Sacha Bailey is a PhD Candidate in the School of Social Work.听She has earned听a BSc in Psychology (2003) and a Master of Social Work (2009), both from McGill University.听Her doctoral project, which focuses on the experiences of hope among parents of children with neurodevelopment disorders (NDD), is funded by the Fonds de Recherche du Qu茅bec en Soci茅t茅 et Culture (FQRSC). Sacha came to graduate studies with several years of experience working on the community and employment integration of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Her clinical practice also included working with families of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders at multiple stages of the service continuum.听It was these experiences that prompted her pursuit of a doctorate that would allow her to talk to parents of children with neurodisabilities about their experiences of hope in the context of caring for a child with a disability and to discover what the scholarship reveals about parenting children with disabilities. Her dissertation seeks to answer such questions as: What do parents mean when they mention seeking hope?; What does hope mean to them?; What role does hope play in their lives?; How do they find hope?; How does it change over time?听Sacha's research and clinical interests include the quality of life of parents and children with developmental disabilities, the facilitators and barriers to their access to health and social services, and knowledge translation in rehabilitation contexts. Sacha currently works at the Centre for Research on Children and Families as a Research Coordinator for a CIHR-funded Pan-Canadian program of research entitled Parenting Matters! The Biopsychosocial Context of Parenting Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Canada. She is involved in two of four concurrent projects on the Parenting Matters! team: a systematic review of observational studies of parenting children with NDD and a multi-method, multi-site clinical study of parenting children with NDD. She is also a sessional instructor in the School of Social Work and has taught courses such as Research Methods and Mental Health and Illness.
听
Sara Kowalski is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History in the听Art History & Communication Studies.听She holds a Master of Arts in the History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture from the University of Alberta (2010) as well as a Bachelor of Humanities (Highest Honours) in Humanities and Art History from Carleton University (2007). Building on her Master鈥檚 research, which examines representations of the cancerous body in medical discourse, media cultures, and contemporary art, Sara鈥檚 doctoral research moves out from the specificity of cancer in representation to focus on the intersection of the medical sciences and artistic practices of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, examining the role of contemporary art practice as an important site for intervention into medical representation and as a crucial means through which to re-imagine the body in post-modern, contemporary culture. As well as听positioning these artistic practices within a wider historical trajectory, she also promotes artistic means for non-specialists to engage in medical science and biotechnology as an embodied practice, stimulating new discourses on the nature of subjectivity, embodiment, and vision in an era of advanced digital technology and genetic transformation. In addition to the听Wolfe Graduate Fellowship,听Sara has received a听SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (2010-2013), and the Archie Malloch Fellowship in Public Learning from the Institute for the Public Life of Art and Ideas at McGill University (2010-2011), among others, to pursue her doctoral research.
听
Rafico Ruiz is a Ph.D. candidate in Communication Studies and the History & Theory of Architecture at McGill University. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (with Great Distinction) in English Cultural Studies and Geography from McGill University (2004), and a Master of Arts in French Cultural Studies from Columbia University (2005). He studies the relationships between mediation and social space, particularly in the Arctic and Subarctic; the cultural geographies of natural resource engagements; and the philosophical and political stakes of infrastructural and ecological systems. He is the co-editor and co-founder of Seachange, a journal of Art, Communication, and Technology (). In 2012, he was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2012-2013, he was the Max Stern McCord Fellow at the McCord Museum and Archives in Montreal. In 2013-2014, he will be a Wolfe Fellow in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University. His work has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas at McGill University, Media@McGill, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Smallwood Foundation of Memorial University of Newfoundland, and the Harvard Medical School鈥檚 Countway Library of Medicine.
听
Katherine Sinclair鈥檚 research examines the ways in which federally approved resource extraction technology collides and intersects with northern Inuit interests and priorities, comparing the different understandings of, and engagement with, mining. Specifically, she is interested in the complex and dynamic relationship between mining practices as embodied in mining technology and Inuit land use and identity. She asks how and why mining in Arctic Canada is positively engaged with, or resisted by, Inuit as they plan their land use and consider the identity implications of extractive technology-based models and futures. Katherine completed her MPhil in Social Anthropological Analysis at the University of Cambridge (UK)听in 2008, and graduated from the University of Alberta in 2007 with a BA (Honours) in Religious Studies.
听