OUR CIRCLE

COMMUNITY STEWARDS

iowyth hezel ulthiin
manifestbreath
iowyth hezel ulthiin (they/them) is a performance artist and Ph.D. student whose research involves an analysis of participatory culture and research-creation through a métis-crip-queer lens, with a particular focus on the creation of horizontal power relations through community-based praxis. They attempt to weave popular modes of expression into social texts that tell us how we can/could live. The work itself has its core in utopic visioning of the possible and the consequent practical realization of radical social alternatives. io has received funding from the Toronto Arts Council and their dissertation is being funded by the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship. They have recently published their first monograph with Dio Press, entitled The Witch: A Pedagogy of Immanence as well as co-authoring The Capitol Riots: Digital Media, Disinformation, and Democracy Under Attack. They are currently under contract with Routledge to co-author a book titled “The Critical Political Economy of Global Activist Media Projects: Organizing Media” with the Media Action Research Group.

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FRIENDS

Megan Hughes
MKH Millinery
Megan K. Hughes is a Spring graduate (’23) of Toronto Metropolitan University’s M.A. Fashion program. Megan began her PhD studies in September 2023, in the Communication and Culture department at TMU. Working as a Contract Lecturer at TMU as well as an international award-winning milliner, Megan creates dynamic designs for her label, “MKH Millinery.” In 2022, Megan published an interview in Fashion Studies (4:1) journal, as well as a review in Fashion Theory (26:5) journal.

Alexa Vachon
alexavachon.com
Alexa Vachon is a scholar, image maker, and visual storyteller whose work focuses on themes including agency, trauma, queer identity, power structures, and ethical responsibilities in visual representation. She’s drawn to issues that she has personal experience with, often collaborating with those who don’t fit neatly into society’s boxes. After many years in New York (BFA, School of Visual Arts), Berlin (Meisterklasse, Ostkreuzschule), and The Hague (MA, Photography & Society), she is currently a 2nd year PhD student at Toronto Metropolitan University where her research focuses on the issues of ongoing and evolving consent in photographic representation and collaborative research practices. Vachon’s work has been exhibited widely and featured in FOAM, PHmuseum, and the British Journal of Photography, among others. In 2018 she published RISE, a Canada Council for the Arts funded book project with the women of Champions ohne Grenzen, a football team for refugee players in Berlin. She is a recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Doctoral Scholarship.

Miranda McKee
As a researcher, educator, and curator, Miranda McKee has spent over a decade between Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Toronto developing exhibitions and public programs in collaboration with artists, art foundations, and government organizations. Her research examines the power of imagery as public pedagogy, with a particular interest in the problematic biases visually embedded within photographs. Her work is driven by a passion for arts and culture initiatives that provide meaningful platforms for community building. Miranda has an MEd from Lakehead University and is pursuing a PhD in Communication and Culture at York University and Toronto Metropolitan University.

Andrew Lochhead
www.andrewlochhead.com
Andrew Lochhead is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator whose work focuses on the intersections of memory, history, identity and urban space. Over the last two years he has been at the forefront of public conversations on commemoration in Toronto and in the United Kingdom after launching a successful campaign to rename the city’s twenty-three kilometre long Dundas Street, over its namesake’s ties to slavery and genocide in the British Empire. This process has also led to the development of a new commemorative framework for Canada’s largest city. His work in this capacity has been the subject of extensive media coverage and been featured in several documentary films, including the BAFTA winning “Scotland, Slavery and Statues.” Andrew has worked for over two decades in artist-run centres, museums and artist residency programs, developing programming that emphasises collaborative and experiential ways of learning and sharing knowledge through creative practice. He is currently a student in the Media and Design Innovation PhD program and affiliate of the School of Image Arts at The Creative School, X University in Toronto, where his research is supported through a multi-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship.

Griffin Horsley
Griffen Horsley is an MA student in York University and Toronto Metropolitan University’s joint Communication and Culture program (2023) and holds an HBASc in Anthropology with a minor in Psychology (2020) from Lakehead University. Interested in research-creation methodologies, material culture studies, hauntology, and abstract photography, Griffen uses research-creation methodologies to investigate his personal and institutional relationships with thinking and feeling. His CGS-M funded research argues for a ‘scanner way of thinking’ as a means of reimagining the inter-relationality of grief. Interested in how research, art, and artifacts are ‘haunted’ by broader social forces, he has deemed this research-creation practice “necromancy” to draw attention to the many specters that haunt his academic arts-making processes. As an arts educator and museum professional, Griffen intends to continue his work within the cultural heritage sector, working closely with libraries, museums, galleries, and archives to develop and deliver engaging and thoughtful educational programming.

