Biographies, «Orienting Desires»
Orienting Desires is a two-day symposium that is dedicated to fostering cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary dialogue on queer histories, decolonial archives, ornamental aesthetics, and digital futures. It brings together artists, scholars, and cultural workers from distinct post-and settler-colonial contexts to share insights on their practices, methodologies, and desires.
Yemi Adegbesan - Artist
Yemi Adegbesan, who works under the name Yung Yemi, is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores Black identity through the lens of Afrofuturism, mythology, and portraiture. Self-taught and visually bold, his work reclaims historical and cultural narratives by merging African iconography with contemporary digital aesthetics. Across murals, photography, and digital collage, Adegbesan constructs layered worlds that reimagine Black presence across time—from ancestral pasts to speculative futures. His work has been featured in major exhibitions and public art projects throughout Canada, celebrating the expansiveness, resilience, and the imagination of the African diaspora.
Damien Ajavon - Artist
Damien Ajavon is a textile artist of Senegalese and Togolese heritage, originally from Paris. Ajavon’s work explores textile manipulation through the interplay of visual and sensory experiences, creating narratives of identity, home, origin, and spirit. Drawing from African, Western, and queer cultural traditions, their practice weaves together generations of African craftsmanship with diasporic and transoceanic perspectives. Their work has been shown internationally at Open Forum, Oslo Kunstforening, and Smack Mellon. They have participated in multiple residencies and received the Norwegian Association of Art Societies Debutant Prize.
Wendy Alakpodia - Research Assistant
Wendy Alakpodia is an emerging curator and cultural practitioner whose work engages the politics of visibility, representation, and belonging across contemporary art and cultural institutions. Her practice focuses on how the stories and aesthetics of Black, diasporic, and other underrepresented communities are shaped, mediated, and often constrained within dominant curatorial frameworks. Through research-driven projects, public programming, and collaborative partnerships, she advocates for interpretive approaches rooted in care, accountability, and cultural nuance. Alakpodia holds a master’s degree in Cultural Studies with a focus on Curatorial Practices from the University of Winnipeg and serves as a Research Assistant for Orienting Desires: Symposium and Interactive Arcade.
Anjali Arondekar - Scholar
Anjali Arondekar is a distinguished scholar whose work bridges feminist theory, queer studies, and postcolonial historiography. Based in the United States, she serves as the Peggy and Jack Baskin Foundation Presidential Chair in Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research navigates the intersections of sexuality, race, caste, and colonial archives across South Asia and the Indian Ocean world. As both a writer and thinker, Arondekar’s practice reimagines the archive as a space of abundance and possibility. Her acclaimed publications, including For the Record and Abundance, continue to shape contemporary discourses in global feminist and decolonial scholarship.
Sa’ed Atshan - Scholar + Activist
Sa’ed Atshan is a Palestinian-American anthropologist, scholar, and activist whose work covers peace and conflict studies, medical and humanitarian anthropology, LGBTQ movements, and Quaker studies. His research examines Palestinian society, global queer movements, and the politics of aid and human rights. Atshan is the author of Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique (2020), co-author of The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians (2020),and co-editor of Reel Gender: Palestinian and Israeli Cinema (2022). Currently Associate Professor and Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College, he has received fellowships from the Open Society Foundations, Mellon Foundation, and National Science Foundation, among others.
Daniel Bagang - Research Assistant
Daniel Bagang is an MA student enrolled in the Art and Architectural History program at the University of Manitoba and also serves as a Research Assistant at the University of Winnipeg. His academic interests include Filipino arts and architecture and new media art. He curated Paul Robles' Yellow Faces in 2024, and co-curated Aganetha Dyck's Interspecies Communication in 2025 with Serena Keshavjee and Sylvia Furtado. His current thesis examines the architecture of Manila from 1945 to 1965, with an interest in how rebuilding, nation-building, and cultural shifts shape understandings of Filipino architecture.
Gabbah Baya - Artist
Gabbah Baya is a Palestinian-American interdisciplinary artist and game designer based in New York City. Their work merges digital architecture, interactive media, and storytelling to explore the politics of space, displacement, and belonging. Through immersive game environments and 3D simulations, Baya reconstructs fragmented memories of Palestinian landscapes, transforming virtual worlds into sites of resistance and reimagined futures. Drawing from diasporic experience and decolonial thought, their practice challenges how technology mediates identity and history, offering new ways to navigate loss, memory, and the power of play as a tool for cultural survival.
