PhD students

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

Sadia Afrin is a PhD student under the stream of Rhetoric and Communication Design at the Department of English Language and Literature in the University of Waterloo. She has completed her B.A and M.A in English Literature from Jahangirnagar University of Bangladesh, her country of origin. She has also completed M.Ed in English Education at the Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum of the College of Education, University of Oklahoma, U.S. Her PhD research area combines Postcolonial studies and Educational studies to inform teaching writing to multilingual learners in Higher Education at the West, empowered with praxis, dialogue, and social justice. She is currently working with interests in Brazilian revolutionist Paulo Freire’s educational pedagogy, critical thinking, neocolonialism, hybrid generation, and Third space.  Her Master’s thesis in English literature was on Marxist study of Spanish poems of Pablo Neruda and Cesar Valejo. Her Master’s in Education was on comparative study of educational systems of Finland and Bangladesh. She has published a book chapter titled: “Trajectories of Language, Culture, and Geography in Postcolonial Bangladesh” in the book named Handbook of the Changing World Language Map published by Springer International Publishing.

​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: r3anders@uwaterloo.ca
Twitter: @beckyanderson35​
LinkedIn: Rebecca Anderson

Becky Anderson completed a BA (English; French Studies) and MA (Literary Studies) at Waterloo. Now a PhD candidate, she’s also pursuing a concurrent Graduate Diploma in Cognitive Science. She’s the recipient of the Provost Doctoral Entrance Award (2015-2016), a Jack Gray Fellowship (2016-2017), a W.K. Thomas Graduate Scholarship (2017-2018), and an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2017-2018). Funded by a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, her dissertation examines how virtual communities are created in massively multi-player online role-playing games and explores what kinds of self-construction emerge in these digital locales and how such self-construction reciprocally affects the living culture of the game. She’s also a researcher at The Games Institute and an Associate Editor at First Person Scholar.

​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

Bio forthcoming

Email: s3beresford@uwaterloo.ca

Sally Beresford, B.A. Hons, (English; Philosophy; History, Redeemer University) and MA (Literary Studies, University of Waterloo) is a PhD Candidate at the University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on women’s detective fiction of the interwar period in Britain and the creation of reading communities by the authors through the 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.

Email: ebrey@uwaterloo.ca
Twitter: @BetsyBrey

Betsy Brey (BA and MA, University of Minnesota Duluth) is a PhD candidate specializing in game studies. Her research focuses on the intersections of narratological structure, social context, and gameplay. In particular, she's interested in how players understand and interpret narrative forms in role-playing games and metagames. Her work is inspired by intersectional feminism, knowledge mobilization, and accessible scholarship. Her research and projects have been supported through the ReFig grant, the IMMERSe research network, a  Mitacs partnership, and The Games Institute. She is the Editor-in-Chief for First Person Scholar. Her writing has been featured in The Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, as well as in several book chapters on player control, storytelling, and agency in games.

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: s37mathe@uwaterloo.ca

Sarah Currie is a doctoral student in the emergent field of MAD STUDIES, a rhetorical intersection of medicalized humanities, disability studies and postpsychiatry. Mad studies is an academic and grassroots hybrid initiative advocating for survivors of the broken mental illness treatment system currently practiced in Canada and the U.S. 

Sarah completed her MA in English and Film Studies with a specialization in poststructuralism at Wilfrid Laurier University before moving to UW for the chance to work with Dr Jay Dolmage. She is a big believer in research initiatives with realizable grassroots impact — the work is worth doing if you’re meaningfully impacting the lives of those without the same access.

 

Email: mdomonch@uwaterloo.ca

Bio forthcoming

Email: j2doyle@uwaterloo.ca

Jennifer Doyle, BA (Mount Allison University), BFA (Mount Allison University), BEd (Memorial University), MA (Wilfrid Laurier University), has research interests that include ecocriticism, American Literature, psychoanalysis, and concepts of place and being. She has just begun work on her dissertation.

 

Email: jehrentr@uwaterloo.ca

Judy Ehrentraut , B.A. (University of Toronto), M.A. (Carleton University) is a PhD candidate specializing in digital humanities, new media and games studies. Her research interests include agency and identity in role-playing games, immersion and interactivity, spatial theory, cybercultures, and utopian/dystopian themes in games and literature. She is particularly interested in avatars and player representation in simulated realities, and how those realities are modeled to challenge current social and political issues globally. As a member of the Games Institute, one of her current projects is the development of a generative narratology application for in-game communication and storytelling.member of the Games Institute, one of her current projects is the development of a generative narratology application for in-game communication and storytelling.

