PhD students

Profile coming soon.

​Email: s5afrin@uwaterloo.ca
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sadia-afrin-a96567176/

Sadia Afrin is a PhD Candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. She is currently teaching as a Graduate Instructor (GI) in the English department.

Sadia sees herself as an energetic and dedicated teacher, researcher, and learner with 10 years of teaching and academic service experiences at post-secondary education in the U.S., Canada, and Bangladesh. She has her B.A and M.A in English Literature from Bangladesh. Then Sadia did her second master’s degree in the College of Education at the University of Oklahoma, U.S. To be specific, she did an M.Ed. majoring in Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum with an area of concentration: English Education. She has published a book chapter as the first author titled: “Trajectories of Language, Culture, and Geography in Postcolonial Bangladesh” in the book Handbook of the Changing World Language Map published by Springer International Publishing. She has and continues to present at various prestigious conferences such as IWCA, CCCC, and MLA. She is originally from Bangladesh. Her areas of expertise are Post-colonial Literature and Theory, Writing Center studies, Writing studies, Critical Pedagogy, and Academic Writing.

Sadia’s research is invested in Writing Studies and classroom practices of the Western Academia, advocating for liberatory writing practices, creating equity in the learning environment, and challenging colonial power structures. She wants to contribute her knowledge, lived experiences, and creativity in teaching of writing in English, so that multilingual students can use their languages and cultural practices consciously in the Western Academia for their rights to their own languages and rhetorical traditions. Her current focus is on critical writing practices to integrate cultural capitals and knowledge domains of the Hybrid Generation in Canadian universities. Sadia strongly advocates for anti-racist pedagogy and believes that liberatory writing practices can transform boundaries into bridges among various cultures and scholarships.

Email: Malrashd@uwaterloo.ca

Maab Al-Rashdan completed her first MA in English Language from the University of Jordan, her second MA in English Literature from the University of Waterloo and is currently a PhD candidate at the latter. She is the recipient of the UWaterloo’s Rhetoric Essay Prize - Doctorate (2022), UW's Beltz Prize in Literature - Doctorate (2021) as well as the RhetCanada’s Michael Purves-Smith Student Paper Award (2021). Maab’s research interests include Postcolonial Literature and Postcolonial Life Writing, Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Counterstory, and Discourse Analysis. 

Maab cherishes her coffee accompanied by reading and writing and admires watching documentary crime shows in her free time – if such time can be captured in any way… Her motto during her academic journey is: “if your studies scare you with their mounting complexity, and infinite amount, scare them back with your passionate motivation, solid determination and ferocious organization! – At the end, the victory is all yours! 

​Email: a2altahe@uwaterloo.ca

Ayesha Altaher completed a BA (English Literature) at AAU and her MA (Literary Studies) at UWaterloo. Ayesha is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. Her secondary field of research is Composition Studies and Pedagogy, and her primary research interest is American Literature. Ayesha is interested in exploring cultural productions, particularly literary texts, by African, Muslim, and Arabic speaking people who were forcefully relocated to the United States (enslaved) or immigrated between the late 1700s and early 1900s, as well as the representations of these groups circulating in North America print culture at the time. Ayesha is interested in how this history challenges what it means to be American.

Email: becky.anderson
Twitter: @beckyanderson35
LinkedIn: Becky Anderson
Office: PAS 2212

Becky Anderson (she/her) completed a BA (English; French Studies), MA (Literary Studies), and GDip (Cognitive Science) at Waterloo. Becky is the recipient of the Provost Doctoral Entrance Award;  a Jack Gray Fellowship; a W.K. Thomas Graduate Scholarship; two Ontario Graduate Scholarships; and a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship. Becky’s research examines the immersive potential of fantastic ontologies across different forms of media. She’s also concurrently pursuing a Certificate in University Teaching from the Centre for Teaching Excellence to complement her extensive instructional experience with a firm theoretical grounding in the scholarship of teaching and learning. 

In addition to her doctoral studies, Becky is a Career Advisor at the Centre for Career Action where she supports folks navigating their path to further education.

​Email: jbaltrus@uwaterloo.ca
Website: www.jonbaltrusaitis.com

Jonathan Baltrusaitis, BA (Film and Communication/Culture Studies at McGill) and MA (Experimental Digital Media at Waterloo) is a PhD student in the department of English Language and Literature. He comes from a film and television background with a drive to extend documentary storytelling into new media, particularly locative augmented reality. His masters research project “The Civic Monument Reinvented and Extended through Enfranchising Documentary AR” explored how augmented reality can alter the narrative potential of civic spaces, particularly by enfranchising traditionally marginalized voices in the context of civic monuments. Jonathan’s current research continues this exploration of “Space, Time and Story” viewing AR as an opportunity to promote community, belonging, civil discourse and cultural understanding by creating meaningful ‘places’ around us, healing the schism of the dual universes we inhabit (the physical and the digital). To this end he’s exploring the cognitive underpinnings of narrative, the effects of stereoscopy and developing a new locative-documentary grammar. Jonathan received the Graduate Grade Average Award (2017-2018) and he is an enthusiastic teacher.

Email: mbano@uwaterloo.ca

Mahnoor Bano is a Ph.D. student in the department of English Language and Literature. She completed her BS Hons and MPhil from Pakistan working on Historiography and the female self in Postcolonial Literature.

As a Ph.D. student at the University of Waterloo, Mahnoor’s research interests include postcolonial and post-partition narrative produced by female authors focusing on South Asian and African Literature particularly. Mahnoor is mainly interested in exploring thedivide seen between the literature produced by women and men and the themes it explored in connection to colonization and the partition of the subcontinent. In doing so, the work aims to centralize the marginalized female narrative while tracing the notion of ‘subaltern female self’.

Email: s3beresf@uwaterloo.ca

Sally Beresford-Sheridan is a PhD Candidate at the University of Waterloo, with a BA (Honours English Literature, Minor Philosophy and History) from Redeemer University and MA (Literary Studies) from the University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on women’s detective fiction of the interwar period in Britain. She examines their literature in the context of the modernist definition of ‘middlebrow’ and how print culture contributes to these labels. She further explores the creation of reading communities by the authors through their use of language. Her research can be found in Clues: A Journal of Detective Fiction. She has also contributed book chapters to edited anthologies which question and define roles of liminal characters of the detective genre. She is a member of the peer review team for Crime Fiction Studies (Edinburgh University Press). She was nominated for Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association (WUSA) Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award and was the recipient of an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2020-2021).

Email: ebrey@uwaterloo.ca
Twitter: @BetsyBrey

Betsy Brey (BA and MA, University of Minnesota Duluth) is a PhD candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature. She teaches courses on digital media, communications, and games and works as a coordinator at the Writing and Communication Centre. Her research focuses on intersectional and queer narratology in video games. She is particularly interested in the intersections of game play and narrative structure, and how game stories are perceived and constructed by communities of fans. Additionally, her work examines the social and cultural practices of the communities that play or enjoy these games, including questions of collaboration, digital labour, canonicity, and the cultural economies of fans and fandoms. Her work has been published in a number of books, including Indie Games in the Digital Age (2020), Narrative Tactics for Mobile and Social Games: Pocket-Sized Storytelling (2018), Beyond the Sea: Navigating BioShock (2018), and The Play Versus Story Divide in Game Studies: Critical Essays (2015), as well as journals such as Rhetor and The Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric.   

Email: c25cameron@uwaterloo.ca

Christopher Cameron is a PhD candidate. He completed his BA and MA at the University of Windsor. Areas of research interest include Tolkien studies, constructions of national identity, walking literature, and Renaissance drama. 




 

Email: j2carpen@uwaterloo.ca

Justin Carpenter is a PhD candidate in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. His current research traces the use of the term 'generative' from literary to computational contexts. He argues that such a genealogy can help better situate game studies scholarship in dialogue with modernist and postmodernist literary studies, as well as cinema and other media. His other research interests include poetry, philosophy of technology, and aesthetics. Justin is generously funded by a SSHRC Doctoral Scholarship.

Email: k2chouinard@uwaterloo.ca

Kellie Chouinard (she/her) is a PhD student in English Literature at the University of Waterloo, where her research explores Instagram as a platform for life writing among young women with breast cancer. She holds a BA(Hons.) in English Literature, Creative Writing, and History (minor in Women’s Studies) from the University of Windsor, an MA in English Literature from the University of Calgary, as well as a graduate certificate in Public Relations from Fanshawe College. She is an accomplished writer and author of a chapbook, dis-connect­ (ZED Press, 2019), and is currently writing a novel entitled Listening to Dark, generously funded by an Ontario Arts Council project grant. Outside of her academic pursuits, she works as a freelance editor and enjoys hiking, photography, social media, and all things coffee. She is also a passionate, engaged advocate for the breast cancer community and for patient-centred care.

​Email: sarah.currie@uwaterloo.ca
Twitter: @kawaiilovesarah
Website: sarahmadokacurrie.notion.so

sarah currie /くり窓花 (she/her); BA/MA English & Film Studies (Wilfrid Laurier University); is finishing a dissertation that investigates critical disability discourse and accessible teaching methods, benefitting from the generous guidance & expertise of Jay Dolmage, Heather Love and Madelaine Hron. Without the support of beloved community, these projects aren’t possible or probable.

Her community work and past publications can be found open-access on Twitter (threaded lessons),YouTube (past talks, open access Disability Policy course), The Polyphony (“how to show up when everything’s breaking down”; “debility and obsolescence”), Disability News Wire (“discord and accessibility in classrooms”), the Journal of Multimodal Rhetoric (“universal design in apocalypse time”), 4C Spark (“dear beloved community”), and Criticism (“make mine melody”).

Upcoming collaborations include groundwork with the 519CC, a chapter for Why Write? A Guide for Students in Canada, co-editing the Literature mad studies special issue, joining the review board of an unannounced NCTE project, a chapter for Rhetorica in Motion II, a chapter for The Routledge Companion to Horror, and other general mischief.

Email: jdipalo@uwaterloo.ca

Julia-Rose DiPalo is a PhD student in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo with a BA Hons (English Literature and History) from Trent University and MA (English and Film Studies) from Wilfrid Laurier University. Julia’s research is based on Canadian Literature with a keen focus on Italian Canadian women’s immigrant narratives, both fiction and non-fiction. Moreover, she is very interested in what these narratives can say about how multiculturalism functions in Canada for both, immigrants, and first-generation Italian Canadians. She takes great pride in telling the stories of her family members, ancestors, and others who underwent a similar plight on their way to Canada.

 

Email: mdomonch@uwaterloo.ca

Michael Domonchuk is a PhD candidate in the English Language and Literature department. He received a BA (Hons) from Algoma University and an MA in Literature Studies from the University of Waterloo. His research areas focus mainly on Horror and Mystery cinema and Psychoanalysis. Other areas include Gothic and Romantic literature, Mid-20th century American poetry and Detective Fiction.

Email: kduvvoor@uwaterloo.ca
Twitter: @KaviDuvvoori
Website: https://kavid.xyz/semiprof/

Kavi Duvvoori is a PhD Student in English, researching the algorithmic mediation of literature and language games. They are interested in critical approaches to linguistic semantics and natural language processing; in worldbuilding and simulation in 19th and 20th century novels (especially British and Latin American); in simulation games, in speculative fiction, in theorizing and practicing resistance to the violence against migrants, racialized and indigenous people; in the rhetorics of structure in mathematics (and math’s influence on literary rhetorics of structure through groups like the Oulipo); in post-colonial and queer theories and practices of living; in meta-gestures; and in writing in experimental constrained forms. Kavi has an Sc.B. in Mathematics and an A.B. in Literary Arts (Hon.) from Brown University, and an MFA in Digital Arts and New Media from UC Santa Cruz; they hope that their work in old complex institutions like universities can nonetheless join those pushing for equity within and without them. They are from the “world garlic capital” in central California, from India, and from Toronto. What does the language game of a profile blurb do, what does it say in implication, what does it limit and obscure?

