Presenter Bios

Workshop Bio

stylo starr is a collage artist whose work centres nature, fantasy and the Afrofuture. Her work is driven by the observation and integration of fine layered detail in a collaboration with her deep amateur interests in astrology, crystals, herbalism, lepidopterology and the metaphysical - all of which are frequently featured in her collages. stylo’s art reflects beauty and power, and she believes prominent and positive representation of Blackness in the arts is critical and necessary. stylo is based in her hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, situated upon the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas.

Keynote Bio

Dr. Gina Starblanket is an associate professor in the School of Indigenous Governance at the University of Victoria. She is Cree/Saulteaux and a member of the Star Blanket Cree Nation in Treaty 4. Dr. Starblanket studies Indigenous–settler political relations with a specific focus on Indigenous politics in the prairies, the politics of treaty implementation and Indigenous movements towards social and political transformation. She is the author of important sole and co-authored interventions theorizing relational responsibilities to the land, including Storying Violence: Unravelling Colonial Narratives in the Stanley Trial and the fifth edition of Visions of the Heart: Issues Involving Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

Author Bios

Alanna Veitch is a PhD student in Gender Studies at Queen’s University with a master’s in health sciences. She is an emerging scholar and poet whose research concerns disability, women's health, female embodiment, temporality, crisis, hope, and artistic praxis. Her academic work has been published in Critical Inquiry, and submitted to Feminist Futures special issue in Gender, Work & Organization. Her creative work has recently been published in Devour: Art & Lit Canada. Alanna's doctoral research focuses on Canadian women’s disability experiences during COVID using arts-based research and activism.

Alyssa Pisciotto is a queer, gender fluid artist from LaSalle, Ontario and now resides in Toronto. She received her BFA from OCADU in 2016, majoring in drawing and painting and minoring in printmaking. She has taught arts programing with a number of organizations and institutions, and has shown in galleries throughout North America. Alyssa’s practice includes painting, textile/fiber art as well as printmaking. Drawing on traditionally feminine or queer ways of creating has become a large part of her practice. Creating work that tells a story but is also visually abstract allows her to explore the ways she connects with these themes on a deeper personal level. 

Alex MacKenzie (she/they) is a trans non-binary, queer femme Ph.D. candidate at York University in the Gender, Feminist, and Women's Studies department. Her graduate work focuses on fan engagement with K-pop by queer and Black fans. Her work is interdisciplinary, drawing from the fields of cultural studies, queer theory, transnational studies, urban studies, fat studies, trans studies, critical femininities, and critical race theory. Her work was published in the Excessive Bodies journal and has presented at the Critical Femininities Conference, the Feminist Digital Media Conference, and the Fan Studies Network Conference.

Andi Schwartz is the Coordinator of the Centre for Feminist Research at York University and Co-Investigator on the SSHRC-funded project “On Our Own Terms: An Oral History and Archive of Femme Cultural Production in Toronto, 1990-2000.” Her scholarship has been published in Sexualities, Feminist Media Studies, and elsewhere.

Boroka Godley is a doctoral student in Education and Gender at McGill University in Montreal. She is Hungarian and Scottish, and has lived in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and now North America. She focuses on topics related to gender, feminism, education, and empowerment internationally. Boroka’s doctoral research examines the topic of child marriage in Brazil and South Africa using participatory visual methodologies, in the form of Photovoice. She looks to apply these methodologies across much of her research in order to reflect the voices and lived experiences of her research participants.  

Braedon Balko is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at York University studying English literature. His field is trans-Atlantic literary modernism, and his theoretical interests include Marxist criticism, linguistic philosophy, and aesthetics. His ongoing dissertation, entitled “The Modernist Sentence Project,” considers the prose of Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and Langston Hughes on the level of the sentence with attention to the politics of sentence composition. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and a recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Master’s Scholarship and two Ontario Graduate Scholarships.

Charlotte Alcon is an M.A. student of Literature, Media, and Culture at Florida State University. She specializes in Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality studies and her research interests primarily lie in feminist and queer theory. She particularly enjoys exploring the ways in which gender and sexuality are constructed via literature as a response to the cultural conditions of each work, and favors intersectional approaches within her research. Her research outside of literature is chiefly concerned with gendered systems and performances, particularly when situated in digital forums.

Chris Aino Pihlak (she/her) is a trans woman, PhD student at the University of Toronto, and social historian of past articulations of trans feminine existence. In addition to her interest in trans feminine porn studies, she is a scholar of twentieth-century, Anglophone trans feminine subcultures.

