Life After the PhD: What is a Postdoc?

Are you a graduate student wondering what your post-PhD pathway might look like? Join Dr. Sharon D. Engbrecht (IICSI 2025-2026 Postdoctoral Fellow), Dr. An Kosurko (Musagetes and MITACS Postdoctoral Fellow), and Dr. Jordan Zalis (SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow) for a discussion of postdoctoral fellowships!

These three researchers will discuss the various pathways they took as they continued their research, how they navigated funding and application processes, and how they grounded their research projects in improvisation, community engagement, and social responsibility! This talk will be of tremendous value for grad students who are curious about the range of opportunities open to them as they complete their degrees. As with all our talks, this event is free!

Sharon D. Engbrecht, PhD English Literature, University of British Columbia (they/them)
IICSI Postdoctoral Fellow, Improvising Futures SSHRC Partnership Grant: Improvising Identity

Sharon’s research in improvisation focuses on narratives of community and identity making. Their research is particularly focused on improvising intimacies by analyzing cultural narratives of gender and sexuality. Their postdoc project is about community-making and engagement, in part working with feminist-influenced organizations that actively seek to end gender-based violence and in part with researchers approaching improvisation from multiple streams of inquiry and disciplines of practice. Their work on intimacies and community-making is one piece of their larger project looking at the multiple registers of dwelling as a theoretical and phenomenological concept.

An Kosurko, PhD Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland (she/her/they/them)
Musagetes & IICSI Postdoctoral Fellow supported through Mitacs: Improvisation, Dementia Care, & Aging

An Kosurko is jointly hosted by Sociology & Anthropology at U of Guelph and IICSI in partnership with the Musagetes Foundation. Her research combines ethnomethodology, multimodal conversation analysis, and arts-based, community-engaged methods to study social inclusion, creativity, technology, and care. Her current project, Improvising with Dementia, brings together people living with dementia, caregivers, artists, and researchers to explore everyday spontaneity in caring relationships.

Jordan Zalis, PhD Ethnomusicology, Memorial University of Newfoundland (he/him)
SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at IICSI: What Does Basketball Sound Like?

Jordan Zalis is an artist and ethnomusicologist whose work examines the powers of sound in a variety of social contexts. His doctoral research built on five years of ethnographic fieldwork with the Toronto Raptors Basketball Club, analyzing how professional basketball has become increasingly commercialized and spectacle-oriented, raising urgent questions about corporate control of transnational sports culture. In response, his postdoctoral project examines public basketball courts as sites of grassroots cultural expression, investigating how basketball’s improvisatory practices transcend social and cultural difference. By studying informal norms and improvised communities emerging on public courts, he explores mechanisms through which small-scale affinity groups can build broader solidarity in everyday life.