Hanan Benammar - Artist
Hanan Benammar (1989) is a French-Algerian artist based in Oslo. Her work has been shown across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, including the National Museum of Norway, KIASMA, Bildmuseet, and Kunsthalle Charlottenborg. She has participated in residencies such as Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris), Nordic Artists’ Center (Dale), and Lusaka Contemporary Art Center. Her work is held in major public collections, including the Norwegian National Museum and KORO. Benammar also runs independent art spaces and programs, has served on multiple boards, and will chair the National Jury for Norway’s 2025 Autumn Exhibition. In 2022, she received a 10-year artist grant. She is currently developing Tyfon, a large-scale project with artist Mattias Cantzler.
Noor Bhangu - Curator + Host + Organizer
Noor Bhangu is a curator and scholar, whose practice is rooted in relational curatorial aesthetics and practices. Through curatorial intervention, she hopes to involve politics of history, memory and materiality to problematize dominant histories of representation. In 2018, she began her PhD in Communication and Culture at Toronto Metropolitan University and York University in Tkaronto, Toronto. Her past projects include Not the Camera, But the Filing Cabinet (2018) at Gallery 1C03 and Homorientalism (2023) at Smack Mellon (NYC), with her current project Deviant Ornaments (2025-2026) now open at Nasjonalmuseet (Norway).
Natasha Bissonauth - Scholar + Writer
Natasha Bissonauth is an art historian and writer whose research explores queer aesthetics, diaspora, and the politics of visual culture. She is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. Rooted in the visual and material cultures of South Asia and the Indian Ocean world, her work investigates how artists engage with histories of indenture, migration, and desire. Through critical writing and curatorial collaboration, Bissonauth examines collage, archives, and assemblage as strategies for reimagining belonging and memory within transnational contexts.
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley - Artist
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is a British artist based between London and Berlin whose work merges animation, sound, video game design, and performance to archive and honor the lives of Black trans people. Through interactive, game-based worlds, they challenge audiences to move beyond passive spectatorship and engage in acts of care, decision, and solidarity. Projects such as Black Trans Archive, Getting Home Safe, and Trans & Conditions expand how digital environments can hold history, memory, and resistance. Brathwaite-Shirley’s practice transforms technology into a living space for Black trans futurity and collective reimagination.
Howard Chiang - Scholar
Howard Chiang is Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies and the Lai Ho & Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research traces the intertwined histories of science, medicine, and sexuality in the twentieth-century Sinophone world, examining how systems of knowledge have shaped modern understandings of gender, sexuality, and race. Chiang is the author of After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (2018) and editor-in-chief of the Global Encyclopedia of LGBTQ History (2019), which received the 2020 Dartmouth Medal from the American Library Association.
Rah Eleh - Artist
Rah Eleh is a Canadian-Iranian visual and performance artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans video, net art, and live, character-based tableaux. Eleh is currently pursuing a PhD in Artistic Research at the University of Applied Arts (die Angewandte), Vienna. Her work interrogates race, gender, performance, and diaspora through playful and provocative personas such as Fatimeh, Oreo, and Coco. Eleh’s recent achievements include a longlisting for the 2023 Sobey Art Award and a residency at ONX Studio (NYC, 2024). Exhibited internationally—from the VeniceBiennale (ECC Palazzo Mora) to formats in Toronto, Athens, and Berlin—she is represented by de Montigny Contemporary and Vtape.
Jawa El Khash - Artist
Jawa El Khash is a Syrian-Canadian interdisciplinary artist and researcher based in Toronto. Working across holography, virtual reality, painting, and digital simulation, she explores the relationship between technology, ecology, and ancestral memory. Her immersive works, such as Hammam and Nature’s Algorithm, reimagine spaces of ritual, transformation, and sensory perception, inviting audiences into poetic dialogues between the natural and the virtual. Through her practice, El Khash bridges scientific inquiry with cultural storytelling, creating environments that question what it means to see, remember, and inhabit more-than-human worlds in the digital age.
Itzel Esquivel - Curator + Organizer + Researcher
Itzel Esquivel is an organiser, researcher, curator and writer. Their practice is focused on diasporic ways of being, trans-movements, the relation between identity and language,and other cultural transitions; informed by intersectional, non-Europatriarchal, and cuir[queer] perspectives.They are a co-founder of ‘Gestures & Nods. A Platform for Embodied Practices andPerformance Art’. Esquivel is currently working for Publishing and Public Programmes at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway – OCA.