Email: ceckert@uwaterloo.ca

Carolyn Eckert, BA (English at Waterloo) and MA (Experimental Digital Media at Waterloo) is a PhD student in the department of English Language and Literature. Bridging studies in English and Communication Departments, the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine (RSTM) is the field of study where I situate my research into how messages are crafted for persuasive effect and where those messages may fail. Broadly, my research investigates 1) who produces news content about pandemics (e.g., traditional news media, citizen journalists, public health officials, political leaders) 2) persuasive strategies used to inform and engage audiences and 3) intended and unintended communication impact of these messages on compliance (or resistance). This research explores pandemic rhetoric and examines figural language and argument from the perspective of Canada’s history of epidemics and pandemics, including the Spanish Flu, Polio, SARs and H1N1 as a comparative analysis to COVID-19. Following a twenty-plus year career in communications, public relations and marketing, she returned to the University of Waterloo to complete her MA (2020), begin her PhD (2020) and continues to teach part-time for Conestoga College and the Humber College School of Business. In 2021, she joined the Graduate Studies Endowment Fund (GSEF) as the graduate student Arts representative on the Project Review Committee, to review and approve funding projects that improve the graduate student experience.

​Email: lelmekka@uwaterloo.ca
Twitter: @LaraMekkawi
LinkedIn: Lara El Mekkawi

Lara El Mekkawi is currently a PhD candidate in English at the University of Waterloo. She is the recipient of the Lea Vogel-Nimmo English Graduate Professionalization Award (2022); the Provost Doctoral Entrance Award for Women (2019-20); and the Jinan Majzoub Excellence Award in English Literature (2017). Lara’s main areas of interest include cosmopolitanism, trauma studies, postcolonialism, critical race theory, and world literature. Lara studies the complicated connotations behind being a part of the world: her dissertation explores the traumas of forced migration and issues of belonging in Black and Palestinian Diaspora Contemporary Transnational Fiction respectively.

Lara completed a BA (English) at Notre Dame University- Louaize, and an MA (English Literature) at the American University of Beirut. She participated in The Institute for World Literature (IWL) 2021 session. She is also currently pursuing the Fundamentals of University Teaching program. Lara also freelances as a book editor. She has edited Nour Abou Fayad’s debut novel The Complete Opposite of Everything (2019), Nadia Tabbara’s debut book Harness Your Creativity (2018) and co-edited a poetry collection titled And We Chose Everything (2018).

​Email: egelamyo@uwaterloo.ca

Elianne El-Amyouni is a Lebanese-Canadian PhD candidate at UW. She is looking at identity formation and recreation in colonial and apartheid states, particularly through youth cultures in Palestine. She is interested in cultural studies and politics, Middle East studies and rhetoric. Elianne received her BA and MA from the University of Balamand in Lebanon where she focused on alchemical symbolism, modernism and the poetry of Khalil Gibran. While she remains interested in Middle Eastern art and artists, her focus has shifted from the esoteric to the sociopolitical aspect of cultural production.

Email: omnia.elsakran@uwaterloo.ca

Omnia Elsakran is a PhD candidate in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo with a BA (English Language and Literature with a concentration in English Language and a minor in Translational Studies, 2013) and MA (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, 2017) from the American University of Sharjah (AUS), United Arab Emirates. Her MA dissertation examined ESL teachers’ perspectives towards teaching culturally sensitive topics in secondary schools in the UAE. As a PhD student, her main research interests are English language teaching, discourse analysis and cultural studies. she is also pursuing The Fundamentals of University Teaching Program to obtain hands-on professional development opportunities and to implement theoretical and practical knowledge in her teaching.

Email: gwfemia@uwaterloo.ca
Twitter: @_foolsbait
Office: EC1 1317B

Giuseppe Femia completed a BA (English, Rhetoric, Media, and Professional Communication & Honours Arts and Business) and an MA (Rhetoric and Communication Design) at Waterloo. Now a PhD Student, Giuseppe’s research in adaptation theory observes different types of gaming media and the appeal it has to its audience. Giuseppe is the current Podcast Producer for First Person Scholar and is pursuing a Certificate in University Teaching from the Centre for Teaching Excellence to complement his experience as a TA and the scholarship he has done in the academic realm of teaching and learning.

​Email: a3fleck@uwaterloo.ca 

Alex Fleck, B.A. (Waterloo), M.A. (Waterloo), is a second-year English PhD student examining virtual reality hardware and software through a media archeology and philosophy of technology lens. This research subject coincides with Alex’s other research into interfaces, FPGA (clone) videogame consoles, various histories of computer technology, the remastering/adaptation of old videogames, modding and piracy/ownership, and game design. 

Email: afraniczek@uwaterloo.ca

Aleksander Franiczek completed his BA and MA in English Literature at Western University and is currently a PhD candidate for the University of Waterloo’s English program. His doctoral research synthesizes perspectives from game studies, phenomenology, narrative theory, and critical design to consider how a player's sense of immersion in the world of a videogame can provide a means towards self-reflection through creative engagements both during and outside gameplay. As a member of both the Games Institute and Critical Media Lab, he is interested in exploring critical and alternative approaches to analyzing gameplay experiences that focalizes how personal meaning is generated in the meeting between player and program. He also helps other game enthusiasts publish their work as the Section Head of Essays at First Person Scholar, where he also features on the journal’s podcast.

Email: k2gerber@uwaterloo.ca

Kyle Gerber, BA (Laurier) MA (Waterloo) BEd (Laurier), is a PhD candidate in the department of English Language and Literature. He works under the supervision of Dr. Randy Harris on a dissertation titled "Figures of Forgiveness: Rhetorical Foundations of the Mennonite Ethos of Forgiveness." Kyle is a recipient of the W. K. Thomas Graduate Scholarship, several Ontario Graduate Scholarships, and is the grateful recipient of a SSHRC Doctoral Scholarship. He enjoys teaching courses in rhetoric, academic writing, and science communication, and has several nominations for the TA Award for Excellence in Teaching. Kyle enjoys collaboration and academic community, and serves on the executive committee for RhetCanada. Previous research collaborations include working with RhetFig at the intersections of rhetorical figures and AI/NLP, the Critical Media Lab, and an expanded Mennonite/s Writing bibliographic database.

He is interested in rhetoric (especially Burkean) and understandings of forgiveness, as well as Canadian Literature (especially “Mennonite” writing): the question at the nexus of these interests is “what action do we symbolize when we say ‘I forgive’?” In particular, his interest has broadened to include figuration, so a central question he is pursuing is "what rhetorical figures cluster around statements of forgiveness?" When not taking up space on campus, Kyle enjoys working with his wife Tracy to care for their three daughters, serving as an associate pastor at a church near Wellesley, and moonlighting as a mandolin player in his side-hustle bluegrass band.