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

Lara El Mekkawi completed a BA (English) at Notre Dame University- Louaize, and an MA (English Literature) at the American University of Beirut.  She is currently a PhD student in English at the University of Waterloo. She is the recipient of the Provost Doctoral Entrance Award for Women (2019). Her research interests are in Cosmopolitanism and World Literature; Lara studies the complicated connotations behind being a part of the world. She also freelances as a book editor. She has edited Nadia Tabbara’s debut book Harness Your Creativity (2018) and co-edited a poetry collection titled And We Chose Everything (2018), and is currently editing Nour Abou Fayad’s debut novel The Complete Opposite of Everything (2019).

​Email: egelamyo@uwaterloo.ca

Elianne 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: 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: k2gerber@uwaterloo.ca

Kyle Gerber, BA (Laurier) MA (Waterloo) BEd (Laurier), is a PhD candidate in the department of English Language and Literature. He is working 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 recent SSHRC Doctoral Scholarship. He enjoys teaching, and has several nominations for the TA Award for Excellence in Teaching. 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 on their old stone house, and moonlighting as a mandolin player in his side-hustle bluegrass band.

Christopher Giannakopoulos, (BA, MA Waterloo) is a third-year doctoral candidate  specializing in rhetorical studies and contemporary literature of the UK. In his research, Chris investigates how a handful of late-twentieth century poets develop interdisciplinary poetics as a way of engaging traditional discourses for knowing (philosophy, history, theology, etc.) through their poetry. Drawing on the poetics of etymology, the rhetorics of argumentation, and the inventive possibilities of poetic form, Chris’s research explores how language both produces—and in some cases obstructs—the paths towards knowledge.

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

​Email: igibson@uwaterloo.ca

Ian Gibson, BAH (Queen's), MA (Trent), is a second-year PhD candidate in the department of English Language and Literature. He has research interests in literary theory, in 19^th and 20^th century American literature and theology, and in just about any form of dialogue between literature and philosophy. His dissertation is an attempt to develop a claim about the nature of experience in the American poet Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss.

Some other interests include: the Frankfurt School (specifically Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno), philosophy of language, theology, existentialism, rhetoric, imagination, and cognitive science. And less literary/philosophical: climbing, running, camping, horror movies, video games, cartoons, and playing the drums.

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: a3irwin@uwaterloo.ca

Ashley Irwin, BA and MA (University of Guelph), is a PhD Candidate at the University of Waterloo. Her research interests include discourse analysis, gender and sexuality, critical race theory, Black Canadian literature and history, and literary theory. Her dissertation analyzes the discourse used in Canadian news media sources to marginalize anti-racist activism when framing instances of Black Canadian uprising. Ashley published an article in Borders Undergraduate Arts Research Journal entitled “Grieving the Ungrievable: Negation and Recognition in Execution Poems” (2012) and was nominated for the Associate VP Academic Teaching Assistant Award of Excellence (2014). She is the winner of the Lea Vogel-Nimmo English Graduate Professionalization Award (2017), the Arts Senate Award (2017), and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2017).

Email: z2jafari@uwaterloo.ca

Zahra Jafari, B.A and M.A (University of Isfahan), M.A (UWaterloo), is a PhD Candidate in the department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. Her interests include rhetoric, women studies, Shakespeare, metaphor studies, film studies and audiovisual translation.

​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: mekamphe@uwaterloo.ca

Monique Kampherm, BA ACS-Public Administration and Public Policy; Political Science (Western University), MA Political Science (Western University), MA Journalism (Bournemouth University), MA English-Rhetoric (University of Waterloo), is a PhD candidate in English-Rhetoric at the University of Waterloo.

Monique’s doctoral research focuses on rhetoric, digital media, and democratic engagement. She is examining the rhetorical influence of digital media in persuading democratic participation during elections.

Monique is a recipient of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2018-2019) and the President’s Graduate Scholarship at the University of Waterloo (2018-2019). She is also named the RhetCanada 2018 Graduate Student Prize Winner by the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric for her paper, “Democratic Prosopopoeia: The Rhetorical Influence of Embodying a Political Statement Online,” which was presented at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences conference.