Ahmed Essam - Artist
Ahmed Essam is a multidisciplinary designer/developer crafting immersive game worlds and digital experiences. He has worked in various media, including graphic design, typography, illustration, and 3D art, but currently focuses on combining disciplines to create interactive experiences and games. Ahmed's work often draws inspiration from everyday life and seemingly mundane situations, reimagining them from unusual perspectives. Notable projects have been showcased at multiple festivals and are available on various online storefronts.
Yara Feghali - Artist + Educator
Yara Feghali is a French-Lebanese architectural designer, educator, and interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. She teaches at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design and serves as Creative Director of Folly Feast Lab, a studio exploring the intersections of space, identity, and technology. Working across virtual reality, interactive media, and installation, Feghali creates immersive environments that merge architecture with storytelling, drawing from queer, ecological, and diasporic perspectives. Her practice reimagines how digital and physical spaces can evoke belonging and empathy, positioning design as a bridge
Katja Fjeld - Scholar
Katja Fjeld is a Sámi/Norwegian art historian based in Lillestrøm, Norway. She finished her masters in art history at University of Nottingham in 2020, where she wrote her thesis on American performance art, where her focus was on performance art as political activism surrounding the intersection between race, class, gender and sexuality. In 2022 she joined the National Museum of Norway as project assistant for Skeivt kulturår before moving on to MiA – Museene i Akerhus after the project finished in 2023. Her work and interest revolve around critical- and radical museum practices and mediation methods, particularly within inclusivity and diversity.
Sylvia Furtado - Project Coordinator
Sylvia Furtado is the Research and Program Coordinator for the international partnership grant The Space Between Us + the aabijijiwan New Media Lab + collaborative research centre at the University of Winnipeg. She supports local and international collaborations exploring connections between community, culture, and place. She has an extensive background in photography and production, with over 15 years of experience working in education and programming. Sylvia supports digital media projects, running creative workshops, coordinating creative incubators + fostering opportunities for the University of Winnipeg students and local and international artists.
Andrew Gayed - Scholar
Dr. Andrew Gayed is Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at OCAD University. An Egyptian-Canadian art historian, Dr. Gayed's research is located at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary and transnational inquiry, bridging art history, gender studies, and critical race theory to examine how visual culture shapes understandings of queerness and multiculturalism. His book Queer World Making: Contemporary Middle Eastern Diasporic Art published with the University of Washington Press (2024), shares innovative new research in visual art and culture that transforms our knowledge about queer experiences. Contributing to decolonizing the study of sexuality, this book illuminates the unexpected history of homosexuality in the Middle East as a way of better understanding the issues today that queer diasporic people of colour face.
Matthis Grunsky - Lead Technician + Artist
Matthis Grunsky is a visual artist and media technician originally from Halifax, NS. He currently lives in Winnipeg, MB, Treaty 1 Territory, where he instructs drawing, painting, and digital media at the University of Manitoba. In his work, Matthis studies the intersection of computational expression and material practice with special interests in generative art, stereoscopy, perspective, and pen plotters. As a media technician, he explores new technologies and enjoys helping other artists make sense of these ever-evolving digital tools, including laser cutting, 3D scanning, 3D printing, and virtual reality.
Mohsen Hazrati - Artist
Mohsen Hazrati is an Iranian new media artist and curator whose work merges Persian mysticism, poetry, and digital technology. Born in Shiraz and based in Berlin, he explores how sacred traditions and contemporary code can coexist as parallel languages of imagination and divination. Hazrati is the co-founder of the Dar-Al-Hokoomeh Project, an independent art space and research platform dedicated to experimental digital practices in Iran. His installations, VR/AR environments, and AI-based projects such as The Fāl Project reinterpret the poetry ofHāfez through data, chance, and immersion. Hazrati’s work has been shown internationally at ARS Electronica, Art Basel Miami, and NFT NYC.
Banyi Huang - Artist + Writer
Banyi Huang (b. Beijing) is an artist and writer currently pursuing their MFA in Design Media Art at the University of California, Los Angeles. Their interdisciplinary practice spans animation, digital fabrication, and writing. It is an attempt to establish belonging through techno-spiritual devotion, and grapple with the non-binary nature of mythological bodies. Their current research centres around systems of interaction between embodied interfaces and Chinese cosmological practices. Their work has been shown at Smack Mellon, NEW INC, and the Clemente (all New York). Screenings include the New Museum and The Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (Taipei).