Daisy McManaman (she/her), is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher based in Glasgow, Scotland. She is a PhD candidate at The University of York’s Center for Women’s Studies, where her research re-analyses representations of women in Playboy, seeking to shift the lens from Hugh Hefner, and onto the women who consumed, produced and featured in Playboy content. Daisy holds an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA (hons) in Fine Art Photography from the Glasgow School of Art. Her writing has appeared in The Conversation and CNN. She is also a co-editor in chief of Cultivate Feminist Journal.

Diana M. Barrero Jaramillo (she/her) is a Latina feminist researcher, educator, and organizer. She is currently completing her PhD at the University of Toronto with a collaborative specialization in Women and Gender Studies. In her research, Diana draws from transnational feminist approaches to memorialization of violence in post-conflict societies. Her active participation with various Toronto-based Latinx organizations has opened the door for transnational collaborations with artists, activists and scholars interested in human rights, arts, and education. She currently works as an Associate Editor of Curriculum Inquiry, where she supports early career and established scholars navigate the publication process. 

Emily Bruusgaard (she/they) is a (fat, queer, neurodivergent) assistant professor (LTA) in the English department at Trent University, Peterborough. Their most recent publications include “Femininity and Fatness After Midlife: Rachel Lynde and the Invisibility of Fat Aging in Canadian Literature” for Fat Studies and “I’d wish to be tall and slender”: L.M. Montgomery’s Anne Series and the Regulatory Role of Slimness” in Fat Studies in Canada. She is at work on a book exploring the relationships of needlework and writing in producing twentieth-century white, Canadian, middle-class femininity. Emily lives and works in Michi Saagiig Anishinaabeg territory with gratitude.

Fatima Borrmann is an FWO postdoctoral researcher at the KU Leuven. She obtained her doctorate in 2023 with a thesis titled “Plotting Eugenics: Fiction by German and British Women Writers 1880-1937”. She has published in a number of scholarly journals such as Cahier voor Literatuurwetenschap, Women’s Writing, Orbis Litterarum and German Life and Letters (forthcoming).  Her current research project inspects multi-generational works by European women writers during the first half of the twentieth century. Her research interests include science in literature (especially concerning biology, evolution, genetics, medicine and eugenics), concepts of generations, age in literature, genealogy and matrilinearity in fiction, gender, feminism and women writers.

Guadalupe Ortega is a feminist scholar and lesbian archivist. Guadalupe is a Feminist Studies M.A./Ph.D. student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. They are currently working with the Lesbians of San Diego project, a digital lesbian community archive. Their archival ethnography research engages with topics such as lesbian aging, queer kinship, digital community archives, 1970s queer print culture, brownness, and nonbinary lesbian identity. Guadalupe works with Matt Richardson and Jane Ward and intends to become a professor at a liberal arts college and continue their work with lesbian community archives.

Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa (they/them/she) is a gender nonbinary queer woman of colour scholar, community organizer, creative writer, knowledge mobilizer, and educator across Central Southern Ontario. They are also a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Guelph with a PhD in Sociology from York University. Their research, teaching, organizing, and art converge on topics of anti-racism and decolonialization, storytelling and pedagogy, gender and sexuality, critical health studies, and social justice. Website: jadecrimson.com 

Jenn Cole is mixed-ancestry Algonquin Anishinaabe from Kiji Sibi watershed territory. She is Assistant Professor of Indigenous Performance and Gender in the Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies and Gender and Social Justice at Trent University in Michi Saggig territory. She is Artistic Director for Nozhem First Peoples Performance Space, editor for Canadian Theatre Review's Views and Reviews and an artful mother. 

Jenna Danchuk is a PhD candidate in Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies at York University, Toronto. Her dissertation offers an account of US lesbian and feminist experiments with witchcraft and goddess spirituality from 1976-1987. Her writing has appeared in WORN Fashion Journal and on the Bitch Media Blog.

Jessica Marion Barr (she/her) is a mother and Assistant Professor (teaching intensive) at Trent University. An artist-researcher of Scottish (Fraser and other clans), English, various European, and matrilineal Haudenosaunee (Six Nations near Niagara Falls) ancestry, her interdisciplinary arts-based practice explores creative and collaborative approaches environmental and social/ecological justice issues. She also explores research-creation around somatics/embodied practice, care work, and student wellness. At Trent, she teaches integrated and studio arts in Cultural Studies, and is Program Coordinator in the Honours Bachelor of Arts and Science Program, teaching interdisciplinary justice-focused courses. www.trentu.ca/culturalstudies/faculty-research/undergraduate-faculty/jessica-marion-barr       

Johnathan Clancy is a doctoral student at York University in the Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies program. Johnathan’s research uses qualitative, material culture, and arts-based approaches to examine how fashion objects interact with the performance and production of gendered, classed and racialized hierarchies.

