Attendee Bios

ATTENDEES (IN-PERSON):

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Adam Davies

Adam Davies (he/they) is a queer feminist interdisciplinary researcher with a background in Education, Sexuality Diversity Studies, and Women and Gender Studies. Adam holds a PhD from OISE, University of Toronto and is an Assistant Professor in Family Relations and Human Development at the University of Guelph. Adam’s research areas include queer theory, critical disability studies, mad studies, early childhood education and care, and gay masculinities, and is currently conducting research projects on the critical intersections of mental health and professionalism in pre-service early childhood education and men, masculinities, and care in early childhood education. Adam is an Ontario Certified Teacher and Registered Early Childhood Educator. Adam is currently accepting graduate students at the University of Guelph. 

Ahmri Vandeborne

Ahmri Vandeborne (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, community facilitator, and Cultural Programs & Events Coordinator, Museums & Culture, at the City of Guelph. Ahmri uses art and improvisation as a vessel for community care, centralizing her practice around providing access in the arts through inclusive community-engaged programming, interactive art experiences, and educational opportunities.

Aimé Dontigny

Self-taught composer, Aimé Dontigny is one of the founding members of the ‘free noise’ collective Napalm Jazz (Free transgénique, 1998), and of the duet morceaux_de_machines (liberum arbitrium, 2002; Estrapade, 2004). 

He devotes himself eagerly to the numerous challenges offered by the new forms of modern and contemporary improvised musics, and is particularly interested in the development and recognition of those expressive artforms. Since 2003, he has been actively involved in the creation of the Canadian New Music Network, a national, bilingual organization aiming at promoting and widening the horizons to ‘new music’ (in its broader definition). 

His works comprise multiple subltes quotes and references, and his acoustic palette adapts to many different aesthetics, as demonstrate his projects with Diane Labrosse (Télépathie, 2002), Chantal Dumas (Duophone, 2003) and his ongoing yet unreleased collaboration with composer Paul Dolden. 

As did numerous western composers of all times, Dontigny frequently finds his inspiration in literature. One of his projects, titled Sine Fiction, has for a daring premise the creation of ‘original soundtracks’, not for films but for books; in that very case, science fictions novels among the most groundbreaking and popular of the genre. One can also perceive in many of his works the direct influence of writers as diverse as William S Burroughs, Anthony Burgess, Guy Debord and Denis Vanier. 

Another characteristic of Dontigny’s compositions is the prevalence that is therein granted to a meditation on the history of music, literally: in that sense, his work is really one of ‘reflexive’ purpose, as through it the musician questions his own role as an artist, the conditions of possibility of an understanding of music and of the limits of its experience, inviting the listener to ‘think’ as well. Dontigny reflects both on practice and on musical theory; in that perspective, the quotes in his pieces are not accidental. Dontigny directs his research towards a rooting of art in history: can we deny for much longer that music, while so profoundly linked to technological advances and innovations, and embedded in telecommunication industries themselves subordinated to certain economic factors, that music is a direct product of its community? Can an artist claim heteronomy, or does he have to endorse political responsibilities? Aimé Dontigny makes the choice of commitment; his works provoque debate and exchange of ideas, yet they put the sensible experience first. Dontigny speaks as a musician and as a modern and post-modern music historian. 

Dontigny regularly presents his work in live settings and in various festivals, such as Rien à voir, Mutek, Périphériques and AlgoRythm(e)s (Montréal), Clonk (Toronto), Digidome (Saskatoon), Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville, Résonances (Saint-Nazaire, France), Haunted Folklore (Brussels, Belgium), Totally Huge New Music Festival (Perth, Australia), and Electrofringe New Media Arts Festival (Newcastle, Australia). 

Ajay Heble

Ajay Heble is the Founding Director of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation and Professor of English in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. He is the author or editor of several books, and a founding co-editor of the journal Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation ( www.criticalimprov.com ). He was the Project Director for Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice, a large-scale Major Collaborative Research Initiative, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 

As the Founder and Artistic Director of the Guelph Jazz Festival, Heble has jolted the citizens of Guelph into an appreciation of improvised and avant-garde music and delighted aficionados from around the world with his innovative and daring programming. Under his visionary leadership, the Festival—winner of the prestigious Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts (2010), and a three-time recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award of the Arts (1997, 2000, 2001) —has achieved a rock-solid international reputation as one of the world’s most inspired and provocative musical events. Recent projects include two new books both published in 2013 by Duke University Press: People Get Ready: The Future of Jazz is Now (co-edited with Rob Wallace), and The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, Rights, and the Ethics of Cocreation (co-authored with Daniel Fischlin and George Lipsitz). As a pianist, he has released three CDs: Different Windows, a live recording of improvised music with percussionist Jesse Stewart (on the IntrepidEar label) and two recordings with his improvising quartet The Vertical Squirrels: Hold True / Accroche toi (on Ambiances Magnétiques) and Winter’s Gate (on Barcode Free). 

Alyssa Woods

Dr. Alyssa Woods is a popular music scholar whose work intersects the areas of music theory, gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, and religious discourse in hip-hop music. Dr. Woods holds the position of Associate Professor in the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph, where she is also a member of the research team and Site Coordinator for the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. Her research involves interdisciplinary approaches to socio-cultural and music-analysis, with recent work focusing on the concept of mythmaking, genealogy, and succession in hip-hop. She is currently working on a book length project, entitled Temptation and the God Flow: Sound and Signification in Pre- and Post-Conversion Hip-hop, as well as a series of collaborative articles on improvisation in the recording studio. 

Benjamin Mayer Foulkes

Dr. Benjamin Mayer Foulkes holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Mexico’s National Autonomous University; has completed MA studies in Psychoanalytic Theory at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Psicoanalíticos, has a Diploma from Cornell University’s School of Criticism and Theory, an MA in English and Critical Theory from the University of Sussex as well as a BA in European History and Latin from the same institution. He has worked as a private-practice psychoanalyst in Mexico City since 1999. Mayer is additionally the Founding Director of 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos where he devised, inaugurated and oversees the master’s, doctorate and post-doctorate programs in Critical Theory. He is founding Co-Director (alongside Alberto Moreiras and Davide Tarizzo) of Política Común, a journal edited online from the University of Michigan. Mayer has worked as a professor at UAM-Azcapotzalco University’s master’s program in Mexican Historiography and was founding director of Universidad Anáhuac’s Master’s in Semiotics program (1995-2001), a researcher with Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (1996-2005), Director of the Semiotics specialty program at Universidad Anáhuac (1993-1995) and was Director of the UNIVERSUM el Museo de las Ciencias de la UNAM Foundation’s video chronicles program (1991-1993). He served on the SITAC board (2012-2015); has been a member of the Festival de Artes Electrónicas Transitio board since 2012; and he has also been on the Fundación Pedro Meyer board since 2010. 

Bo Bárdos

Hungarian-born mezzo, actor, creator and collaborator, Bó (Margaret) Bárdos, is based in Southern Ontario and loves touring. At home with classical as well as new, experimental music and performance opportunities, she seeks out creative challenges and cherishes working with good hearted people. With a voice described by Opera Canada as “mellow, fruity, that caresses the ears”, Canadian and European appearances include interdisciplinary collaborative and site-specific projects that make use of her varied training: from Butoh dance and physical theatre to extended vocal technique and improvisation.  She is a grateful member of the studio of Tom Schilling, is a peer assessor for several funders throughout Canada, sat on the board for NUMUS and InterArts Matrix, and continues as Company Manager at MT Space in Kitchener. When not on stage, in the studio, or working with arts organizations, she can be found on the back of a horse, or meditating under her favourite clump of trees. 

Braeden Etienne

Braeden Etienne (he/them) is Business Manager of The Making-Box.The Making-Box offers teams tools to foster adaptability, creativity and joy at work and in the classroom. Over the last nine years, The Making-Box has served a wide spectrum of clients including Shopify, Google, RBC, McMaster University, and even a forensics firm. In their free time Braeden is also a writer, poet, and improviser performing regular monthly shows in Guelph and Kitchener-Waterloo. 

Cameron Slipp

Cameron Slipp is a stage manager and production manager based in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. He is also a Co-Technical Director at The Registry Theatre. Cameron has extensive experience working on both individual productions and large-scale festivals like The Elora Festival and IMPACT festival. He has toured internationally as a stage manager and technical director, and currently works as an account manager at Sherwood Systems.

Charity Marsh

Dr. Charity Marsh (she/her) is a settler community-engaged researcher, multidisciplinary artist, collaborator, and scholar living in Treaty 4. A former Tier II Canada Research Chair in Interactive Media and Popular Music, Dr. Marsh is internationally recognized for her research on hip hop cultures, popular music, gender and technology, media arts, and performance and activism in community arts programming.  

Currently, Marsh is leading three funded research projects: In April 2024 Marsh was awarded a SSHRC Insight Grant for the project, Feminist Activism, Community Building, and Social Justice: Considering the Interventions and Impacts of Girls Rock Camps in Canada; It’s More Than A Name Change!: Re-Thinking the Culture and Priorities of GRR (formerly Girls Rock Regina), funded through the SSHRC Partnership Engagement program; and Take Up Space, You Matter!: Fostering (Re)Connection During and After the Pandemic Through Trauma-Informed Community Arts Programming. This is a collaborative project with community partners, GRR, Vibes YQR, and Femmes Across the Board, funded by Mental Health Research Canada and the Saskatchewan Health Foundation. 

Director of the University of Regina’s Humanities Research Institute (HRI), Dr. Marsh is  Professor and Program Coordinator of Creative Technologies and Design in the Faculty of Media, Art, & Performance. She is also director of the Interactive Media and Performance (IMP) Lab, which she founded in 2007 during her tenure as a Canada Research Chair.  

Within the IMP Labs’ programming, Marsh produces and facilitates workshops on interactive audio and digital technologies; curates the Flatland Scratch Seminar and Workshop Series; engages in collaborative hip hop and interactive media projects with various partners; hosts the annual GRR youth and adult camps and programs; she has collaborated on developing sustainable supports for remote communities focusing on hip hop and arts programming; and she offers accessible, interactive community programming in the IMP Labs. 

Marsh’s scholarly and creative practice focuses on Hip Hop and DJ cultures in Canada, gender, ageing and popular music, interactive media and performance, digital storytelling and community radio, and the impacts of community arts-based initiatives on expanding possibilities for children, women, non-binary people, and gender expansive people within the music industries. 

