RBTLAB.UBC.CA - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Student in the Language and Literacy
Amir Michalovich is a PhD student in the Language and Literacy Education Department. His area of specialization is multimodality in education, particularly the ways in which multimodal meaning-making can facilitate immigrant and refugee students' engagement and integration in school learning. Through his involvement in the RBT Collaborative as a documentary filmmaker, Amir is pursuing his interests in the role of artistic inquiry as part of research, whether in the generation, representation and/or dissemination of data. His past experience includes managing a national-scale education research project in Israel, filmmaking work, teaching, and mentoring community-based filmmaking groups. He is a professional ATLAS.ti trainer, and works at UBC Library's Research Commons as a Graduate Student Peer for Data Analysis Software.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- UBC Graduate Student
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Community Artist
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- UBC Graduate Student
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Community Partner
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Cluster Coordinator
- Cluster Coordinator, PhD Student
Christina (she/they) is a therapist and theatre creator, and she is passionate about using theatre as a therapeutic, learning, and research tool. Christina has facilitated and developed theatre projects on diverse topics, working with various communities from residents in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside to youth who identify as LGBT2SQIA+. As a playwright, Christina's work includes The Better Parts of Mourning, Gerty: Live! In Concert, as well as Quick Bright Things, published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2020. Christina is currently a Ph.D. student in Counselling Psychology at the University of British Columbia and runs a private practice in Vancouver.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Artistic Director of the Reminiscence Arts
David Savill is the Artistic Director of the Reminiscence Arts charity Age Exchange based in the UK. Age Exchange specialises in working with older people and intergenerational groups to produce visual and performance arts devised and created from reminiscence. In the 1980s and 90s he worked as a professional actor, having trained at Drama Centre London under Yat Malmgren and Christopher Fettes. This period was when he began to explore the role of lived experience through devised theatre. David joined Age Exchange in 1998 and has over 20 years' experience of working in care and community settings to develop practice which enables isolated older people to be empowered through creating theatre and art from their own life experience. His passion and expertise is in the performance of memory. He has worked regionally, nationally and internationally, alongside many arts professionals, and partner organisations in arts, heritage and education with the aim of giving older people and neglected communities a voice through reminiscence arts. His work with older people and with intergenerational groups has resulted in many theatre productions, exhibitions, and documentary film. Among other projects and productions David created: the theatre model "Creative Ageing" (2003-2006) with older people in residential and day care in London, Dorset, Yorkshire and Norfolk, he created "Cruel Sea" a national programme of reminiscence interviews, theatre, exhibition and film documentary with veterans from the Wartime Merchant Navy (2004-2006), "RADIQL" (2013-ongoing) a new approach to supporting older people with dementia and their carers. Between 2014 and 2017 he created and directed major First World War commemorative programmes in London and in Germany, notably "Meeting in No Man's Land" Munich 2016. David is currently working with the military mental health charity Combat Stress to deliver its Centenary project with veterans and families across the UK, "Combat Stress 100". David has lectured and presented on the work of Age Exchange at universities, drama schools, and conferences. He has also worked with partner NGOs and universities in Germany, Poland, Ireland, Australia, and Canada.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
Amanda Claudia Wager, PhD is a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Community Research in Art, Culture & Education at Vancouver Island University in British Columbia, Canada. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Wager's community research, teaching, and scholarship focuses in literacies, languages, and the arts with local youth, families, and communities. Her scholarship encompasses the fields of qualitative inquiry, participatory research methodologies, Indigenous and culturally responsive pedagogies, multimodal and multilingual literacies, and arts/drama-in-education. Her community-led research in education is informed by 18 years of experience as a trilingual/literate/cultural (English/Spanish/Dutch) educator with children, youth, and adults in Canada, Peru, the Netherlands, and the United States. In recognition of Dr. Wager's teaching, she was awarded the Killam Graduate Teaching Award at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies
- Department of Asian Studies
Anne Murphy is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia and co-Director of the Centre for India and South Asia Research in the Institute of Asian Research. She is also Interim Associate Dean for Faculty and Program Development with the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for 2018-9. Dr. Murphy's research interests focus on early modern and modern cultural representation in Punjab and within the Punjabi Diaspora, as well as more broadly in South Asia, with particular attention to the historical formation of religious communities and special but not exclusive attention to the Sikh tradition. Her monograph, The Materiality of the Past: History and Representation in Sikh Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2012), explored the construction of Sikh memory and historical consciousness in textual forms and in relation to material representations and religious sites from the eighteenth century to the present. She edited a thematically related volume entitled Time, History and the Religious Imaginary in South Asia (Routledge, 2011), and has pursued her continuing interests in commemoration and memorial practices in a volume entitled Partition and the Practice of Memory (Palgrave, 2018) co-edited with Churnjeet Mahn (Strathclyde University).
She has published articles in History and Theory, Studies in Canadian Literature, South Asian History and Culture, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and other journals. As indicated on the list of "current ongoing projects," below, Dr. Murphy is currently pursuing research on the history of the Punjabi language and the early modern and modern emergence of Punjabi literature, for which she has received major funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council from 2017-22. She also has established interests in Punjabi Canadian cultural production (see below for details on related projects); she is a cofounder of SACHA, the South Asian Canadian Histories Association (https://www.sachacanada.ca/). She received the UBC Dean of Arts Research Award for W2017, was a Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC in 2016-7 and, from May to July 2017, was a Visiting Fellow at the Max-Weber-Kolleg Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the Universität Erfurt, Germany. She will be a Directeur d'Études Associé (Associate Director) of L'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris in June 2019.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Department of Language and Literacy Education
Dr. Bonny Norton Distinguished University Scholar Department of Language and Literacy Education Born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the turbulent apartheid years, Dr. Bonny Norton learnt at an early age the complex relationship between language, power, and identity. View profile
Born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the turbulent apartheid years, Dr. Bonny Norton learnt at an early age the complex relationship between language, power, and identity. Now a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Distinguished University Scholar in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at UBC, her passion for social justice and the role of language education in social change has fuelled her extensive body of research in North America and Africa. Her research is centrally concerned with the promotion of multilingual literacy for children, youth, and adults, and is informed by her seminal work on identity and language learning, described in her 2010 AERA award as "changing the face of second language research". Her work has introduced novel conceptions of identity to the field of language education, and has been the subject of journal special issues in the USA (1997, 2003, 2017), Japan (2002), China (2007), and Europe (2016). Her publications have been translated into French, Chinese, Portuguese, and German. Learn more.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Assistant Professor of Language
- Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy
- Department of Language and Literacy Education
Derek Gladwin is an Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy Education and a Sustainability Fellow with the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. He has also held research fellowships at University of Amsterdam, University of Edinburgh, and Trinity College Dublin. Gladwin's research focuses on environmental literacy, digital media culture, and arts-based education. He has also written about theatre and drama as forms of art that produce social and environmental change. Gladwin is the author and editor of several books, including the recent Rewriting our stories: Education, empowerment and well-being (2021). See his UBC bio page for more information.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Cluster Lead
- Cluster Lead, Professor
Professor Belliveau specializes in Theatre Education where he integrates theatre as a form of research and artistic expression across multiple disciplines. He is an international leader in research-based theatre, and has shared his performative approach to research in numerous countries around the world.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Geography
- Professor
My research focuses on transnational migration, labour precarity and performance. I am currently completing a book on the travels of Caleb Johnston's and my testimonial play, performed in Vancouver (2009), Berlin HAU1 (2009), Manila (PETA, 2013; in collaboration with Migrante International, 2014), and Whitehorse (2015).
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Member of the Steering Committee
Dr. Graham Lea joined the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba as assistant professor of drama education and language and literacy in August 2016. Previously he served as an assistant professor at the National Institute of Education/Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He completed a SSHRC Post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Prince Edward Island, which examined narrative and teacher identity. While completing his PhD, Graham was a Vanier Doctoral Fellow the University of British Columbia. Graham has taught in secondary and post-secondary settings around the world including in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya as part of Borderless Higher Education for Refugees. His research has received awards from organizations including the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, the Canadian Association for Teacher Education, and the Arts Researchers and Teachers Society. Graham's recent research-based theatre production Contact!Unload examines experiences of veterans transitioning to civilian life. It has been performed across Canada and in London where it was shared with audiences including HRH Prince Harry. Graham has published and presented widely and is co-editor of the book Research-based Theatre: An Artistic Methodology published by Intellect.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Member of the Steering Committee
Dr. Grant Charles is Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and an affiliated faculty with the Division of Adolescent Health and Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics with the Faculty of Medicine. He holds an adjunct appointment with the School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria. He is also affiliated with the UBC Centre for Group Counselling and Trauma. He is a member of the UBC Cluster on Research Based Theatre. He is also a founding member of the Prato International Research Collaborative for Families Affected by Parental Mental Illness.
He is co-editor of the Journal of Child and Youth Services. He sits on the editorial boards for the Journal of Applied Hermeneutics, Best Practices in Mental Health: An International Journal, the Journal of Advances in Mental Health and the International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies.
Grant's research falls into two board categories of vulnerable children and youth and system change. He is currently involved in projects with young carers, children of parents with mental illness, families where there is a parental mental illness, youth homelessness, child sexual abuse images on-line, youth in care and peer to peer abuse in residential schools. He is also working with projects related to interprofessional education and practice, the ethics of international service learning, social accountability, psychosocial oncology, moral distress, shared research agendas and practice education.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Associate Director / School of Nursing
- Associate Director, Professor / School of Nursing
- Professor and Associate Director
- Professor and Associate Director Research at the School of Nursing
Dr. John Oliffe is a Professor and Associate Director Research at the School of Nursing, University of British Columbia. Founder and lead investigator of UBC's Men's Health Research program, his work focuses on masculinities as it influences men's health behaviors and illness management, and its impact on partners, families and overall life quality. Findings drawn from his research offer guidance to clinicians and researchers to advance men's health promotion in the areas of psychosocial prostate cancer care, smoking cessation and male suicide prevention.
Job Titles:
- Member of the National & International Cluster
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Professor of Mental Health at the Black Dog Institute
Dr. Katherine Boydell Professor Black Dog Institute Katherine Boydell is Professor of Mental Health at the Black Dog Institute. View profile
Katherine Boydell is Professor of Mental Health at the Black Dog Institute. She also holds a number of Adjunct positions at leading Canadian institutions: Adjunct Senior Scientist, Child and Youth Mental Health Research Unit, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto; Adjunct Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto; Adjunct Professor, Graduate Program in Theatre, York University, Toronto.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Associate Professor of Teaching and Deputy
- Associate Professor of Teaching, Deputy Department Head
- Deputy Head of the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia
Kedrick James is an Associate Professor of Teaching and Deputy Head of the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. He is also Director of the Digital Literacy Centre where he is engaged in creating innovative software, apps, and media projects that promote arts-based research methods, placed-based knowledge sharing, and critical understanding of the role of automation in digital lives and learning. He is also a poet, musician, and media artist with decades of experience in live performance and experimental, artful inquiry. He has published in many different media formats, and has participated in Research-based Theatre workshops and performances on several occasions.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
Dr. Sadeghi-Yekta received her BA (Honours) and MA in Theatre Studies from Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and her Ph.D. in Drama, Applied Theatre from The University of Manchester, United Kingdom. She has taught at Simon Fraser University. Prior to teaching in Canada, she was a Lecturer in Drama and Theatre in London, and a graduate teaching assistant at The University of Manchester, where she taught MA courses and undergraduate courses with particular focus on applied theatre and global theatre.
As a theatre practitioner, Dr. Sadeghi-Yekta has been involved in projects with different communities and in a variety of countries. For instance, she has worked with the Hul'q'umi'num' community on Vancouver Island, children in the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, young people in Brazilian favelas, disabled young women in rural areas of Cambodia, adolescents in Nicaragua, and students with special needs in schools in The Netherlands. Additionally, in 2004 she established a theatre company in an impoverished neighbourhood in Northern Nicaragua, which is still in operation.
Her research has been supported by different scholarships, including SSHRC's Partnership Development Grant; the Prince Bernhard Scholarship for excellent research capacities, which is administered under the auspices of His Royal Highness Prince Carlos de Bourbon de Parma; The Sir Richard Stapely Educational Trust; and The University of Manchester Studentship Award.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
Lauren Spring is a PhD Candidate in the Adult Education and Community Development program at the University of Toronto. She holds an MA in International Development and a BFA in Theatre and Development and also studied at physical theatre conservatory L'ecole Jacques Le Coq in Paris, France. She is also a graduate of the Second City Improv Conservatory program. Lauren works as a Course Instructor at the University of Toronto (in Sociology and Equity Studies) and also teaches regularly with the School of the Environment, in the Women and Gender Studies Institute, and in the Interdisciplinary Centre for Health and Society). Additionally, Lauren works as an educator at the Art Gallery of Ontario where she leads interactive art history and social justice tours for a wide variety of different groups. Lauren has also published widely on subjects related to arts based research, aesthetics of emotion, feminist museum pedagogy, embodiment, eating disorders, participatory research, performance ethnography, sex work, and the relationship between gender and mental health/ madness.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Artist
- Artist / Research - Based Theatre Cluster
I became interested in performance as a methodology, when I discovered the existence of documentary theatre and particularly verbatim theatre. Having been aware of the revelatory nature of the spoken word forever as a performer, I combined that with a fascination for how community stories are told and how individual truths are understood. I completed my Masters and Doctoral degrees at Sydney University using verbatim theatre as a mode of research delivery. For my Masters I looked at the trauma of sustained silence for survivors after a rail disaster some eight years before and for my Doctorate I looked at the legacies of colonization using as a case study an Aboriginal massacre and the construction of a memorial to commemorate this atrocity 162 years later.
