Alisha Stranges, Research Manager

Alisha Stranges is a queer, community-based, public humanities scholar, theatre creator, and performer. She holds an MA in Women & Gender Studies and Sexual Diversity Studies from the University of Toronto. At present, she serves as Research Manager for the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory (PI Elspeth Brown).

Ola Alanqar, Art History (FAS)

Ola Alanqar is a Palestinian-Canadian interdisciplinary artist, designer, and graduate student in art history at the University of Toronto. As a mother of four, Ola understands how important it is for families to connect with their roots and develop a strong identity in today’s fast-changing world. Inspired by Arabic Calligraphy, Sacred Geometry, indigenous arts, and traditional methods of art making, Ola enjoys creating art pieces that aim to manifest the beauty of Islamic arts. Each painting comes as a celebration of a unique story that takes the audience back to the interconnection of history and culture, anchoring the heart and mind.

Ola enjoys using a wide array of mediums, including hand-made watercolours, inks, and shell-gold and finds joy in preparing papers using traditional natural methods. She continuously looks for innovative ways to widen her perspective in her artistic journey. She is working towards her “Ijaza,” or license in Arabic Calligraphy, according to the traditional Ottoman School.

Chloe Bordewich, JHI and CDHI Postdoctoral Fellow (FAS)

Chloe Bordewich is Critical Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute and CDHI. She writes about the history of information and the politics of historical narrative in West Asia and North Africa. Her current book explores citizens’ fight for freer access to information in Egypt in both the past and the present. Chloe received her PhD in history and Middle Eastern studies from Harvard University (2022) and was a postdoctoral fellow at Boston University from 2022–23. She is also co-leader of the Boston Little Syria Project, a public & digital history initiative that documents Boston’s first Arabic-speaking neighborhood.

Zeinab Farokhi, Historical Studies, (UTM)

Dr. Zeinab Farokhi earned her Ph.D. in Women and Gender Studies and Diaspora and Transnational Studies from the University of Toronto. Currently, she serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga and holds the position of SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia University.

Pablo Herra Veitia, Deparment of Arts, Culture, and Media (UTSC)

Pablo D. Herrera Veitia is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Afrosonic Innovation Lab, in the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media, University of Toronto Scarborough. As a poet and pioneering Afro-Cuban rap producer, he is working through the assemblage of Orisa/Ifa worship practice, global hip-hop studies, and multimodal ethnography.

Carl Knappett, Art History (FAS)

Tia Sager, Art History (FAS) and Collaborative Digital Research Space (UTM)

Carl Knappett: I specialize in the Aegean Bronze Age, and Minoan Crete in particular. My main focus currently is the east Cretan site of Palaikastro, where I direct a new excavation project. I continue my research on pottery from a number of other Aegean sites, such as Knossos, Malia, Myrtos Pyrgos, Akrotiri, and Miletus. This multi-sited approach has led me into various kinds of network analysis for investigating regional interactions. My work on pottery relates to an interest I have in material culture generally, and the methodological and theoretical challenges involved in its study. In terms of teaching, my undergraduate classes focus on the east Mediterranean and Aegean in prehistory, and at the graduate level I have offered both specific Aegean topics, and wider explorations of material culture theory.

Tia Sager is a recent PhD graduate of the department of art history at the University of Toronto and interim Senior Research Associate at the Collaborative Digital Research Space at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Her work on Aegean Bronze Age architecture uses digital methods to investigate the social dimensions of space and reuse and rebuilding practices during the Late Bronze Age.

Rebecca Renwick, Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, Professor Emeritus (Medicine)
Francis Routledge, Research Assistant

Francis Routledge is the lead director and producer of Pathways To Belonging. They are also the research assistant on the Pathways to Belonging research team with a background in neuroscience, cinema and media studies, and rehabilitation sciences. They completed their MSc degree at the University of Toronto’s Rehabilitation Sciences Institute where their research was on Autism self-diagnosis from a critical Autism studies lens. Francis has been a part of qualitative research projects on belonging for young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in community life and society. They also work with disabled youth and project partners in disability and sexuality on a knowledge mobilization project titled “We are Sexual Too” at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital.

Dr. Rebecca Renwick was a Professor and is currently a Professor Emeritus (as of Jan. 1, 2024), in the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy and the Graduate Department of Rehabilitation Science at the University of Toronto. She has a PhD in social psychology and is a registered occupational therapist (Ontario). Her most recent program of research focusses on belonging in community and society for young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The three studies associated with this program of research so far have aimed to learn about the perspectives and experiences of these young adults concerning various aspects of belonging from their own perspectives. Each study has taken an inclusive approach in that several young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities are active members of the research team for each study. In terms of methods, all three qualitative studies have used arts-based methods in data generation or knowledge translation, or both.

Seika Boye, Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies (FAS)

Ilana Khanin, Research Assistant and Project Manager

It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada is an exhibit that showcases archival records of Black dance in Canada and additional artistic discourse around these records in our modern lens. Throughout the Accelerator Program, the focus was on improving the website of this exhibit, particularly around improving its usability and reorganizing its contents that better communicates the message and intentions of the exhibit.

Seika Boye is Assistant Professor, Associate Director, Undergraduate at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. She is Director of the Institute for Dance Studies and the PI and curator of It’s About Time: Dancing Black Canada.

Mark Campbell, Department of Arts, Culture and Media (UTSC)

Brittany Channer, Research Assistant

The intended impact of project ONLOCK is to provide access to visual artists (in hip-hop culture) to the tools that will help them protect their artistic works, with the aim to reduce their marginal social relations when it comes to leveraging copyright protections. The Accelerator team designed the Knowledge Portal which primarily will be an educational foundation for artists seeking intellectual property support. Secondarily, the Knowledge Portal will feature content about ONLOCK, the team’s licensing engine. Working with the research team, we helped them consider critical questions about organising all the information on the knowledge portal, and how to interlink the Knowledge Portal and ONLOCK.

Mark V. Campbell (Assistant Professor, Department of Arts, Culture and Media, UTSC) is a DJ, scholar and curator. His research explores the relationships between Afrosonic innovations and notions of the human. Mark is the founding director of the AfroSonic Innovation Lab.

Pamela Klassen, Department for the Study of Religion (FAS)

Krista Barclay, Department for the Study of Religion (FAS)

Mounds & Memory brings together an interdisciplinary network of researchers called the Mounds Research Collective to catalogue, analyze, and remediate historical narratives about the builders of the mounds and and earthworks around the Great Lakes and their connecting rivers. The accelerator team helped the research team brainstorm and conceptualise the website. The major features include adding an engaging and interactive map to showcase the different mounds, and an archive section for users who wish to take a deeper look. Significant thought was also put in to ensure that the design reflected the research team’s vision, by adding elements with different representations of the mounds, and incorporating an appropriate map.

Pamela Klassen (Professor; Chair & Graduate Chair, Department for the Study of Religion, FAS) teaches graduate and undergraduate students in the anthropology and history of Christianity and colonialism in North America and Turtle Island, religion and public memory, and religion, law, media, and gender. She is working on two main projects: a book about the public memory of gold rushes in settler colonies and a collective project on “Mounds and Memory,” in collaboration with Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre, the site of ancient burial mounds stewarded by the Rainy River First Nations.

Krista Barclay (Assistant Professor, Department for the Study of Religion, FAS) is a settler historian with a background in the cultural heritage sector. Her research focuses on histories of families, colonialism, and public memory in Canada in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Irina Mihalache, Faculty of Information

The Building Inclusive Cities (BIC) project is a series of four arts-based workshops, a panel, and digital publications intended to foster intersectional dialogues and knowledge exchange between local community organisers, city planners, and heritage and museum professionals. The Accelerator team helped the BIC brainstorm and finalise the website content, organising it into a user-friendly information architecture, and explore and decide the visual style of the project. The design was made to reflect the team’s values of decentralising the Toronto visuals and representing an inclusive city.

Irina D. Mihalache (she/her) is a recent immigrant who settled in Tkaronto from Romania; she researches and teaches in the areas of museum studies, food studies, community-based museum interpretation, and material cultures at the Faculty of Information.

Alison Mountz, Human Geography (FAS) and OVPRI (UTSC)
Kira Williams, Coordinating Data Scientist

Haven is a new computer lab where human migration scholars, researchers and students alike can access, preserve, publish and analyze migration data. Haven offers a centralized repository and services for managing and storing migration data; it also features a dedicated lab facility for providing access to and selected cutting edge tools (hardware and software) for analyzing these data. We serve to promote and propel research, policymaking and teaching through cleaning, archiving and disseminating data per best standards in data management in international migration with controlled access. Through Haven, we offer a growing catalogue of specialized data-sets and -bases in human migration in order to support innovative research, with novel data for evidence-based policymaking, and a unique teaching resource for students.

Elio Colavito, History (FAS)

My project, “Mapping Transtopia: Trans-Masculine Mutual Aid, Activism, and Community Formation, 1965-2005” is a digital public history exhibit that centers the history of trans-masculine and FTM organizing and community formation. combining trans-masculine oral histories, digitized archival documents and images, and ArcGIS mapping technology used in my dissertation. This exhibit spatializes the mutual aid and resource-sharing networks between trans men from across Canada and the United States. A digital map that traces these letters from sender to sender and city to city illustrates the vastness and complexity of late 20th-century trans-masculine community building, resource-sharing, and identity-making. “Mapping Transtopia” is hosted on ArcGIS StoryMaps, a story-driven web application that integrates digital maps with narrative text and other multimedia content.

Elio Colavito (he/they) is a white transmasculine settler, interdisciplinary scholar, and PhD candidate in the Department of History with a collaborative specialization in Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. He is a public historian, oral historian, and digital humanist whose research centers transmasculine histories of care, mutual aid, and community formation in 20th-century Canada and the United States. With support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Critical Digital Humanities Initiative, University of Toronto, Elio works to make a usable past accessible to trans communities. Elio is a CDHI Graduate Fellow (2023-24).

Matthew Coleman, Art History (FAS)

Taking as its focus the art of the Hellenistic period (323–31 BCE), this dissertation project strives to reconstruct the ‘Popular’ visuality of the ancient world. In antiquity, art beholders engaged in an individualistic viewing experience, relative to their unique identities. In other words, this project seeks to describe how traits like sexuality, gender, class, race, religion, and a variety of factors unique to antiquity, primed ancient viewers to react in particular ways to ancient Hellenistic sculpture. Often overlooked textual sources for viewers who ‘mis-read’, ‘mis-interpret’, or ‘mis-understand’ works of art will be re-evaluated, with new translations and Corpus Linguistic strategies, as valid accounts of material culture aligned with personal experience. To turn our work toward the contemporary public, a Participatory Visual study conducted with a group of diverse modern beholders will be compared with our ancient data using an analogous active viewership of popular art beholders in today’s world.

Matthew C. Coleman is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History, supervised by Dr. Björn C. Ewald. Before joining the Ph.D. program at U of T, Matthew received his B.A. (2018) and M.A. (2020) in the Classical Studies department at the University of Waterloo, specializing in ancient languages. His Master’s thesis focused on the purposes for antiquities collection and the aim of sculpture display in the Italian Renaissance. His current research interests include studies in viewership and the ancient body in figural sculpture, modern antiquarianism, classical reception, and ancient Greek poetry. Centrally, however, Matthew focuses on Hellenistic art (esp. sculpture) and its afterlife in post-antique cultures. In the Art History department at U of T, Matthew continues his exploration of the many ways in which individuals and societies, from antiquity to the present day, interact with the material culture of the ancient world. Matthew was a CDHI Graduate Fellow (2022–23).

Mohamed Dasu, Digital Humanities Minor (Woodsworth)

Hurricane Maria in 2017 catalyzed the emergence and intensification of Private Military Contractor (PMC) presence on Puerto Rican city streets. These PMCs, primarily Constellis, claimed that they are instilling order and stability in the aftermath of the hurricane. PMCs were hired to, as job postings suggest, provide humanitarian aid and professional security services, and to tactfully deal with the public. In the broader context of Puerto Rico’s trajectory of increasing militarization of state police, I explore the legitimization rhetoric and narratives used by PMCs in Puerto Rico to justify their operations and presence, especially where civilian operators could have been just as or more suitable. To make this rhetoric digitally legible and ready for analysis, I compiled it into a database that can be compared to PMC rhetoric and legitimization narratives in other post-natural disaster contexts – such as Hurricane Katrina. I specifically draw from news articles, job postings, and speeches.

Mohamed is completing his Honours B.A. with a double major in Sociology and Peace, Conflict, and Justice studies, as well as a minor in Digital Humanities. He has previously received scholarships and awards for his research and proposals on the Taliban takeover in 2021 and on preventing and resolving intra-village conflicts among individuals and groups near Bharuch, India. He was drawn to Digital Humanities research after being introduced to the field through digital visualization and archival projects on medieval Islamicate literature. In his down time, Mohamed enjoys pursuing personal long-term projects, such as learning formal Urdu and Farsi, and reaching new personal records at the gym.

Roxana Escobar Nanez, Geography & Planning (FAS)

This presentation sheds light on the different ways in which music and blackness are integral to the formation of the Black geographies of the South through the case of the López sisters, two Afro-mestizas who own and run a peña criolla—a criollo music venue—in Lima, Peru, since 1974. Criollismo or criollo culture is a mix of different popular traditional expressions of the coast of Peru mainly associated with Limeño’s working-class cultural productions such as gastronomy, musical production, and everyday life. By analyzing the position of Afro-peruanas as peña owners and performers of criollo music, my research seeks to understand Afro-descendant women’s musical spatialities as essential to Lima’s urban blackness.

Roxana Escobar Ñañez is an Afro-Peruvian Ph.D. candidate in Human Geography. She also holds a B.A. in Philosophy and a M.A. in Political Science by the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, and M.Ed in Social Justice Education from OISEUofT. Roxana’s research focuses on the places Afro-Peruvian women hold in Lima’s sonic landscapes. With her project, Roxana seeks to contribute to the geographic knowledge production about black womanhood in Latin America. Roxana is a CDHI Graduate Fellow (2023–24).

Mathew Iantorno, Faculty of Information

This research poster will present the findings of Toronto 14-24, a data visualization project mapping the expansion of retail automation within Toronto, Ontario. Over the past decade, Toronto has seen the arrival of numerous autonomous businesses, ranging from robotic coffee automats, to cashier-less grocery stores, to 24/7 pizza vending machines. Although often advertised as leveraging innovative new technologies to provide unparalleled contactless convenience, these novel forms of retail automation often reconfigure labour practices, consumer responsibility, and public space in unexpected ways. Toronto 14-24 employs ArcGIS to visually map these reconfigurations on Toronto’s streets. Through a blend of onsite photography, providence research, and Google Street View data, the project illustrates the transition from traditional to autonomous businesses on a location-by-location basis from 2014 through to 2024. In addition to summarizing general trends within Canadian retail automation, this research poster will include a QR code linking to the Toronto 14-24 project itself.

Mathew Iantorno (he/him) is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. His research explores how novel forms of retail automation—from coffee-dispensing automats to sidewalk delivery robots—reconfigure labour practices, consumer responsibility, and public space. Matthew is a CDHI Graduate Fellow (2023-24). This fellowship has supported his development of Toronto 14-24, a data visualization project mapping the expansion of retail automation within Toronto, Ontario over the past decade. His research is further supported by a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship – Doctoral and a School of Cities Graduate Fellowship—and is further informed through his ongoing volunteer work with the Design Justice Network.

Devashish Khare, Digital Humanities Minor (Woodsworth)

Stemming from the tales of child migrants, “El Sueño De América” addresses the plight of undocumented migrants who are often exploited and used as political fodder. Fleeing to the USA in hopes of a better life, the American Dream that these migrants get is apprehension and fear, persecution and deportation, and underpaid jobs. Contextualized with the America Ouroboros dealing with terror and repression by Professor Jennifer Ross, the project aims to portray the humans behind the number, stories that border agents (or private mercenaries) may easily discount and families that have their entire lives altered, all in the pursuit of “The American Dream.”

Devashish is a 4th year international student in the Rotman Commerce Management Specialist program, with minors in Economics and Digital Humanities. Having prior experience as a research assistant on The Scarborough Social Atlas, he is excited to examine intersections of the digital and physical worlds that we inhabit today. From “Bandhan – The Bonds of Belonging,” a project on immigrants finding home in Scarborough to “Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan!,” a personal reflection of life in the metro that is Mumbai, Devashish loves examining identities and the way they play out for people.

Amrita Kumar-Ratta, Geography & Planning (FAS)

The topic of sexual and reproductive health is often shrouded in secrecy and shame within diasporic Punjabi communities. In Canada, damage-centered and ‘victim-oriented’ narratives of Punjabi women’s sexual and reproductive lives are all-pervasive. In this context, creative, community-centered, and care-based practices help elicit radical vulnerability around nuanced embodied experiences that are difficult to verbalize. The application of these kinds of approaches to research on the socio-spatial politics of sexual and reproductive health among racialized transmigrant diasporas remains limited. I thus use critical ethnography, affective and arts-based storytelling to re-center Punjabi’s women’s voices and sexual and reproductive experiences. From 2021-23, I combined analysis of select policy and media documents around forced/fraudulent marriage, sex-selective abortion, and family violence among Punjabis in Canada with interviews with South-Asian subject matter experts in/around Brampton, ON and Surrey, BC. I also conducted six storytelling workshops with multi-generational Punjabi women in these places; these included oral storytelling, body mapping, and writing about participants’ sexual and reproductive experiences, perspectives, and imaginations. Throughout, I kept field diaries to reflect on the research process. This approach reveals multiple spatialities and temporalities of sexual and reproductive surveillance and struggle among multigenerational Punjabi women in/around Brampton and Surrey, Canada. Furthermore, it offers transformative possibilities for re-mapping and re-imagining sexual and reproductive life and envisioning more desirable futures within and beyond ‘Punjabi Canada’.

Amrita Kumar-Ratta is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. The founder and curator of Shades of Brown Girl, a global creative storytelling and community healing initiative, she works at the intersection of poetic and performance arts, academia, and transformative justice activism. Her doctoral research explores the politics of sexual and reproductive violence and resistance in sub-urban Ontario and British Columbia using critical ethnography as well as arts-based storytelling tools. With her research, Amrita seeks to contribute to knowledge production about Punjabi femininity, sexuality, and reproductive justice in Canada, and to decolonial and co-creative research processes and practices within and beyond the academy. Amrita is a CDHI Graduate Fellow (2023-24).

Patricia Landolt, Sociology (UTSC)

Paul Pritchard, Sociology (FAS)

Shanice Burton, Peace and Conflict Studies (UTSG)

Adam Filippelli, City Studies, Geography and GIS Minor (UTSC)

Farzana Rahman, International Development Studies (UTSC)

Haven Clare Townsend, Geography & International Development Studies (UTSC)

Quieting and Reclamation is a collaborative project with undergraduate students at UTSC that tracks the legal, social and cultural practices that constitute the University of Toronto Scarborough into a place, from settler contact in the late 1700s to the present. We use the legal term “quieting” to refer to the process by which settlers and the settler-colonial state continually work to quiet Aboriginal title and erase sovereign Indigenous presence on the land. Reclamation refers to the Indigenous assertion and enforcement of sovereignty and jurisdiction over lands and waters. The research project uses digital tools (ArcGIS StoryMap, FieldMaps, Survey123) and different data types and sources to track the perennial hostility between quieting and reclamation. The poster will feature elements of the data in which the critical digital humanities methodology has allowed us to identify and challenge some of hegemonic settler-colonial fantasies that have turned the land into the UTSC campus in ways that engage in settler-colonial quieting.

Patricia Landolt is professor of sociology. Her research examines the relationship between global migration and social inequality with a focus on the politics of non/citizenship and community-engaged research methods.
Haven is a researcher and advocate passionate about the intersections of land, kinship, and care, especially as they relate to the experiences of young caregivers navigating stigma and institutional harm. They bring a toolkit of participatory research methods, GIS and spatial analysis skills, and a deep commitment to community-led, story-telling justice to their work mobilizing care and grief in advancing equity in the space of health and legal geographies.

Celina Lee and Christina Zhao, Digital Humanities Minor (Woodsworth)

This project aims to connect heraldic imagery on French baptismal fonts from the 15th to 16th centuries with the ICONCLASS controlled vocabulary system, enhancing the Baptisteria Sacra Index (BSI) and facilitating its integration into global databases via Linked Open Data. Through collaborative teamwork between the authors, we updated existing datasets to include ICONCLASS codes and analyzed the data to offer a new perspective on the distribution and significance of heraldic symbols across France during this period. The study focuses on a detailed analysis of heraldic designs, applying the ICONCLASS system for categorization and aiming for future application in mapping through Leaflet. This interdisciplinary approach combines art history, heraldry, and digital humanities methodologies to improve the interoperability and accessibility of the BSI project, contributing to broader academic discussions and research on heraldry’s role in its historical identity.

Celina Lee (she/her) is a fifth-year student at the University of Toronto majoring in Cinema Studies and Art History and minoring in Digital Humanities. She is interested in photography, cultures of exhibition and preservation, and conservation practices. This also includes understanding the intersection between Digital Humanities and Art History, which aligns perfectly with the ICONCLASS project carried out for the Baptisteria Sacra Index as part of the DHU437 capstone course. Celina hopes to pursue a career within the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) sector or in the art market. In her free time, Celina enjoys baking, watching movies and hiking.

Christina Zhao is an undergraduate student studying Digital Humanities and Art History at the University of Toronto. Passionate about classical art history and the evolution of human culture, she has been actively involved in the area that links historical artifacts and modern technology. Her current research project focuses the use of controlled vocabulary to classify baptisteria icons of 15th and 16th century France, aiming to enhance accessibility and understanding of these historical artifacts. Through work like this, she hopes to contribute to the preservation and interpretation of cultural heritage archives, making it more accessible to both the public and scholars.

Nat Lee, English (FAS)

Nat Leduc is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and a member of the Book History & Print Culture collaborative program at the University of Toronto. Their SSHRC-funded dissertation,The Glitch Body and Something Else: Kinship, Poetics, and Resistance Under (Data) Colonialism and (Data) Capitalism, investigates glitch writing—a term they developed to describe a type of digital writing that challenges intersecting bigotries—is a form of literary activism that problematizes exclusionary notions of the human. Prior to their studies, they spent time working in Los Angeles as a pop and locker. They are an original member of the poetry performance ensemble Rhombus 19 and the creator of the Zine Apocalips.

