Laticia Chapman is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Alberta, supervised by Dr. Roger Epp. Her dissertation work takes place in rural libraries in western and northern Canada, and, focusing on the life-trajectories of public institutions, asks questions about the relationship between rural communities and the state in the 20th century. She is interested in a hopefully productive conflict between theories of democratic politics that see the state as an instrument for enabling public life, and theories which view the state as a disruptor of - or even a constraint on - public life (especially the public life of rural and remote places and small towns). Laticia grew up in Williams Lake, British Columbia, and currently lives near Castlegar, BC.

Laura Pannekoek is a Ph.D. student in Communication Studies at Concordia and is supervised by Peter C. van Wyck. Laura's research focuses on the political ecology and technology of geology and the earth sciences. Her dissertation project on Lithomedia studies technologies of geological mediation in Canada, and its historical and contemporary extractive impulses and modes of dispossession. Laura is a member of the Feminist Media Studio at Concordia and the Grierson Research Group on Media, Environment, and Infrastructure at McGill. She is co-convenor of the Montreal Tailings Program, a cultural programming body for art and research on resource extraction in Quebec, located in Montreal's Villeray neighborhood.  

Malcolm Sanger (he/him) is a PhD student in Communication Studies at McGill. His research, supervised by Darin Barney, investigates reforestation and its infrastructures in Canada via its intersections with national mythology and settler colonialism and climate change and environmental duress. He is the lead Research Assistant for Media Rurality.

Janna Frenzel is a PhD student in Communication Studies at Concordia University. Her research revolves around the materiality, geopolitics and sociotechnical imaginaries of computing, the role of extraction in the digital economy, and attempts to decarbonize the Internet. As a research assistant, she is currently involved in a project that looks at the role of tech companies in gentrification processes in Montreal, and one that examines public controversies around artificial intelligence. Before starting her PhD, Janna worked as a communication strategist and writer/editor for the non-profit sector with a focus on sustainable urbanism. She holds a BA and MA in Political Science from the Free University of Berlin.

Robert Marinov is a PhD student in Communication at Concordia University. His research critically examines the political and commercial discourses surrounding ‘smart’ technologies and infrastructures of connectivity and datafication as responses to anthropogenic climate change. Robert completed his BA and MA in Political Science from the University of Ottawa. His Master’s thesis, which was awarded the Commission on Graduate Studies in Humanities Thesis Prize, developed a novel methodology using mixed methods discourse analysis to study the phenomenon of ‘infotainment’ within Canadian political newspaper coverage of the 2019 federal election. Robert’s broader research interests include cultural, media, and communications theory; political thought; populism studies; neoliberalism studies; critical discourse analysis; and more. His research has been published in academic journals including The Communication Review, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Politics & Policy. Currently, Robert is collaborating in a research project studying newspaper columnist discourses on climate and energy politics across Canada, the US, and the UK, as well as working as a Communications Assistant with Concordia’s Next-Generation Cities Institute.

Montiana Ashour is currently pursuing a PhD in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. Her ongoing research explores affective geographies of popular film. Focusing on popular film beyond US/Europe, Montiana is interested in cinematic image and its ability to challenge dominant geopolitical constructs through the realm of everyday culture. She pays attention to the activities of subjective agency and desire in this realm, and how these activities and cinematic image engage with each other to stay ‘alive’ as part of visual culture, thus mapping geographies of affect that resist border fortification through their own articulations and expressions of globality. Montiana previously presented on Emirati cinematic hybridity. She is also part of the Work-In-Progress group, which is organized by Concordia’s Gem Lab.