Email: kasturi.ghosh1@uwaterloo.ca

Kasturi Ghosh is a PhD student in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. Her research interests are Women’s and Gender Studies, Gothic Studies and Popular Literature and Culture. She did her MPhil and MA in English from Jadavpur University, and BA Honours in English from Loreto College, University of Calcutta, both in Kolkata, India. She has taught for eight years in India and has published papers and reviews in peer reviewed journals while she was teaching as an Assistant Professor of  English at Salesian College (2012-2017) and Vivekananda College for Women (2017-2020), both in West Bengal, India. She is the International Student Representative at SAGE. She is grateful for the opportunity to enhance her academic and professional skills with the resources and training that the University of Waterloo has to offer.

Christopher Giannakopoulos (BA, MA Waterloo) is a PhD candidate specializing in rhetorical studies and contemporary literature of the UK. Chris’s research investigates how a handful of late-modernist poets engage various knowledge domains (eg: philosophy, history, theology) to develop the idea of poetry as an epistemological medium. Drawing on gestalt psychology, the rhetoric of riddles, and the poetics of theology, Chris’s research explores how language and literature produce—and in some cases necessarily obstruct—the paths towards knowledge.

Profile: Academia.edu
Project Alumni: The Life of Words & Shakespeare’s Common Language

Email: vrgnaniah@uwaterloo.ca
LinkedIn: Vanya Gnaiah

Vanya Rachel Gnaiah is a PhD Student whose research interests include Animal Studies, Posthumanism, Food Culture and Media Theory. She previously completed an Integrated MA in English Studies with a minor in Development Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. She was also the recipient of the Erasmus Mundus scholarship and was selected for an exchange program to Aarhus University, Denmark. She currently holds the Exceptional Doctoral Student Scholarship and her PhD research examines the conditions that make the animal killable in the abattoir and the biopolitical consequences of technological innovations centered around lab-grown meat and plant-based proteins.

Email: ahalilagic@uwaterloo.ca

Aldijana Halilagic is a PhD student in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo with a BA (Honours English: Rhetoric, Media, and Professional Communication, Minor Legal Studies) and MA (Rhetoric and Communication Design) from the University of Waterloo. Aldijana's research focuses on the intersection of rhetoric and literature, specifically how theories of narrative discourse can be used to examine the form and construction of short stories. Her Master's MRP examined the role of narration in Raymond Carver's collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by applying Gérard Genette's theory of narrative discourse to read the collection through a rhetorical lens.

Email: nhobin@uwaterloo.ca

Nicholas Hobin is a Ph.D. candidate in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo, with an MA (English Language and Literature) from the same, and a BA (English) from King’s University College. His research aims to create links in the fields of humanities-based game studies and animal studies, exploring questions of virtual animality and posthuman identity. His dissertation investigates the many ways in which the non-human animal image is used and articulated in digital games, and how these images reveal, reinforce, or challenge our cultural preconceptions of what it means to be animal. He works at the UW’s Games Institute, and is the Associate Editor of Book Reviews and Interviews for First Person Scholar. 

Email: z2jafari@uwaterloo.ca

Zahra Jafari is a fourth-year PhD candidate of Rhetoric in the department of English Language and Literature. She completed her BA in English Language and Literature and her first MA in Translation Studies, both at University of Isfahan. She did a second MA in Rhetoric and Communication Design at the University of Waterloo. Currently, she is working on her dissertation under the supervision of Dr. Michael MacDonald. Her project is a comparative, multimodal analysis of the representation of Iranian women in media. Zahra’s book chapter titled “Iranian Women and the Media: The Good, the Bad, and the Untold” has appeared in Minority Women and Western Media: Challenging Representations and Articulating New Voices.

Some of her academic interests include: Rhetoric, Women’s Studies, Metaphor Studies, Postcolonial Literature, Shakespeare, 19th-century British Literature, and Translation Quality Assessment (TQA).

​Email: mnpjohns@uwaterloo.ca

Melissa Johnson is a PhD student in the Department of English Language and Literature. Her dissertation examines how the rhetorical history of hysteria has informed and continues to inform current societal and medical perceptions of contemporary women with illness and/or disability. Melissa graduated with distinction from Western University with a BA (Hons.) in English and a Minor in Sociology. She received her MA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Northern British Columbia where she examined the negative social and health ramifications of disseminating, legitimating, and perpetuating pathologizing discursive representations of Indigenous peoples in Canadian media. Melissa is the recipient of the Provost Doctoral Entrance Award (2018/2019). She is also an Executive Member of the Student Association for Graduates in English (SAGE) serving as Equity Liaison (2019/2020). She is committed to investigating inequities and oppression, violence, discourse and power, and especially, ableism.

Email: Monique.Kampherm@uwaterloo.ca
Website: https://uwaterloo.ca/scholar/mekamphe
Twitter: @MoniquePhD
LinkedIn: MoniquePhD

Monique Kampherm, B.A. Administrative and Commercial Studies - Public Administration, Public Policy, and Political Science (Western University), M.A. Political Science (Western University), M.A. Multimedia Journalism - Television, Radio, and Online (Bournemouth University, England, U.K.), M.A. English - Rhetoric and Communication Design (University of Waterloo), is a Ph.D. Candidate (ABD) in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo.

Monique Kampherm's doctoral research focuses on rhetoric, social media, and democratic engagement. She is examining how political federal leader debates are evolving because of the rhetorical influence of social media.

Monique's article, "Democratic Prosopopoeia: The Rhetorical Influence of the I-Will-Vote Image Filter on Social Media Profile Pictures During the 2015 Canadian Federal Election," is now published in the peer-reviewed journal Rhetor: The Journal of the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric, vol. 8, 2019, pp. 59-98.

Monique is a recipient of the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship (2020-2021), the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2018-2022) and the President’s Graduate Scholarship at the University of Waterloo (2018-2022). Monique earned the Independent Graduate Instructor Award for Excellence in Teaching (2021) and the Lea Vogel-Nimmo English Graduate Professionalization Award (2021). Monique was also named the RhetCanada Graduate Paper Prize Winner (2018) by the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Monique is concurrently pursuing a Certificate in University Teaching (2018-2022) with the Centre for Teaching Excellence at the University of Waterloo.