Hyphen-Labs - Artist Collective
Hyphen-Labs is an international collective of women of color working at the intersection of art, technology, science, and futurism. Founded by Carmen Aguilar y Wedge, Ece Tankal, and Ashley Baccus-Clark, the group creates immersive, research-driven projects that merge speculative design, neuroscience, and virtual reality to reimagine the future through a lens of equity and empowerment. Their acclaimed work NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism envisions a world shaped by Black women’s innovation and care, challenging dominant narratives in both tech and art. Through radical collaboration, Hyphen-Labs continues to expand the boundaries of creative technology and collective imagination.
Mark Igloliorte - Circumpolar Lead + Artist
Mark Igloliorte is an Inuk artist + scholar exploring the use of the kayak, kamutik (Inuit sled) and skateboard which speaks to his relationship to movement, language and the land, how it is traveled, and specific connections to the past and into imagined futures. Recent exhibitions include: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Sámi Pavilion for the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia and Film Festival (in partnership with the International Sámi Film Institute, the Norwegian Film Institute, and the Office for Contemporary Art Norway); Saputiit—Fish Weir Skateboard Plaza, a large-scale public commission for Nuit Blanche Toronto; Perez Art Museum, Florida; The Image Centre, Toronto + Cariotonica, Egypt. Igloliorte is an Associate Professor in Audian Faculty of Visual Art + Painting at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, Canada.
Rana Issa - Curator + Educator + Writer
Rana Issa is a writer, educator and curator. She is cofounder and artistic director of Masahat for Arab Culture in Exile, an institution that programs and produces Arab and global South artists and writers in Norway. Her debut queer memoir Tung tids tale (Press Forlag 2025) was nominated to the Bokhandleren pris. Her book The Modern Arabic Bible (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) is an academic study of 19th century language and literature. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Houghton Library, The Center of Advanced Studies in Oslo, the Norwegian Research Council, the Norwegian Nonfiction Union for Writers and Translators among others.She co-wrote Hartaqat, a theatrical performance by Rabih Mroue and Lina Majdalani (Theatre Vidy, 2023).
Kasra Jalilipour - Artist + Writer + Educator
Kasra Jalilipour is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist, director, writer, and educator whose work engages with identity, queerness, faith, and the body. Working across performance, film, writing, installation, and sculpture, Jalilipour examines how belief, desire, and cultural heritage intersect to shape personal and collective experience. Jalilipour has presented solo exhibitions at Grand Union, Haarlem Artspace, Gasleak Mountain, and ArcadeCampfa, and their work has been screened at Filmfest Dresden, Vienna Shorts, and the ICA London. They have received support from Arts Council England, Jerwood Arts, and the Freelands Foundation, and held residencies at Artsadmin, Prospect Cottage, and Trinity Square Video.
Elizabeth Kerekere - Scholar + Activist
Elizabeth is a takatāpui activist and scholar of national and international renown. She has been active within Rainbow and youth development sectors for over 40 years and mentored over 50 queer youth leaders. She is Founder/Chair of Tīwhanawhana Trust (2001) which advocates for takatāpui to “tell our stories, build our communities and leave a legacy.” As a Member of Parliament, Elizabeth broke records with the petition that led to banning conversion practices, contributed to new gender markers on birth certificates for trans, non-binary and intersex people and she introduced the term ‘takatāpui’ into legislation for the first time. Elizabeth’s health framework ‘Te Whare Takatāpui’ is currently being applied to the health system and she was appointed Adjunct Professor, Public Health at Victoria University of Wellington.
Dr. Serena Keshavjee - Co-Investigator
Dr. Serena Keshavjee is a professor of Modern Art and Architecture at the University of Winnipeg. Her research focuses on how modern and contemporary artists use science and technology to make art. Keshavjee has edited two SSHRC funded books exploring these intersections (Picturing Evolution, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014, with Fae Brauer, and The Art of Ectoplasm, University of Manitoba Press, 2023), and curated the multi-venue exhibition The Undead Archive in 2023 (Gallery 1C03 at the University of Winnipeg, The School of Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba, and the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections).