Marsh is co-editor of We Still Here: Hip Hop North of the 49th Parallel (McGill-Queen’s), producer of Let’s Talk Research, a podcast series focusing on research supported by the Humanities Research Institute, and director of the documentary, I’m Gonna Play Loud: Girls Rock Regina and the Ripple Effect, which won Best Short Documentary and Audience Choice Awards at the Toronto Short Film Festival in 2021.  

From March 2020 through 2021, Dr Marsh and her two young children produced and co-hosted Imagine This Music!, a weekly radio program for kids and their caregivers. From the radio program and in response to the voting down of the Pride Celebrations motion by the Regina Public School Board in Fall 2019, Marsh co-created the mixed media artwork, We are a Family, (with Evie Johnny Ruddy), as part of the Queering the Creek Augmented Reality exhibition (2020); and in August 2021, Marsh and Ruddy created the 12 minute audio composition called Imagine This, reflecting on making radio with children during the pandemic, which debuted at the international IF Festival. 

Marsh is a long time researcher of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, is a co-pi on the SSHRC Partnership Grant Improvising Futures. Recently she has also taken on the Co-Directorship of the Regina Improvisation Studies Center (RISC), the Regina site for IICSI.  

Marsh holds a PhD in Popular Music and Ethnomusicology and MA in Women’s and Gender Studies from York University, and a Bachelor of Music and BA in Women’s and Gender Studies from University of Ottawa. 

Colin Harrington

Colin Harrington is a Guelph based multimedia artist, A/V technician, and multidisciplinary musician. He performs in a “live hardware” electronic project called MOONBEAN, who has toured Canada and Europe playing semi-improvised dance music. He also produces and directs music videos, and works for IICSI as a technician in their ImprovLab at University of Guelph. 

Daniel Fischlin

University Research Chair Daniel Fischlin is a leading Canadian humanities researcher who has produced important cross-disciplinary work, including some sixteen books with a wide variety of international presses. His most recent books include (with Ajay Heble and George Lipsitz) The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, Rights, and the Ethics of Cocreation (Duke UP) and a co-authored book with Martha Nandorfy entitled The Community of Rights • The Rights of Community (Oxford UP), the third in a trilogy of books co-written with Dr. Nandorfy on rights issues. Fischlin has received several major awards for teaching excellence and is to date the only winner from the Humanities of the prestigious Premier’s Research Excellence Award. He is a multiple award winner of SSHRCC grants as an independent researcher and as a core investigator on the MCRI and Partnership Fund grants. Associated with the Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice (ICASP) project and the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI). Dr. Fischlin serves as the General Series Editor for Oxford University Press’s unique re-edition of the Shakespeare plays (Shakespeare Made in Canada) from a specifically Canadian point of view, featuring prominent Canadian scholars and authors. He also serves as the General Series Editor of Duke University Press’s series entitled Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice, a key component of the research outcomes associated with the ICASP project. 

David Dove

A trombone player, composer, improviser, and workshop-facilitator, David Dove has given performances and workshops across the US and internationally.  

As Founding Director of Nameless Sound (a non-profit organization in Houston, Texas), he curates/presents a concert series of international contemporary experimental music, and has developed a philosophy and practice for music workshops. Nameless Sound’s pedagogy identifies collaborative improvisation for its potential towards goals of knowledge exchange, creative work, healing, community building, and play. Nameless Sound serves hundreds of youth annually in Houston homeless shelters, community centers, public schools, and refugee communities. Dove has written on music pedagogy, including a chapter titled “The Music is the Pedagogy” that has been published in the collection “Beyond the Classroom” (Routledge).  

Dove’s early musical background ranged from studies in jazz and symphonic music, to punk rock bands. As a creative artist, free improvisation has been his primary (but not exclusive) approach to performance and collaboration. In addition to collaborations with other musicians, Dove has made music for film, dance, theater, poetry and visual/installation work. He has focused on acoustic playing for most of his career, developing a style that draws influence from a range of sources including jazz, 20th century composed music, electronic music and free improvisation. He’s inspired by a diverse range of influences from outside of his form, including hardcore punk rock, visual/conceptual arts, modern/contemporary dance, and Houston mixtape visionary DJ Screw. The influence of DJ Screw was the catalyst for an electronics-based development in Dove’s music. In an attempt assimilate the effect of Screw’s extremely slow and low mixes (as a real time, improvisational music), Dove extends the trombone with the use of guitar pedals, pitch shifters, and (most importantly) sub-woofers. Another special interest is site-specific performance (especially when a special acoustic environment is available) and durational events (lasting for as long as 5-8 hours). Non-musical performative activity has also been explored in recent projects. Dove has collaborated with a wide range of local, national and international creative musicians. He performs in both set groups and ad hoc ensembles, as well as solo. 

Ellen Waterman

Ellen Waterman is Professor and Helmut Kallmann Chair for Music in Canada at Carleton University. Previously she taught at Memorial University of Newfoundland where she was IICSI site coordinator. She is both a music scholar and a flutist specializing in creative improvisation. Her interdisciplinary research interests range across improvisation, contemporary performance, gender, sound and ecology. With Gillian Siddall, she is co-editor of Negotiated Moments: Improvisation, Sound and Subjectivity (Duke 2016). Her books on acoustic ecology and sound art include The Art of Immersive Soundscapes (with Pauline Minevich, 2013) and Sonic Geography Imagined and Remembered(2002).  She is a member of ~spin~ duo (with James Harley) exploring the intersections between acoustic/electro-acoustic performance and real time multi-channel sound diffusion. Their multi-channel recording Like a ragged flock…was released in 2015 (Canadian Music Centre and iTunes). Ellen is founding co-editor of the online, peer-reviewed journal Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation. With Rob Jackson, she developed the Improvisation Tool Kit at www.improvcommunity.ca drawing together information from several community-engaged projects to create a free resource for teaching improvisation. She also participates in a multi-site research project to develop the Adaptive Use Musical Instruments (AUMI) software interface, a musical instrument that enables people who have very limited controlled (voluntary) movement to independently engage in music making. Her work on AUMI may be found at https://voices.no/index.php/voices/article/view/834/739. Ellen’s current book project is a comparative ethnography of twelve Canadian music festivals, Sounds Provocative: The Ecology of Experimental Music Performance in Canada, www.sonicecology.com. 

Emma Bortolon-Vettor

Emmalia Bortolon-Vettor is a guitarist and multidisciplinary researcher whose work involves live sound technology and improvisation. They have garnered varied arts experiences including live sound and theatre production, project coordination and management, curriculum design, developing and executing events, curating shows, along with marketing and communications management. Emmalia recently earned their MA in the IMPR program, involving the creation of a free recording and producing curriculum for Girls Rock Camp Guelph. Their current musical project is Bonnie Trash, whose debut album Malocchio was released in October of 2022 on Hand Drawn Dracula. If you don’t see them on stage, you can catch them in Guelph coordinating the Girls Rock Camp Guelph chapter, curating live music and theatre, or behind the board at a DIY show. 

Eric Fillion

Eric Fillion is director of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) and assistant professor at the School of Languages and Literatures (SOLAL – French Studies). His ongoing work on the social and symbolic importance of music—within countercultures and in international/intercultural relations—builds on the experience he has acquired as a musician. It also informs his current research on the postwar cultural public sphere in Canada, Quebec, and the Francophone world. His two main projects examine the emergence of the music festival phenomenon and the entangled sonic histories of diasporic social movements, with a focus on both intermediality and improvisation. Eric Fillion is the founder of the Tenzier archival record label and co-editor of the journal Critical Studies in Improvisation. The author of two books, JAZZ LIBRE et la révolution québécoise: musique-action, 1967-1975 and Distant Stage: Quebec, Brazil, and the Making of Canada’s Cultural Diplomacy, he is also the co-editor (with Sean Mills and Désirée Rochat) of Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race, and History in the Life of Lou Hooper. He is currently working on a collection (co-edited with Ajay Heble) tentatively titled Ripple Effects: The Active Histories and Possible Futures of Music Festivals.

Erin Parkes

Erin received her Bachelor of Music, Master of Arts in Musicology, and Graduate Certificate in Piano Pedagogy Research from the University of Ottawa. Erin holds a Ph.D. in music education from McGill University, where she researched how to effectively train studio music teachers to work with students with autism. In 2012, Erin founded Lotus Centre for Special Music Education, a charitable organization committed to providing access to music education for people with exceptionalities, where she currently serves as Director of Research and Professional Development. Recently, Erin launched the Lotus Centre Institute for Professional Development in order to provide music educators with the skills and tools they need to help students with exceptionalities reach their full potential. In addition to her role at Lotus Centre, Erin is an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa, teaching courses and mentoring students in special music education. Erin presents at conferences and guest lectures throughout North America and internationally on teaching music to students with exceptionalities and other issues in music education. 

Hiyam Mahrat

Originally Syrian, born and raised in the United Arab Emirates, Hiyam came to Canada in 2018 and studied Performing Arts at Sheridan College. Besides her passion and work in the medical and administrative fields, she is a growing artist in theatre, film, and music. She is interested in contemporary Canadian theatre, experimental short film, traditional performing arts, and is currently a choir member of the Canadian Arabic Orchestra. Her art focuses on issues of belonging, identity diffusion, and cultural erosion. Hiyam is also interested in theatrical set design, voice acting, and directing. Currently, Hiyam is the General Manager of MT Space. 

James Harley

James Harley is a Canadian composer presently based in Ontario, where he teaches at the University of Guelph. He obtained his doctorate in composition at McGill University in 1994, after spending six years composing and studying music in Europe (London, Paris, Warsaw). His music has been awarded prizes in Canada, USA, UK, France, Poland, Japan, and has been performed and broadcast around the world. Some of Harley’s compositions are available on disc (Artifact, ATMA, Centrediscs, Dame, Kappa, McGill, Musicworks, PeP, Soundprints) and his scores are primarily available through the Canadian Music Centre. He has been commissioned by, among others, Codes d’Accès, Continuum, ECM, Hammerhead Consort, Kappa, Kore, New Music Concerts, Oshawa-Durham Symphony, Open Ears Festival, Polish Society for New Music, SMCQ, Transit Festival Leuven, Transmission, Trio Phoenix, Vancouver New Music. He composes music for acoustic forces as well as electroacoustic media, with a particular interest in multi-channel audio. As a researcher, Harley has written extensively on contemporary music. His book, Xenakis: His Life in Music (Routledge) was published in 2004, and his second book, Iannis Xenakis: Kraanerg (Ashgate) in 2015. As a performer, Harley has a background in jazz, and has most recently worked as an interactive computer musician, performing with Ken Aldcroft, Cam McKittrick, Joe Sorbara, Ellen Waterman, Gayle Young, and others. ~spin~ (duo with Ellen Waterman) put out a disc in 2015. 

jashen edwards

jashen’s research centres around students’ sonic lifeworlds—sound currents streaming at home, school, on the streets and cyberspace—examining how sonic encounters may be a conduit and catalyst for creative critical consciousness. Drawing upon the fields of archaeoacoustics, sound studies, and sensuous scholarship, his work seeks to draw connections between music education and social justice arts education through the phenomenon of sound. 

