Julie Cruikshank, UBC
Julie Cruikshank is a professor emeritus of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Her research focuses on practical and theoretical developments in oral tradition studies, specifically how competing forms of knowledge become enmeshed in struggles for legitimacy. Julie’s ethnographic experience is rooted in the Yukon Territory, where she lived and worked for many years recording life stories with Athapaskan and Tlingit elders. She has also carried out comparative research in Alaska and Siberia. She is presently investigating historical and contemporary encounters among environmental earth sciences and indigenous oral traditions within the recently designated World Heritage Site that spans the borderlands of Yukon, northwest British Columbia and Alaska.
Her most recent book, Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters and Social Imagination, was the recipient of a 2006 Clio Award (Canadian Historical Association).
Carolyn Podruchny, York University
Dr. Carolyn Podruchny is an award-winning historian of Aboriginal and French encounters in early Canadian history. Her 2006 book, Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade, is the culmination of a decade of research on French-Canadian voyageurs who transported goods and staffed posts in the fur trade. With Laura Peers, she has also recently co-edited Gathering Places: Aboriginal and Fur Trade Histories (UBC Press, Forthcoming September 2010). She currently teaches in the History Department of Toronto’s York University, where she is writing a book about oral traditions and folktales told among voyageurs and their Cree, Ojibwe, and Metis kin
John Greyson is an award-winning filmmaker, video artist, writer, activist and educator whose productions have won accolades at festivals throughout the world. He is also an associate professor (production) in the department of film at York University.
Professor Greyson’s films include: Urinal (1988 – Best Feature Teddy, Berlin Film Festival); Zero Patience (1993 – Best Canadian Film, Sudbury Film Festival); Lilies (1996 – Best Film Genie, Best Film at festivals in Montreal, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, San Francisco); Uncut (1997, Honourable Mention, Berlin Film Festival); The Law of Enclosures (2000, Best Actor Genie); Proteus, co-created with Jack Lewis (2003); and Fig Trees (2008 – Teddy Award for Best Documentary, Berlin Film Festival). Film/video shorts include: The Kipling Trilogy (1984-5), The ADS Epidemic (1987), The Making of Monsters (1991 – Best Canadian Short, Toronto Film Festival; Best Short Film Teddy – Berlin Film Festival), Herr (1998) and Packin’ (2001).
Pamela Sugiman, Ryerson University
Pam Sugiman is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. Her research is largely in the areas of oral history, memory, women’s history in Canada, the history of Japanese Canadians, gender, racialization, work and labour. She is the author of Labour’s Dilemma. The Gender Politics of Auto Workers in Southern Ontario, 1939-79. She has also written numerous articles on memory and the internment of Japanese Canadians, experiences of racial oppression, racialization and paid work, personal and collective memory, and women and the labour movement. She is currently writing a book on the Second World War Internment and the memory stories of Japanese Canadian Nisei. Women. Her next project, “Gendered Livelihoods: working-class women’s memories of making a living in Canada,” will be a comparative analysis of the livelihoods of working-class women, from girlhood to old age, in various regions of Canada.
Dr. Sugiman has served as President of the Canadian Sociological Association, and has been a member of the National Executive Board of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, and the External Committee to the Policy Research Fund, Status of Women Canada.
Alan MacEachern, University of Western Ontario
Alan MacEachern is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Western Ontario. His research gravitates to topics on humans’ past relations with nature: environmental history, a field too pertinent to present-day concerns, and too interesting, to stay within the academic domain. Much of his time these days is spent as director of NiCHE (Network in Canadian History and Environment), which works to assist Canadian environmental history researchers in developing their projects, to facilitate collaboration, and to make the field better known to governments, public history organizations, environmental groups, and the public. Alan’s first book, Natural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada, 1935-1970, received an honourable mention for the 2002 Sir John A. Macdonald Prize (Canadian Historical Association). He is also the editor of a series of books being developed by University of Calgary Press and NiCHE.
Ryan O’Connor, University of Western Ontario
Ryan O’Connor is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Western Ontario. He is working on the history of the environmental movement in Toronto. A native of Prince Edwards Island, he has published articles on the history of the province stemming from both his master’s and doctoral research. He also maintains a research blog, The Great Green North, which deals with environmental issues both historical and contemporary.
Miss Emily Brown
Singer-songwriter Miss Emily Brownʼs debut album Part of You Pours Out of Me (April 2008) was named one of the yearʼs top ten by CBC host Alan Neal. In January 2010 she released In Technicolor, an album written during her recent Canada Council sponsored songwriting project based on her grandmotherʼs WWII diary. Recently featured on CBC Canada Live and CBC Canada NEXT, Miss Brownʼs live performance impossibly combines autoharp, vintage keys, guitar and music box with her unmistakable voice.