I am now developing this same methodology to use performance in the rehabilitation space. My most recent work, My Mind's I, is with stroke survivors.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Professor at Simon Fraser University
Lynn Fels is Professor at Simon Fraser University in Arts Education. Her research interests include: performative inquiry; writing as inquiry, pedagogy, & reflection; collaborative research creation; participatory action research with women with incarceration experience; arts for social change in Canada; social circus in Ecuador; evaluation as pedagogy & dialogue; reimagining knowledge representation; moments of resistance, vulnerability, openings that tug on one's sleeve as action sites of inquiry & learning. She co-authored Exploring Curriculum: Performative Inquiry, Role Drama & Learning, with Dr. George Belliveau; and co-editor of Arresting Hope (Inanna Press, 2014) and Releasing Hope (Inanna Press, 2020), collections of writings by women with incarceration experience, and those working with them. She was the director for Women Giving Birth to a Red Pepper (2013), and Imperfect Perfections (2018) with Dr. Celeste Snowber, and former editor of Educational Insights.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Professor
Dr. Madjid Mohseni Professor Chemical and Biological Engineering Research in my laboratory focuses on water quality and the application of advanced water treatment processes to improve the quality of drinking water. In particular, I work on the development, evaluation, and implementation of advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), particularly UV-based AOPs, ion exchange, and electrochemical processes. View profile
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Professor
Marilys Guillemin is a sociologist of health and illness, and Professor in the Centre for Health Equity, School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Marilys is also the Associate Dean Learning and Teaching in the Faculty of Medicine Dentistry and Health Sciences (MDHS) and is leading the Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) Athena SWAN initiative for the University. She has conducted research and published widely in the areas of sociology of health, illness and technology, innovative research methodologies, research practice, narrative ethics, and ethical practice in research and in health care. Marilys works with visual and sensory methodologies, and she is particularly interested in the ethical and methodological challenges of visual and sensory research. Marilys has completed research projects encompassing: the management of menopause within specialised clinic settings; mid-age women and heart disease; deafness and genetic testing; research on how ethics committee members and health researchers understand research ethics and how they address ethical issues in practice; and the role of trust in human research from the perspectives of researchers and research participants
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Professor Emeritus of Counselling Psychology
Marvin "Marv" Westwood is Professor Emeritus of Counselling Psychology, in Educational & Counselling Psychology, and Special Education at the University of British Columbia. He currently has a post-retirement appointment to the Faculty of Education. His major areas of teaching and research focused on development, teaching and delivery of group-based approaches for counselling clients, and men's psychological health. He developed the UBC Veterans Transition Program to help promote recovery from war related stress injuries for which he received both the Queen's Golden and Diamond Jubilee Medals in 2005 and 2013. In 2012 he established the Centre for Group Counselling and Trauma (currently he's Senior Consultant to the Centre).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Professor
Professor Michelle LeBaron is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary scholar on conflict transformation, arts and resilience. Upon joining the Peter A. Allard School of Law, she directed the UBC Program on Dispute Resolution from 2003-2012.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies
Dr. Mindy R. Carter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE). She conducts research in curriculum studies, drama and theatre education primarily with in-service and pre-service teachers with a focus on questions of social justice, art processes, and the relations of schooling. Her research projects and writing have provided international insight into teacher identity, pedagogy, arts-based research and creativity. Dr. Carter is also an Associate Editor for the McGill Journal of Education, Co-Vice President of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, and Chair of the Artful Inquiry Research Group (AIRG), and Associate Member of the Institute for Human Development and Well-being (IHDW).
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Associate Professor at the Institute for Social Justice
Minelle Mahtani is Associate Professor at the Institute for Social Justice at UBC. She is also the Senior Advisor to the Provost on Racialized Faculty where she supports the recruitment and retention of racialized faculty. She is also a former national television news journalist at the CBC and was previously a journalism and geography professor at University of Toronto. She has been hosting a radio show at Roundhouse Radio, 98.3 Vancouver for the last three years. Her show was unapologetically anti-racist and feminist in its approach, focusing on the stories of systemically disadvantaged communities. The show won four awards, including a Canadian Ethnic Media Association award for building relationships between ethnic communities and Indigenous communities, and a British Columbia Association of Broadcasters award for best community service reporting. She is the author of "Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality" with UBC Press.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Professor of Drama
- Professor of Drama / Theatre Education
Dr. Monica Prendergast, is Professor of Drama/Theatre Education, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Victoria. Her research interests are varied and include drama-based curriculum and pedagogy, drama/theatre in community contexts, and arts-based qualitative research methods. Dr. Prendergast's theatre and drama books include Applied Theatre and Applied Drama (both with Juliana Saxton), Teaching Spectatorship, Staging the Not-yet, and Drama, Theatre and Performance Education in Canada. Monica's latest book is Portrayals of Teachers and Teaching on Stage and on Film: Dramatic Depictions (with Diane Conrad). Her CV includes over 50 peer reviewed journal contributions, numerous chapters, book reviews and professional contributions. Monica also reviews theatre for CBC Radio Canada and writes a column on theatre for Focus Magazine.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Member of the Steering Committee
Dr. Nisha Sajnani, RDT-BCT, is the Director of the Program in Drama Therapy at NYU Steinhardt and on the faculty of the Rehabilitation Sciences Ph.D. and Educational Theatre Ed.D/Ph.D. programs. She is the Director of the Theatre & Health Lab which includes the As Performance therapeutic theatre series. Dr.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
Dr. Prue Wales University of Melbourne I am educator, researcher and theatre maker who has primarily worked in tertiary institutions in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong over much of the past two decades. As a researcher and playwright, I am particularly drawn to researched performance as a means of presenting and reporting data. View profile
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Student / University of Toronto
Scott has spent nearly two and a half decades exploring the convergence of performance, persuasion, and social affect.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Health Researcher
Susan Cox is an interdisciplinary health researcher with expertise in medical sociology, qualitative methodology and ethics.