He has worked in PK-12 schools, colleges and universities, juvenile detention centers and homeless shelters in San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago, Berlin, Deutschland and London, ON. jashen has published and presented his research internationally and is co-founder of Sound, Meaning, Education (SME). Presently, jashen is a in post-doctoral fellow at the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI). He has earned a Ph.D. in music education from Western University, an MA in music education from Northwestern and a BA in music (composition) from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Jesse Stewart

Jesse Stewart is a composer, percussionist, visual artist, researcher, and educator. His music has been documented on over twenty recordings including Stretch Orchestra’s self-titled debut album, which was honoured with the 2012 “Instrumental Album of the Year” Juno award. He has performed and/or recorded with musical luminaries including Pauline Oliveros, Hamid Drake, William Parker, Joe McPhee, David Mott, Dong-Won Kim, and many others. His music has been performed at festivals throughout Canada, in Europe and in the United States and he has been widely commissioned as a composer and artist. His writings on music and art have appeared in such journals as American Music, Black Music Research Journal, Contemporary Music Review, Intermedialities, and in numerous edited anthologies.   

He is a professor of music in Carleton University’s School for Studies in Art and Culture and an adjunct professor in the Visual Arts program at the University of Ottawa. In 2013, he received Carleton University’s Marston LaFrance Research Fellowship. He has also received numerous teaching awards including the 2015 Carleton University Teaching Achievement Award, the university’s highest honour in recognition of teaching excellence, and in 2017 he was given the International Desire2Learn award in Teaching and Learning. In 2014, he was named to the Order of Ottawa. Aside from his contribution to academia and music, Jesse is passionately dedicated to strengthening his community, which led him to create the We Are All Musicians project, which is dedicated to making music as broadly accessible and inclusive as possible. 

Jim Davies

Jim Davies is a full professor in the Institute of Cognitive Science at Carleton University. Director of the Science of Imagination Laboratory, he explores computational modeling and artificial intelligence applied to human visual imagination. His work has shown how people use visual thinking to solve problems, and how they visualize imagined situations and worlds. 

He is a frequent contributor to Nautilus magazine and is author of Riveted: The Science of How Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe and Imagination: The Science of Your Mind’s Greatest Power, and Being the Person Your Your Dog Thinks You Are: The Science of a Better You. 

He is also a co-host of the podcast Minding the Brain http://www.mindingthebrainpodcast.com/ 

Joe Sorbara

Canadian drummer and percussionist Joe Sorbara has spent more than two decades developing a reputation as an imaginative and dedicated performer, composer, improviser, organiser, writer, and educator. Sorbara is equally comfortable playing jazz, free improvised music, indie rock, and chamber music, but is most at home when playing them all at the same time. He has played and recorded with Ken Aldcroft, Jared Burrows, Anthony Braxton, Nikita Carter, François Houle, Germaine Liu, Evan Parker, Allen Ravenstine, Clyde Reed, and Friendly Rich, among many many others. Sorbara is currently developing a book for a post-pandemic Toronto-based sextet. Other projects under his own name include a Vancouver-based quartet and the woodwinds-and-percussion trio, The Imperative. 

Joe is a long-time student of master drummer Jim Blackley. He holds an Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music from York University in Toronto and a Master’s degree in English from the University of Guelph where his work focused on critical improvisation studies, literary and cultural theory, and pedagogy. He is currently studying toward a PhD with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. Joe has worked extensively as a workshop facilitator and guest lecturer and has taught for twelve years in the School of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Guelph. 

Joel Bakan

Joel Bakan is a professor of law at the University of British Columbia, and an internationally renowned legal scholar and commentator. A former Rhodes Scholar and law clerk to Chief Justice Brian Dickson of the Supreme Court of Canada, Bakan has law degrees from Oxford, Dalhousie, and Harvard. His critically acclaimed international hit, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Free Press, 2004), electrified readers around the world (it was published in over 20 languages), and became a bestseller in several countries. The book inspired a feature documentary film, The Corporation, written by Bakan and co-created with Mark Achbar, which won numerous awards, including best foreign documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, and was a critical and box office success. Bakan’s highly regarded scholarly work includes Just Words: Constitutional Rights and Social Wrongs (University of Toronto Press, 1997), as well as textbooks, edited collections, and numerous articles in leading legal and social science journals. His new book, Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children (Free Press) was recently released in paperback and has been published in several translations. Bakan, who is also a professional jazz guitarist, grew up in East Lansing, Michigan and now lives in Vancouver, Canada with his wife, Rebecca Jenkins, and their two children, Myim and Sadie. 

Jordan Zalis

Jordan Zalis is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Recipient of the Helmut Kallmann Award for Research in Canadian Music, and a doctoral fellow of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Jordan’s research sits at the intersection of sound, music, sport, and society. His thesis lauds perspectivism, asking hundreds of people the same question: “What does basketball sound like?” The result is a dynamic multimedia project and set of essays, criticisms, and oral histories that will turn into book form “soon.” If you’re interested in reading what an emerging ethnomusicologist thinks about the sound of sport in Canada, Jordan has published work on the 2017 Tim Hortons Brier, and the sounding politics of TD Place Stadium, where he “listened to football (soccer) in Ottawa” (Insular Livros 2020; Routledge 2021). Together with writing and performing original music, Jordan manages a small Toronto-based record label and music publishing house, named Suplex Music and [xlds], respectively. When not in the field (studying sound, music, and sport), Jordan is out in the park, practicing environmental soundscape recording while embracing rivers, lakes, oceans, and forests.  

Julia Busatto

Julia Busatto (she/they) is a bookmaker, artist, and community advocate born and raised in Guelph, Ontario. Fiercely passionate about the arts, community-building, and storytelling, Julia has had a hand in Flea School, the Arts Everywhere Festival, Kazoo! Festival, Soup on Sundays, and Ronnie Magazine. She has worked with Musagetes and PS Guelph as a part-time production and administrative assistant. Julia holds a BAH in English from McMaster University and a postgraduate certificate in Publishing from Centennial College. Outside of work, you can find Julia walking her dog, catching a concert, watching paranormal television, or out on a run! 

Justine Richardson

Justine Richardson is the Director of the Arboretum at the University of Guelph where improvisation with people and nature interplays with planning every day. She was the project manager for the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation from 2015–2020.  She has experience in project and partnership development with both university research environments and community-based arts and cultural organizations. Prior to IICSI, she worked at the 2030+ Research Group at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. For many years she worked developing and managing multi-partner humanities research projects at MATRIX: Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online at Michigan State University. Her work at Matrix included the Quilt Index, the American Black Journal Online archive, and the Quilt Alliance’s Quilt Treasures video documentaries. She began her work-life at the community-based media-arts centre Appalshop, in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky, where she directed Girls’ Hoops, a documentary history of girls’ high school basketball. Justine holds a M.A. from Michigan State University in American Studies with a certificate in Humanities Computing and a B.A. from Yale University in History of Art. As an undergraduate she was part of Yale Children’s Theater and the improvisational group, Playscape, so she is especially enthusiastic about bringing her management experience to engage with the IICSI community. The Arboretum is a community partner on the IF project and Justine serves on the Advisory Committee. 

Karen Ng

Toronto based improviser Karen Ng can be found in many different projects across a wide range of music. She has performed with The Weather Station, Andy Shauf, Lido Pimienta, Luka Kuplowsky, Badge Époque Ensemble, Tim Baker, L CON, Happiness Project, and Do Make Say Think. Currently Karen is involved in several improvising ensembles in the city including Rob Clutton Trio, p2p, Kind Mind, Craig Dunsmuir and the Dun Dun Band, See Through 4 as well as various ad hoc duos, trio and quartets.  

In 2015 she was awarded the Chalmers Professional Development Grant by the Ontario Arts Council to study with the saxophone section of the ICP Orchestra in Europe as well as the OAC National/International Residency grant in 2018 which took place in New York. In 2017 she was a finalist for the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist award. Formerly a board member of the Somewhere There collective and Assistant Artistic/General Director of Guelph Jazz Festival from 2019-2022, she is the co-founder of TONE festival and is Chair for the Music Gallery Board of Directors. 

Kevin McNeilly

Kevin McNeilly teaches Cultural Studies and contemporary literatures in English at the University of British Columbia. He was the UBC site manager as well as the coordinator for the Text and Media research group for the Improvisation, Community and Social Practice research His research focuses on the intersections of improvised music and poetry, on media aesthetics, and on concepts and practices of listening. He has published articles on the music of Charles Mingus, John Zorn, and Steve Lacy, on television programs including The Wire, Battlestar Galactica and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and on the work of a wide variety of contemporary poets, from Anne Carson to Robert Creeley. His book of poems, Embouchure, was published by Nightwood Editions in 2011. He maintains two blogs: Frank Styles (http://frankstyles.blogspot.ca), which concentrates on poetry and music, and Flow, Fissure, Mesh (http://flowfissuremesh.com), which concerns improvisation, media and pedagogy. His website, http://www.kevinmcneilly.ca, features audio, video, poetry and more. 

Kim McLeod

I joined the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph in 2016 and teach courses in contemporary performance practices, including devising and approaches to digital performance. My main area of research focuses on the intersection between political performance and participatory forms of media. My current book project, Performing Digital: Publics, Politics and Participation (advance contract MQUP) uses performance theory and critical media studies to investigate how live performance and activism can work with new media tools to facilitate political engagement. An ongoing secondary area of interest for me is the role satire plays in contemporary political culture, particularly within Canada. I am also co-editor of the Views & Reviews section of Canadian Theatre Review and have edited issues of the journal on Gaming and Time’s Up. 