“Many marginalized poets have in the past decade turned to corporate social media platforms such as X (Twitter), Tik Tok, and, perhaps most notably, Instagram to find an audience for their work. However, as Miriam E. Sweeney notes, “[digital mediums] do not de facto serve democratic aims, and instead may be directly implicated in facilitating legacies of racism, sexism, heterosexism, colonialism, as well as capitalistic exploitation and classism.” Therefore, although social media has given marginalized poets a platform to publish, it has also been a place of censorship and oppression. It seems then that an alternative online platform is needed. My research-creation project, e.lit.ish, aims to provide such a space. e.lit.ish is an app for those who self-identify as 2SLGBTQIA+, Black, Indigenous, or persons of colour, and/or disabled, to publish and engage with poetry and poetics outside of data capitalism and colonialism. It hopes to do so by putting into practice what Sasha Constanza-Chock defines as “design justice” and Afsaneh Rigot calls “designs from the margins.”

Rose Liu Mori, East Asian Studies (FAS)

Using markup programs and quantitative textual analysis, this project investigates the recognition, documentation, and evaluation of women artists in China’s long history of painting, based on biographical art histories from the Tang to the Qing dynasty (9th–18th century). Women in premodern China faced many systemic constraints that prevented their artistic talents from cultivation and recognition. However, in the fluctuating social conditions of many dynasties, some women managed to become artists and were recorded in history. Who were they? When and where did they live? How and what did they paint? Were they great artists? The rising percentage of women painters in canonical art historical texts show increasing access to art and education particularly for women in the gentry class. Although only one woman might be marked as a great artist, women painters in Early Modern China had formed their own social and intellectual space and cultural heritage through art.

Rose is a PhD student in the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto. Her research focuses on gender archaeology of Early China, women in antiquity, proto-historical material cultural networks, and application of digital humanities methods in art historical analysis. Her PhD dissertation, entitled “Fu Hao (c. 1250BCE): Queen, Warrior, General, Priestess, China’s First Known Woman Collector,” examines gender manifestation in proto-history through textual and material remains, and reconstructs the Late Bronze Age material cultural network through Fu Hao’s jade collection. Before taking on the academic life, Rose was trained as a visual artist. In her spare time, she likes to draw, crochet, read, visit museums, listen to classical music, and watch cat and dog videos.

Anusha Madhusudanan, International Relations and Economics, Trinity College (FAS)

The intersection of Generative AI, deep fakes, and sexual violence stands as a pressing concern in contemporary digital society. A 2023 cybersecurity report highlights the alarming prevalence of deep fake pornography (DFP), comprising 98 percent of all online deepfake videos. Significantly, 99 percent of DFP content targets female victims. This alarming trend raises profound ethical questions regarding gendered bias and digital consent. Additionally, it underscores the psychological impacts faced by victims and the digital sexual objectification of marginalized communities. Moreover, the proliferation of Generative AI technology has lowered entry barriers to making non-consensual deep fake content, enabling widespread dissemination of manipulated media. This phenomenon not only amplifies the risk of exploitation but also challenges existing legal frameworks and societal norms surrounding privacy and sexual consent. Therefore, this research presentation delves into the impacts of such content on its victims and proposes solutions aimed at fostering a safer digital environment free from sexual violence.

Anusha Madhusudanan is a fourth-year student at the University of Toronto studying International Relations and Economics, with a focus on the international economy. Her academic pursuits are driven by an interest in the intersection of artificial intelligence and humanities, aiming to decode the societal implications of the integration of generative artificial intelligence into our daily lives. With a focus on comprehending both its pitfalls and advantages, she aspires to cultivate a balanced relationship with AI usage while advocating for regulations against its harmful applications such as the creation of deep fakes, and actively promotes the ethical and responsible use of AI technologies for the betterment of society. Her academic endeavors reflect a steadfast commitment to promoting transparency, accountability, and ethical considerations in the adoption of generative artificial intelligence technologies.

Risa de Rege, Faculty of Information

My poster presentation explores a project I did on a medieval music manuscript as part of my Master’s of Information. Using Omeka and Neatline, I created an interactive digital edition of a page of medieval music from the British Library. My Omeka site contained information about the song and manuscript, including sources, history, and my own recording of the piece (the earliest known English-language polyphony). One page featured the Neatline artifact, where users could click on a part of the manuscript for information about the book (page markings) and song (lyrics, translations, and an audio file of the melody). This project explored the application of Neatline and Omeka to music and book studies, “mapping” the interconnected elements of a manuscript page and giving an immersive look into the song through text, image, and audio.

Risa de Rege recently completed her Master’s of Information at the University of Toronto, specializing in book history and print culture, and has a BA in history, art, and medieval studies. Her research interests focus primarily on digital humanities, codicology, and material culture. She has worked in academic libraries for several years in various roles including special collections and music collections management.

Sebastian Rodriguez, Faculty of Information

Following widespread deployment during the Global War on Terror, private military contractors (PMCs) transitioned from overseas military engagements to domestic operations, a shift highlighted during Hurricane Katrina when Blackwater supported civilian relief and law enforcement efforts in New Orleans. This project examines the domestic use of PMCs through a case study of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Federal Protective Forces (FPF), a law enforcement agency staffed by PMCs that safeguards nuclear materials. Building upon critiques of police militarization and imperialization, the project investigates the FPF’s operational structure, legal authority, and instances of contractor misconduct. It is supported by a digital archive of government documents and a mapping analysis of contractor networks that illustrates the blurring lines between domestic law enforcement and military operations. By raising concerns about the implications of employing PMCs in civilian contexts, this project highlights the need for stronger oversight, additional training, and federalization.

Sebastian Rodriguez is a student at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. He works as a research assistant for the Digital Humanities program at the University of Toronto and holds a position as a researcher for metaLAB (at) Harvard within the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. His research explores the intersection of technology and society with a focus on digital pedagogy, emerging technologies, and sites of power and surveillance. He also specializes in building platforms to support open educational resources, with recent contributions including the AI Pedagogy Project and the Failure: Learning in Progress Project.