Kathleen Cherrington is a fourth-year PhD student in the Gender, Feminist, and Women's Studies Program at York University. She was an outreach worker spanning 15 years, for chronically homeless individuals, HIV+ prisoners, and street-based sex workers. Her current research pursuits delve into critical trafficking, sex work, and erotic labour studies, sexual rights, and feminist sex-tech theories. Her commitment to bridging the gap between academia and the real-world issues faced by vulnerable populations underscores her dedication to making a meaningful impact as she aims to broaden the scope of her academic and practical understanding of sexuality, technology, and feminist studies.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin is a Queer Femme non-binary performance maker who creates unconventional works of theatre and performance art that plays with time, reality and feelings. The performances imagine a Queer feminine performance aesthetic – they can be gentle, fragile, soft, wild, emotional and imposing. Kerith has performed across Australia in galleries, theatres, gigs and music and arts festivals including: Rising, Provocare, DarkMofo, PICA and RCC. www.unofficialkerithfanclub.com 

Laura Brightwell is a PhD candidate in Gender, Feminist, & Women’s Studies at York University in Toronto. Her dissertation looks at the ripple effects of queer theory’s investment in antinormativity on queer femmes. Her academic work has been published in feral feminisms, Journal of Lesbian Studies, and the anthology Gender Hate Online.

Lacey Bobier is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Health & Society at the University of Toronto Scarborough, working with Professor Jessica Fields. She received her PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan in 2023. Lacey’s work uncovers how cultural discourses and formal policies shape everyday embodied practices and experiences (such as menstruation or getting dressed), producing gender and gender inequalities in childhood and adolescent sexual subjectivity. She is currently working on a book manuscript detailing how middle-school dress codes function as disciplinary mechanisms that produce gendered embodied and academic inequalities.

Lila Rush is an undergraduate student in the Literature, Media, and Culture program at Florida State University. She is preparing to defend an honors thesis on the femme lesbian subject in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Her research interests include gender and sexuality studies, queer and feminist theory, and critical theory more broadly. She is compelled by queer femininities and looks forward to continuing her research in graduate school.

Lisa Edwards has a multidisciplinary background; beginning with an undergraduate degree in Communication Studies from the University of Guyana. She then went on to complete a post-graduate certificate and her Masters of Science degree in Gender and Development Studies from the University of West Indies, Cave Hill Campus in Barbados. In 2023, she completed her doctoral degree training in education with a specific focus on Leadership and Innovation at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, USA. Lisa presently holds the post of researcher at the Institute of Gender Studies, University of Guyana. 

malia hatico-byrne (she/they) is a graduate student in the Department of Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University. Their work explores femme identity, friendship, and arts and popular culture. She is a dancer, community-based arts practitioner, and community organizer based in the Bay Area, California.

Michele White is a Communication Professor at Tulane University. Her monographs consist of The Body and the Screen: Theories of Internet Spectatorship (MIT, 2006); Buy It Now: Lessons from eBay (Duke, 2012); Producing Women: The Internet, Traditional Femininity, Queerness, and Creativity (Routledge, 2015); Producing Masculinity: The Internet, Gender, and Sexuality (Routledge, 2019); and Touch Screen Theory: Digital Devices and Feelings. (MIT, 2022). She co-edited Genealogies of Feminist Media Studies (Feminist Media Histories, 2018) and Anti-Feminisms in Media Culture (Routledge, 2022) and edited The Mixed-Up Politics of Disinformation, Anti-Feminisms, and Misogyny (Feminist Media Studies, 2024). She has written extensively about beauty cultures.

Naaz Kaur Grewal-Greeno (she/her), MSW, B.Sc., is a second-generation Punjabi, Sikh settler and clinical counsellor in the Okanagan, currently in pursuit of her RSW designation. Her clinical counselling and research approach is rooted in anti-racism and anti-oppressive practice, emphasizing advocacy for systemic change, and focusing on culture and intersectional identities. Her project, Chaa da Cup, further exemplifies this work, giving power back to marginalized and racialized stories and voices. Naaz has been an invited speaker at conferences such as the International Women’s Day Conference (2024) organized by the University of Guelph and the University of British Columbia – Okanagan’s EDI Lunch and Learn series, showcasing her commitment to inclusivity and social justice. For more information and updates follow along on our Instagram page at https://www.instagram.com/thechaadacupproject/  

Rita Duru is a first-year PhD student in Gender Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. She is from Turkiye and has a background in Psychology and a master’s degree in GWS. Along with her academic background, Rita is a travesti and a transfemme activist/performer who comes from lubunya (a vernacular term for queer and trans+) scenes and streets beginning from her high school years. In her doctoral research, Rita focuses on trans and performance studies, resistance strategies, and collective care as well as seeking new political potentialities through tracing the lubunya, trans, and femme encounters in underground scenes and nightlife with a historical emphasis. 