In addition to her diverse scholarly background, her past professional experiences as a policy advisor for the infrastructure and realty arm of the Government of Ontario, journalistic experiences with Sky News Business and BBC Watchdog in England, and educational experiences as an instructor (University of Waterloo), course director (York University), and partial-load professor in English (Sheridan; Seneca College) have helped 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 Sociolinguistic.

​Email: abkhaliq@uwaterloo.ca

Asma Khaliq, BA (Honours English Literature; Double Specialization in Digital Media Studies and English Literature in a Global Context English) and MA (Rhetoric and Communication Design) is a PhD student at Waterloo. She has a research interest in the visual and rhetorical design of websites and online communities such as Reddit and Facebook with regards to medical self-diagnosis, credibility, and the spread of information and misinformation. Asma’s other pursuits include graphic design, marketing, and communications.

Email: s2kiani@uwaterloo.ca

Sam Kiani completed her BA and MA in English Literature in Iran. She is currently working on her PhD dissertation under the supervision of Dr. Heather Smyth. Her research focuses on the dynamics of gender, sexuality, race, and diaspora in Anglophone Caribbean literature. Her interests include postcolonialism, Caribbean Literature, Diaspora studies, and women's writing.

Email: js2kim@uwaterloo.ca

​Email: k4lubin@uwaterloo.ca

Kem-Laurin Kramer completed an Honours BA at the University of Ottawa and an M.A in the Rhetoric and Professional Writing stream at the University of Waterloo. She has returned years later, after a career in Design, to begin a Ph.D., continuing her journey in the Digital stream of the program, where she will focus on the Rhetoric of human interaction in the context of Smart Cities.
 
Kem is also the author of a design text User Experience in the Age of Sustainability, an accredited Innovation coach and Design Strategist. Kem-Laurin brings over 15 years of practical experience and foresight into next level Design consulting that understands the changing needs of business delivery. Kem-Laurin has worked in a wide range of design spaces including, Cloud, Web & Mobile, Logistics & Assembly; Mobile, Energy & Automation; Postal Automation, Medical Imaging & Health Information Systems. She drove the institutionalization of design at Siemens, Blackberry along with numerous consultancy roles, including the hands-on building of the Toronto-based Platform Maidstr. She led the visual redesign of the multi-layered 3D Animation software Maya®, the industry's leader in 3D animation software. She is also the holder of several mobile patents. She is mum to two boys and a rambunctious German Sheppard.

Email: jlajoie@uwaterloo.ca

​Jason Lajoie is a PhD candidate in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. He graduated Magna Cum Laude with an Honours BA in English Literature and Theatre, and an MA in English Literature from the University of Ottawa. He has been the recipient of a Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Master's Scholarship, two Ontario Graduate Scholarships for his PhD and the WK Thomas Graduate Scholarship. His dissertation, "Gayming an Identity: Queer Media Technology, Queer Media Practices from 1890-2017" uses a mixed methodologies approach to study how gay identities are constructed and negotiated through media and technology, particularly in domains like online game communities and social media. 

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 student in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. She completed her Honours BA in English Literature and Rhetoric at the University of Waterloo (2016) and her MA at Western’s Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism (2019). She has been the recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canadian Graduate Scholarship (2018) and the Provost Doctoral Entrance Award for Women (2019).

Shannon’s main research interests include rhetoric, semiotics, Canadian studies, and discourse analysis. Her master’s thesis examined the role of myth, as defined by Barthes, in the construction of Canadian national identity. In her dissertation, she plans to investigate the ways in which Canada has been symbolically represented to its citizens, how these representations have shaped current attitudes and sentiments about the Canadian nation, and their potential social, political, and environmental ramifications.

​Email: lndaviso@uwaterloo.ca

Bio forthcoming

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 research-creation dissertation, “I AM OLOLON: Transperforming William Blake’s Eve, Ololon, and Oothoon,” focuses on Romantic Period and contemporary transgender visual culture as they “drag up” their academic writing to embody their research.

In addition to their doctoral studies, Tommy is also an Educational Developer in Office of Teaching and Learning (OTL) at the University of Guelph. They are also the Associate Director for the Science Library Project at the University of Pittsburgh with Dr. Sarah Ruffell, and together, Sarah and Tommy have been awarded an Innovation in Education Award from the University of Pittsburgh’s Advisory Council on Instructional Excellence (ACIE) as well as a Learning Enhancement Fund (LEF) grant from the University of Guelph’s Office of the Associate Vice-President Academic for their writing and multimodal communication science communication project.