Christine Tran, Faculty of Information

Amid the Pink Collar is a critical dress-up game that delves into home, harassment, and hope within marginalized livestreaming communities on Twitch.tv, Amazon’s premier live video entertainment platform. While Twitch expands opportunities for vulnerable gamers in the lucrative creator economy, it also exposes domestic spaces and their inhabitants to new surveillance risks. Rethinking the drag-and-drop conventions of avatar makers like Barbie Fashion Designer, the game aims to educate streamers and viewers about the precarious nature of creating homemade content for paid spectatorship.This presentation will showcase prototypes, narrative charts, and ongoing community resources related to the game’s development. Amid the Pink Collar contributes to the educational potential of digital games in higher education, highlighting how home studios, like classrooms, perpetuate unequal access to digital safety and literacy. The project explores which digital threats can be addressed (and dressed up) through individual creative action and which require collective efforts.”

Christine H. Tran (they/she) is a PhD Candidate and multimedia artist in the Faculty of Information. Their SSHRC-funded dissertation explores video game livestreaming platforms and their effects on women and BIPOC in the creator economy. Their research on Internet cultures and digital labour has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Television & New Media, Communication, Culture & Critique, and New Media & Society. Christine has been quoted as a research expert for news stories in BBC Future, CBC, Slate, The Guardian, and The Globe & Mail. Christine has also held fellowships at the Centre for Culture & Technology and Massey College. Christine is a CDHI Graduate Fellow (2023-24).

Clarice Wu, Communications, Cultures, Information & Technology (UTM)

Mia Jakobsen, Digital Humanities Minor (Woodsworth)

The Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP) is an open-access critical digital archive that transforms public access to twentieth-century publishers’ records and special collections through a combination of digitization, custom metadata creation, born-digital scholarship, and community building. This presentation delves into our experience conducting original research as undergraduate scholars with the MAPP project and DHU437. We examine individual authors’ lives (Dorothy Strachey and Rupert Trouton) to expand the current network of modernist publishers related to Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press. We develop metadata for archival material (such as letters and photographs) to connect works to publishing houses. Through our work, we seek to acknowledge labour and give credit to historically underrepresented individuals.

Clarice Wu (she/they) is a third-year undergraduate student doing a double major in Communications, Cultures, Information & Technology and Commerce with a minor in Economics. She is involved in research through the Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP), working on the management and editing of born-digital scholarship to a digital archive with Dr. Claire Battershill. Clarice is also a research assistant with the McEwan Mediated Communication Lab (McMC) looking into interpersonal social experiences in Virtual Reality with Dr. Bree McEwan.

Mia Jakobsen (she/they) is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, working towards my H.B.A. in Book and Media Studies, Sexual Diversity Studies, and Digital Humanities. She is currently an undergraduate researcher at the Queer and Trans Research Lab (QTRL) and the Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP). Mia is the president of the Book & Media Studies Student Association and the director of marketing and outreach at VicPride. Their research interests lie in queer and trans history and social justice; particularly exploring archival silences produced by cisheteronormativity and systems of power. She is a digital humanist, with an interest in library and archival science, the publishing industry, and journalism.

Jennifer Ross, Woodsworth College / Transitional Year Programme (FAS)

Since the start of the U.S. War on Terror, counterinsurgent and counterterror logics, rhetoric, and tactics have increasingly merged with domestic governance and policing. Private military and security companies (PMSCs) lie at the heart of this drive toward militarized governance, yet few in the U.S. recognize either the infiltration of PMSCs or the significance for civil liberties and protections. In recent years, PMSCs deployed to #NoDAPL protests at Standing Rock, North Dakota to suppress the “pipeline insurgency.” In Portland, Oregon, contractors snatched up #BlackLivesMatter protestors and drove them away in unmarked vans. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, PMSCs detain and deport unaccompanied minors in a “shadow” immigration system outside of legal channels. This presentation introduces the Ouroboros Project, which seeks to excavate the growing prevalence of PMSCs, and unveils the prototype of the digital project visualizing both the scope of PMSC involvement and community resistance to it across the United States.

Dr. Jennifer Ross is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, of Digital Humanities and Writing jointly appointed between Woodsworth College and the Transitional Year Programme. Jennifer’s research centers on contemporary American literature, digital humanities, literary and cultural theory, and critical disaster and terrorism studies. Her book manuscript, “Insurgents on the Bayou: Hurricane Katrina, Counterterrorism, and Literary Dissent on America’s Gulf Coast” (under contract, SUNY Press) explores forms of political resistance put forward in literature and film after the flooding of New Orleans in 2005. New research in The Ouroboros Project, examines the increasing prevalence of private military and security contractors (PMSCs) in U.S. domestic governance and policing. Jennifer earned her PhD in American Studies from William & Mary (Virginia, United States). In 2020-2021, she was awarded the JHI/CLIR Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship. From 2021-2022, Jennifer then served as the Educational Research and Innovation Postdoctoral Fellow for the Failure: Learning in Progress research project out of University of Toronto Mississauga.

Thy Phu, Department of Arts, Culture and Media (UTSC)

Maral Aguilera-Moradipour, Department of Arts, Culture and Media (UTSC)

Refugee States is a three-year community-based project that partners with Midaynta, Agir Montreal, the University of Toronto, and the Universite de Montreal to engage community members in the creation of a digital archive of migrant stories, including from individuals with refugee experience. These stories will expand our understanding of forced migration.

Thy Phu is a Distinguished Professor of Race, Diaspora and Visual Justice at the University of Toronto, Scarborough.

Maral Aguilera-Moradipour is a postdoctoral fellow based at UTSC.

Elisa Tersigni, Collaborative Digital Research Space (UTM)

This talk will summarize the research of the Pedagogy AI Research (PAIR) Group, established in summer 2022. We will highlight some of the pedagogical challenges and opportunities that have emerged from investigating university student and instructor responses to generative AI, focusing on the impacts in the humanities and social sciences.

