Addressing Rape Culture and Gendered Violence on Campuses
Atwater Library and Computer Centre
Eric Craven is Coordinator of the Digital Literacy Project at the Atwater Library in Montreal, where he also did his graduate studies in Information Science at McGill University. Eric’s work focuses specifically on using digital media to disrupt normative expectations and perceptions in the community. Eric has spent the past 5 years coordinator of the Digital Literacy Project to create programming that directly responds to community needs, helping participants learn to express themselves, find new ways to talk about things important to them, and to help them build their own communities with digital tools. Eric has worked with a wide range of academic and community stakeholders bringing diverse groups of people together, ages 6 through 96, to express themselves through digital art and media. Eric is currently the co-coordinator for the Preventing and Eliminating Cyberviolence against girls and young women; Helping communities respond project and employs his extensive networks to bring people together to develop strategies to combat cyberviolence.
Shanly Dixon, PhD is a digital culture scholar and educator who has spent over a decade employing ethnographic and arts based methodologies to investigate people’s engagement with digital culture. As a participant in a pan-Canadian network of 150 women leaders working on a variety of related projects to advance gender equality and support feminist action at the national level, she is currently working as a researcher and knowledge mobilizer on a new project to examine the issue of gender-based sexual violence on college campuses. She also works as the lead researcher and educator for the Atwater Library’s Digital Literacy Project, a non-profit organization providing educational workshops primarily to marginalized, and at-risk communities. Over the past 3-years (2014-2017) she has acted as co-coordinator, lead researcher and knowledge mobilizer for a Cyberviolence against girls and young women; Helping communities respond project funded by a grant from Status of Women Canada. She is a research fellow at Technoculture Art & Games Research Centre at Concordia University. She is co-editor of the text Growing Up Online examining how girls and young women use digital technology in their everyday lives. Her interest focuses on facilitating networks bringing together academics, community organizations and activists to address social issues. She holds an Interdisciplinary Doctorate in Society and Culture from the Humanities Department at Concordia University, Montreal.
McGill University
Cassandra Jones is a co-creator and coordinator of Growth on the Horizon. She studies Anthropology at McGill University employing ethnographic and arts-based methodologies related to topics of gender, the body, and embodiment in the discipline of Medical Anthropology. As a research assistant and workshop facilitator on Preventing and eliminating cyberviolence against girls and young women; Helping communities respond she had the opportunity to work with youth leading and designing a variety of arts-based and educational workshops in elementary and high schools, and symposiums at secondary institutions like John Abbott and Concordia University. A highlight of the project was working with Dr. Dixon and Haley Crooks on the cyberviolence documentary with L.O.V.E and the sexual health initiatives with Get to the Pointe!. Cassandra is passionate about working with and learning from youth, and participating in community art projects.
Sofia Misenheimer is a co-creator and coordinator of Growth on the Horizon. She is a graduate student in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University, with a concentration in women's and gender studies. Her research explores how self-identity informs the work of women urban artists in Montreal. She works as a coordinator at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF), and as a freelance writer/videographer with a regular by-line in Kolaj Magazine. Sofia is creator and editor-in-chief of Art/iculation magazine and co-founder of the While No One Was Looking project.
Alanna Thain is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and World Cinemas in the Department of English. She is the director of the Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at McGill University. She directs the Moving Image Research Laboratory (MIRL), devoted to the study of bodies in motion across forms of media. Through the MIRL she runs “Cinema Out of the Box!”, a research-creation project on new expanded cinema, consisting of a completely bicycle-powered, mobile cinema that holds guerrilla screenings in unexpected sites in the city. She is the author of Bodies in Time: Suspense, Affect, Cinema (University of Minnesota Press, 2017). Her work addresses questions of time, embodiment and media across contemporary cinema, dance and performance, including work by David Lynch, Tino Sehgal, Norman McLaren, Dave St-Pierre, William Kentridge and more. Her SSHRC-funded major research project, “Anarchival Outbursts: Dance and the Practices of Post-Digital Cinema” (2014-19), considers dance movement in screen dance and other contemporary productions as a key site for negotiating new potentials of embodiment in the digital age.
Dawson College
Saša (andie) Buccitelli is a community worker, educator, and advocate who works as a consultant for the Atwater Library's Addressing Rape Culture on College Campuses project and as a teacher in Dawson College's Social Service Program. Intersectionality, trans and queer positionality, healing, collective care, art, and emotional consciousness are central considerations and practices in their life and work. Their community endeavours have included anything from organizing a photovoice art exhibit with young parents, to facilitating workshops on sexual health, consent and gendered cyberviolence in high schools, CEGEPs and universities. In their teaching practice, they strive to attend to the overt and insidious ways trauma, oppression, guilt, shame and fear are reproduced in the classroom in an attempt to nurture learning spaces grounded in critical consciousness, healing, self/collective compassion, accountability, creativity and trust.
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Preventing and Eliminating Cyberviolence
Atwater Library and Computer Centre
Eric Craven is Coordinator of the Digital Literacy Project at the Atwater Library in Montreal, where he also did his graduate studies in Information Science at McGill University. Eric’s work focuses specifically on using digital media to disrupt normative expectations and perceptions in the community. Eric has spent the past 5 years coordinator of the Digital Literacy Project to create programming that directly responds to community needs, helping participants learn to express themselves, find new ways to talk about things important to them, and to help them build their own communities with digital tools. Eric has worked with a wide range of academic and community stakeholders bringing diverse groups of people together, ages 6 through 96, to express themselves through digital art and media. Eric is currently the co-coordinator for the Preventing and Eliminating Cyberviolence against girls and young women; Helping communities respond project and employs his extensive networks to bring people together to develop strategies to combat cyberviolence.
Shanly Dixon, PhD is a digital culture scholar and educator who has spent over a decade employing ethnographic and arts based methodologies to investigate people’s engagement with digital culture. As a participant in a pan-Canadian network of 150 women leaders working on a variety of related projects to advance gender equality and support feminist action at the national level, she is currently working as a researcher and knowledge mobilizer on a new project to examine the issue of gender-based sexual violence on college campuses. She also works as the lead researcher and educator for the Atwater Library’s Digital Literacy Project, a non-profit organization providing educational workshops primarily to marginalized, and at-risk communities. Over the past 3-years (2014-2017) she has acted as co-coordinator, lead researcher and knowledge mobilizer for a Cyberviolence against girls and young women; Helping communities respond project funded by a grant from Status of Women Canada. She is a research fellow at Technoculture Art & Games Research Centre at Concordia University. She is co-editor of the text Growing Up Online examining how girls and young women use digital technology in their everyday lives. Her interest focuses on facilitating networks bringing together academics, community organizations and activists to address social issues. She holds an Interdisciplinary Doctorate in Society and Culture from the Humanities Department at Concordia University, Montreal.
Concordia University
Sandra Weber, PhD is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Concordia University where she taught courses about children’s toys and popular culture, media literacy, gender roles, school curriculum, and digital technologies. Co-founder and director of the Image and Identity Research Collective(www.iirc.mcgill.ca) and author/editor of five books and over 50 research articles, Dr. Weber is interested in interdisciplinary visual research methodologies and the impact that participatory research has on communities. Her current works seeks to involve young people actively in research that is about them. Her latest book, Growing Up Online: Young people and digital technologies, co-edited with Dr. Shanly Dixon, reflects her deep interest in young people’s everyday experiences, and most particularly, girls and young women. Sandra has employed her wealth of experience contributing as a writer and consultant to the Preventing and eliminating cyberviolence against girls and young women; Helping communities respond project.
Digital Literacy Project
Bianca Baldo, (B.A., LL.L and LL.M) is the legal and gender equality consultant on the Digital Literacy Project (DLP). She brings to the project over eight years of research, policy, advocacy and training experience in gender equality and human rights in a multitude of cultural environments. She currently works as a researcher and writer with GenderIT.org on the impacts of information and communication technologies on women’s rights, including the tech-related violence against women and empowerment tools. She recently gave a presentation at the International Women's Week - Vanier College on the cyber-violence against women in Canada, its impact on student life and resources available to survivors of tech-related violence. She holds a master in law on international human rights and human trafficking legal protections mechanisms from McGill University, Montreal.
Nina Pariser is a Montreal Educator and Artist. She has worked as a teacher at high school and elementary levels and has been a facilitator at the Digital Literacy Project for 5-years. Her interests include arts-based learning and community engaged projects tackling important issues. Nina continues to facilitate knowledge sharing events for the cyberviolence project and employs her creative and artistic skills to help develop strategies that resonate with youth.
University of Ottawa
Hayley Crooks is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa. Hayley employs visual arts-based research methodologies, primarily video-making, to investigate gendered cyber-violence with young people. Recently, she conducted documentary workshops with youth as part of the "Cyber & Sexual Violence: Helping Communities Respond" project. She is a co-author of white papers on cyber-violence and has published in venues such as Cleo: A Journal of Film and Feminism and the Canadian Journal of Communication. Hayley also has a professional background in non-fiction television and documentary production.
Pixelles
Stephanie Fisher is a community-based researcher with 10+ years experience studying gender and digital games culture and industry, and a co-director of Pixelles, a women-in-games non-profit organization based in Montreal. Stephanie's contributions to the Cyberviolence project included writing a literature review section for the needs assessment, as well as organizing and running "Take Care: A Game and Wellness Jam" in February 2016 with co-organizer, Kara Stone.
Trafalgar School
Lina Branter is a free-lance and YA writer. She is currently taking a leave of absence from her job as librarian at Trafalgar School for Girls, an all-girls private high school in Montreal. She is passionate about making sure the next generation are equipped with the skills necessary to fully engage and participate in building the online and offline world without having to worry about their physical or psychological safety. To this effect, she coordinates a comprehensive digital citizenship program at the school as well as provides opportunities for students to learn to code, design video games and participate in the Technovation Challenge, an international competition for girls aged 10-18 where they must build a prototype of an app to help their community. Lina is also the master of the Atwater Library's Cyberviolence blog directed at Women and Girls, where she curates and comments on issues around feminism and technology. She is especially interested in design solutions to cyberviolence and ways in which girls and women use technology for empowerment.