Professionally, Monique has worked as a Policy Advisor in the Infrastructure and Realty arm of the Ontario Government. During her studies in England, Monique gained journalistic experience with Sky News Business and BBC Watchdog. Monique has also taught at multiple higher-education institutions as an Instructor (University of Waterloo), Course Director (York University), Adjunct Partial-Load Professor (Sheridan; Seneca College), and Tutorial Leader/Teaching Assistant (Waterloo; York; Western). These experiences have helped to shape her research interests.

Supervisor: Dr. Randy Harris
Committee member: Dr. Michael MacDonald
Committee member: Dr. Anna Esselment

Email: ckkarki@uwaterloo.ca 

Chitra Karki  is a PhD student, Department of English Language and Literature. He received an MA in English Language and Literature in 2002 from Tribhuvan University, Nepal, and an MA in Rhetoric and Communication Design in 2015 from the University of Waterloo. His research interests are: Critical Race Theoretical Praxis, African American Rhetoric, Critical Pedagogy, Postcolonial Studies,  Nuances in South Asian Diaspora(s) and Critical Sociolinguistics.

Email: js2kim@uwaterloo.ca

Email: am2latimer@uwaterloo.ca

Alicia Latimer completed a BA in English and an MA in English Rhetoric and Communication at the University of Waterloo. Her main areas of interest are digital rhetoric, young adult literature, and disability studies. Her Master’s research project looked at the representation of marginalized identities in a popular YA series and how the YA reader community impacted this representation by responding on social media platforms. She plans to further this research by studying the representation of disability in YA literature. 

Email:clawerence@uwaterloo.ca

During my undergraduate studies at Carleton I double majored in English Literature and Linguistics, and played a lot of video games. During my Masters in English Literature at Carleton I specialized in science fiction and dystopia, and played a lot of video games. At some point I realized that I ought to combine these interests.

Video games are everywhere now: in books, in film, on your TV, on your phone, in the classroom, in the workplace. I want to make sense of their impact on our lives. People today spend as much time playing games as they might have spent reading books fifty years ago. How does that restructure our cognition? McKenzie Wark summarizes that “Games are no longer a pastime, outside or alongside of life. They are now the very form of life, and death, and time itself." So "play" isn't just about play anymore. Play has become work.

I believe that it's essential to understand how we are using what we learn in games to approach challenges in our real lives. To plead ignorance is to allow external forces to co-opt those influences and manipulate them in their favour. Nick Dyer-Witheford and Grieg de Peuter warn that "video games are a paradigmatic media of empire." To this I ask: what is our alternative? How can we take this cognitive capital back from the gamified office and leverage it positively? Big questions. I can't answer them on my own. That's why I'm here at the University of Waterloo.

​Email: smlodoen@uwaterloo.ca

Shannon Lodoen is a PhD candidate in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. She holds an Honours BA in English Literature & Rhetoric (University of Waterloo, 2016) and an MA from the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism (Western University, 2019). Shannon’s main areas of interest include rhetoric, critical theory, media studies, and philosophical pessimism. Her dissertation uses a Frankfurt School lens to investigate how digital communications technologies (especially smartphones) rhetorically construct and position subjects.

Shannon holds a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship (2022-2024) and has also been the recipient of a Master's SSHRC (2018- 2019); the Provost Doctoral Entrance Award for Women (2019-20); UW's Beltz Prize in Literature (2020, 2021) and the Rhetoric Essay Award (2020); Ontario Graduate Scholarships (2020-22); UW’s President’s Scholarships (2020-22); and the Gladys Srivastava Graduate Award (2022). At the 2021 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, her presentation was selected for a Congress Graduate Merit Award as well as RhetCanada’s Michael Purves-Smith Student Paper Award.

Shannon has published articles in The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics (2021) and Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction (2021). She is the founder and chair of SAGE’s “Projects & Research by English Students” (PRES) lecture series. She works as a TA Workshop Facilitator at the Centre for Teaching Excellence, where she completed a Certificate in University Teaching (2022) and the Fundamentals of University Teaching program (2020). Shannon is also a Research Assistant on the SSHRC-funded “Critical by Design” research team led by Dr. Marcel O’Gorman and Dr. Heather Love. This project aims to investigate the social, psychological, and environmental impacts of technology and establish benchmarks for responsible innovation.

​Email: k4lubin@uwaterloo.ca

Kem-Laurin Lubin is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Waterloo, where she focuses on Artificial Intelligence (AI) biases and how their inherent discursivity informs the material effect on the lived experience of people, particularly the marginalized.  Her research is predicated on the idea that technology is nothing short of a digital colony, mathematizing and amplifying the analogic biases and that an understanding of how AI models work can better inform how they make decisions, void of bias but also to further hermeneutic methods of assessing AI models as advanced textual forms. She is also the 2021-2022 OGS/QEII-GSST Scholarship (2021-2022) as well as  President’s Graduate Scholarship (PGS) 2021. Kem-Laurin completed an Honours B.A. at the University of Ottawa and an M.A in the Rhetoric and Professional Writing stream at the University of Waterloo. 

Email: c23martin@uwaterloo.ca

Chris Martin is a PhD student at the University of Waterloo, building on the concepts learned there during his Masters in English Rhetoric and Communication Design. Currently, he is spending his time researching the formation of ideological communities on YouTube, focusing on the interactions between the rhetorical techniques employed by popular content creators and the platform’s algorithmically driven content recommendation systems. When not testing the limits of his sanity by gazing into the abyss of the internet, Chris writes and edits screenplays, and even engages in the occasional acting role.   

Email:tommy.mayberry@uwaterloo.ca
Facebook: tommy.mayberry.5
Twitter: @tommymayberry

Tommy Mayberry (he/she/they) is a PhD candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature. They hold a Joint Honours BA in English Literature and Fine Arts: Studio Specialization (with Dean’s Honours) from the University of Waterloo and an MA in English and Cultural Studies from McMaster University. They have been the recipient of two Ontario Graduate Scholarships and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) Doctoral Fellowship, and they also were one of the recipients of the 2015 Amit & Meena Chakma Award for Exceptional Teaching by a Student. Their dissertation, “Queen of the Academy: Academic Drag in Theory and Culture,” focuses on academic dimensions of drag artistry to put forward a theoretical framework of drag culture as visual, public, and performance pedagogy.