Lauren Morris
Lauren (L) Morris is a former neuroscientist, artist, activist, and interdisciplinary scholar whose current research seeks to engage queer and mad/Deaf/disabled folks living in Toronto in a co-creative art-as-research project studying community care. L received their BSc in Neuroscience with a Minor in Studio Art from the University of Lethbridge in 2020, where they first became interested in Queer Theory and Social Justice Scholarship. In 2019 their undergraduate research on queer belonging in Southern Alberta was awarded the Women’s & Genders Studies Recherches Féministes (WSGRF) Undergraduate Essay Prize second place co-winner at Congress. Currently, they are completing their MA in the Communication and Culture Program at Toronto Metropolitan University, funded by the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

Chris Hugelmann
chugelmann.com
Chris is an emerging games studies scholar and games user researcher. Chris studies the impact of the design of user interfaces (e.g. character creation screens, group formation menus) on player behaviour and autonomy in digital games. He examines how the interfaces of digital games afford specific outcomes for the player to create themselves in-game and manage their relationships with others and is using a research-creation methodology to prototype improved interfaces based on self-microethnographic findings and critical game design literature.

Jaclyn Marcus
Jaclyn Marcus is a PhD Candidate in Ryerson University and York University’s joint Communication & Culture program and holds an MA in Fashion from Ryerson University and a BA in English Language and Literature (Honours) from Queen’s University. Supported by the Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship, Jaclyn’s doctoral dissertation is entitled “Sartorial Narratives: Digitally Reconstructing Fictional Fashion Objects,” researching the intersections between fashion, youth literature, and digital practice. Jaclyn is the Managing Editor for the open-access, academic journal Fashion Studies, published through the Centre for Fashion & Systemic Change, and is an Executive Committee Member at the Modern Literature & Culture Research Centre.

Tanya Pobuda
tanyapobudaphd.com
Tanya is a board game designer, licensed drone pilot, artificial intelligence chatbot creator, and virtual and augmented reality practitioner. She is a PhD Candidate in Ryerson & York University’s Communication & Culture program with a 26-year background as a former journalist, certified project manager, digital storyteller with a background in public relations, communication, marketing and Web design.

Grayson Richards
grayrichards.com
Grayson Richards is an artist, writer, and researcher living in Toronto. He holds a BFA (Photography) from Emily Carr University, an MFA (Documentary Media) from Ryerson University, and is pursuing a PhD in Communication & Culture at York and Ryerson Universities. His current research considers synthetic media (hyperrealistic, computer-generated multimedia) and their associated practices, framing them as necessarily pro-social insofar as they may determine the social architectures of future virtual environments. This work animates its theoretical formations through speculative fictions set in scenarios arrived at through a blended foresight approach, articulating visions of synthetic media practice in near, middle and distant futures. His work has been supported by the Toronto and Ontario Arts Councils, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and has been presented across Canada, the United Kingdom and Europe.

Amy Siegel
amysiegel.com
Amy Siegel is an artist, academic, educator, and organizer of artistic projects. Amy is currently a doctoral candidate in Communication & Culture at York University and is the Creative Director of the ReFrame Film Festival in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough, Ontario. Amy’s art practice spans film, performance, and socially-engaged art.

Aaron Tucker
aarontucker.ca
Aaron Tucker is a poet and novelist, whose latest novel, Y (Coach House Books) was translated into French as Oppenheimer (Éditions La Peuplade) in 2020; his forthcoming collection, Catalogue d’oiseaux, will be published in April 2021 (Book*hug Press). His new media works have been shown in Norway, Portugal, Brazil and across the United State and Canada. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Cinema and Media Studies department at York University, where he is a Elia Scholar, a VISTA Doctoral Scholar, and a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier doctoral scholar. His scholarly work explores the triangulation of citizenship, mobility and crisis as enacted by the deployment of facial recognition technologies.

SORCE FOUNDERS

Andrew Bateman
andrewbateman.ca
Andrew Bateman is a documentary media artist and a PhD Candidate in the Communication and Culture Program at York University and Ryerson University in Toronto. He also holds an MFA in Documentary Media. His research unravels the myriad connections between Toronto and the Canadian Arctic to rethink the visual lexicon of Arctic documentary film. His films have been screened in Toronto, Berlin, Hamilton, Edmonton, and Lunenburg, while his artwork has been featured in Bergen, Istanbul, Brussels, Berlin, and Toronto. He is the recipient of the prestigious Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

Craig Fahner
craigfahner.com
Craig Fahner is an artist, musician, educator and researcher from Calgary, Alberta. I currently live in Toronto, Ontario, where I’m working on my PhD in the Joint Program in Communication & Culture at York and Ryerson Universities. I also studied at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where I r eceived my MFA in 2013. I make artworks that question and reimagine the way that media technologies shape everyday life. I work across a bunch of different media, including sound installation, virtual reality, video, performance, and more recently, web-based artworks. My works have been shown in various venues internationally, including the Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art, the Museo de la Ciudad in Queretaro, Mexico, and the Device Art Triennial in Zagreb, Croatia. I have been awarded project grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and my dissertation work is currently supported by the SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship