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I am a PhD Student in the Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies Program. I have been a practicing artist for 35 years focusing on film and video installation art, queer and feminist space making and public installations. I have spent most of my career working in artist run culture and maverick institutions such as FAG Feminist Art Gallery, The Film Farm, Vtape and now FAR Feminist Art Residency. My current research delves into the potential of vibration as access, sensibility and vocabulary. 

Roya Akbari is a media artist, filmmaker, and writer. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies with a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and a Master of Visual Studies in Studio Art from the University of Toronto. Akbari’s research-creation examines the intersection of archive and media studies, diasporic studies, decolonial feminism, Indigeneity, and racial capitalism.

Akbari has worked with the Vulnerable Media Lab and has curated programs and written essays for educational guides about VIVO media archives related to gendered violence. Her curatorial essays have been published on VUCAVU’s website.

Akbari’s work is distributed by V-tape and has been exhibited at artist-run centres in Canada and screened at festivals internationally, including TIFF Cinematheque in Toronto, Edinburgh International Film Festival, and Oberhausen International Short Film Festival.

Skyler James is an MA student in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies and holds a BAH in Media and Performance Production from Queen's University. As a multimedia artist, their work and research revolves around utilizing methods of digital transhumanism and postgenderism within performance and installation art to expand, obscure, and escape the gender binary. They are also a professional theatrical designer and technical director, specializing in projection, lighting, and sound.

Vincent E. writes, curates, teaches, moderates, organises, dreams, and plots. They live as an uninvited settler in Katarokwi (Kingston), on land stolen from the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, and Huron-Wendat peoples.Their doctoral research develops decolonial approaches to Soviet Cold War–era media, centering Indigenous land-based struggles. Their writing has appeared in The Funambulist Magazine, Journal of Visual Culture, Parse Journal, Kajet Journal, and other publications, with forthcoming contributions in volumes from Edinburgh University Press and Bloomsbury Press. They have presented their work at nGBK Berlin, transmediale art and digital culture festival (Berlin), Goldsmiths University of London, the University of Amsterdam, and La Biennale di Architettura, Venice.

In their curatorial work, they seek to build connections across places and contexts through working groups, conferences, film screenings, and radio broadcasts.  Recently they co-curated a conference “Technologies of Colonialism and Solidarity” at the IWM Vienna, and a film festival Where The Wind Scatters Seeds at Filmhaus Köln / Akademie der Künste der Welt, Cologne.

In their free time they like drawing and going for long walks.

Alice Brisbin (she/her) is an MA student in the Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies program, previously graduating from Queen's University's Film and Media with a BAH. Her research interests include archival remediation, narrative and documentary filmmaking, and power structures in archival practices.

Paris-Marae Smith is an MA student in Screen Cultures and holds a BAH in Film and Media at Queen's University. She has experience as a director and producer with her production company, Her Siren Cinema. As a practising artist and filmmaker, her work is driven by feminist perspectives and a commitment to addressing women's and queer issues. Her research as an academic explores divine feminine prehistory and its reflection, symbolism, and impact on modern feminist communities and activism within film and media culture.

Jessica Turner is a PhD student in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies. As a curator, her research broadly encompasses the intersection of art and climate. Climate communication, relational aesthetics, audience evaluation, and place-based research all inform her work. Jessica is currently a Research Assistant in the Art and Media Lab.

Noah Berc is a filmmaker, curator, and researcher pursuing an MA in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies at ���ϳԹ���Դ. His research examines transgressive bodies and the politics of degradation in contemporary North American horror cinema, building on his Joint Honours BA in Film and English from ���ϳԹ���Դ. Noah’s work bridges scholarship and practice: he curated the film series Beyond the Flesh, which explored Queer, theological, and abject theory in body horror cinema, and directed the short film Pimple Patch, which has screened at festivals in the UK, Austria, the US, and across Canada. As a Dene (Deninu Kųę́, Treaty 8) scholar, he has also contributed to public history as the commissioned writer of Unmarked Waters, an Indigenous history tour for the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes. Alongside his academic work, Noah is a professional actor with ACTRA Toronto and a core board member of the Cinema Society of Kingston, where he programs and introduces screenings.

I am an MA student in the SCCS program with a specialization in Media and Performance production. My main research and interests include advocating for mental health through experimental and narrative media, serving as outlets to cope with these issues. Alongside this, I am also interested in integrating part of my Latin American culture through my projects, paying homage to my Mexican roots and exploring immigration effects via mental health disorders. 

Yujing Ma comes from a filmmaking, multidisciplinary art production, and artistic research background. Her practices and research focus on mass urbanization, fractured and precarious narrative, systemic hierarchy, as well as the entangled relationship between human and non-human existence. She views research as a process of investigation and thinking, which inspires her creative reflections. Most of all, she cares about the impact of social progress on individual identities, as well as the instability of geographical and psychological belonging. Yujing is an MA student in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies. She completed her BFA in Film, Video, New Media, and Animation from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.