Her research focuses on the arts and health and the experiences of human subjects participating in health research, including the implications for an evidence-based and participant-centred approach to ethical review. Cox has also conducted research on genetic risk and the experiences of persons undergoing predictive testing for late onset conditions. Her work employs narrative inquiry as well as a range of arts-based approaches including research-based theatre, found poetry and bodymapping.
Cox has published widely on these topics and recently co-edited a book on ethics and visual methods as well as ethical guidelines for visual researchers and REB members.
She is a past member of the Research Ethics Board for Emily Carr University of Art and Design and a member of the Advisory Board for the Arts Health Network Canada.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Professor
Tal believes everyone has the right to be an occupational human being. "The personal is political" - whether she is playing basketball, biking, cooking with her children, reading, watching a movie with her partner, talking to her mother, working on a research project, or marking an assignment - she is always occupied.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Member of the Steering Committee
Dr. Virginie Magnat Associate Professor Research and Teaching Interests: Performance Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Experimental Ethnography, Indigenous Epistemologies and Methodologies, Ritual Performance, Embodied Research, Physically-Based Performance Training, Body-Voice Integration, Traditional Singing, World Performance Traditions, Experimental and Intercultura View profile
Job Titles:
- Lecturer
- Member of the Steering Committee
Xia-Bing Chi is a Lecturer exploring Educational Drama in China in the College of Teacher Education, Ningbo University. She is also a practitioner and working with students in secondary schools in the People's Republic of China.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Postdoctoral Fellow
- Research Fellow at the Department of Occupational Therapy
Dr. Yael Mayer is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Occupational Therapy and Occupational Science at the University of British Columbia. Yael has a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from Tel-Aviv University; she is a registered clinical psychologist in Israel and a registered clinical counselor in Canada.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Associate Dean
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Associate Dean / the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
- Associate Dean / the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts / Research - Based Theatre Cluster
Estella Wong is currently the Associate Dean of the School of Drama and the Head of Academic studies/ Applied Theatre of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, School of Drama. Graduated from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and Birmingham City University, Estella Wong joined two professional theatre companies, Prospects Theatre Company and Chung Ying Theatre Company, before joining the Academy as a full-time faculty member in 2008. Her earlier creative works include 4.48 Psychosis by On and On theatre and the original musical production The Chiu Chow Groom by Rayanita production as leading actress, Broadway musical Once on this Island by Hong Kong 3 Arts Musical Institute and Homo Superus by 2 On Stage as assistant director. Recent works include the innovative online interactive mini-ethnotheatre See You Zoom and See You Zoom Again by Case One (as director), both created under the pandemic 2020. Being an advocate of applied theatre, Estella has designed the first certificate course (jointly with Chung Ying Theatre Company) Drama education techniques for drama tutors for the Academy's drama students in 2002; designed and established the first local Master of Fine Arts programme in Drama and Theatre Education in 2008; designed and established the first Bachelor of Fine Arts programme in Applied Theatre in 2020 (to be launched 2022). Her publications include Applying Theatre (co-author, 2011), Dramawise: An Introduction of GCSE of Drama by Brad Haseman & John O'Toole (Chinese translation, 2005), Gavin Bolton: Essential Writings by David Davis (Chinese translation, 2013) and Risks and Opportunities: the Tension in Hong Kong Drama Education Development (editor, 2007). Wong was a member of the academic committee in IDEA 07 hosted in Hong Kong, and the chairperson of academic committee in the World Conference of Drama Education in Chinese Communities (DECC) in 09. Estella also serves as the board member of Pants Production and Hong Kong Teacher's Drama Association (HKTDA).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Community Artist
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- UBC Graduate Student
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- UBC Graduate Student
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Artist
- Artist / Research - Based Theatre Cluster
- Arts Club Theatre Company 's Education & Outreach Associate
Hila Graf is the Arts Club Theatre Company's Education & Outreach Associate. As a theatre director, educator and administrator - she is passionate about utilizing the language of theatre in order to ignite dialogue about unspoken matters in our society. She has facilitated community theatre groups where she worked with seniors, adults with diverse needs and youth. Hila has been gladly taking part in the RBT project as a video director and as an artist (contributing to the development of the play Alone in the Ring).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Community Artist
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- UBC Graduate Student
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- UBC Graduate Student
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
Jennica Nichols PhD Student Department of Language and Literacy Education, School of Population Health and Centre for Applied Ethics Hi! I am an inspiring implementation scientist and Ph.D. candidate in Interdisciplinary Studies. I have an undergraduate degree in molecular biology and biotechnology (BSc, University of Waterloo, 2008) and a master's degree in epidemiology and global health (MPH, University of Toronto, 2012). View profile
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- UBC Graduate Student