Much of my work employs research creation/performance-as-research methods. I am currently working on a performance as research project that addresses the predominance of female voices as digital assistants (e.g. Siri, Alexa) and how this relates to understandings of the openings and constraints for the female voice in performance. I was also recently the director of The Haven Project, a fiction podcast on food security created in collaboration with the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute. 

Kyle Mackie

Leslie Fisher

Leslie Fisher, originally from Guelph ON joined Guelph Youth Dance Training Program as a parent, student and in an administrative role in 2017/2018 after returning to Guelph in 2016 with her family. Leslie holds a BFA in contemporary dance from Concordia University and is currently the Outreach and Development manager for Guelph Dance. Leslie’s return to Guelph was also a return to dance with Park’n Dance; a dance program for people with Parkinson’s disease as assistant program director. 

Leslie is thrilled to be part of Guelph Youth Dance Training Program as a Teacher and Office Manager.  With many years of experience working with Young People she is excited to share her passion for movement, self-expression and creativity! 

She is a true believer that everyone, regardless of age or ability, should be dancing. 

Lisa Cay Miller

Lisa Cay Miller (she/her) lives and makes music on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations.  

As a pianist, Miller performs/performed with many great musicians, including Ken Vandermark, Nicole Mitchell, Butch Morris, Mankwe Ndosi, Douglas R. Ewart, Eyvind Kang, Ingrid Laubrock (USA), John Dikeman, Ig Henneman, Michael Moore, Wilbert de Joode, Anne La Berge, Jasper Stadhouders (Amsterdam), Nova Musica Eletroacústica and Pianorquestra (Brazil), Vicky Mettler, Eric Normand, Le GRILL, L’Ensemble SuperMusique (Québec), Kenton Loewen, Dylan van der Schyff, Peggy Lee, Joshua Zubot, NOW Orchestra, NOW Ensemble and many more (Vancouver). Miller is the Artistic Director of the New Orchestra Workshop Society (NOW), proudly presenting Vancouver improvisers in regular concerts and workshops. Miller has released recordings on the greenideas (Sleep Furiously, Q, waterwall) and Trytone (682/281) record labels.   

Miller’s compositions have been premiered by the Flat Earth Society, de Bijloke ensemble (Belgium) the Tetzepi Bigtet (Amsterdam), mmm…(Tokyo), NME, Pianorquestra (Brazil), L’Ensemble SuperMusique, le GGRIL, Quatuor Bozzini (Montreal), NOW Orchestra, NOW Ensemble, Vancouver New Music, Standing Wave, Jesse Zubot, Turning Point Ensemble, Rachel Iwaasa, Hard Rubber Orchestra and the François Houle Jane Hayes duo (Vancouver). Upcoming commissions include those for Russell Wallace and the Hard Rubber Orchestra (Vancouver). Lisa has been the Artistic Director of the New Orchestra Workshop Society (NOW Society) since 2013, presenting improvised music and community events in Vancouver. 

Lisa Hirmer

Lisa Hirmer is an interdisciplinary artist working in visual media, especially photography; social practice/community collaboration; performance; and occasionally writing. Her work is focussed on collective relationships—that which exists between things rather than simply within them— both within human communities and in human relationships with the more-than-human world. Much of her recent work wrestles with what it means to be living inside the climate emergency, on the edge of planetary collapse. 

Hirmer’s practice is unapologetically sincere in its engagement with the world and deeply connected to the sites, communities and circumstances that surround its creation. Her work finds home both in traditional gallery contexts and an expanded field of other public and semi-public spaces. It is always created with a keen awareness—informed by a mixed Mexican- and European-newcomer Canadian background—that multiple realities exist alongside one another.   

Her work has been shown in galleries across Canada and internationally including at Art Gallery of Ontario, University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Doris McCarthy Gallery, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Harbourfront Centre, KIAC, Peninsula Arts, CAFKA, Third Space, Queens Museum, and Flux Factory, among others. Recent highlights for her practice include a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Guelph, We Are Weather, which explored changing human relationships with weather; solo exhibitions Of Containers and Firestarts at Cambridge Art Galleries, and In Case of Emergency at Art Gallery of Mississauga, both of which investigated emergency as a state of being; the 2018 premier of the multi-faceted performance work Drinking Water in collaboration with choreographer Sete Tele at Tasdance (Australia). From 2019-2023 she was a thread residency artist with Towards Braiding, a program led by Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti working towards decolonial processes and sensibilities. In 2020 her book of poetry, Forests Not Yet Here, which emerges from texts written for participatory works, was published by Publication Studio Guelph. 

She has also done artist residencies with Arts House Melbourne (TimePlaceSpace: Nomad), the Santa Fe Art Institute (Water Rights), the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (Rising Waters), the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (Soil Cultures), BIGCI, KIAC (the Natural + Manufactured) and the Camargo Foundation, and was the 2016 Artist-in-Residence for the City of Guelph. She has received grants from the Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Culture and Animals Foundation. 

She has a Masters of Architecture from the University of Waterloo and is currently based in Canada. From 2009 until 2017 she created public work under the pseudonym DodoLab. An archive of that work can be found here. 

Marcelo Wanderley

Marcelo Mortensen Wanderley holds a Ph.D. degree from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI), France, on acoustics, signal processing, and computer science applied to music. His interdisciplinary research focuses on the development of novel interfaces for music performance. He has authored and co-authored several dozen scientific and technological publications on NIME, including the development of open databases on academic resources and sensor and actuator technologies for musical applications: the Interactive Systems and Instrument Design in Music Working Group (ISIDM) and the SensorWiki.org projects. 

In 2000, he co-edited the first English language research reference entirely devoted to this area, Trends in Gestural Control of Music (Wanderley & Battier, 2000). In 2003, he chaired the second International Conference on New Interfaces for Music Expression (NIME03), and in 2006, he co-wrote the first textbook on this subject, New Digital Musical Instruments: Control and Interaction Beyond the Keyboard (Miranda & Wanderley, 2006). In 2008 he was a visiting professor at the Université de Bretagne Sud, France (Maître de Conférences), and in 2011, he was awarded a 2-month international chair at the Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil. More recently, he was awarded a 5-year international research chair from Inria, France, the Francqui Foundation Chair at the University of Mons, Belgium, and the Distinguished Visitor Award at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. In September 2016, has was appointed a member of Computer Music Journal’s Editorial Advisory Board. He is a senior member of the ACM and of the IEEE. 

Research from 2021 showed that his research was the most cited in the first two decades of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME).  

Marina Santi

Marina Santi holds a PhD in Educational Sciences and is Full Professor in Didactics and Special Education. She works in the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Pedagogy and Applied Psychology – FISPPA at University of Padova, Italy. Her research deals with dialogue and argumentation concerning knowledge construction processes and the investigation of social interaction as cognitive potential for learning. She specialized in classroom discussion both as method and context for the development of higher-order thinking skills and reflective capabilities. She is an expert on “Philosophy for Children”, a subject into which she has carried out a wide range of empirical research to evaluate the effectiveness of philosophical practice within communities of inquiry for the development of critical, creative, caring thinking and the construction of inclusive school and social environments. Her recent studies focus on improvisation in teaching and learning. In particular, she explored the Jazz methapor in education. On the topic she directed eight edition of the International Jazz Day – UNESCO at Padua University. Among her main publications: with S. Oliverio (eds.) (2012), Educating for Complex Thinking through Philosophical Inquiry. Models, advances and proposals for the new millennium, Liguori; (2010) (Ed.), Improvisation Between Technique and Spontaneity, Cambridge Scholar Publisher; with E. Zorzi (Eds.) (2016), Education as Jazz. Interdisciplinary Sketches on a New Metaphor, Cambridge Scholar Publisher. 

Marva Wisdom

Marva Wisdom is a leading voice in Canada on empowering social change and is a committed social justice advocate.  She is among the most respected and sought facilitator, moderator and speaker on equity, inclusivity.  Marva’s skills, talent and experience have contributed to significant projects, including as outreach director for the frequently referenced Black Experience (Research) Project (Environics Institute), Lead Advisor for the City of Guelph’s Award Winning Community Plan and Director of Musagetes Foundation’s ArtsEverywhere Festival.  

Her volunteer leadership spans 3 decades including, the YM-YWCA, United Way, Guelph Black Heritage Society, Canadian Centre for Diversity, Operation Black Vote Canada, and Rotary. Marva’s recognitions include the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal, YWCA’s Woman of Distinction and the University of Guelph’s Lang School of Business, Alumni Award. 

Marva holds a Master of Arts in Leadership and is a Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (University of Toronto). 

Meng Xu

I am a recent PhD graduate in Sociology from the University of Guelph. I use ethnographic fieldwork to explore the potential of public spaces as sites of sociability in/across different urban settings. My dissertation research documents how a shopping mall in Beijing is used as a de facto form of social infrastructure, a space of cosmopolitan sociability, and a space of publicness from the perspective of its everyday users. I also work as a research assistant for the ‘Sociable Cities Project’ under the supervision of Dr. Horgan Mervyn at the University of Guelph. 

Improvisation, for me, means the dynamic social organization of public spaces in everyday life. I am particularly interested in how people appropriate (suspensions or changes of planned uses), claim (novel uses of underutilized spaces), and negotiate (rewriting boundaries between various behaviors) public spaces through spontaneous social activities. I am eager to learn more about how improvisation is imagined, practiced, and theorized in other different spheres, for different purposes, and by different groups. Uncovering the commonalities, differences, and interconnectedness among them may shed light on the actualization of more potentials of public spaces for inclusive and sociable urban experiences. 

Nada Abusaleh

Nada Abusaleh is a theatre performer, creator, and artistic produce. She has been performing professionally on stages since 2018 after graduating from the University of Waterloo with a BA minoring in Theatre & Performance. Nada often works collaboratively on new devised works, and often employs physical theatre and improvisation in her approach to performance and creation. Since 2020, she has been exploring puppetry, theatre for early years, mime, and visual theatre. Select performance credits include The Last 15 Seconds (MT Space); Suitcase (7Spices Theatre); Twelfth Night (Tottering Biped Theatre); The B Party (Cosmic Fishing Theatre). Nada is the current Apprentice AD at MT Space and Artistic Producer with Cosmic Fishing Theatre. 

Odesia Howlett

My name is Odesia Howlett, I’m the Marketing & Outreach Director with CFRU 93.3FM Radio & Media Centre, the campus/community radio station based at the University of Guelph.  