In addition to their doctoral studies, Tommy is also the Executive Director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Alberta as well as Co-Editor of the upcoming collection of essays RuPedagogies of Realness: Essays on RuPaul’s Drag Race and Teaching and Learning (forthcoming McFarland, 2021).

Email: lmeaning@uwaterloo.com

Lindsay Meaning (BA English, Wilfrid Laurier University; MA Experimental Digital Media, University of Waterloo) is a fourth year PhD candidate in the English department at UWaterloo. Her research in game studies explores representations of settler colonialism and imperial ideologies in single player role-playing games. Lindsay's research is currently supported by a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, and she has been the recipient of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2019-2020; 2020-2021) as well as the David Nimmo English Graduate Scholarship (2019). Lindsay has served as review board co-chair and a member of the planning committee for the International Conference on Games and Narrative (2021), and her recent publications include “Adaptations of Empire: Kipling’s Kim, Novel and Game.” Loading…, vol. 13, no.21, 2020.

Email: dmorenoo@uwaterloo.ca
LinkedIn: Diana Moreno Ojeda

Diana Moreno Ojeda, BA (Art History and Theory; Philosophy minor, Los Andes University), MA (English Language Teaching, University of Tabriz), and MA (Rhetoric and Communication Design, University of Waterloo) is a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo.

Her research work is anchored at the intersection of Attitude, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Cognitive Narratology. More specifically, Diana looks at how authors deploy patterns of Attitude in science fiction to present their evaluation of AI to their readers. Attitudinal appraisal is ultimately a device for the positioning of discussions on the cultural value of our technological artifacts and their construction; but, also, for the exploration of our current definitions of intelligence, reason, and cognition.

Diana is also Associate Editor of Essays for First Person Scholar, and she enjoys cooperative table-top games just as much as reading Science and Speculative Fiction.

Email: alexi.orchard@uwaterloo.ca
Website: alexiorchard.ca

Alexi Orchard (she/her), BIS (Communications, Thompson Rivers University) and MA (English/XDM, University of Waterloo), is an English PhD candidate and Manager of the Critical Media Lab. Alexi's research explores topics such as engineering ethics education, responsible innovation, sociotechnical systems, interdisciplinary pedagogy, and critical design methods. Alexi is an honoured recipient of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2022, 2021), President’s Graduate Scholarship (2022, 2021), Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute Scholarship (2022), and Provost Doctoral Entrance Award for Women (2020), and has served as a Research Assistant on multiple internally and federally funded research grants. In her free time, Alexi is the Game Day Coordinator for the Waterloo Warriors varsity volleyball teams and training to be a Pilates Instructor. 

​Email: znpearl@uwaterloo.ca
Website: www.zachpearl.com

Zach Pearl is a PhD candidate in the English Language and Literature program. His dissertation research centres on fictocriticism—a method of writing that blends fictional narrative with critical commentary and theoretical frameworks—and its relationship to second-order cybernetics and post-Internet communication. Zach currently holds a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship (2022-23) and is a three-time recipient of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2020-23). He has also been awarded the UW President’s Graduate Scholarship, the Jack Gray Fellowship Award, the David Nimmo English Graduate Scholarship and the Gladys Srivastava Graduate Award. His work has been published in the Open Library of the Humanities Journal, TEXT, English Studies in Canada, Peripheral Review and IEEE Xplore. 

During his time at UW, Zach has been a Research Assistant on the SSHRC-funded initiative, Entangling the Media History Archive, led by Dr. Henry Adam Svec, and last year Zach served as Publications Chair for the 2021 International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS).  Before coming to UW, he completed a BFA in Graphic Design and Illustration at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice at OCAD University (Toronto). When not working on his dissertation, Zach maintains a professional practice as a design educator, arts writer and curator. He has produced public programs for a wide range of organizations, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Vtape, the Subtle Technologies Festival, Eastern Edge and the Gladstone Hotel.

​Email: ddpinhei@uwaterloo.ca
Twitter: @DakotaPinheiro

Dakota Pinheiro (he/him) is a PhD Candidate and Sessional Instructor in the Department of English Language and Literature and a Graduate Educational Developer (GED) for the Centre for Teaching Excellence. He completed his BA in Honours English Literature at the University of Waterloo and his MA in English at the University of Toronto. He has also completed the Fundamentals of University Teaching (FUT) certificate and is currently completing his Certificate in University Teaching (CUT) from the Centre for Teaching Excellence. Dakota has served as Treasurer and Co-President of the Student Association for Graduates in English (SAGE), as a voting member on the English Chair succession committee, as a chair for the graduate student stage of 2022’s English faculty interviews, and as an Editor and Section Head of Commentaries at First Person Scholar (FPS).

Dakota’s dissertation project critically examines socially-conscious works of contemporary American literature and their representations of labour protest, in/justice, and intersectional solidarity. His project, divided into three sections, examines representations of labour in corporate fiction, superhero satire, and in the COVID-19 pandemic’s literary corpus. His work employs an interdisciplinary approach, integrating economic theory, critical labour studies, and literary theory (to name a few) into his investigation of the social implications of labour and equity advocacies in some of America’s most recent literary works. Dakota presently has forthcoming articles being published by First Person Scholar and English Studies in Canada and has presented his research at several prestigious venues including MLA, ACCUTE, CAAS, NeMLA, and CASDW.

Dakota has been the recipient of a number of merit-based scholarships including a Viola Whitney Pratt Memorial Scholarship, two Ontario Graduate Scholarships (OGS), a Jack Gray Graduate Fellowship, an Arts Graduate Enhancement Scholarship, UW President’s Scholarship, the Lea-Vogel Nimmo Graduate Professionalization Award, and a W.K. Thomas Graduate Scholarship. He has also been the recipient of his cohort’s Grade Average Award and Betty G. Headley Senior Essay Award during his undergraduate studies.”

​Email: ampurnel@uwaterloo.ca

Alison Purnell is a PhD student in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. She has a BA in Religious Studies from the University of Waterloo, an MA in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto, and studied at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York (UK) for several years. Her interdisciplinary work explores the social discourses and rhetoric around mental disability in 14th and 15th century England through the lens of critical disability theory. Alison's translation of her manuscript source material was included in the Medieval Disability Sourcebook published by Punctum Press (2020) and she tweets about disability history and amusing medieval shenanigans at @14thCdisability.

