Join us for another online iteration of the Archive/Counter-Archive Working Papers Series (WPS), which brings together PhD students and graduate researchers from different universities to hear about exciting work in the area of archival studies. Our next event is a roundtable discussion featuring A/CA postdoctoral researchers Erika Biddle, Axelle Demus, Ylenia Olibet, and Mikhel Proulx. Each participant will give brief presentations of their most recent or current research and creative projects, followed by a collective discussion about the early stages of their postdocs, including how they arrived to their current position, their independent practices outside this context (curation, publishing, and artistic practices), and how these practices may connect and/or diverge from their future research. The discussion and Q&A will be moderated by WPS student organizers, Em Barton and Elina Lex.
Click the following link to register for this event:
https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/qM4wCZIPRq2JUMapS8AOJg#/registration
NOTE: This event is taking place online over Zoom and will have closed captioning available. The Zoom invitation link will be emailed to all who are registered.
SPEAKER AND PRESENTATION INFORMATION
Erika Biddle is a Mitacs Accelerate Postdoctoral Fellow at York University, working with Archive/Counter-Archive and PUBLIC. She received her PhD in Communication and Culture from York University, where her dissertation, “Plastic Publics,” examined historical uses of “neuroplastic power” in shaping modern publics. Since January 2024, Erika has been collaborating with PUBLIC to produce Arcana, a special project led by artist Christine Davis with four contemporary artists and librarians at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (University of Toronto), culminating in a limited-edition multiple of four artists’ books. She is also developing PUBLIC Online as a broader platform for PUBLIC’s work. Erika is senior editor at Common Notions press and co-editor of Constituent Imagination with David Graeber and Stevphen Shukaitis. She is currently working on a book based on her doctoral research.
Axelle Demus, PhD, is the Community Archives Accessibility Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University’s School of Information Studies. As part of their appointment, they are developing and supporting a paid internship program in collaboration with various Montréal-based community archives, while conducting interdisciplinary research focused on disability and accessibility in community archives across the United States and Canada. As a Research Associate for Archive/Counter-Archive (counterarchive.ca), Axelle is also developing a series of open access educational guides for the project’s Case Studies to make vulnerable archival material available to classrooms at the secondary and postsecondary level. Finally, their current research, which is derived from their dissertation work, focuses on the histories and archives of LGBTQ2+ community cable access TV in Canada. Broadly speaking, Axelle’s interdisciplinary research interests include (community) media history, archival studies, critical disability studies, and critical pedagogy. For more: https://axelledemus.com/
Ylenia Olibet is a Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University. She is interested in the formation of feminist and queer publics developed around film cultures. Her research encompasses queer and feminist theory and history, transnational approaches to film and media studies, film festivals, and digital media. She published in Feminist Media Studies, Feminist Media Histories, MAI: A Journal of Feminist Visual Culture and in edited book collections. Her research is funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et Culture.
Mikhel Proulx is the Fonds de recherche du Québec Société et culture Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vulnerable Media Lab, Queen’s University. In recent projects, he has collaborated with the artists Skawennati, Anna Banana, Margaret Dragu and Rita McKeough. Mikhel has recently curated exhibitions and presented research at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City; Foundation PHI in Montreal; and the Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris.