Past Members

I am a recent MA graduate from Concordia’s Anthropology program, arriving in Montreal via Toronto, Kelowna, BC and Victoria, BC. I am cultural anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of dance and performance, and my MA thesis “Let the rhythm speak to you. We dance for liberation”: Bodies and Belonging in a Haitian Dance Troupe in Montreal is a story of racial politics, senses of belonging, embodiment, and space and sociality in Haitian Danse Folklorique practice. Currently, I am a prospective PhD student of the Interdisciplinary PhD (HUMA) program proposing to study ecological theatre; the implication of embodied narratives of fantastical species, relationships, and futures in relation to environmental crises; and the potential of performing human-ecological relations as companion species embedded in reciprocal matters of care. At this moment I am primarily interested in creating, running, and participating in lab workshop series, as well as nurturing a lively space of collaborative interdisciplinarity among the professors and students of the EthnoLab and Speculative Life Cluster.

Fariba Almasi is a doctoral student at “Social and Cultural Analysis” program. Her previous projects were mainly focused on implications of equality in Iranian context. Harmful Traditional Practices (HTPs), Female Genital Mutilation or Cutting (FGM/C), Early Child Marriage (ECM), LGB minorities, Temporary Marriage, and White Marriage were the topics of her field works in Iran. Her current research in Human Rights Research team at Anthropology Lab is studying the ethnography of museum of Human Rights with a focus on Museum of Holocaust in Montreal. 

Agnieszka Bill-Duda is pursuing a Master’s degree in Socio Cultural Anthropology at Concordia, with a BA in the same from University of Alberta. Her work broadly focuses on the question of how do people make health-related choices, and more narrowly on the use of technology and information in making those choices. She enjoys collaborating with peers, rallying people together and sharing stories with friends over coffee. At the Ethnography Lab, she is a part of the “Who cares? Visual ethnographies” working group. Currently, the group is looking at how people relate through the practice of brewing Kombucha.

Sara is a doctoral student in Social and Cultural Analysis whose research interests include theories of place and belonging in the city, anticolonial approaches to Indigenous community-based research, and the role of new digital media in shaping contemporary practices of storytelling, community-building, and self-representation. Her doctoral research project examines the emergence of Nipivut, an Inuktitut-language community radio show in Montreal. Based on a participatory, community-based model, the project supports the radio initiative and documents the ways in which urban Inuit engage in creative practices of speaking, listening, and storytelling through the use of sound recording and radio technologies.

Currently a PhD candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology of Concordia University, working on Indigenous higher education as a tool for decolonization in the Americas, I always start my presentations by situating my own position as a non-Indigenous person, born and raised in Mohawk territory (Montreal), as member of the settler society. However, I ignored this is a fact for most of my life, as most settlers in Montreal, Quebec, and Canada in general do, given our current education system and the socio-cultural theories it relies on (Batiste, 2005; Alfred, 2004; Brayboy, 2005). Realizing this problem late in my education, I turned to Indigenous initiatives in education, where communities identified needs and interests in higher education and built empowerment and self-determination, allowing survival, recovery, and moving communities past historical trauma. With Tribal Colleges, Indigenous Universities and Native American Studies programs collaboration and permission in USA (Montana and Arizona) and in Ecuador, I learned about Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies built and transmitted in Indigenous higher education. Ultimately, I believe the concrete initiatives, innovations and theoretical challenges that emerge from Indigenous higher education become learning and decolonizing opportunities for mainstream higher education and research.

Emanuelle Dufour holds a master’s degree from the Université de Montréal. She has a background in anthropology and the arts with a focus on Aboriginal cultural safety in a postsecondary context. Her research findings have contributed to the establishment of culturally sensitive services for Aboriginal students at that university. SSHRC grant holder, Emanuelle is currently studying for her PhD in Art Education at Concordia University, with a view to exploring the potential for subjectivity and encounter in graphic memories. To date, her work has focused on education and intercultural dialogue, drawing on contributions from nearly 40 countries.

Mathieu Guerin is a student in the Master of Arts in Social and Cultural Anthropology program at Concordia University. He completed the Honours in Anthropology program at Concordia in 2015, after conducting ethnographic research in a polar microbiology lab, and after completing a multispecies study of weeds, plants and permaculture in Montreal. His current research involves composting in Montreal, focusing on how expertise and technology shapes the practices and discourses that surround compost. Mathieu takes a keen interest in the anthropology of biology and of the life sciences, the politics of knowledge production, and multispecies ethnography.

Alix Johnson is a visiting scholar at Concordia University’s Ethnography Lab, a fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies, and a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research is broadly concerned with understanding infrastructures and imaginaries of global connection, and her current project traces digital networks in Iceland as a lens on shifting formations of distance, difference, intimacy, and empire. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Leifur Eiríksson Foundation, and the American-Scandinavian Foundation, and has appeared in Imaginations Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, Allegra Lab, and Anthrodendum. At the Ethnography Lab, Alix is active in Montreal Waterways, Writing Circle, and the Workshop Group.

I have been working for the last 3.5 years in BC as a community consultant for mostly rural First Nations. I have worked on teams to create projects like Land Use Plans, Comprehensive Community Plans, Economic Development Plans, and Housing Policies and Strategies. I am interested in the arts (in particular storytelling, oral histories, and digital media) as a method for community engagement in planning projects.

Carmen Lamothe is an MA level graduate student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. Her research interests are situated at the intersection of critical public health, surveillance, and science and technology studies. Currently she is examining the way that public health agencies use mobile applications (apps) to predict or more rapidly intercept outbreaks of disease.

Attempting to interrupt her primary framework as a literary settler scholar, Brieanna is interested in the concrete, relational dynamic between expressions of food, land and story. Her research explores disjunctures between settler and Indigenous ways of knowing in an effort to better understand how to decolonize contemporary Canadian food systems. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities at Concordia University.

Shoshana is a Ph.D. student in the Social and Cultural Analysis program at Concordia University. Her doctoral research currently focuses on equality legislation, and how unconscious bias can affect its writing and implementation especially in cases where the rights of protected classes, such as a person’s sexuality or religion, come into conflict. She is also interested in individual and collective human rights, and the differences in how society understands and protects those rights. Shoshana has a B.A. in Sociology/Anthropology from Lewis & Clark College in Portland OR, and an M.A. in Gender, Sexuality and Culture from the University of Manchester in England where her M.A. dissertation explored the social impact of the U.K.’s same-sex marriage law.  

Vjosana Shkurti is a filmmaker based in Montreal, Canada. Born in Albania and raised in Greece, she explores aspects of origin, memory and human relationship with technology. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and festivals around the world: the Propeller Center for the Visual Arts in Toronto, the BMW Guggenheim Lab in New York, the Independent Days Filmfest International (IDIF) in Germany, the Festival du Film Étudiant de Québec (FFEQ) in Quebec City, the Montreal World Film Festival, the Patmos International Film Festival in Greece and the Balneário Camboriú International Film Festival, in Brazil. In 2017, Vjosana received the highest award from Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University for outstanding achievement in film production.

For more info: vjosana.com

Adam van Sertima is a Phd Candidate in Concordia University’s INDI program. He uses playful, aesthetic installations and performance to
explore the phenomenology of proprioception as a means to investigate theories of mind. He is interested in the metaphysics of embodied, enacted, embedded and extended cognition. Adam also looks at logics of how aesthetic methods can be used in disciplines not usually thought of as primarily aesthetic. He is a member of the 18 Wheel Ethnography group, and has recently presented a paper on their object centered story-telling methods. He is also co-directing a short film presenting that method. Leveraging his previous career as a framing carpenter, and an interest in craft, he facilitates the Meta-building group at the Ethnolab.”

Bio coming soon

Major: Joint Specialization in Anthropology and Sociology

Minor: Diversity and the Contemporary World

My studies have been focused on the topic of international development as well as sustainable and ethical social, economic, and political systems. Alongside my studies I have been involved in several on and off campus organizations that focus on community-based initiatives; including food justice, refugee integration, literacy programs, and community economic development. The most recent project I have been working on is a student-led initiative called Co-Lab, started by me and two other students. Co-Lab’s central objective is to reduce dependency on fast fashion and the circumvent the ethical and environmental consequences of the fashion industry; by providing the community with the tools, resources, and skills to upcycle ‘old’ and second-hand clothing.  Moving forward I plan to continue to invest my academic and practical knowledge in initiatives that promote social and economic justice in both the local and global community.

