that utilize internal stresses to change their form in unpredictable ways.

Thesis title: Objets Trancorporels

Supervisory committee: Chris Salter, David Morris, Sandeep Bhagwati

Mohammad Abdalreza Zadeh is an INDI PhD student at Concordia University. He investigates the potentials of design education for developing the community-university-industry partnership. He completed his MArch at the University of Tehran and his B.S.Arch at Iran University of Science and Technology. His curiosity about the social responsibility of design grew in volunteer working with local and International NGOs in Iran. He believes that community-based design is an inevitable aspect of a democratic society.

Thesis title: Toward a Democratic Design Education

Supervisory committee: Carmela Cucuzzella, Janis Timm-Bottos, Cynthia Hammond

Tatiana Zanon works for over a decade with science dissemination and has an interdisciplinary academic background covering the areas of Communication, Education, and Science.  Her current research is situated in the fields of STEM Education and Science and Technology Studies. It addresses othering and marginalization of women, People of Colour and other visible minorities in STEM, investigating how the current culture of STEM and its narratives reinforces social inequalities.

Thesis title: Diversity and Othering in Physics- A Comparative Study of Brazilian and Canadian Textbooks.

Supervisory committee: Tanja Tajmel, Govind Gopakumar, Calvin Kalman