Ian Bradley-Perrin is currently working on his Masters degree in History at Concordia University, which explores the intersection of lived and embodied experiences of HIV/AIDS with public health systems in the context of Quebec nationalism in the 1990s. He has worked as a community organizer in Montreal for the past five years with projects such as Radical Queer Semaine and Pervers/cité and currently coordinates the Concordia University Community Lecture Series on HIV/AIDS and the Plus ou Moins Open Conference on HIV/AIDS. Most recently Ian facilitated the creation of a new agitprop collective called FuckLaws in partnership with CEREV, the Design and Computation Arts Lecture Series and Avram Finkelstein of ACT UP, the Silence=Death Collective and Gran Fury. Ian is currently working with CEREV’s postdoctoral fellow Jenny Doubt.

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 visual ethnographer and documentarian currently pursuing a PhD in Humanities at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture in Concordia University, Montreal. Born in Cordoba, Argentina, during times of political upheaval, she has focused her recent work on the politics and practices of cultural memory, investigating the affective traces of violent pasts in present day lives, including her own. Florencia co-directed “A storyteller’s story” as part of her affiliation with CEREV. Her doctoral project is an anthropological inquiry of experimental character about and with/in the public works of memory in contemporary Argentina, paying special attention to the historical narratives materializing in new site museums and the differential participation of distinct social groups in the creation of these spaces. Florencia was trained in Social Communications and Anthropology at the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba before obtaining an MA in Social Documentation from the University of California in Santa Cruz. Her documentary photo work has been widely used by grassroots groups and activists in Cordoba, and has also been filed as part of the Provincial Memory Archive while her video work has been showcased internationally in academic research, art and community-based contexts.

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.

Vicky Chainey Gagnon is a curator and doctoral student in Concordia’s Humanities program at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture. Her Ph.D project, “Curation as Civic Engagement: Testing the ‘New Museology’ in the Canadian Art System” traces the intersections of curating and activism and will also produce a series of experimental curated projects: (Above and Below, 2009; Filing Memory, 2010 and How Does Art Teach? 2011-2012). Her thesis project is supervised by Drs. Erica Lehrer, Martha Langford and Haidee Wasson. Vicky holds a BFA degree with a concentration in Film Studies and Art History (Concordia University, 1999), and a MA degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a specialization in the history and practice of avant-garde filmmaking practices (York University, 2005). Since 2005, Vicky works as Curator of the Foreman Art Gallery (Bishop’s University). In 2008, she founded their Community Art Lab, a cultural mediation project that appropriates civic spaces in the local community with the goal of building relationships between citizens.
Vicky is the Director/Curator at Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Quebec.

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.

Erin Jessee is a recent graduate of Concordia University’s Interdisciplinary Humanities PhD program. Her doctoral dissertation “Inscribed Intent: Genocidal Symbolic Violence and Social Death in the Aftermath of the Rwandan and Bosnian Genocides” was successfully defended in May 2010. At present, she is a Fonds québécois de recherche sur la societé et culture postdoctoral fellow at the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University. She is revising her dissertation into a manuscript that addresses the following research questions: How do different actors use history to make sense of their experiences of genocide? And to what end? In the aftermath of genocide, how do people’s interpretations’ of genocidal violence, as victims, bystanders or perpetrators of genocide, for example, then influence their perceptions of the present and future of their communities and nations?
Erin is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow affiliated with the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

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.

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.

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.