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Clinical Associate Professor of Educational Theatre
Joe Salvatore is a Clinical Associate Professor of Educational Theatre and director of the Verbatim Performance Lab at NYU Steinhardt. His most recent project Making Gay History: Before Stonewall, a verbatim documentary theatre adaptation of Eric Marcus's Making Gay History books and podcast series, premiered at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York City in February 2020 and is now available for licensing. In 2017, Joe collaborated with economist Maria Guadalupe (INSEAD-France), to create Her Opponent, a verbatim re-staging of excerpts of the 2016 presidential debates with gender-reversed casting (Nominee, Off Broadway Alliance Award for Best Unique Theatrical Experience). Joe's academic writing on ethnodrama and ethnotheatre appears in The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd edition) and The Handbook of Arts-Based Research.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Community Partner
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
Laen Hershler PhD Student Department of Language and Literacy Education Laen Hershler is a performing artist, expert facilitator of creative processes and an investigator in the field of Research Based Theatre (RBT). He has vast experience working with artists, business people, teachers and students of all ages and backgrounds. His facilitation style is engaging, entertaining and highly interactive. View profile
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- UBC Graduate Student
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
Laura Bulk PhD Student Occupational Science and Therapy Laura Yvonne Bulk (@LYBOT) is a friend, learner, woman, teacher, disabled person, occupational therapist, Christian, artist, scholar, advocate, and activist. Her work focuses on enhancing diversity and understanding, and promoting human dignity and flourishing. View profile
Laura Yvonne Bulk (@LYBOT) is a friend, learner, woman, teacher, disabled person, occupational therapist, Christian, artist, scholar, advocate, and activist. Her work focuses on enhancing diversity and understanding, and promoting human dignity and flourishing. As a public scholar, Laura aims to benefit the wider community and the academic and clinical communities, making purposeful social contributions and employing innovative forms of collaborative scholarship. She works in the areas of quality of life in palliative care; being blind and belonging in academia; inclusion of disabled people in healthcare professions; and the use of creative methods (including research-based theatre and audio theatre) and cross-sectoral partnerships to do research for the public good.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Community Partner
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Associate Professor of Teaching
Growing up in a culture with strong work ethics and values, Michael never doubts the values of occupation and work. Having practiced as an occupational therapist in the field of Mental Health Rehabilitation for over 35 years, he developed a passion for enabling people with psychosocial needs to participate in the occupations of their choice. In recent years, he has been an ambassador bringing psychosocial rehabilitation and recovery to countries where such concepts are not fully embraced. In 2015, he was awarded with the Ambassador Award from the Psychosocial Rehabilitation Canada in recognition of his outstanding work in advancing psychosocial rehabilitation. Strongly believing in the importance of preparing the younger generation to become outstanding therapists, Michael started investing his time and energy in educating future occupational therapists almost 20 years ago. Enabling his students to fully participate in the occupation of learning is his greatest joys.
Michael was educated as an occupational therapist in Hong Kong and immigrated to Canada about 25 years ago. He is particularly keen on supporting occupational therapists educated elsewhere in practicing in Canada. Merging his clinical expertise in mental health practice and his beliefs in enabling students to thrive in their higher education, Michael spearheaded many campus mental health projects and has been developing new knowledge on how best to support students' wellbeing, in particular focusing on teaching practices. In recognition of his pioneering work on campus mental health, he was awarded with the Margaret Fulton Award in 2018.
Michael enjoys his occupation as a father and a husband. During his spare time, you can find him swimming regularly for his fitness, and fixing electronic gadgets to keep up with his problem-solving skills.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- UBC Graduate Student
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Associate Professor of Teaching / Peter a. Allard School of Law
Patricia M. Barkaskas is Métis from Alberta. Her research focuses on the intersection of justice and law, including access to justice, clinical legal education, and decolonizing and Indigenizing law. She is particularly interested in examining the value of Indigenous pedagogies in experiential learning, clinical legal education, and skills-based legal training, and disrupting the normative violence of colonial legal education.
Professor Barkaskas is the Academic Director of the Indigenous Community Legal Clinic, which is located in the Downtown Eastside community of Vancouver on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sə̓lílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. The ICLC welcomes up to thirty law students a year who provide free legal services to the Indigenous community in the Lower Mainland and throughout the province. Students are taught through hands-on experience conducting legal work on client files, including legal research, submissions, and court appearances. Professor Barkaskas is also faculty lead for the law school's Indigenous Cultural Competency Certificate, launched in September 2018. The ICCC is an eight-month non-credit certificate course that assists students in developing better understandings of colonial assumptions, beliefs, and biases that form the foundation of the Canadian legal system, the history of colonial practices and policies in Canada, Indigenous perspectives on law, and what decolonization means for the practice of law.
