Affiliated Faculty

Dr. Sirma Bilge

Dr. Sirma Bilge
Full Professor, Département de Sociologie

Dr. Arseli Dokumaci

Dr. Arseli Dokumaci
Assistant Professor, Communication Studies

Dr. Monika Kin Gagnon

Dr. Monika Kin Gagnon

Professor, Communication Studies

Dr. Shannon Hebblethwaite

Dr. Shannon Hebblethwaite
Associate Professor, Department of Applied Human Sciences

Dr. Gada Mahrouse

Dr. Gada Mahrouse

Associate Professor, Simone de Beauvoir Institute & Womens Studies

Dr. Nalini Mohabir

Dr. Nalini Mohabir

Assistant Professor, Geography, Planning & Environment

Dr. Alessandra Renzi

Dr. Alessandra Renzi

Associate Professor, Communication Studies

Dr. Ted Rutland

Dr. Ted Rutland

Associate Professor, Geography, Planning & Environment

Dr. Daniel Salee

Dr. Daniel Salee

Professor, School of Community and Public Affairs & Political Science

Dr. Kim Sawchuk

Professor, Communication Studies

Work

Director, Ageing + Communication + Technologies – www.actproject.ca

Students

Davis Hepnar

MA Student
Davis Hepnar
bio
Davis grew up in small town BC and is pursuing a Master’s in Media Studies at Concordia University. His research interests include social media and their intersections with activism, propaganda, and popular culture, as well as shifts in the journalism field and the rise of the far-right. Previously, Davis studied film production at Capilano University in Vancouver and received a BA in Communication Studies from Concordia. When he isn’t working, he enjoys long city walks, taking photos, and refreshing Twitter.

Our inferiority was not a scientific fact but a political fiction written by representatives of the systems that oppressed us. - Kamal Al-Solaylee

Mackenzie Lad

Undergrad Student
Mackenzie Lad
bio

Mackenzie Lad is a photographer, writer, and journalism student at Concordia University in Montreal. Before that, she grew up in the peripheral of Toronto feeling like she was missing out on something. These days she is most often found behind a camera or with a notebook in hand, asking too many questions to quell her insatiable curiosity. Her interests include art and activism, gender and sexuality, media criticism, diaspora communities, and immigration.

She is the Editor of Photography at The Concordian. Her photography and writing has appeared in various publications online and in print.

 

Sasha Lipskaia

MA Student
Sasha Lipskaia
bio
Sasha Lipskaia is a communications specialist, originally from Moscow, Russia, and currently living in Canada. She is presently completing her MA in Media Studies at Concordia University. She is very grateful to be working as the Director of Communications at Concordia University Television – CUTV Montreal, where she has a lot of fun supporting local media creators and students in their education, creative projects, community engagement and hands-on experience producing content that matters to them. Sasha finds joy and inspiration in the daily walks she takes to her amazing job, the incredible community around her, reading, and mindful movement. 
Projects
  • Undoing The Russian Doll: the performance component of “Becoming a Russian Doll”: A research-creation MA thesis project by Alexandra Macias Lipskaia, Concordia University, 2018, Montreal, Quebec.
  • Photo Portfolio 

 

I hunt everywhere for a life worth living and a knowledge worth knowing. Having roots nowhere, I have everywhere to go. - Elif Shafak, The 40 Rules of Love

Maha Tazi

PhD Student
Maha Tazi
bio

Maha Tazi is a Ph.D. student in the Communication Studies Program at Concordia University. Her research interests focus on the recent developments of the feminist movement in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, where the rise of fourth wave feminism is concomitant with the Arab Spring and its aftermath. She is interested in exploring how feminist activists are fighting on several fronts in the MENA region today, incorporating aspects of conflict-resolution, good governance, human rights and social justice to women’s rights advocacy. Currently, Maha is also teaching (TA) a Media Criticism course at Concordia University.

Previously, Maha studied International and Middle Eastern Studies in Morocco, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Women’s Studies at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) Paris. She also worked and volunteered with several women’s NGOs in the Middle East and North Africa region, such as Association Solidarite Feminine in the city of Casablanca, where she helped single mothers learn a new profession and re-integrate into a society that once shattered them. She was also a volunteer writer with Ananke Mag, an online interactive platform based in Dubai and engaging women across the MENA (and beyond) on issues pertaining to women’s rights.  More recently, she held the position of Program Manager with Empowering Women in the Atlas, a social initiative which aims to engage rural women in economic growth and sustainable development in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, prior to moving to Canada.

 

Marginality as site of resistance. Enter that space. Let us meet there. Enter that space. We greet you as liberators. - bell hooks

Shanice Bernicky

MA Student
Shanice Bernicky
bio
Montréal native, Shanice Bernicky is currently a Masters student in the Media Studies program at Concordia University. Coming from a background in Communication Studies with a focus on video production, she is currently pursuing a research-creation type thesis which explores the segregated hair salon industry in her hometown.

When she is not in the CJ building at Loyola Campus (which is rare), she works as a video editing assistant. One project through editing can become many, it is all about rearranging the scaffolding to access new levels of engagement. 