​Email: tsracico@uwaterloo.ca

Supervisor: Dr. Neil Randall

Email: jrickert@uwaterloo.ca
LinkedIn: @jennrickert
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JennRickert

Jenn Rickert is an interdisciplinary-trained academic, currently in the English PhD program, who specializes in the study of people, technology, and culture. Currently, her research focuses on gender, power structures, and social dynamics surrounding competitive gaming communities, particularly within World of Warcraft. She is also interested in gaming cultures (more broadly), identity, embodiment, gamification, gaming narratives, world building, storytelling, cultural reciprocity, and human-technology interactions.

Her research interests and object-texts have included 3D printing of archaeological artifacts & semiological meanings (MA thesis), modification & cheating in (video)games, emotion and game-investment, microtransactions/DLCs, role-playing (traditional & non-traditional), paratext, video game lore & narrative, and Twitch.

Email: christopher.rogers@uwaterloo.ca 

Christopher Rogers is a PhD student in English. He completed his BA in Political Science at the University of Toronto and his MA in Experimental Digital Media at Waterloo. His research explores the rhetoric of watery spaces – shores, riverbanks, beaches – as places where the vibrancy of the material world comes into focus. Chris’ work asks what hopeful paths forward we can imagine, observe, and create when we pause and consider our entanglements with the nonhuman world.  

Email: srowland@uwaterloo.ca

Samuel Rowland (BA, MA Trent University), is a PhD Candidate in English Literature at the University of Waterloo. His Doctoral project studies the influence of music, sound, and noise on literature about Harlem from the 1940s and 50s. He is interested in how jazz, oration, and the sounds of the city informed the work of Ralph Ellison, Ann Petry, Richard Wright, and others. His other research interests include transgressive fiction, synaesthesia narratives in Young Adult fiction, and historical video games that rewrite and play with history.
 

​Email: ssamboo@uwaterloo.ca
LinkedIn: Stephanie Samboo

Stephanie Samboo is a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo’s English Language and Literature department. She has a Bachelor of Arts (English) and Master of Arts (English Studies) from the National University of Singapore. She is also an Ontario Certified English Language Teacher (OCELT), a CLBPT (Canadian Language Benchmarks Placement Test) assessor and a certified ISW (Instructional Skills Workshop) facilitator. Her research interests include Intercultural Rhetoric, Composition Pedagogy, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Postcolonial Studies, and Language Acquisition.

Her PhD research project seeks to foreground rather than elide the lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) speakers and writers of World Englishes; to critique mainstream writing pedagogies that participate in that elision; and to theorize a translingual pedagogy that provides safe and open spaces for the identities, languages, epistemologies, and discourses of BIPOC to prevail in North American writing classrooms.

In addition to her doctoral studies, Stephanie is an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Sheridan College. She oversees the cross-college English and Communications portfolio, the English Language Studies (ESL) program and the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) Plus graduate certificate.

​Email: j9sander@uwaterloo.ca
LinkedIn: Jerika Sanderson

Jerika Sanderson is a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo. She completed her MA (English) and her BSc (Biological Sciences and English) at Brock University. Her doctoral research is funded by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (2021-2024) and investigates representations of biotechnology and biomedicine in 21^st-century science fiction and science journalism. In general, she is interested in the intersections of biotechnology, biomedicine, environmental issues, and discourse, and her research engages with critical posthumanism and critical medical humanities. She is the recipient of the Provost Doctoral Entrance Award for Women (2019), the Waterloo Special Graduate Student Entrance Award (2019), the Lea Vogel-Nimmo English Graduate Professionalization Award (2020), and the Rhetoric Essay Prize (2021).

​Email: sasgandu@uwaterloo.ca

Sabrina Alicia Sgandurra (HBA Ryerson University, MA University of Waterloo) is a PhD student specializing in games studies. As a resident of the Games Institute and as a student, her research focuses on the intersection of narrative structures and gameplay in role-playing (RPG) video games. Her Master’s research project analyzed RPG video games for their narrative structure, discovering a pattern that replicated structures found in medieval and oral storytelling. Her PhD research seeks to extend this by focusing on how that pattern may reflect a current cultural preference for specific types of stories. In addition to her role as a student, she is also currently working at First Person Scholar as the Editor-in-Chief and Book Reviews and Interviews Section Head.

​Email: mshafqatali@uwaterloo.ca

Mohsina Shafqat Ali completed her BA (High Distinction) from the University of Toronto, MA from York University, and World Literature Diploma from York University. She is currently a PhD Candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. Her research interests include South Asian Women’s Life Writing, Postcolonial Studies, Discourse Analysis, Diaspora Studies, Translation Studies, and World Literature. Her MRP responded to the paucity of life writing texts by South Asian women writers who have not been analyzed in the discourse of Postcolonial Studies, Diaspora Studies, and Translation Studies. In order to close the gap of this understudied field, in her dissertation, she plans to continue her investigation of women’s Diasporic Intersubjectivity by examining South Asian Women’s Memoirs from a Transcolonial perspective.

Besides writing for her dissertation, Mohsina likes to expand her teaching skills by attending the courses provided by the University of Waterloo. She has tutored students from Accessibility at the University of Toronto, and was a TA and a GA at the University of Waterloo. She is currently a GI at the University of Waterloo. She has also served as the Co-President for SAGE (Student Association for Graduate in English) at the University of Waterloo. Besides that, she reads for the Puritan Magazine. In her free time (if she has any), she likes to set up her telescope in her backyard to gaze at the moon.

​Email: eshatalo@uwaterloo.ca

I am a PhD student at the English Department of University of Waterloo with the focus on Cultural Studies, Philosophy and Television narratives. I received my BA at Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia, specializing in Philology (namely Russian Language and Literature). There, I wrote my thesis on Vladimir Nabokov and his literary explorations of the cinematic noir genre, which solidified my general interest in visual storytelling and Modernism. I obtained my MA degree from University of Leeds, England, where I studied English Modernist movements and Philosophy. My dissertation thesis from Leeds focused on the problem of self-identification and post-war trauma in the fictional works of Rebecca West, Alain Robbie-Grillet and Ian McEwan. In Leeds I also kept exploring my passion for cinematic perception, this time approaching the TV series Mad Men through the literary-philosophical lens of thing theory.