Before attending law school, Professor Barkaskas earned a M.A. in History, with a focus on Indigenous histories in North America, and worked for Residential school survivors as an historical legal researcher for the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. As part of her J.D., she completed a Law and Social Justice Specialization. After receiving her law degree from UBC, she practiced in the areas of child protection (as parent's counsel), criminal, family, civil litigation, and prison law. She has written Gladue reports for all levels of court in BC.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- UBC Graduate Student
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Independent Artist, Paris
Job Titles:
- Lecturer
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Lecturer / Department of Language and Literacy Education
- Lecturer, PhD Student / Department of Language and Literacy Education
Raymond Pai is a Lecturer and the Director of the Cantonese Language Program at the University of British Columbia. He is also a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded PhD student in the UBC Department of Language and Literacy Education.
He teaches all levels of Cantonese courses and collaborates with the local community and organizations on various Cantonese-related projects. He received his MA in Linguistics from Brigham Young University. Having taught Chinese at the Defense Language Institute and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, he is currently the Cantonese examiner for the University of Arizona as well as a certified Cantonese examiner for the American Council on the Teaching of the Foreign Languages (ACTFL).
A native of Hong Kong, Raymond's research and teaching interests include heritage language education, language ideology and learner identity, language technology and testing, and popular culture and theatre in language education. He currently hosts the Chatty Cantonese podcast.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Professor
Born in Montreal, Canada, Rena Sharon began her life in chamber music at the age of eight. Her early studies were with Professor Dorothy Morton, and she continued her training at the Eastman School and Indiana University. Principal teachers were Menahem Pressler and Gyorgy Sebok, Janos Starker, and Joseph Gingold. Called "one of the finest musicians of her generation", and a "national treasure", she began concertizing throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe at the age of 19. In 1987 she was awarded "Best Pianist" diploma at the International Voice Competition of Rio de Janeiro. The Vancouver Sun described her as "By turns dreamer, adventurer, warrior, and wanderer… few pianists can match the deep compassion of her playing…Sharon captures it all". Among Canada's foremost chamber musicians, she has collaborated in recital with many distinguished artists including Ben Heppner, Steven Isserlis, Gary Hoffman, Scott St. John, Pamela Frank, Steven Dann, Kevin MacMillan, Richard Margison, Marina Piccinini, James Somerville, Lara St. John, Martin Beaver, James Ehnes, Susan Platts, Benjamin Butterfield, Wendy Neilsen, Brett Polegato. Recent performances include the Vocal Arts Society at the Kennedy Centre in Washington, DC, the Dalai Lama International Summit for Peace in Vancouver, Jazz at Lincoln Centre, Rockefeller University in New York City, and Ladies Morning Musical in Montreal. She was a mentor for the 2010 Banff Fall Artists Residency.
In addition to her concert schedule, Ms. Sharon also lectures extensively about Art Song topics and Chamber Music. "I Love Lieder", her popular lecture/recital, is an introduction to the collaborative interaction of poetic and musical language in the Art Song genre. She has collaborated with Dr. Michelle Le Baron, Prof. of Dispute Resolution at UBC Law and has presented at the Whistler Summit on Collaborative Governance, the CRANE seminar for mediators, and the International Association of Collaborative Legal Professionals. Her interest in cross-disciplinary dialogue and Music/Science research interaction led her to produce an Exploratory Workshop entitled "Art Song Anima - ambiguities, authenticities, auguries" at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC in 2007. The meeting was a convergence of musicians, poets, musicologists, philosophers, composers, music neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, physicians, and music therapists. She has also presented at the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, and the 2011 International Performance Science Conference in Toronto. She is a Co-Investigator in the current SSHRC MCRI: "Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing" for which Dr. Annabel Cohen ( UPEI Dept. of Psychology) is the Principal Investigator, and a collaborator on a SSHRC SRG held by Dr. Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson which includes studies in gesture cognition in Art Song performance.
As an advocate of innovative performance genres for Art Song, Ms. Sharon created a company of singers and pianists in 1994 called The Song Circle, for which she developed a genre called Art Song Theatre which has drawn reviews such as, "if lieder are ever to gain a larger audience, this is the way to do it. What a revelation." From 1994-2004 Song Circle performed hundreds of recitals, lectures, and theatre works in venues such as the CBC, Festival Vancouver/Musicfest, the Vancouver International Writers Festival, The Seattle Chamber Music Festival Winter Series.