Email: lmeaning@uwaterloo.com

Lindsay Meaning is a PhD student in the English department of the University of Waterloo. She previously studied English Literature at Wilfrid Laurier University, and completed a Master’s in Experimental Digital Media at Waterloo. Her research lies in the field of Game Studies, focusing on representations of imperial ideologies and colonial practices in strategy and role-playing video games. Further interests include digital life writing, fan communities, and Victorian women’s writing.

Houman Mehrabian, completed his MA (English Literature) at the University of Tehran. He is currently a doctoral candidate in the department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo, studying the history and theory of rhetoric and William Shakespeare. He is particularly interested in ancient Greek and Roman texts on the art of persuasion (Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian) and the role of rhetorical argumentation in Shakespeare’s tragedies. Houman is also a recipient of the 2017 Amit and Meena Chakma Award for Exceptional Teaching by a Graduate Student.

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

Diana Moreno Ojeda is a PhD student at the University of Waterloo, where she also completed an MA in English, Rhetoric and Communication Design. Her research focuses on Artificial Intelligence, in particular text generation through Actor-Critic methods (where networks train other networks). Before coming to Waterloo Diana completed her BA in Art History and Theory, with a minor in Philosophy, at Los Andes University in Colombia. After which, her love for Orientalist paintings and geometric art forms took her to the Middle East, where she experienced the wonders of Islamic art while completing an MA in English Language Teaching at the University of Tabriz, Iran.

Email: devon.moriarty@uwaterloo.ca 
LinkedIn: Devon Moriarty
Twitter: @devmoriarty
Website:Devon Moriarty
ResearchGate

Devon Moriarty completed her BA (Psychology), MA (English, Rhetoric and Communication Design), and GDip (Cognitive Science) at the University of Waterloo. As a SSHRC-funded doctoral candidate (English, Rhetoric), Devon’s work examines how science communication and political communication unfolds on online social voting communities like Reddit, and has appeared in a variety of journals including Technical Communication Quarterly and Social Epistemology. She is working to find ways to leverage virality in these established, democratically-oriented online communities to the benefit of a more inclusive democracy in Canada where citizens can participate meaningfully in political life by capitalizing on the affordances of virtual platforms.

Email: edeshane@uwaterloo.ca
Website: evedeshane.wordpress.com

Evelyn Morton's creative and nonfiction work has appeared in The Atlantic’s tech channel, Plenitude Magazine, Briarpatch Magazine, StrangeHorizons, Lackington's, and Bitch Magazine, among other publications. Evelyn (pron. Eve-a-lyn) received an MA from Trent University’s Public Texts Program after completing a Gender Studies and English Literature BAH at Trent years earlier. Evelyn’s current dissertation examines adapting transgender narratives from medical texts, memoirs, and novels to film and other digital media.

Email: rtmorton@uwaterloo.ca

R. Travis Morton is a game studies scholar pursuing his PhD at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, studying collective identity-building online through ostention and legend-tripping. He is also an online journalist, writing articles for Lost Hemisphere and other online periodicals. 

Email: gnorthco@uwaterloo.ca

Graeme Northcote​, homo sapien sapien (occasionally living up to the name), BA Honours (English and Philosophy, University of Guelph), MA (North American Literature, the University of Guelph), is a PhD student here at the University of Waterloo, with a dual specialty in rhetoric and media studies. When he isn’t referring to himself in the third person, he is working to apply ecocritical and semiotic systems of analysis to discussions of modern technostructures. His research aims to explore the mythological rhetoric of communication and transportation infrastructures.

Specifically, he seeks to critically engage with how these technologies operate as highly concentrated symbolic matrices that encode powerful and pervasive cultural narratives of what it means to be human and our place in relation to non-human animals and the rest of the living world.

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

Zach Pearl is a PhD student in the English Language and Literature program. His research centres on fictocriticism—a method of writing that blends fictional narrative with critical theoretical frameworks—as well as its relationship to cybernetics and post-Internet culture. Additional interests include media arts, virtuality, smart environments and histories of technology. Zach’s research and methods are often interdisciplinary. 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 towards his dissertation, Zach maintains a professional practice as a designer, curator and arts writer. He has produced public programs and exhibition texts for a wide range of organizations, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Vtape, the Subtle Technologies Festival, Eastern Edge and the Gladstone Hotel. His academic writing has appeared in Art & Education (e-flux/Artforum).