Elisa Tersigni is the Senior Research Associate at the Collaborative Digital Research Space (CDRS). Together with Dr. Nathan Murray, she is the co-PI of Pedagogy AI Research (PAIR) Group, a SSHRC-funded project investigating the effects of generative AI on university pedagogy.

Noa Yaari, History (FAS)

In Fall 2023, students in the course Digital History wrote a Business Model in which they conceptualize a startup in the field. The core of the assignment is to identify an existing problem and plan a solution to it. Accordingly, the model delved into the identity of the customers, solutions that are already in the market, the costs to build a new business, pricing plans for customers, the business logo, and more. In my talk, I will show examples of students’ startups that utilize augmented reality to solve a range of problems. In each solution, adding information that matches but also extends reality enables the customers to experience history anew and ultimately “buy the past.” How would the turn to augmented reality influence the role of history in our lives? And while we use this technology, would we develop a different approach to the present?

Dr. Noa Yaari is an artist who explores knowledge creation and dissemination through multimedia, especially combinations of words and images. She teaches Digital History at the Department of History and Communication at the Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education and Practice (ISTEP). In her teaching, she promotes creativity, problem solving, and entrepreneurship.

Clelia Rodriguez, Curriculum, Teaching & Learning (OISE)

Danielle Denichaud (OISE)

Josephine Gabi, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

This radical collaboration is fostered by Indigenous ways of knowing, thinking-feeling in a time when ‘normal’ digital learning is synonymous with distraction, numbing, and superficial communication mining our minds. Our decolonising work reclaims digital terrain through the embodiment of Pedagogies of Liberation and community-driven intra/inner-active initiatives manifested in responses to The Call: Who Are You Without Colonialism? (2023). This presentation is an ontological and epistemological offering animated by digital multivocalities, “… A plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousness, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices… “(Bakhtin, 1984, p. 6), echoed by students, scholars, artists, poets, educators, and Elders. The interlayering of these co-created modalities amplify the political experiential learning journey of voices, images, writing and movement that confronts and challenges perpetuating notions of knowledge production. It is a 7-minute digital manifestation that emerges from our analog-digital dreaming as liberatory pedagogical practices in the field of Digital Humanities.

Dr. Clelia O. Rodríguez is an Afro and Indigenous Descendant born and raised in El Salvador. As a Global Scholar, she is committed to teaching beyond binary models. She is the Founder of SEEDS for Change, the birthing space of Who Are You Without Colonialism?: Pedagogies of Liberation (2023). IAP Book Series, Volumen X and author of Decolonizing Academia: Poverty, Pain and Oppression. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, Ltd, 2018. She teaches in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning at OISE and is presently working in her newly launched global learning initiative with programs on Memory, Culture, Ancestral Healing, Decolonizing Feminism, Food & Identity, Nahuatl Philosophy, and Pedagogies of Liberation in higher learning digital settings. Her approaches to engaging in academic spaces are informed by land-based teachings, Critical Race Theory, Decolonizing and Cultural Studies, Mayan Philosophy, and the use of ancestral and modern technologies.

Danielle Denichaud is a daughter of the Earth; student of eco-spirituality, eco-somatics, holistic health sciences, peace stewardship and the first of her family lineage born on Turtle Island. She is a contract lecturer at OISE and Toronto Metropolitan University; sharing learning-practices for community building, classroom cultures of care, and compassionate intergenerational trauma work. As a PhD Candidate, inter-arts curator and knowledge mobilizer, her work and research centre our subjective mind-body-heart-spirit embodiment as the salient terrain to cultivate earth honouring, individual wellness and relational harmony.

Dr. Josephine Gabi, PhD (She/Her/Hers) is a Reader in the School of Education at Manchester Metropolitan University UK. Grounded in Black feminist thought, and antiracist praxis, she is dedicated to challenging disembodied pedagogy in the early year’s education and care and undoing forms of coloniality in curricula and relational encounters. Josephine embraces solidarity as a tool of resistance to the matrix of domination as a critical orientation towards liberated futures. Her work advances co-creation as a liberatory pedagogy that facilitates relational agency. Josephine is a Senior Advisor of the UK Advising and Tutoring (UKAT) and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AdvanceHE).

Antje Budde, Centre for Drama, Theatre, Performance Studies (FAS)

Queer philosopher Michel Foucault in “On the Government of the Living” invents the word play anarcheology insisting on a “theoretical-practical position on the non-necessity of power as a principle of intelligibility of knowledge” while also alluding to theatrical traditions and alethurgic performances of truth-telling without which power cannot exist. The term (media) anarcheology rather than media archeology seems to be an interesting departure point for performing human-machine relations in ways that make visible and sensual concealed power relations embedded in histories of blackboxed oppressive strategies as a matter of digital literacy, empowerment and agency. The Digital Dramaturgy Labsquared (DDL2) has experimented with many performative scenarios of queering the Brechtian apparatus and employing playful methods of A/I or Artistic Intelligence. One strategy are collisions and collaborations of mechanical and digital objects through collective creative labor leading to hybrid, illuminating and occasionally silly time-machines of sorts. This digital storytelling of creative making will demonstrate a few selected possibilities, drawing from a multitude of works created over the past 12 years.

Antje Budde is a queer-feminist scholar-artist and the artistic research director of the Digital Dramaturgy Labsquared (DDL2). Multi-media workshops/performances/courses are focused on building agency, literacy and transferrable skills based on A/I (artistic intelligence), queering the Brechtian apparatus and multi-modal embodied learning, collective creation, social labor, materiality and making, critical creativity, and dialectical perfections of failure. Works are based on principles of togetherness (respect, relationality, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural), laughter (self-reflection, de-centering, dialectics, curiosity, play, silliness), and radical slowness (labor, accepting that human learning takes/gives time). Recent projects focussed on media anarcheology, ecology, student mental health, Indigenous anti-colonial collaborations through performance, international collaboration.