In 2006 Ms. Sharon assembled a Canadian team of singers, collaborative pianists, and song scholars to create the Vancouver International Song Institute, a groundbreaking project hosted at UBC for the interdisciplinary research, study and performance of Art Song and other song genres. VISI highlights the study of song as a global fundament of human expressivity and a gateway to related studies in the humanities and sciences. Now in its 6th year, VISI is regarded as an international nexus of innovation in the Art Song realm. Ms. Sharon continues to preside as Artistic Director, and its distinguished faculty has included Graham Johnson, Susan Youens, Margo Garrett, Cameron Stowe, Tracy Dahl, Carol Webber, Kenneth Griffiths, Benjamin Butterfield, James Taylor, Scott McCoy, François LeRoux, Rosemarie Landry, J. J. Penna, and a large group of renowned performers, poets, composers, researchers, and scholars. VISI also hosts the month-long SONGFIRE Festival of Song, with over 30 concerts, lectures, and workshops for the public.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Artist / Sky Theatre Group
- Artist / Sky Theatre Group / Research - Based Theatre Cluster
Originally from South Kurdistan, Vancouver-based playwright, theatre director, actor, acting coach and writer, Rzgar Hama currently serves as an artistic director for Sky Theatre Group. He started his theatre journey in 1984. Rzgar's first adaptation and directing project was CANNIBALS in 1987, a play based on true stories of the city of Leningrad during World War II. Rzgar's works as a director included: SPARTACUS, RESURRECTION of the DOGS, TABLEAU, RAIN, SIYAMEND, SCREAM, THE LAST GAME, and a play based on Arthur Rimbaud's poems, A SEASON in HELL. His recent work as playwright and director was SOLDIERLAND, which performed at the ANNEX in Vancouver, BC from May 18 - 24, 2018 and still in progress for other performances.
Rzgar has created works and collaborated with many theatre companies in Vancouver, Montreal, Turkey, Iraq, and Kurdistan. He also ran an acting lab for nine months, focused on improvisational techniques and actor training to help participating actors discover their potential for play development and performance. Rzgar has written and held several seminars and workshops about theatre, performances acting techniques and arts in many places around the world.
Rzgar believes that theatre can play a magnificent role in developing a healthier society for the next generation, and that theatre, as a current event, is a place for expanding one's thoughts to build a better life. Rzgar and Sky Theatre Group and UBC Research - Based Theatre Collaborative are developing his new play My Home is a Suitcase.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- UBC Graduate Student
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Artist
Scott is a playwright, screenwriter and actor, active in theatre, film & television. Produced plays of Scott's include Viva (Theatre BC Playwriting Award - Best One Act), The Hunger Room and Desire(e), the latter of which was recently published in Speakeasy Theatre's Pull Festival anthology. With Agnes Tong, Scott co-wrote the feature film script Miss Hong Kong, which is receiving further development. He has also written a couple of short films, and a 12-episode season of a web series. This year he was selected to join the inaugural year of the Arts Club Theatre Company's Emerging Playwrights' Unit. With the Unit, he is working on Night Passing, a work of historical fiction that tells the story of the harassment, surveillance and persecution of queer Canadians by the RCMP in the 1950s. Scott has a BFA in Acting from the University of British Columbia, where he was the recipient of several performance-based scholarships. He lives in Vancouver with his partner, Chris, a counseling psychologist and playwright.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Department of Language and Literacy Education
Simangele Mabena PhD Student Department of Language and Literacy Education Simangele Mabena first encountered Research-Based Theatre (RBT) while studying her Masters in Dramatic Arts in Johannesburg, South Africa. View profile
Simangele Mabena first encountered Research-Based Theatre (RBT) while studying her Masters in Dramatic Arts in Johannesburg, South Africa. From thereon, she was interested in the intersection of Research-Based Theatre and Deaf Studies, particularly in exploring the pedagogical practices between Deaf and hearing teachers in Deaf education, which is the focus on her PhD studies. Simangele aims to use RBT as a form of inquiry to ultimately benefit key stakeholders in inclusive education with disabled teachers and students. Through her involvement in the RBT Collaborative, she has understaken the roles of performer-researcher, facilitator and graduate research assistant.
Simangele also enjoys having tea with friends, dancing and enjoying films from around the world.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Artist
A former writer for CBC Television's This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Tetsuro Shigematsu, became the first person-of-colour to host a daily national radio program in Canada when he took over The Roundup on CBC Radio. As a theatre artist, his most recent theatre work, 1 Hour Photo - about internment garnered five Jessie nominations, and won for Significant Artistic Achievement. His solo work, Empire of the Son was described by Colin Thomas as, "One of the best shows ever to come out of Vancouver. Ever" and has toured to 18 cities across Canada, including the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. He recently completed his PhD studies at UBC in Education where he was a Vanier scholar.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- UVIC Graduate Student
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Community Partner
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Community Artist
Job Titles:
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Community Artist