​Email: ddpinhei@uwaterloo.ca

Dakota Pinheiro is a Ph. D. student in the department of English Literature. He completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in Honours English Literature at the University of Waterloo, graduating with several grade average awards and with the Dean’s List distinction. Dakota went on to complete his Master of Arts degree in English Literature at the University of Toronto.

As a Ph. D. student at the University of Waterloo, Dakota’s research interests are 19^th and 20^th century American literature, though he is especially interested with the opus of John Steinbeck and the relationship between literature (and mythologies of literary quality and significance) with the American public consciousness. Dakota is also interested in drawing comparisons between literary developments and shifts in public opinion, such as the dissent generated, and the pressure exerted when literary works transcend the written page and manifest aspects of themselves and their messages or critiques in their contemporary, as well as our contemporary, world.

​Email: tsracico@uwaterloo.ca

Toben Racicot, BA Creative Writing (BYUI), MA Rhetoric and Communication Design (University of Waterloo), is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Waterloo. 

Toben’s research focuses on role-playing games, player characters and avatars, adaptation theory, and comic book narratives. He is examining player-to-character interactions when characters are adapted from another storytelling medium.

Toben is the co-host and producer of The Games Institute Podcast, interviewing student and faculty researchers from the Games Institute and The University of Waterloo. He’s presented research papers, "Superheroes Beyond Cliche…Invincible" at Comics Forum 2018 in Leeds, UK and “Trauma and Demogorgons: Analyzing Dungeons & Dragons in Stranger Things” at MAPACA 2018 in Baltimore, Maryland.

In addition to academic work, Toben is very involved in the independent comic book scene as a writer, letterer, and designer. He writes Crown & Anchor, a sci-fi fantasy pirate adventure comic that his wife, Alaire Racicot, illustrates. The first volume was successfully crowdfunded through Kickstarter in Spring 2019. He wrote the four chapter mini-series: The Bad Guys: The Ballad of Greg and Chad on Webtoons. He also letters many comics including Beastlands, Menagerie, Leaders of the Free World, and many others.

Supervisor: Dr. Neil Randall

Email: jrawding@uwaterloo.ca
​
Jay Rawding, BA (University of New Brunswick, Saint John) and MA (University of Toronto), has interests in Canadian literature and ecocriticism. His research analyzes existing literary works that have originated from, and are about, northern Alberta. By studying how the land, history, and culture have previously been represented in texts, he establishes connections with contemporary narratives that characterize this highly contested region. Other interests include romanticism, postcolonial literature, and American literature.

 

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: meghan.riley@uwaterloo.ca
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.ca/in/meghankriley
Twitter: www.twitter.com/meghan_k_riley
Office: PAS 2222

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Meghan K. Riley (BA and MA, University of Michigan-Flint) is a doctoral candidate studying the ways in which writers of colour in speculative fiction represent the tensions between essentialism and hybridity, as well as how the reading and watching of speculative fiction can be utilized to improve the ways secondary and postsecondary students and instructors can think and talk about race and gender together. Currently her research projects include an article on depictions of race, gender, and reproduction in shows such as Star Trek, Continuum, and Orphan Black, and an article on the relevance of fMRIs on postpartum depressed women and men to provide a model for feminist science. Meghan's research has been generously funded by the Ontario Trillium Scholarship and Ontario Graduate Scholarship.

Meghan's research interests and career trajectories have been influenced by her secondary school and adult education teaching history. At the University of Waterloo, Meghan has continued to engage with student-centred learning and student services through employment at the Student Success Office and Centre for Teaching Excellence, and through founding a teaching support network for English grad students: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ENGLteachingnetwork/

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

Stephanie Samboo has a Bachelor of Arts (English) and Master of Arts (English Studies) from the National University of Singapore. She is also TESL (Teaching English as Second Language) certified, a CLPBT (Canadian 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 focuses on how existing models of composition pedagogy marginalize the voices of English Language Learners in the post-secondary classroom and explores ways to mitigate this issue using the concept of translingual studies.

​Email: j9sander@uwaterloo.ca

Jerika Sanderson is a PhD student at the University of Waterloo. She is the recipient of the Provost’s Doctoral Entrance Award for Women (2019-2020), and her research interests include contemporary speculative fiction, ecocriticism, critical posthumanism, and animal studies. She completed a BSc in Biological Sciences and English Language and Literature and an MA in English (Text/Community/Discourse) at Brock University.

​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 Associate Commentaries Editor.