 I am currently completing my thesis in the Master of Arts in Social and Cultural Anthropology program. My research interests stem from my non-profit work experience in British Columbia at a transition house that provides services to women and children who are fleeing abuse. British Columbia transition houses give an impression that a neoliberal government is trying to ameliorate violence against women. However, my research apprehends how the infrastructure of a “safe place” (house) rearticulates settler-state power through its policies, protocols and paperwork that co-terminously creates and monitors subjects who bolster the neoliberal class divide.

John is a production assistant at Best, C. Podcast and is currently in the Sociology masters program. He is also a Muay Thai coach and amateur Muay Thai world champion researching combat sports participation as his thesis.

Nora T. Lamontagne is a Master’s student in Media Studies, under the supervision of Dr. Kim Sawchuk. Her research revolves around older adults’ negotiation of technologies in a context where the recent and the brand new, traditions and heritage co-exist. At the Ethnography Lab, she studies kombucha and its makers.

During her time at Concordia, Tristan Biehn has worked with burlesque performers, environmental educators, and business students turned hippies. She’s interested in the ways that people try to improve the world, whether that be through performances of feminist sexual agency, or attempts to instill people with a love of nature, or to build a self-sustainable community. She is currently completing an MA in Cultural Anthropology, studying hope and social change via utopian studies and feminist political economy.

Lindsey Jackson is a second year doctoral student in the Department of Religions and Cultures. Lindsey’s research is concerned with contemporary Judaism in Canada and the US. Lindsey is particularly interested in ritual change and creation, the tension between tradition and innovation, and diversity of ritual practice. Lindsey is interested in how ritual serves as a means through which to maintain or challenge the status quo, enact change, and a site of activism and protest. Lindsey’s dissertation consists of an ethnographic study of Jewish parents and their engagement with, adaptation, or rejection of the traditional circumcision ritual. Lindsey’s research also examines how anti-circumcision movements and advocates are impacting Jewish observance of circumcision. 

Treva Michelle Legassie is an interdisciplinary researcher, curator, artist and a PhD Candidate in Communication Studies at Concordia University. Her research questions the particular modes of collecting, classifying, conserving, and curating art that are becoming necessary in the present geological era of the Anthropocene. By examining contemporary curatorial practices of environmental and site-specific art, her scholarship builds on current work calling for a new ethics of care that is bound to transversal and collaborative relationships between artist and curator, human and nonhuman, object and artist. Ultimately her research questions; how curation and environmental site-specific art as ‘practices of care’ can help to reimagine response-able modes for living on a damaged planet?

Legassie is the founder and director of the Curatorial Collective at Milieux and Assistant Director of the Speculative Life Cluster, and a researcher at the Ethnography Lab in the Waterways group. Her writing has been published in Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, De Gruyter Open Cultural Studies, PUBLIC Journal, The Senses & Society, InterARTive, 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 and co-ordinated Cheryl Sim’s YMX: Land and Loss after Mirabel. Legassie 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 Master’s Thesis, published in 2016, “Whimsical Bodies: Agency and Playfulness in Robotic Art” won OCAD University’s Outstanding Thesis Award in 2016.

Lucian’s research interests are focused around how individuals managed the created risks caused by surveillance practices in the Eastern European Block. He is interested in gathering and synthesising data under the umbrella of the term surveillance (such as cultural surveillance), data that otherwise is organised and thought of in different terms, in post-communist countries.

Jessica is a lecturer and supervisor in Drama Therapy at Concordia University, and also works in private practice with individuals, couples and families. She is the diversity chair for the North American Association of Drama Therapy and a recipient of the YMCA’s 2016 Volunteer Peacemaker Medal for her involvement facilitating cross-cultural dialogue. Jessica is also a PhD student studying the relational impact of micro-aggressions. Jessica’s work extends to non-clinical settings where she uses drama therapy within organizations for the purposes of conflict resolution, team-building, and strategic direction. She engages in arts-based research at Concordia and the University of Toronto on projects that use drama therapy and other arts-based methodologies.