Rebecca Barnstaple

Dr Rebecca Barnstaple was an IICSI postdoctoral research fellow and is now an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Creative Arts, Health and Wellness at University of Guelph.  With a PhD in Dance Studies and training in Neuroscience (York University), Rebecca’s research investigates biological dimensions of culture and the impacts of participation in the arts.  A graduate of the National Centre for Dance Therapy at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens (2015), she is involved in education and training for dance therapy and community dance programs globally. Rebecca has contributed to the development and delivery of improvisational arts and health initiatives in the United States (IMPROVment, Wake Forest University) and Canada (SingWell, Toronto Metropolitan University; Piece of Mind, McGill; Dance for Health, Nova Scotia), and has extensive experience in community health and social prescribing. 

Rebecca Caines

Dr Rebecca Caines is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and scholar. Her artistic practice, teaching and research work crosses between creative technologies (including sound art, new media, and augmentation), contemporary performance and improvisation, site-specific art practices, and community-engaged art. She is currently playing a lead role in developing the new Creative Technologies area at the University of Regina, which is an exciting initiative crossing between Fine Arts, Computer Science and Engineering. She is a co-applicant on the 2.5 million dollar SSHRC funded partnership The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), directing the new Regina Improvisation Studies Centre (RISC). She also convenes the Faculty research group REACT (Research into Art and Creative Technology) and coordinates the Arduino and Technology Crafting Group, a weekly informal drop-in working group for practical technology-based art projects open to Faculty and students. Her recent practice-based research projects include Community Sound [e]Scapes: Northern Ontario, a collaborative sound art, video and new media project in remote First Nations communities (with K-Net Services and Ed Video Media Arts); and The University of Regina iPad Orchestra, a creative project exploring improvised music with the iPad and other tablets and mobile devices (with David Gerhard and Pauline Minevich). She has convened large-scale community projects in Australia, Northern Ireland and Canada, and serves on the board for Common Weal Community Arts, Knowhere Productions, and Holophon Audio Arts. She has published internationally, including a number of journal articles and book chapters and is co-editor of a book on improvisation entitled Spontaneous Acts: The Improvisation Studies Reader, with Ajay Heble for Routledge. 

Reza Yazdanpanah

Reza Yazdanpanah (MA, Critical Studies in Improvisation) is an Iranian musician who is a teacher,improviser, performer, and composer. Since 2009, he has been a music faculty member at the University of Guilan, where he has taught Persian classical repertoire, Radif, and Improvisation on tar and setar (Persian plucked chordophones). Me, Myself, and I; Reza et Moi, Tamashay-e- Saba, Eshq Amad, and Goshayesh are his recorded compositions and improvisations based on folkloric, traditional, and classical Persian music. In 2016, focusing on children’s music education, Reza established his private music school (Yazdanpanah Music School) in Shiraz with his brothers. His recently published book is Shur-e-Tar, a comprehensive guide for both music educators and self-teaching students.  Since 2019, Reza has been a grad student at the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) at the University of Guelph. His research interest is creating improvisational games for children as social practices in order to equip them for their future lives. 

Saara Liinamaa

I am a cultural sociologist interested in creativity and everyday life. As a qualitative researcher, my research agenda combines critical analysis and meaning-centred cultural interpretation with an overarching interest in how individuals and organizations navigate conditions of uncertainty. I have published work on urban life and public space, migrant agricultural labour, art and cultural theory, and creative work and occupations. My recent book, The New Spirit of Creativity (UTP), was awarded the CSA 2023 Canadian Sociology Book Award. I am co-investigator of the Sociable Cities Project (SSHRC-IG), a project that studies sociability and belonging in public space, and principal investigator of the Cultural Labour Studies Project (SSHRC-IDG), a project that examines cultural work and occupations in Canada. As a graduate of Social and Political Thought (York University), I am dedicated to interdisciplinary inquiry across the arts and social sciences and welcome invitations to collaborate. 

Scarlett Racycki

My name is Scarlett Raczycki, I’m the ED at Silence a non-profit, community engaged music venue, art gallery and low-barrier community space located in downtown Guelph. Improvisation to me means adaptability and responsiveness. Being present with those you’re working with and meeting challenges and opportunities with excitement and a sense of freedom. We have plenty of opportunities for collaboration within our space and the work we do – options are pretty open but I have no concrete suggestions or ideas to provide right now. 

Shauna McCabe

Dr. Shauna McCabe is the Director of the Art Gallery of Guelph, and former Executive Director of the Textile Museum of Canada with more than 15 years of experience as an arts administrator, as well as professor and Canada Research Chair at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. 

Previously, she was Director of The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in Newfoundland and Labrador, and Senior Curator at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Prince Edward Island. In 2007, she was appointed Canada Research Chair in Critical Theory in the Interpretation of Culture, leading interdisciplinary research and practice at Mount Allison University where she was also Associate Professor. 

McCabe completed a PhD at the University of British Columbia, an MA at Simon Fraser University, and a BA at McGill University. 

Shawn Van Sluys

Shawn Van Sluys (he/him) is the Executive Director of Musagetes, a Canadian foundation whose programs aim to make the arts more central and meaningful in peoples’ lives. Musagetes supports artistic inquiry, experimentation, and publication that deepens our understanding of and relationship to the world around us. Musagetes’ international programs include festivals, artist fellowships and residencies, research collectives, and publishing. Musagetes is an Executive Partner of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) and Shawn is a member of the Executive Team. 

Prior to joining Musagetes in 2009, Shawn was the Executive Director of the Canadian Art Museum Directors’ Organization (CAMDO). He completed a BFA in Art History & Museum Studies at the University of Lethbridge. He is currently in the research phase of a Doctor of Education in the study of philanthropy at the University of British Columbia. 

Sofia Boz

Sofia is attending PhD in Educational Sciences at University of Padova on improvisation in education. Her study focuses on jazz in school adopting a qualitative approach to improvisation as way to teach and learn staying in the moment and valorizing a variation approach to curriculum design. 

Taylor Graham

Taylor Marie Graham (she/her) is an award-winning playwright, librettist, director, theatre scholar, arts administrator, and educator who lives in Cambridge, Ontario / Haldimand Tract. She has an MFA in Creative Writing, a PhD in theatre from the University of Guelph, and works as a sessional theatre professor at universities in Southwestern Ontario. You can find Taylor’s articles in Canadian Theatre Review, Intermission Magazine, Routledge’s Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, and Canadian Literature. Critics describe her plays and operas as, “arresting and funny” (Slotkin), “uncommonly cool” (MoT), “charmingly twisted” (Toronto Star), “powerful, and courageous,” (OnStage), “meaningful for all ages” (Intermission), “darkly evocative” (Istvan Reviews), “psychological, theological, and ornithological” (Our Theatre Voice), “as moving as it is scary” (My Entertainment World), and “profound, beautifully crafted” (StageDoor). 

 

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Adrian Chan

Adrian D.C. Chan is a Professor with the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University, where he is also the Director of the Collaborative Specialization in Accessibility, and the Director of the Abilities Living Laboratory (ALL). He is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Human Kinetics at the University of Ottawa and an Affiliate Investigator at Bruyère Research Institute. 

He is a biomedical engineering researcher with expertise in biomedical signal processing, biomedical image processing, noninvasive sensor systems, assistive devices, and accessibility. He served in various leadership positions at Carleton University, including Associate Dean (Programs and Awards) for the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs, Assistant Vice-President (Academic), and interim Associate Vice-President (Teaching and Learning). 

Chan has over 100 refereed publications and has been recognized with a number of honours including CMBES’ Outstanding Biomedical Engineer of the Year and the 3M National Teaching Fellowship. He is a Registered Professional Engineer, a Senior Member of the IEEE, member of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Fellow of the Canadian Medical and Biological Engineering Society, member of the Biomedical Engineering Society, and 3M Teaching Fellow. 

Adriana Camacho Torres

Double bassist, documentary filmmaker and improviser, active promoter on the Mexican and international scene of free improvisation and free jazz. Her drive as an improviser has led her to collaborate and record with musicians, poets and artists such as Anne Waldman, Ana Ruíz, Chefa Alonso, Elliott Levin, Naima Karlsson, Guro Moe, Phillip Greenlief, Daniel Carter, Federico Ughi, Germán Bringas, Scott Amendola, Lisa Mezzacapa, Natalia Pérez Turner, Alex Otaola, Todd Clouser among others. She has participated in improvisation ensambles directed by Kahil El Zabar, William Parker and Phillip Greenlief. 

She has played in forums such as the Museum of Modern Art of CDMX, Knulp Bar in Trieste Italy, Museum Ugo Cara in Trieste Italy, Resist! Vienna, Austria, Monday Improviser’s Sessions Vienna, Austria, Pavilion 2.0 Venice Italy, Cafe Otto London, ICA London, Medicine for Nightmares, San Francisco, Philliput Gallery Philadelphia USA, Roskilde Festival, Malmo Museum Sweden, Kuhlspot, Berlin. among other forums. 

Adriana has organized series of concerts and festivals such as Música Libre at the Casa de Cultura San Rafael, Free Music Thursdays at the UNAM Centro de Ciencias de la complejidad, 13th Musica Radical in the Museum of Mexico City and Radio Niagara. 

She currently plays as a double bassist in several projects: No tan Cuerdas, Ronronoise, David Contreras Trio, Sesión Libre Trío, Ana Ruiz y su orquesta Kóryma, Cataratas del Niagara and her solo project Loope. 

Ana Ruiz

Ana Ruiz is a pianist and composer of music for videos, films and choreography dedicated to improvisation and pioneer of free jazz in Mexico since 1973. Ana created the group Atrás del Cosmos, the first free jazz group in Mexico. While performing with the group Atrás del Cosmos, Don Cherry was invited to play and teach the Organic Music Workshop, culminating with three concerts at the National Auditorium. 

Andrew Staniland

Andrew Staniland began January 2019 as IICSI Site Coordinator at MUN, and serves on the Executive Committee, the Management Team, and the Digital Tools Committee. Andrew is a faculty member in the School of Music at Memorial University in St John’s Newfoundland, where he founded MEARL (Memorial ElectroAcoustic Research Lab). At MEARL, Andrew leads a cross-disciplinary research team that has produced the innovative Mune digital instrument: www.munemusic.com. 

Described as a “new music visionary” (National Arts Centre), composer Andrew Staniland has established himself as one of Canada’s most important and innovative musical voices. His music is performed and broadcast internationally and has been described by Alex Ross in the New Yorker Magazine as “alternately beautiful and terrifying.” Important accolades include 3 Juno nominations, the 2016 Terra Nova Young Innovators Award, the National Grand Prize in the EVOLUTION Composers Competition (presented in 2009 by CBC Radio 2/Espace Musique and The Banff Centre), and the Karen Keiser Prize in Canadian Music in 2004. 

Learn more about Andrew and his work at: https://andrewstaniland.com/ 

Craig Gelowitz

Dr. Craig M Gelowitz is an Associate Professor in Software Systems Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Regina in Canada. Before joining the University of Regina, he was a Research Engineer and Manager for Telecommunications Research Laboratories (TRLabs) which was Canada’s largest industry-invested information and communications technology R&D consortium.   

Craig has collaborated on a variety of interdisciplinary projects and initiatives. In addition to his interest in these collaborations, his research interests are in contextually aware software and devices that provide ubiquitous dynamic collection and distribution of information and media. This research covers areas such as machine learning, the integration and development of software systems that provide seamless access, distributed distribution, location awareness and dynamic delivery of information and media. 

Danielle Richardson

I am a performance poet, arts administrator, and independent theatre creator living and working on Treaty 6 territory. I am a queer white settler who loves to collaborate to create impactful artistic experiences. I am especially curious about collaborative writing and creation. Improvisation creates opportunities for risk taking and offers a space for real-time problem solving through an artistic medium. Common Weal Community Arts creates diverse programming with Saskatchewan communities and I think there could be a strong partnership built to create programming in connection with the communities we serve. 

Dong-Won Kim

Since 1984 Kim Dong-Won has learned various traditional percussion music, such as farmer’s drumming and dance, shaman music, Pansori accompany, and music theory. 

In 1987, he was a political prisoner, sentenced for playing music at the funeral ceremony of Lee Seok-Gyu, who was killed by policemen in a pro-democracy protest against the Korean military dictatorship. From this experience, he thought more deeply about society and art. That was the turning point of his life; he began to study traditional music more profoundly as a search for the truest methods of communication. 

During his work for the Samulnori Hanullim Organization as director of Research & Education (1994-2004), he wrote teaching material about Korean traditional music, as well as children’s books, e.g., “The Story of Samulnori” (a creative story about the origins of Samulnori). He has performed in Europe, the U.S.A., Japan, and many other countries, especially as a member of “The Silk Road Ensemble,” led by cellist Yo-Yo Ma. As an innovative improviser, he performed with many brilliant musicians, such as; Vertical Squirrels, Jesse Stewart, William Parker, James McGowan, Mei Han, Randy Raine-Reusch. And he took a new roll as a musical guide in a documentary film “Intangible Asset Number 82″(2008). This film has been invited by many renown international film festivals and won an award in Durban International Film Festival as “The Best Documentary of 2009”. 

He has been helped forge new possibilities for Korean music and performed with western classical, jazz, and international musicians. He wants to create new artistic languages with music from all over the world as it encounters traditional Korean music. He did numbers of long term residencies as a visiting lecturer/professor at the Basel Musik Akademie, Switzerland, at the University of Toronto, Canada, at the University Paris 8, France. In 2016, he directed a gigantic event of “Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of Won-Buddhism” which took place in Seoul World Cup Stadium. At present he is a practitioner in ‘Taepyongmu‘(the 97th Korean intangible cultural asset”) and a professor at Wonkwang Digital University. In 2019, he directed and produced an innovative on-line educational program for Samulnori Instructors and released globally. In same year, he received the citation of the Minister of Education.  

Dustin Brass

Anīn nitišinihkas Dustin Brass, nīn anihšināpēk šikwa from the pisiw doodom, nitōnči Key First Nation, nitōnči ahki. I completed a Bachelor of Education degree in the Secondary Indian Education Program at First Nations University of Canada (FNUniv).  

Erin Goodpipe

Erin is a dakȟóta wíŋyaŋ/ anishinaabekwe from tatanka najin oyate (Standing Buffalo Dakota Nation) and in her close kinship circle, she is a wife, mother and eldest sister. While exploring and sharing diverse layers of storywork, her heart is rooted in the storying and resurgence of and for Indigenous people and culture. She is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, media figure and researcher with a Bachelor of Indigenous Education at First Nations University of Canada (FNUniv), where she is currently in the Master of Indigenous Education program.

Working alongside academics, researchers and community knowledge carriers, Erin has had the immense privilege of co-leading and co-facilitating Indigenous research projects, investigating and advocating in the areas of: arts based community research; cultural relevance and safety in curriculum for Indigenous youth; Indigenous youth suicide and intervention; land imbedded education; Indigenous research methodologies; and Water policy and governance, to name a few. She is also the co-founder of the Making Treaty 4 Collective, a group of artists from Treaty 4 territory dedicated to community education by story sharing through the arts. Her most notable performance and directorial work has been in Making Treaty 4 (MT4 Collective); In Care (Globe Theatre); Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion (Globe Theatre); Mêtewamin (Mêtawê Theatre) and upcoming, Children of the Bear (Outside the March Theatre Company). She was recently recognized and awarded by Sask Arts as an Arts Leader in the province. Erin is involved in various media projects, most notably as a television host of: RezX (Access Communications); The Other Side (APTN); and Treaty Road (season 2 premiering Winter 2025 on APTN), where she also served as key Researcher, Associate Producer, Director and Co-host. She also was the lead investigator of Bathsheba: Search for Evil (Travel + Escape) and lead expert on Paranormal Revenge (CTV Sci-Fi).

Franziska Schroeder

Franziska Schroeder is a saxophonist, theorist, and a Professor for Music and Cultures at the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast. She is a Fellow of the HEA (Higher Education Academy in the UK). She serves on the peer review panel for the UK’s AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) and is a registered expert for the EU’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). 

Franziska was awarded her PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2006, and has since written for many international journals, including Leonardo, Organised Sound, Performance Research, Cambridge Publishing and Routledge. She has published a book on performance and the threshold, an edited volume on user-generated content and in 2014 a book on improvisation entitled Soundweaving. 

Franziska has performed with many international musicians including Joan La Barbara, Pauline Oliveros, Stelarc, the Avatar Orchestra, and Evan Parker. Franziska has released two CDs on the creative source label, a CD with Slam records, and a 2015 album (entitled Barely Cool with improvisors from Brazil) on the pfmentum label. 

George Lipsitz

George Lipsitz is Professor of Black Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Along with Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble he is co-author of The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, Rights and the Ethics of Co-Creation. Lipsitz has authored (among other books) How Racism Takes Place, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, Time Passages, Dangerous Crossroads, Footsteps in the Dark and Midnight at the Barrelhouse.  He serves as editor of the Insubordinate Spaces series at Temple University Press, as editor of the comparative and relational ethnic studies journal Kalfou, and as co-editor of the American Crossroads series at the University of California Press. Lipsitz serves board chair for the African American Policy Forum and for the Woodstock Institute.  The American Studies Association awarded him the Angela Y. Davis Prize for Public Scholarship in 2013 and the Bode-Pearson Prize for Career Distinction in 2016. 

I-Ying Wu

I-Ying Wu is a somatic and improvisation practitioner as well as researcher connected to international networks in artistic and academic circles in Taiwan, UK, and Canada. She was awarded her MA from the National Taiwan University of the Arts in 2006 and a PhD in the performing arts from the University of Northampton, UK in 2014. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Improvisation Studies Centre based in the Faculty of Media, Art and Performance, University of Regina during 2016-2017. Her research on improvisation began from her Masters project that investigated the history of dance improvisation and the cultural meaning of Contact Improvisation within the sociocultural context of Taiwan. Her doctoral thesis, Being Formless: A Daoist Movement Practice, employs practice-as-research methodology to explore the ambiguity of the unknown as characterised in Daoism, how Daoist perspectives on qi-energy are manifest through in-between states of being and the transformation of the self. During her PhD, she developed, based on a Daoist perspective of qi, a somatic movement practice that relies on improvised movement as a pathway towards understanding the Dao (Way). Building on this, her postdoctoral project rethinks the concept of improvisation from a Daoist perspective in order to fill a gap between Western concepts and those from her own cultural perspective and embodied experience of qi.  

Through a series of heart/mind “detachment” in her creative process resonating with her embodied experience of Daoist meditative practices, she holds that improvisation is not a form of art but rather is something within our being, a subtle reaction to the self and surroundings, which needs to be rigorously trained to dwell within our heart/mind so that we may experience, realise, and understand.  

I-Ying has organized and participated in many independent and collaborative projects in creative, multi-disciplinary, and multi-cultural environments. Currently, she is involved in teaching, performing, and undertaking artistic research as an independent artist in Regina, SK, and maintains ties with the Regina Improvisation Studies Centre (RISC) and the International Institute for Critical Studies of Improvisation (IICSI). 

Ian Gibson

I am the liaison between the UofG Library and the Improvising Futures team. I am inspired by creative people (esp. my wife who trained as an opera singer, did improv theatre for fun for years, and is now writing a book).

Ichiro Fujinaga

Ichiro Fujinaga is Canada Research Chair in Music Information Retrieval and Professor in the Music Technology Area of the Department of Music Research at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. He has Bachelor’s degrees in Music/Percussion and Mathematics from University of Alberta, and a Master’s degree in Music Theory, and a Ph.D. in Music Technology from McGill University. In 2003-4, he was the Acting Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) at McGill. In 2002-3 and 2009-12, he was the Chair of the Music Technology Area at the School of Music. Before that he was a faculty member of the Computer Music Department at the Peabody Conservatory of Music of the Johns Hopkins University. Research interests include music theory, machine learning, music perception, digital signal processing, genetic algorithms, and music information acquisition, preservation, and retrieval. He’s also a member of Montreal’s traditional Japanese drumming group Arashi Daiko and tours with them across North America and Europe. 

Jessica Bissett Perea

Dr. Jessica Bissett Perea (Dena’ina [Alaska Dena]) is an interdisciplinary musician-scholar whose Indigenous-led and Indigeneity-centered work uplifts radical and relational ways of being, knowing, and doing to generate more just futures for Indigenous communities. She is a double bassist and vocalist and holds a BME in Music Education, an MA in Music History, and a PhD in Musicology. Her first book Sound Relations: Native Ways of Doing Music History in Alaska (Oxford University Press, 2021) delves into contemporary Inuit musical life across a range of genres—from hip hop to hymnody and drumsongs to funk and R&B—to amplify the significance of sound as integral to Indigenous self-determination and resurgence movements. Sound Relations won the 2023 Irving Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music, the 2023 International Council for Traditional Music and Dance Book Prize, and the 2023 Ruth Stone Prize from the Society of Ethnomusicology. Dr. Bissett Perea currently works as an Associate Professor of American Indian Studies and Adjunct Associate Professor of Music History at the University of Washington, where she teaches courses on American Indian Arts and Aesthetics, Native American Performing Arts Cultures, and Indigenous Research Methodologies. 

John-Carlos Perea

John-Carlos Perea’s (Mescalero Apache, Irish, Chicano, German) research interests include jazz and improvised music performance and composition, urban American Indian lived experiences and cultural productions, music technologies, recording and archiving practices, social constructions of “noise,” Native and African American jazz cultures, and the Creek and Kaw saxophonist Jim Pepper. 

In addition to his scholarly activities, Perea maintains an active career as a GRAMMY® Award winning multi-instrumentalist and recording artist. He has recorded on eighteen albums as a sideman and three as a leader, First Dance (2001), Creation Story (2014), and Cedar Flute Songs (2023). His most recent release is Perea / Sioui / Teuton Trio, recorded live at Jack Straw Cultural Center in Seattle with Joseph Sioui (drums, vocals) and Markus Teuton (guitar).  

John-Carlos Perea is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology in the School of Music at the University of Washington. He has previously served as Associate Professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University (2010-2023), as Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Music at UC Berkeley (2021-22), and as Visiting Researcher, Composer, and Performer (2022-23) at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT). In April 2019, Perea was recognized by the San Francisco Arts Commission’s American Indian Initiative for his musical contribution “to reclaim space, to challenge false narratives, and to reimagine public art from the perspective of Indigenous Peoples.”  

Katherine Zien

Katherine (Katie) Zien* is Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the English Department (Drama and Theatre Concentration). Zien researches and teaches theatre and performance in the Americas, with special focus on transnationalism, militarization, gender, and racialization. Following her 2017 book Sovereign Acts: Performing Race, Space, and Belonging in Panama and the Canal Zone, Zien has developed two ongoing research projects. The first is Bodies on the Front Lines: Performance, Gender, and Sexuality in Latin America and the Caribbean (https://press.umich.edu/Books/B/Bodies-on-the-Front-Lines2) The second, a monograph-in-progress and digital accompaniment, investigate performances of counterinsurgency and military training in the Panama Canal Zone during Latin America’s cold war. Zien is co-editor of the Routledge Studies in Cultures of the Global Cold War book series (https://rb.gy/hpju33) and Co-Director of the Réseau d’Études Latino-américaines de Montréal (https://relam.org/). Zien’s research is supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant from the Government of Canada. 

*Zien rhymes with “Lion.” 

Kathryn Ricketts

Kathryn Ricketts is Associate Professor of Arts Education at University of Regina. Ricketts is a dance educator and performer, with a practice of improvised dance/theatre and somatic study. She is an active member of the dance community in Regina, SK, including work with professional company, New Dance Horizons, and is an active participant in the REACTING improvisation group, coordinated by the Regina Improvisation Studies Centre. She has served as external examiner for one of Regina Institute’s students (John Trinh),. Her PhD research at Simon Fraser University was on practice-based research in the area of auto-ethnography, a/r/tography, improvised poetic narrative and movement. Ricketts has been performing 3 research characters for the last 15 years. One is called LUG with a full-length overcoat, felt hat and aged leather suitcases and the other, Remington with a full-length fur coat and a rubber pigeon head. And the third is Rufus, a tired clown that struggles to find humour in dissonance. These characters function as kinaesthetic conduits telling the stories of others echoing themes of displacement, migration belonging, arrivals, departures Space and place and dissonance. Her current research centre, The Listening Lab, explores experimental art practices integrated with inclusive pedagogy hosting artists and scholars from across the country. 

Laura Levin

Laura Levin is Associate Professor of Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies at York University; York Research Chair in Art, Technology, and Global Activism; and Director of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology. She teaches courses on contemporary theatre and performance art, devised theatre, and practice-based research. Her research focuses on site-specific, immersive, and urban intervention performance; performing gender and sexuality; activist and political performance; performance, human rights, and environmental justice; intermedial and digital performance; research-creation methodologies; and performance theory. She is Associate Editor of Canadian Theatre Review (former Editor-in-Chief) and Co-Editor of Performance Studies in Canada (with Marlis Schweitzer)—winner of the Canadian Association for Theatre Research’s (CATR) 2018 Patrick O’Neill Award for Best Edited Collection. She is Editor of Theatre and Performance in Toronto and Conversations Across Borders, a collection of dialogues on performance, politics, and border culture with performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña; and Editor of Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective, a book on performance art icon Jess Dobkin. Laura has also edited special issues of journals on a wide range of topics: performance art, performing politicians, performance and space, digital performance, choreographies of public assembly, and more. She is author of Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending In, winner of the CATR’s 2015 Ann Saddlemyer Book Award. 

Laura has worked as a director, dramaturg, curator, and performer on artistic research projects at the intersection of political performance, site-specificity, archives, and digital media. Recent examples include performing/co-curating TALIXMXN with Jess Dobkin (Mexico City, 2019), and serving as dramaturg for Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective (AGYU, 2021) and SpiderWebShow’s VR theatre production, You Should Have Stayed Home on Toronto’s G20 protests (directed by Michael Wheeler).  

Laura is Principal Investigator for Hemispheric Encounters: Developing Transborder Research-Creation Practices (2020-2027 SSHRC Partnership Grant), a project that brings together artists, scholars, and activism across Canada, the US, and Latin America to study “hemispheric performance” as a research-creation methodology, a pedagogical strategy, and a tool for social change. She also serves as Community Partnerships Lead on the CFREF grant, Connected Minds, a project addressing social impacts of AI and other disruptive technologies.  

Liz Jackson

Elizabeth Jackson is the Acting Director of the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute (CESI) at the University of Guelph. She builds on her research and teaching expertise in community engaged scholarship, practice-based research, and interdisciplinary approaches to social justice to facilitate mutually beneficial community-university partnerships and foster meaningful engagement between faculty, students and community. Her work in non-profit, activist, and academic contexts has addressed a range of inter-connected themes—including environmental justice, human rights, the politics and implications of artistic representation, the ways we think about time, and the relationships between formal education and broader social realities—all of which inform her commitment to ethical and sustained engagement with communities. 

Marian Donnelly

Marian Donnelly has been working in the creative industries since 1975. Between 1976 and 1996, Marian worked as an artist manager, concert and festival producer, tour manager and in a variety of music industry-related capacities in Winnipeg, Toronto and Vancouver. In 1996, she moved back home to Regina to work as the Executive Director of SaskMusic. In 2002, she worked for a brief period of time as a Cultural Industries Consultant to the Province of Saskatchewan, and was then hired as the General Manager of the Globe Theatre from 2003-2005. In 2006, Marian returned to school and earned her Master of Business Administration degree. In 2008, she took a lease on the top two floors at 1843 Hamilton Street, and spent the next two years donating her evenings and weekends to converting that space into the Creative City Centre. 

Over the years, Marian has worked as a independent consultant to a number of non-profit organizations, developing strategic plans, governance policies and other corporate documents. From December 2016 to January 2023, Marian worked with the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award. 

Marian teaches a number of workshops on grant writing, marketing, event production and other non-profit business-related courses around the province of Saskatchewan. She has mentored hundreds of young artists and entrepreneurs over the years and is passionate about ensuring that our next generation has the skills and support they need to succeed. She continues to contribute hundreds of volunteer hours to ensure the smooth operations of the Creative City Centre, and comes up with ideas, grant applications and sponsorship proposals to create programs like our SMMART (Social Media Marketing for Artists) training program, among others. Her open-door policy has enabled many artists to find new ways to collaborate, create and market their works. 

Marian was recently recognized for her service to our community with the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal and with the prestigious Saskatchewan Volunteer Medal. 

Maricarmen Graue

She was born in Mexico City. She studied music at the National Conservatory of Music, at the “Ollin Yoliztly” music school, and at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, the Gliere music school and the Kiev Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

She was member and co-principal of the cello section of the Carlos Chávez Orchestra. She has been member of multiple different ensembles, playing music of all genres and times, academic, popular or experimental music and and free improvisation. She has participated in various interdisciplinary projects and plays, sometimes even as actress and dancer. She was member of the experimental music ensemble “Graffitone”, the RIO group “Arteria”, and was member of the female free jazz ensemble “Cíhuatl”. She is part of the literary musical ensemble “Zoonoros”, and of the “Claroscuro” ensemble, of cello and piano, among some others.

She has presented three painting exhibitions, one collective and two individual.

In 2001 she received a scholarship from FONCA as a performer, with a project to perform works for ensembles with cello, by contemporary Mexican composers. In 2019, together with 2 other artists with disabilities, he obtained the PAPIAM-D award, awarded by CENART and the British Council. , with an audiovisual project with the theme of Precariousness. In 2019, she was recognized by “Forbes” magazine as one of the 100 most creative Mexicans. 

Currently, she performs with various ensembles, teaches improvisation and creation workshops, and is a cello teacher at the INBAL(National Fine Arts Institute) Artistic Initiation School No. 4.

She has 3 recorded CDs, with “Graffitone”, with “Arteria” and with “Cíhuatl”.

In 2019 she published the autobiographical book Mirar Miranme.

Since 2019, the documentary film Maricarmen by director Sergio Morkin, a film based on her life, has been presented at multiple international festivals, obtaining awards and recognition.

Matthew Rodger

My main research interests are in perceptual-motor coordination and skill acquisition, with a specific focus on auditory-motor coordination. My research includes: studying how people synchronise with a beat or walk to rhythmic sounds; investigating how interactive sounds can be used as feedback to enhance learning of motor skills; skill acquisition in music performance, including understanding how sound-movement coupling emerges through musical training, and techniques to enhance musical skill acquisition in the context of music improvisation. 

Michelle LaCour

Michelle LaCour is an ECMA-nominated and MusicNL award-winning audio engineer and multi-instrumentalist based in St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador. She holds a Bachelor of Music in piano and historical musicology from Memorial University of Newfoundland, as well as a Masters of Music in sound recording at McGill University. Since completing her studies, Michelle has found work as a recording, mixing, and mastering engineer; as a videographer, producer, and livestream engineer; as a location sound recordist and post-production editor; as a sound designer for theatre and film; as a live sound engineer; as a Technical Director for numerous festivals and conferences; and as faculty at the College of the North Atlantic’s Paul Leslie Pope School of Film & Television. She works especially closely with Sound Arts Initiatives, assisting with production and programming for the Sound Symposium, ONSOUND, and special projects.