Lucas LaRochelle - Artist
Lucas LaRochelle is a Montréal-based designer, researcher, and artist whose work explores queer and trans digital cultures, collective memory, and the politics of mapping. They are the founder of Queering the Map, a community-generated digital archive that invites LGBTQ2IA+people to share intimate stories tied to specific locations around the world. Through projects such as QT.bot, which uses artificial intelligence to generate speculative queer narratives, LaRochelle examines how technology, desire, and geography shape our sense of belonging. Their work bridges activism and aesthetics, transforming digital space into a living archive of queer experience and connection.
Pamila Matharu - Artist + Researcher
Pamila Matharu is a settler of Panjabi-Sikh descent, born in Birmingham, England, raised in Tkarón:to (Toronto, Canada) and now splits time betweenTkarón:to and London (UK). As an artist-researcher, they explore a range of transdisciplinary feminist issues, blurring the lines between object-based art (installation, collage, film/video & photography), artist organizing, arts activism and social practice. They are currently completing their Master of Visual Studies at University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design in the Studio Art program. @pamilamatharu
Dan Taulapapa McMullin - Artist + Poet
Dan Taulapapa McMullin is a Fa'afafine Non-Binary Poet and Artist from Sāmoa 'i Sasa'e (Eastern or American Samoa). Their current body of work Our Bodies Are Memories of Our Bodies: Siapo ma Solo is a series of poems and abstractions based on indigenous Samoan barkcloth painting and chants, with prints on cloth and tapestry in exhibition this winter at Queens Museum NYC and Pieam Pacific Islander Museum in Long Beach California. This work will be published in book form in 2026 by Tropic Editions of Honolulu. Their recent artist collage book The Healer's Wound: A Queer Theirstory of Polynesia (2022, 2024) will be published in a 3rd edition in 2026 by Pu'uhonua Society in Hawai'i with new research. Their work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Hawai'i Triennial. They live on Muh-heh-con-neok lands in upstate New York with their husband. They are currently working on a novel, “Mafu.”
Rebecca Merlic - Artist
Rebecca Merlic is a Vienna-based digital artist, architect, and experimental filmmaker whose work explores the fluid boundaries between technology, space, and identity. Trained in architecture, she creates immersive worlds that blend built environments with virtual realities, investigating how bodies and communities move through systems of power, gender, and belonging. Her award-winning projects, such as The City as a House, reimagine architecture as a living interface for social and digital transformation. Recipient of the DKB VR Art Prize and the Marianne von Willemer Prize, Merlic continues to redefine the relationship between art, architecture, and speculative futures.
Dr. Julie Nagam - Principal Director + Organizer + Artist
Dr. Julie Nagam is Canada Research Chair in Collaboration, Public Art, Interactive + Digital Media and is the Director of the Aabijijiwan New Media Lab + Collaborative Research Centre in Winnipeg, Canada. Dr. Nagam was the inaugural Artistic Director for 2020 and 2022 for Nuit Blanche Toronto, the largest public exhibition in North America with over 200+ BIPOC artists and over 200+ projects, a symposium with performances, workshops, and podcasts. In 2020, she shifted and led the first virtual Nuit that included a 15-year archive, an edited publication, a six-hour livestream, podcasts, webinars, the largest AR/VR works for a festival. Her artistic work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, which includes solo and group exhibitions. Dr. Nagam is currently the Principal Director of the multi-million-dollar SSHRC Partnership Grant, The Space Between Us (2019–2028).
Rashaad Newsome - Artist
Rashaad Newsome is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans filmmaking, animation, robotics, collage, sculpture, music, writing, and performance to interrogate dominant narratives and invent new aesthetic languages. Drawing from Black and queer diasporic traditions of improvisation, he blends advertising, internet culture, art history, and machine learning into works that move between social practice and abstraction. Collage serves as both his conceptual and technical foundation, shaping innovative visual, sonic, and computational forms that honor the expressive force of Black life. Newsome’s work is exhibited internationally and held in major museum collections, reflecting his impact on contemporary art and cultural discourse.
Meera Sethi - Artist
Meera Sethi is an Indian-Canadian visual artist based in Tkaronto (Toronto) whose interdisciplinary, research-based practice spans painting, drawing, fibre, illustration, public art, performance, and social practice. Her work explores the relationship between body and cloth, with a focus on South Asia and its diasporas, addressing themes of gender, labour, migration, and belonging through textile and material culture. Engaging archival and community-based research, Sethi examines how histories are woven into garments and surfaces. Recently, she has developed abstract weavings with adhesive tape that recall the structure of cloth while evoking memory, history and transformation. Her work is held in the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum and the Wedge Collection and exhibited widely across Canada.