​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: djsikkema@uwaterloo.ca

Douglas Sikkema, BA (Redeemer University College), MA (University of Ottawa), BEd (University of Toronto), is currently doing work in 20th century American literature and ecocriticism. His work explores the idea of "disenchantment" and how this has affected the way we think about (and use) language, how we understand the human mind and consciousness, and how we live on the earth. Doug is using the poetry of Christian Wiman and the prose of Wendell Berry and Marilynne Robinson to explore just how the "disenchantment" narrative is breaking down and new avenues are being opened up. Doug has written book chapters on Wendell Berry and Wallace Stegner and on ecocriticism and enchantment.

In addition to his research, Doug has a passion for editing and public policy research. He has published research on health care and education in Ontario and Canada and continues to explore arguments that bolster the institutions that mediate the individual from the State and the Economy.

​Email: mstephany@uwaterloo.ca
Twitter:  https://twitter.com/strongwriting
Website: www.maudestephany.ca 

Maude Stephany is a Ph.D. student in the English Literature and Languages department at the University of Waterloo. Maude can be reached via email at mstephan@uwaterloo.ca and has an office in Hagey Hall 241.  
Maude received both her BA Honours and Master’s degree from The University of Guelph’s School of English and Theatre Studies.  Maude’s fields of interest include transgender and non-binary studies, performance, improvisation, contemporary American and Canadian literatures and media, spatiality, gender, and young adult (especially Steampunk) literature and media.

 
Maude Stephany has been published internationally in children’s and parenting magazines, and her first novel, Delilah, was published in 2012. She is a creator and curator of Steampunk and Victorian inspired art and accessories at The Explorer's Emporium, and creates works that take form in poetry, prose, short stories, novels, articles, paintings, collages, sculptures, presentations, and performances. 

Email: c33taylo@uwaterloo.ca

Christin Taylor studies the evolving nature of internationalization of higher education in Canada and how it impacts the teaching of composition and writing for international students.

​Email: dthiesse@uwaterloo.ca

Email: mtorbica@uwaterloo.ca

Maša Torbica completed her BA (Criminal Justice and Public Policy; English) and MA (English and Theatre Studies) at the University of Guelph. Her teaching and research interests include Canadian literature, rhetoric, social justice movements, and decolonizing pedagogies. Her dissertation (supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) examines affordances for decolonizing communication within contemporary Canadian society. Maša is a fiction editor at The New Quarterly and a co-organizer of the Balderdash Reading Series at Wilfrid Laurier University.

​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 doctoral research focusses on labour unrest, collectivity and migration in 20^th century Canadian literature. Her dissertation addresses how representations of worker subjectivity reflect notions of citizenship in settler-colonial Canada. Valerie is the Graduate Student Association (G.S.A.) representative on S.A.G.E.

Email: jvandeke@uwaterloo.ca
LinkedIn:  jessvdk
Twitter: @jess_vdk

Jessica Van de Kemp, BA (St. Jerome’s), B.Ed (Western), MA (Waterloo), is a PhD candidate studying gender in crime drama TV. Funded by three Ontario Graduate Scholarships (2016–2019), her dissertation examines depictions of gender-based violence in television to advocate for positive change and better representation for women and girls. An educational leader, she’s the recipient of three Awards for Excellence in Teaching (2015, 2016, and 2018). In addition to her work as researcher and teacher, Jessica is also a spoken word activist, whose empowerment of LGBT people in rural communities has been recognized with a Simcoe County Pride Award (2019). To read some of her poetry, visit: canadianpoet.org

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: hwatts@uwaterloo.ca

Hannah Watts is a PhD candidate in English Literature focussing on modern and contemporary 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.

​Email: a4weiler@uwaterloo.ca

I grew up in Kitchener, ON, and completed my MA at the University of Windsor. My research interests include the Romantics, Victorians and Pedagogy. From my MA thesis to current doctoral project, I am interested in the sources of influence on early Victorian British fiction. I completed my Bachelor of Education at the University of Western Ontario, have experience teaching 100 level English courses, and conduct research in this field.

Email: j42yoon@uwaterloo.ca
LinkedIn: John Yoon

John Yoon BA (Honors English, Alberta), MA (Literary Studies, Waterloo) is a PhD candidate at Waterloo. His research interests focuses on the narratology of sports. His dissertation examines the narrative structure of traditional sporting broadcasts and online eSports leagues. John is a member of the Games Institute.