As a keyboardist, accordionist, and electronic musician, Michelle has performed live across Eastern Canada and at festivals including Lawnya Vawnya, Sound Symposium, St. John’s Folk Fest, Freeze Brain, Electric Eclectics, and POP Montreal with Atomic Clock, Loopstitch, Spring Var, Tired Wired, Hullo, Wily, The Dandelion Few, Green & Gold, and Len O’Neill. Current projects include Loopstitch, an experimental, electronic, improvisation-based duo with violist Kate Read; Vainweather, an improvisation-based quartet; and performing as an accordionist with Len O’Neill.

For more info, please visit www.michellelacour.com.

Paul Stapleton

Paul Stapleton is a native of Southern California who began lecturing at Queen’s University Belfast in 2007. He is Professor of Music at SARC, Queen’s University Belfast, where he conducts research in the areas of new musical instrument design, music performance, sound design, and critical improvisation studies. Paul designs and performs with a variety of modular metallic sound sculptures, custom made electronics, found objects and electric guitars in locations ranging from Echtzeitmusik venues in Berlin to remote beaches on Vancouver Island. His composition and sound design work as part of the immersive audio-theatre piece Reassembled, Slightly Askew has received widespread critical acclaim, including 4-star reviews in The Guardian, Time Out London, and London Evening Standard, and has touring internationally in both artistic and medical training contexts (e.g. SummerWorks Performance Festival in Toronto, and the Brain Injury Research Center of Mount Sinai in New York City). Paul was Co-I for the recently completed AHRC funded network Humanising Algorithmic Listening, and has led a number of previous AHRC and European Commission funded interdisciplinary research projects on topics ranging from the relationship between music improvisation and law, to the development of new methods for studying social interaction and entrainment in music performance. He has held a Visiting Scholar position at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University, and regularly gives invited keynotes and workshops at international conferences and festivals (e.g. Art, Body and New Technologies 2016 colloquium at Universidad de Chile, and Resonate 2017 technology in art and music festival in Belgrade). He is a regular contributor and committee member for the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), and frequently performs and records with his own instrument designs in collaboration with professional improvising musicians in Europe and North America. His album FAUNA (2013) with saxophonist Simon Rose has received acclaim from music critics such as Ken Waxman (Jazzword), Mark Corroto (All About Jazz), and Marc Medwin (New York City Jazz Record). Additional notable collaborations include: a networked distributed instrument Ambiguous Devices with Tom Davis; new music for the performance of Irish poetry with Steve Davis and The Lyric Theatre; a virtual acoustic instrument VASPBI with Maarten Van Walstijn and Sandor Mehes; studies on sonification feedback in motor skill learning with Matthew Rodger and John Dyer; and co-direction of the Translating Improvisation research group with Sara Ramshaw. 

Phanuel Antwi

Phanuel Antwi is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia. In 2022 he was named Canada Research Chair in Black Arts and Epistemologies. He writes, researches, and teaches critical black studies; settler colonial studies; black Atlantic and diaspora studies; Canadian literature and culture since 1830; critical race, gender, and sexuality studies; and material cultures. He has published articles in Interventions, Affinities, and Studies in Canadian Literature, and he is completing a book-length project titled “Currencies of Blackness: Faithfulness, Cheerfulness and Politeness in Settler Writing. 

Ricardo Lomnitz Soto

Ricardo Lomnitz Soto (1994) is a multi-instrumentalist musician, sound designer, performer, and philosopher from Mexico City. He graduated with a degree in Philosophy from the UNAM, from where he graduated with a thesis on the political implications of John Cage’s music. He has composed music for film, circus, radio, and numerous plays, including “Trino en busca de su poder interior” (directed by Alberto Lomnitz, EFITEATRO, 2023; nominated for best original music at the METRO awards), “Medea en el destierro” (directed by María Sánchez, 2023), “Yo Despierta” (produced by Seña y Verbo, Teatro de Sordos, for the International Cervantino Festival, 2022) and “La Visita” (CUT production, directed by Clarissa Malheiros, 2022). As a stage musician, he has participated in the shows “La Hora del Diablo” (La Máquina del Teatro company, 2015), “Historias a la deriva: improvisación de historias” (a spontaneous theater event of the company La Cabra Salvaje, 2019) and “Medea en el destierro”.

He has published texts in the journal Performance Philosophy, in the Cuadernos de Música de la UNAM and in the portals of 17. He currently coordinates the area of Critical Studies in Improvisation at 17, Institute of Critical Studies – being one of the organizers of “Silence-Producing Machine” XXXVII International Colloquium – and is part of the faculty of the Escuela Libre de Teatro in its current semester (2024).

His philosophical interests include the politics of listening and music, the links between improvisation and archives, ecomusic, the performative aspects of music, silence and noise as performative terms, and the ontology, ethics, and politics of improvisation. As an artist, his practice focuses on exploring the combinatorial possibilities between recordings and improvisation; the performative aspects of the musical experience; the expansion of events where the boundaries between audience and artists are diluted; and the voice in the context of sonic materiality.

Sara Ramshaw

Sara Ramshaw was appointed Associate Professor at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law in 2017 following previous appointments at the University of Exeter (England) and Queen’s University Belfast (Northern Ireland). After receiving her B.A. (Hons) from the University of Toronto, Sara obtained both a LL.B. and a LL.M. from the University of British Columbia. She then clerked at the Ontario Court of Justice (General Division) and was called to the Bar of the Law Society of Upper Canada in 2000. Sara worked for the Ministry of the Attorney General at the Superior Court of Justice, Family Court in Toronto before commencing postgraduate studies at the University of London (Birkbeck College) in England. Sara’s doctoral thesis, completed in 2007, examined the legal regulation of jazz musicians in New York City (1940-1967) through the lens of post-structural theory informed by feminism, critical race theory and critical improvisation studies. During the 2008-9 academic year, Sara was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Improvisation, Community and Social Practice (ICASP) project in Montreal. Her monograph, Justice as Improvisation: The Law of the Extempore, published by Routledge in 2013, was nominated for the 2014 Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) Hart Book Prize. 

Sara Schroeter

My research focuses primarily on how drama, an aesthetic art form and multimodal literacy practice, can be used to examine differences of race, class, gender, and sexuality in schools with multiracial student populations. Much of my work has examined these issues in Francophone minority language schools outside Quebec; however, my focus has recently expanded to explore representational practices in musical theatre productions at English and French immersion schools in the prairies and on professional stages. I am also collaborating with two elementary school teachers and my colleague, Dr. Joël Thibeault, on a project examining how drama can be used to teach French in Francophone schools. My research interests lie at the crossroads of anti-racist and decolonizing pedagogies, drama and cultural production, literacy, and minority language education. 

Sherrie Tucker

Sherrie Tucker (Professor, American Studies, University of Kansas) is a contributing editor and co-author for the collaboratively created Open Access book entitled, Improvising Across Abilities: Pauline Oliveros and the Adaptive Use Musical Instrument (AUMI) (University of Michigan Press, Music and Social Justice Series, 2024). AUMI has a long history with Guelph! She is also the author of Dance Floor Democracy: The Social Geography of Memory at the Hollywood Canteen (Duke, 2014), Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s (Duke, 2000) and co-editor, with Nichole T. Rustin, of Big Ears:  Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies (Duke, 2008). She was a member of the Jazz Study Group and a Louis Armstrong Visiting Professor at the Center of Jazz Studies at Columbia in 2024-2025, and a member of research initiatives: Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice (ICASP) and International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI). She co-edits the Music and Culture Series at Wesleyan University Press with Deborah Wong and Jeremy Wallach. She enjoys jamming and performing on the AUMI with her bandmates in the Pre-Pandemic Ensemble (PPE) based in Lawrence Kansas.  

Stacey Bliss

Stacey Bliss, PhD (Education: Language, Culture and Teaching, York University, Canada) is a researcher, instructor, and sonic improvisor. For her SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship in the Faculty of Media, Art, and Performance at the University of Regina (2019-21), she began to query the social, pedagogical, and contemplative possibilities and impacts of sound theory/practices with international gong master-teachers. During her SSHRC Insight Development Grant (IDG) project (2021-24), she was affiliated with HRI (Humanities Research Institute) and RISC (Regina Improvisation Studies Centre) at the University of Regina. The IDG project aim was to find out ‘what is going on’ with ‘sound healing’ communities in Canada. The research with sonic artists in 3 provinces in Canada is documented in interview and ‘sound bath’ videos on a dedicated YouTube channel: @GongAcrossCanada. From 2024-25, she is taking time to consider the themes from the sonic research and reconceptualize a model for non-traditional literacies she calls ‘Literacies of the Heart’. Stay tuned! 

Stephanie Loveless

Stephanie Loveless is a sound and media artist whose research centers on listening and vocal embodiment. Loveless’ sound, video and performance work has been presented widely in festivals, galleries, museums and artist-run centers in North America, South America, Europe and the Middle East. She currently lives and works in upstate New York, where she is a Lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the Department of Arts, and Director of the Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer. Loveless’ co-edited volume, Situated Listening (forthcoming in 2024 via Routledge), is a collection of essays that contribute theories and practices of embedded, contextual, and critical listening to growing literature in the field of sound studies. 

Timothy O’Dwyer

Tim O’Dwyer has been the Head of the School of Contemporary Music at LASALLE | University of the Arts Singapore for the past 14 years. During this time of change and growth, the school has developed a unique approach to music pedagogy that covers a broad range of disciplines including Electronic Music, Popular Performance, Contemporary Classical, Jazz Performance, Composition and Audio Production. The impact of these programmes on the Singapore music community has been significant and extensive. O’Dwyer improvisers on the saxophone, composes music, and has been practising and studying soundpainting with its originator Walter Thompson since 2014. Over more than 30 years, he has been an important musical instigator in Australia, Singapore and Europe with projects including bucketrider, The Make It Up Club, The Tim O’Dwyer Trio, ELISION Ensemble, The Australian Art Orchestra, CHOPPA Festival of Experimental Music, and as a Fellow of the Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne, Germany. In addition, he has released recordings on established labels in Europe, Australia and Asia. He has numerous publications across journals, book chapters and conference papers that generally grapple with the ideas of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri in the context of his practice. 

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