I came to University of Waterloo to conduct more broad cultural research on televised series as a genre. For the past ten years we have observed how Television narratives have been changing, investing in, as I argue, more complex narrative structures than ever before. The aim of my research is to trace this complexity by applying philosophical, literary and cultural methods of analysis. Narratology, philosophy of language and cultural studies are, therefore, the main fields of my academic interests. 

Email: h3shoaib@uwaterloo.ca

Humaira Shoaib is a PhD student at University of Waterloo. She did her MPhil and MA from Government College University and University of the Punjab, Pakistan respectively. Her research interests include Post-colonial Literature especially Migration Studies and Cognitive Literary Studies. During her MA she received the recognition for Best English Orator by the President of Pakistan (2006). She also won the Academic Merit scholarship (2005-2006) in MA.  She has taught English at University of the Punjab, Pakistan for more than 10 years. She is excited to complement her experience with the academic and professional development opportunities that University of Waterloo offers.  

Profile forthcoming.

Email: mtorbica@uwaterloo.ca

Maša Torbica is a PhD candidate (English Language and Literature) at the University of Waterloo. Maša previously completed her BA (Criminal Justice and Public Policy; English) and MA (English and Theatre Studies) at the University of Guelph. Strongly influenced by her interdisciplinary academic training, her research and teaching interests include rhetoric, Canadian literature, decolonizing pedagogies, creative writing, and research-creation.

Maša’s doctoral dissertation, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, examines the Idle No More movement. She is also completing a multimodal research-creation project titled Fault Lines, supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. Fault Lines explores the complex interactions between displacement, (im)migration, and (de)colonization in the era of global climate crisis. Maša’s critical and creative work appears or is forthcoming in Canadian Literature, 32 Poems, The New Quarterly, The Puritan, Consequence Forum, Portland Review, FreeFall, Versal, and elsewhere.

Maša has taught numerous undergraduate courses at the University of Waterloo and at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her teaching has been recognized by University of Waterloo’s Amit and Meena Chakma Award for Exceptional Teaching by a Student, and the English Department’s Independent​ Graduate Instructor Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Maša works at University of Waterloo’s Writing and Communication Centre and is a fiction editor at The New Quarterly.

​Email: vuher@uwaterloo.ca

Valerie Uher, B.A. (Toronto), M.A. (Ryerson), is a PhD student in the department of English Language and Literature. Valerie’s research, supported by a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, focusses on representations of labour unrest and precarious work in 20^th and 21^st century Canadian literature. Her dissertation addresses the myriad ways in which worker subjectivity is imagined in this literature, and how those representations are impacted by shifting notions of race, gender and citizenship in settler-colonial Canada. 

Valerie is an active member of the GSA., serving as Councillor for English, as well as working as a volunteer for the UW chapter of the Fight for Fifteen and Fairness, an advocacy group that supports students in their fight for improved working conditions. A life-long educator, Valerie is the grateful recipient of the T.A. Award for Excellence in Teaching (2020). 

 

Email: jveitch@uwaterloo.ca

Julie Veitch completed a BA (Honours English, Minor History) at Ryerson University and MA (English Language and Literature) at Brock University. Now a PhD student in the English Language and Literature department at the University of Waterloo, her research focuses on the horror genre, Gothic literature, and detective fiction in all forms of media. In particular, she is interested in exploring the emergence and development of the (often supernatural/occult) horror-detective subgenre, looking at how trends in the genre may be influenced by culture, history, and medium.

Email:mevist@uwaterloo.ca
Twitter: @visticuffs

Elise Vist (BA, MA English, Carleton University) is a PhD candidate studying queer fans and our relationships to each other and our fandoms. Her research is grounded in contemporary feminisms, queer theory and queer phenomenology, as well as fan studies and literary theory, but is most importantly ethnomethodological. Her dissertation (currently titled "Longing for Queerness in the NHL: Intimate Fandoms and Hockey Real Person Fanfiction") argues that some fandoms operate like intimate publics online, especially when their needs and desires are unwelcome in public fandom spaces.  She has also written about queer games, queerbaiting, and immersion for First Person Scholar, where she is now producing podcasts that introduce quarterly special issues.  These days, you can find her running around the Arts areas of campus, as she also works with the Writing and Communication Centre to help support first year Arts students learning different ways to write and communicate.

Email: k3ward@uwaterloo.ca

Profile forthcoming.

Email: hwatts@uwaterloo.ca

Hannah Watts is a PhD candidate in English Literature focussing on modern and contemporary Irish and North American poetry, and disability studies. She received her BA Hons. and MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Windsor, with a minor in Classical Studies during her BA. 

Hannah is also working on an interdisciplinary project for developing useful interventions for underrepresented STEM students. She teaches critical reading and writing at the BC Institute of Technology.  

​Email: a4weiler@uwaterloo.ca

Andrew Weiler is a PhD student in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. He is the recipient of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship for his work on novelist and poet Charlotte Brontë. His MA thesis, Charlotte Brontë’s Spiritual Vision, was published in 2019.

His dissertation research includes embodied learning, cognitive literary studies, and composition pedagogies. These diverse academic interests stem from professional experience and prior education. Teaching a variety of subjects from grades K-12, and first-year writing courses at multiple universities, Andrew has worked with the Ojibwa people of Shoal Lake 40 Indigenous Reserve (near Winnipeg), in southwest Saskatchewan, and southern Ontario. He graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a bachelor of education and from the University of Windsor with an MA Thesis in English Language and Literature.

Andrew currently instructs ENGL 109 Academic Writing and Somatic Literacies at the University of Waterloo, and has been published with the Brontë Studies Journal (Taylor and Francis):

“An Orphan’s Dissent: Charlotte Brontë’s Spiritual Vision in Jane Eyre” (2022). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14748932.2022.2121626

Email: sa2zafar@uwaterloo.ca

Sonia Zafar is a PhD student in English Literary Studies. Her research interests include Feminist and Post-colonial Research Studies. She did her MS from Lahore College for Women University, Pakistan, in English Literature.  She has also worked at the University of Engineering and Technology Lahore, Pakistan as a Lecturer under the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. Her previous research at the University of Waterloo focused on the South Asian Muslims as Model Minorities within the diaspora fiction of the South Asian Anglophone writers. She is particularly interested in exploring the experiences of postcolonial diaspora and depicting the identity deconstructions due to their displacements.