Daniel is a PhD Candidate at the Cinema Studies Institute and a member of the Collaborative Graduate Program in Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. His SSHRC-funded research explores how a subgenre of online gay pornography featuring heterosexual performers claims authenticity through confession, amateur aesthetics, and on notions of straightness that are coded in terms of race and class. His other research and teaching interests include reality television, the queer archive, and pre-AIDS sexual identities.

I'm a researcher, writer, community organizer, and PhD student interested in archive theory, media archaeology, audio-visual preservation, and the concept of the living archive in promoting elements of care, community, and agency in the archival sphere.

With a deep interest in community building and collaborative programming, since 2012 I managed multiple arts projects while working in various institutions and presented at conferences across Canada and internationally.

Currently, my research explores the preservation of new media, cinematic, and digital art forms and the role of the institution in archiving obsolete technologies, ephemeral art, and collective memories. My theoretical and experiential research interrogates the ways institutional archives are shifting their preservation and conservation methods in order to manage the constant cycles of obsolescence, disposable, and changing technologies. By completing field placements at Vtape, Video Cabaret, Cinémathèque Québécoise, Niagara Artists Centre, and TIFF's Film Reference Library, I have been identifying processes, trends, protocols, strategies, and issues related to media preservation, while considering alternative archival projects and digital community network.

Elina Lex is an interdisciplinary researcher, media artist, and PhD student in Communications Studies at Concordia University. Working across VR, 360° video, sensory ethnography, interactive documentary and digital archives, she investigates how emergent digital media formats might transform the way cultural information, knowledge, and memory is expressed and exchanged. Her current doctoral research-creation project explores potential applications of VR in the design of future archival interfaces and architectures, examining how they might produce new modalities for diverse communities and audiences to share, preserve, and interpret tangible and intangible cultural heritage material. Elina is an active member of the Immersive Media Lab at the Post-Image cluster located at the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture, and Technology as well as researcher in the Technology: Innovation working group of the Archive/Counter-Archive project.

Theo Xenophontos is currently pursuing his PhD in Cinema and Media Studies at York University. He also holds a BA from the University of Toronto, having majored in both Cinema Studies and English, while minoring in History, in addition to a MA in Cinema and Media Studies from York University. His research interests include archive theory, film history, historiography, experimental film and video, and media archaeology. 

Axelle Demus is a PhD student in the joint Communication and Culture program at York and Ryerson University. They hold an MA in Anglophone studies from the Université de Nantes, France, during which they studied the history of activist media production and circulation during the HIV/AIDS crisis in North America. Their PhD dissertation explores the history of queer cable access television in Ontario, Canada from the 1970s to the early 2000s and its intersections with the wider constellation of queer community media and activist networks in the province. Axelle Demus’ research interests include queer and feminist media theory and history, television studies, community archives, and alternative media. 

Jess Stewart-Lee is a graduate student in the Film Studies program at Concordia University. After completing an undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto in Cinema Studies and Diaspora & Transnational Studies, Jess wanted to continue her studies in film. She is currently pursuing research into the use of archival media in autobiographical documentary films, with a focus on films by people of colour. She is specifically interested in questions of family history, liminality, and depictions of race on-screen.

Muxin Zhang is a first year PhD student in Film & Moving Image Studies at Concordia University. She had curating experience as a student organizer of “Zoom-In,” a screening series and thesis showcase for Columbia University’s Film & Media Studies Class of 2020. Her MA thesis, “Meeting Women of the World: Hollywood’s Ambivalent Encounters with the Vamp Actresses,” analyzes the intersection of popular cosmopolitanism and the stardom of female performers specializing in playing “vamps” in early and studio-era Hollywood. For her PhD studies, she expects to further examine archetypes of cosmopolitan consciousness in the first decades of Hollywood. The broader concern would be how people of different ethnic backgrounds develop “habits of coexistence,” using Kwame Anthony Appiah’s phrase, and how cinema as a mass cultural institution can be regarded as a space for such negotiations of identity.

Debbie Ebanks Schlums is a multidisciplinary artist exploring themes of Jamaican diaspora, Caribbean archiving, migration, and anti-colonial actions through community engagement, materials, and conversation. She was a founding member of the Out of a War Zone and To Lemon Hill Collectives, both addressing the Syrian refugee crisis. She is a of Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council Visual Arts Grants, and an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Fellowship. Debbie studied Visual and Critical Studies and Fine Art at the California College of the Arts, and holds degrees in Philosophy, Political Science and International Relations. She was Co-Director of the Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film from 2016 to 2020 and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Cinema and Media Arts at York University. She resides in Mulmur, Ontario.

Caroline Klimek is a programmer and a PhD Candidate in Cinema and Media Arts at York University and a recipient of the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship. Her research examines the impact current Canadian public funding and policy stakeholders have on Canadian cultural institutions’ new media programs and exhibitions’ practices. She is published in the Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Shameless and forthcoming issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. She helped start the Digital Media at the Crossroads graduate student symposium DM@X-tra, an annual collaborative event focused on key aspects of the digital future of the cultural industries.

Emily Collins is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary researcher, arts administrator and PhD student in Cinema and Media Studies. She has worked across arts organizations in local and international settings, including the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Festival Scope (Paris), VUCAVU (Toronto), PUBLIC Journal (Toronto), and the Toronto International Film Festival. She holds graduate degrees in Arts and Culture from Maastricht University (Netherlands) and Cinema and Media Studies from York University (Toronto). Situated at the intersection of film and media, sound studies, cultural studies and gender studies, Emily's PhD research considers practices of deep listening, sonic epistemologies and embodied soundscapes. Namely, her project examines how sonic intervention and experimentation within audio-visual works can function as tools of resistance, instruments for disruption and modes of trans-sensory knowledge formation.