Projects
  • Hot Mess: a short documentary on the culture and community of the waacking dance scene in Montreal.
  • Invisible Women: a short documentary about the story of Rose Henry and discussing the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada
  • CDN

If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.

Aurelia Talvela

MA Student
Aurelia Talvela
bio
Aurelia is a Master in Media Studies student at Concordia University. She completed her Bachelor of Arts in French linguistics and minored in Cultural History at the University of Turku in Finland. Her research focuses on the representation of Arabs and Muslims in Western political discourse perpetrated through Islamophobia and Orientalism looking at rhetoric and policy, specifically.

Previously, she worked in a research group that produced a report called Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Press Coverage, which was presented at the EU as well as in events related to the ethics of journalism. Aurelia has a multi-cultural background having grown up, worked and studied in several countries.

Projects
  • Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Press CoverageA comparative content analysis of texts published in Helsingin Sanomat and Aamulehti (FI), The Guardian and The Times (UK) and Le Soir and De Morgen (BE) newspapers in the time period from 1 January to 31 January 2016

Identities are formed at the unstable point where personal lives meet the narrative of history. Identity is an ever-unfinished conversation. Stuart Hall

Maya Youngs-Zaleski

MA Student
Maya Youngs-Zaleski
bio
Maya is an MA student in Media Studies at Concordia University. Her interests include feminist media studies, critical race theory, queer studies, affect theory, and art and design. Her current Masters’ project considers how intimacy and privacy are conceptualized through digital feminist critique, particularly by way of ephemeral, collective, and ambiguous practices and texts. She received her BA (Honours) in Communications from the University of Calgary.

In her spare time, Maya likes walking and listening to comedy podcasts, reading about fashion and design, and drinking coffee with her friends.

You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies, / You may trod me in the very dirt / But still, like dust, I'll rise. - Maya Angelou

Nicole Taylor

MA Student
Nicole Taylor
bio
Nicole is pursing her Masters in Media Studies at Concordia University, exploring the relationship of cosplay (costume play) and black identity; more specifically, how the embodiment of various fictional characters can obstruct archetypal characterizations of black identity and offer a space to play with race and signification.

Nicole possess an insatiable hunger for literature, having a BA in English literature, and you can either find her with her nose in a book or drafting up a story. 

 

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success. - Bruce Feirstein

Katayoun Hashemi

MA Student
Katayoun Hashemi
bio
Katayoun is a Masters student from Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany where she studies Linguistics. Her research interests include the Influences of race and gender within the context of advertisement through media and theories of communication.

Her current research is on visual media discourse analysis concerning race and representation in media advertisements. 

Despite all our desperate, eternal attempts to separate, contain, and mend, categories always leak. - Trinh T. Minh-ha

Maya Hey

PhD Student
Maya Hey
bio
Maya Hey is a cross-disciplinary researcher, food-maker, and educator, combining her backgrounds in nutrition, gastronomy, and movement to investigate ways that engage the everyday eater. New to Montreal, Maya is a doctoral candidate in the Communications Department at Concordia University as a Faculty of Arts and Science Fellow and a Concordia University Public Scholar (2018-2019). Her current research investigates the relationship between humans and microbes by way of fermented foods, using feminist theories and discourses of contamination to better understand discriminating tastes and practices.

She is co-founder of Food, Feminism, and Fermentation, author of the experimental cookbook EAT M.E., and researcher at the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture, and Technology. Prior, she has conducted various research projects related to food: on a post-Fukushima food system, on Japanese ferments with the Nordic Food Lab, and on the antioxidant scavenging power of polyphenols in grapefruits at the University of Notre Dame. She completed her master’s degree in Food Culture and Communications at the University of Gastronomic Sciences and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in dietetics and biochemistry.

Projects
  • Food, Feminism, and Fermentation: an organization dedicated to bringing together scholars and makers working at the intersections of food, feminism, and fermentation.
  • EAT M.E.: an experimental cookbook exploring the use of microbes as food ingredients.

If you want something you’ve never had, then you’ve got to do something you’ve never done. - Thomas Jefferson

Bipasha Sultana

MA Student
Bipasha Sultana
bio
Bipasha is a native Montrealer who’s currently a Master’s student in Media Studies. Her research explores extremism and masculinity within the context of Canadian statehood.

Some of her passions involve discussion and awareness of a melange of subjects including politics, literature, food, health and psychology! En plus, elle parle quatre langues.

 

 

Shawn Suyong Yi Jones

PhD Student
Shawn Suyong Yi Jones
Bio
Shawn Suyong Yi Jones is an interdisciplinary researcher investigating gay East Asian-Canadian men and the role of online pornography consumption in constructing their cultural, ethnic, and racial identities. His research lies at the intersection of diaspora, cultural, porn, and queer critical race studies, touching on issues of representation, identity, consumption, desire, and access.

In addition to his work with the Intersectionality Hub, he is also a research member of the Speculative Life cluster at the Milieux Institute. He holds an MA in International Communications from Communication University of China and an MA in Communication Studies from Simon Fraser University where he has conducted research on gay pornography in both the Chinese and Canadian contexts, respectively.