Whyishnave Suthagar - Research Assistant
Whyishnave Suthagar is an installation artist based in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Her practice is centered around crafting site-specific installations that incorporate lighting design, thread-based weavings, and original soundscapes. Through her work, she explores the interplay of light, space, and sound to create immersive, mediated experiences. She received her BFA from McMaster’s School of the Arts and is presently pursuing her Master’s in Architecture at the University of Toronto. To date she has shown her work around the GTA including the McMaster Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, The Critical Distance Gallery and Nuit Blanche 2022 (Toronto). Upcoming works that are presently in development include a show for the Art Gallery of Mississauga (2026).
Brendan Tang - Artist + Professor
Brendan Tang is a Vancouver-based visual artist celebrated for his innovative approach to ceramics and mixed media. Born in Dublin and raised in Canada, Tang’s work explores cultural hybridity, technology, and the collision of tradition with futurism. His signature series, Manga Ormolu, fuses classical porcelain forms with manga-inspired mechanical motifs, transforming craft into a dialogue on identity and globalization. Blending meticulous handcraft with digital aesthetics, Tang challenges boundaries between fine art and popular culture. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in major public collections across Canada and beyond.
Christina Thomson - Research Assistant
Christina Thomson is an emerging curator and scholar from Winnipeg currently based in Tkaronto, Toronto. Her interests lie in contemporary public art and performance in the cityscape, with her current research exploring the complexities of skateboarding as an artistic urban intervention. She holds a BA (Honours) in Art History from the University of Winnipeg, and is pursuing an MA in Art History and Visual Culture at York University (2026). Christina has worked at the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq as well as with Toronto’s Lassonde Art Trail, and actively serves as Research Assistant at both The University of Winnipeg and York University.
Dr. Renee Valiquette - Co-Investigator
Dr. Renée Valiquette is an interdisciplinary scholar and assistant professor in Diversity & Social Justice Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island. Her work bridges feminist environmental humanities, transformative pedagogy, and community-engaged research, with a focus on climate futures, relational ethics, and social transformation. She leads several initiatives, including the Wild Futures Research Lab, the UPEI Sandbox Summer Institute, and the Transformative Pedagogies Network linking Canada, Scotland, and Norway. Renée’s teaching centres imaginative, concept-driven courses that nurture the relational and ethical capacities required to sustain healthy democracies. She is also deeply engaged in partnerships supporting climate adaptation and youth engagement, working across generations to meet turbulent times with curiosity, creativity, and a sense of shared possibility.
Alexander G. Weheliye - Scholar
Alexander Ghedi Weheliye is a writer, professor, and curator focusing on Black Studies, critical theory, gender and sexuality studies, social technologies, and popular culture. They are Malcolm S. Forbes Professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media and the Brown Arts Institute at Brown University. They are the author of “Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity” (2005), Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human (2014), and Feenin: R&B Music and the Materiality of BlackFem Voices and Technology (2023). Currently, Weheliye is working on two projects. The first, Between Continents, is a critical bilingual memoir about their early life in East Germany and Somalia. The second, Schwarz-Sein: The Elements of Black Life, reimagines the periodic table of elements from the vantage point of Black queer life.
Dr. Johnson Witehira - Pacific Lead + Artist + Designer
Dr Johnson Witehira (Ngāti Hinekura, Ngāi Tūteauru) is a Māori artist, designer, and professor whose work bridges Mātauranga Māori with contemporary creative technologies. His practice explores how Indigenous visual systems shape public space, digital environments, and urban experience. Dr. Witehira creates interactive installations, games, typographic systems, and AR learning tools that centre Māori worldviews and challenge colonial design norms. Recent projects include large-scale immersive artworks, Indigenous AI research, and public commissions in Aotearoa and abroad. He is Professor of Toi Hangarau (Creative Technologies) at Massey University and contributes to global dialogues on Indigenous innovation in digital and immersive media.
Karoline Trollvik - Curator
Karoline Trollvik has been the Curator of the Sámi collection at the Norsk Folkemuseum STI since 2024. She is from Gáivuotna/Kåfjord (Sápmi/Norway) and holds a MPhil degree in Anthropology of Development from the University of Bergen (2014). She was the Director of the international Indigenous festival Riddu Riđđu (2014–18), temporarily led Várjjat Sámi Musea (2019 –20), and worked as Head of Communications and External Relations at Office for Contemporary Art Norway (2020 –24).