Sarah Jensen is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto Scarborough working with the Urban Just Transitions research cluster. She is broadly interested in the effects of mixing media in and around social justice movements, and her current research takes up accessibility, adaptation, and cross-media production. She also writes creative nonfiction and poetry.

Sasha Askarian is a PhD candidate at York University’s political science department. Her research focuses on how artificial intelligence shapes the politics of carcerality through the lens of intersectional feminism, decoloniality and social equity. Sasha conducts innovative arts-based research at UBC’s Centre for Gender & Sexual Health Equity in Indigenous Health and advocates for health equity as a senior policy analyst at FNHA. She passionately connects the worlds of research, community and art by curating gallery exhibitions that amplify Indigenous knowledges and art. Sasha is also a poet that channels the power of art to reflect and shape our social and political realities.   

Stephanie Harkin is a Lecturer and early career researcher at RMIT University in the School of Design, Games Program. Her research is interested in girls’ digital cultures and feminine gaming histories. Her doctoral dissertation, completed in 2022 at Swinburne University of Technology, was titled “Girlhood Games: Gender, Identity, and Coming of Age in Videogames” and explored representations and invisible histories of girlhood in videogames. She is now expanding this project to explore feminine gaming cultures more broadly. She has previously published on gender and games in the journals Game Studies (2020), Girlhood Studies (2022), and Games and Culture (2020).

Tamara Frooman (she/her) is a PhD student at York University. She holds a BA from UofT with a double major in English and Gender Studies and completed her SSHRC-funded MA in English Creative Writing at UofT. Her research interests include psychoanalytic, queer, and deconstructionist frameworks at the intersection of autotheory, autofiction, and autobiography. When she's not reading or writing, you can find her foraging in the tools aisle of your local hardware store or refinishing old furniture she drags in from off the street. Her first true love was critical theory.

 

Tara Schell holds a Master of Arts in History, a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre, and a Bachelor of Education from York University. Her studies have focused primarily on the role of storytelling and performance as tools for creating and preserving identity. She hopes to continue to explore the ways in which community storytelling can be used as a tool to empower others, and to subvert traditional power structures. She currently works as a teacher in Ontario’s public schools. 

Philip Berezney (they/she/he) is a 35-year-old queer/genderqueer artist-educator, and a "younger" participant in the The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project. She is currently practicing queer pedagogies through music and oral history workshops with LGBTQ+ adults and children in community learning spaces. 

 

Molly Fulop (they/she) is an Educational Psychology doctoral student at UIC and a Graduate Research Assistant for The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project. Their work explores LGBTQ+ intergenerational collaborative artmaking and Florida art museums’ role in combating LGBTQ+ censorship. They received an MA in Art Education from SAIC in 2023. 

 

Phyllis Johnson is a 73-year-old retired Columbia College teacher who serves on the board of Affinity Community Services, the West Chesterfield Community Association, and the State of Illinois Commission on LGBTQ Aging. She co-founded Women of All Colors and Cultures Together. She seeks empowerment through participation and engagement. 

 

Katia Ellise Klemm (she/they) is the Undergraduate Research Assistant and Curator for The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project and a student of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They are a curator and performer following their curiosities through liberating community practices.  

 

Danie Muriello is a 72-year-old bisexual trans woman. She began her transition ten years ago. Danie has been involved in The Intergenerational Dialogue Project as both an elder participant and a facilitator. She is a member of The Howard Brown Aging Services Advisory Board and The Illinois Commission on LGBTQ Aging.

Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift are co-authors of Trans Femme Futures: Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds (Pluto Press, forthcoming 2024) and co-editors of Radical Transfeminism zine. An article on femmeness, complicity and solidarity is forthcoming in Social Text. Mijke van der Drift is a philosopher and educator. Mijke’s work has appeared in Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, and The Emergence of Trans. Mijke is a founding member of the art collective Red Forest, and a tutor at the Royal College of Art, London. Nat Raha is a poet and activist-scholar. Her fourth book of poems is apparitions (nines) (Nightboat Books, 2024). She has essays in Transgender Marxism, Third Text, TSQ, South Atlantic Quarterly. Nat lectures at Glasgow School of Art.