Alan Galey, Faculty of Information

Ellen Forget, Faculty of Information

Adapting the centuries-old form of the scholarly edition to digital media has been a central goal of the digital humanities for decades. By 2024, the field has an abundance of books, articles, projects, encoding systems, workshops, editing platforms, and infrastructures focused on digital editions of print, manuscript, and other non-digital texts. A curious oversight in the digital humanities, however, has been the question of how (and why) humanities scholars might create digital editions of texts that are themselves born-digital. This lightning talk will describe our project to create a digital scholarly edition of the now-defunct Flash-based website ApertureScience.com, an in-universe paratext for the videogame Portal (2007). As a work of interactive paratextual fiction, ApertureScience.com is an obvious candidate for digital archiving and emulation. This talk, however, will consider what it means for this kind of born-digital text to become an object for scholarly editing, and the associated disciplines of bibliography and textual criticism.

Alan Galey is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information with a cross-appointment in the Department of English at the University of Toronto, where he also teaches in the collaborative program in Book History and Print Culture. His research and teaching are located at the intersection of textual studies, the history of books and reading, and the digital humanities. His current research focuses on the bibliographical study of born-digital texts and artifacts. For details, see his research website: https://veilofcode.wordpress.com/

Ellen Forget is a PhD candidate at University of Toronto in the Faculty of Information and the Book History and Print Culture specialization, and they are a 2023–24 Critical Digital Humanities Initiative fellow. Ellen is a graduate of the Master of Publishing and Editing Certificate programs at Simon Fraser University. Their research focuses on braille, print disabilities, and small press publishing.

Heidi Craig, English (FAS)

The mountains of e-waste generated from our digital discards represents the fastest growing waste stream globally. With all this trash, one might expect to see more of it. But, in the Global North, digital waste is mostly shipped to developing areas in the Global South, where environmental laws are lax and labour is cheap. E-waste is toxic, poisoning both local environments and vulnerable e-waste workers. While the average consumer is ignorant of the consequences of e-waste, digital humanists are at the forefront of drawing attention to the e-waste crisis, but are also acutely aware of the self-defeating quality of their research, which directly contributes to the problem. Yet, lessons from minimal computing and critical Black feminist DH offers a way to reconcile these contractions. This lightning talk introduces the facts of digital waste, the paradoxes of ecoDH, as well as potential solutions to create more sustainable DH work.

Heidi Craig is Assistant Professor (CLTA) of English at UTSC, cross-appointed to Woodsworth College. She’s the editor of the World Shakespeare Bibliography and creator of Early Modern Dramatic Paratexts online. She teaches classes in Shakespeare, DH and digital literatures. She’s the author of articles on early modern drama, bibliography, digital pedagogy, and material culture, as well as the monograph Theatre Closure and the Paradoxical Rise of Renaissance Drama (Cambridge UP, 2023). She has begun a second book project, tentatively titled Waste Work: Writing and Labour from Rags to E-Waste a transnational history of the extricable link between writing and material waste, and between writers and scavengers, from the early modern period to the present. The book explores the close relationships – based on material dependence, spiritual and artistic affinity, and intellectual inspiration – between waste workers and writers. This lightning talk emerges from the book’s final chapter, on contemporary writing and e-waste.

Maria Assif, English (FAS)

Pr. Maria Assif is the primary investigator of New Voices, New Vistas: Contemporary Arab Women Writing—a digital, collective and transnational project that celebrates contemporary Arab women writing of all genres. This living document is the first of its kind in the field of Arab women literary studies in its comprehensive, detailed and critical coverage.

Pr. Maria Assif is Professor of English (Teaching Stream) in the English department at the University of Toronto Scarborough. She is also the department Associate Chair, EDI, the Coordinator of the English Department First-Year Writing Course and the Faculty Advisor of the UTSC/OISE joint Master of Teaching. Maria is the recipient of many teaching and research awards, and her work can be found in tens of literary, writing studies and pedagogical journals and digital platforms.

Genevieve Ritchie, Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity (OISE)

Shirin Haghgou, Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity (OISE)

Andrea Vela Alarcón, McMaster University

Shahrzad Mojab, OISE and Women and Gender Studies Institute

We came together as a group of critical educators and artists to respond to misplaced anxieties over youth ‘radicalizing’ online. We are mindful of youth work frameworks that depict almost any form of youth politicization (including feminist, socialist, anti-fascist, anti-racist) as extreme or position young migrants as inexperienced civic subjects in need of training and re-education. Counter to these trends within civil society and social policy, we are creating multimedia resources that both begin with young people’s knowledge of the digital terrain and reignite community-based traditions of learning from and for radicalization. We ran knowledge exchange and media creation sessions with young people and are now layering the insights gained from these sessions with media, conceptual tools, art, and community resources. The goal is to create a freely accessible and digitized arts-informed syllabus that centres the community tradition of radical praxis and revolutionary learning.

Shirin Haghgou is a PhD candidate at OISE and lecturer in the Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity (UofT). She is a community connected educator, and her research thinks at the intersection of refugee resettlement and learning.

Dr. Genevieve Ritchie is a lecturer in Youth Work and Women and Gender Studies (WSU, UofT). She is the co-editor of Marxism and Migration and author of Precarity and Promise: The political economy of youth and migration (forthcoming).

Andrea Vela Alarcón is a PhD candidate at McMaster University and an artist working with women’s collectives in Peru.

Prof. Shahrzad Mojab is a professor at the OISE and the Women and Gender Studies Institute. She is the author of numerous critical pedagogy books and is widely known for her use of film, dance, and art to build critical consciousness.