Shauna Janssen is a PhD Humanities student in the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture. Broadly, her research works across and in between the disciplines of architecture and performance studies, spatial theory and oral history, drawing from a mixture of discourses about the relations between contemporary art and historical architecture, theories of the city, and contested urban spaces. Her current doctoral project focuses on documenting the reoccupation and adaptive reuse of post-industrial sites for cultural activities. Subsequently, she has been drawn to the power and affect of urban sites undergoing transformation; the potential interim urban landscapes have to stage and spatialize creative responses within modernity’s architectural ruins. In addition to her studies, she recently founded Urban Occupations Urbaines (UOU), a platform for creative engagements and collaborations with urban environments in transition and decay.  The current site in question is Griffintown, Montreal’s historic industrial district. For more information about UOU artists and programming visit the website.

Stephanie Ketterer is a PhD student in Social and Cultural Analysis in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University. Her research concerns the role of ‘truth’ and ‘truth-telling’ in post-conflict societies. Within this context, she is particularly interested in how the understanding and implications of ‘truth(s)’ transform as new generations are confronted with their nation’s and their families’ memory of violence. Born and raised in Germany, Stephanie holds a BA in International Relations (2006) from the University of Sussex, UK, and a MA in Public Administration (2011) from the International Christian University, Japan. Her MA research on Christian reconciliation efforts in the context of contemporary Japan-South Korea relations was fully funded by the Japanese Government (Monbukagakusho) Graduate Student Scholarship. For her PhD project Stephanie returns to her origins by examining the interaction of curatorial efforts, history education, and the life realities of youth in the context of contemporary Germany.

Audrey Mallet is a PhD student in the history department at Concordia University. Her current research focuses on postwar memory in her hometown, Vichy (France’s substitute capital during WWII). Because of the recurrent use of expressions such as ‘Vichy France’ or ‘Vichy regime,’ the city of Vichy, which used to be a world-renowed spa-town, is now mostly remembered for being the site where Petain and his government relocated after the June 1940 armistice. Audrey’s dissertation will investigate how the city has been attempting to (or avoid) work(ing) through this ‘poisoned’ heritage since 1945. Audrey holds a B.A. in English Studies (Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand, France) and a M.A. in History (Concordia University). Her previous research focused on Jewish memory in postwar and post-Communist Poland. Audrey is also involved in the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center, both as a volunteer guide and interviewer.

Florencia Marchetti is a PhD student in Concordia’s Humanities program at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture. Her endless curiosity led her to complete a degree in Social Communications and graduate training in Anthropology at Universidad Nacional de Cordoba in Argentina, where she was born and raised. In 2005 she moved to California, obtaining a MA in Social Documentation from UC Santa Cruz. Her thesis video essay, called Haunting Presences (2007, 42’), explores the memories, fears and silences among the residents of a marginalized area in the city of Cordoba. Her documentary photo work has been widely used by community groups in the area, as well as published and filed as part of the Provincial Memory Archive. Her doctoral project at Concordia builds on her previous ethnographic research and documentary work on the politics of memory and the memories of everyday life under state sponsored terrorism in post-dictatorship Argentina. Florencia is working to both analyze and intervene in the production and circulation of narratives about the years of military repression, paying special attention to the differential participation of distinct social groups in the ongoing processes of memorialization.

Ivet Reyes Maturano is a PhD candidate in anthropology at McGill University. She is interested in the issues of political ecology, migration, and engaging art as a means to build new cross-border communities. She was born and raised in Mexico City. Ivet graduated as anthropologist at the National School for Anthropology and History (ENAH) in Mexico City and received her MA in Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). From 2007 to 2009 she worked as curatorial assistant in the large artistic project Be(com)ing Dutch, led by Annie Fletcher and Charles Esche, at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Holland. In 2009 Ivet served as Hub Fellow at the New Museum in New York City and later collaborated with artist Theaster Gates in Chicago. Currently she is working in her PhD research project around emigration and its impacts in Zapotec communities in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca.

Dana Samuel is an interdisciplinary artist based in Montreal, Canada. Presently a doctoral researcher in Humanities at Concordia University, her CEREV-affiliated research-creation project, which has earned her a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from SSHRC, constructs performance-based scenarios for imagining history anew. Working across studio practices in tandem with investigating contemporary global and media art histories, she explores a “migratory aesthetics” of exile (specifically referring to her family’s flight from Hungary during the Holocaust). Dana holds an Associate Degree from the Ontario College of Art & Design (2001) and a Masters of Fine Art from Western University (2003). She has exhibited her work in Canada and Europe, including at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art (Toronto), Dalhousie Art Gallery (Halifax), and Galerie F15 (Moss, Norway). Previously a resident of the Independent Studio Program in Oslo at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, she was recently invited to The Banff Centre to participate in a residency with artist Ken Lum.

Virginie Soulier is finishing her doctorate in an international program at both UQAM (museology) and University of Avignon, France (communications). Her research deals with museums collections gathered from oppressed or trauma-affected people, with a particular focus on visitor reception of collaborative and “multivocal” exhibitions in Canadia that emphasize aboriginal points of view. She is the author of several articles in museum mediation and education, including Collaborations en contexte muséal: le discours d’exposition polyphonique et ses faces cachées (2012) and Le programme éducatif “Vous faites partie de l’histoire!”: intérêts et retombées (2011). She created and directed the professional review L’interprétation du patrimoine from AQIP (2009-2011) that received le Prix Parc Québec (2012). She was recently awarded a 2013-2015 SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship.