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.

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.

Lisa Myers is a member of Chimnissing, Beausoleil First Nation. She works as an independent curator, artist and also as an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. Her research encompasses both an art and curatorial practice. Through printmaking, stop-motion animation and performance she considers spaces of sustenance. She has exhibited her artwork in venues including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Peterborough, and Queens Museum. Recent curatorial projects include touring exhibitions: Beads, they’re sewn so tight (2018); Carry Forward (2017); and wnoondwaamin | we hear them (2016). Her writing has been published in many exhibition publications, in addition to journals and art periodicals such as Senses and Society, C Magazine and Inuit Art Quarterly. Myers has an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial practice from OCAD University. She is Toronto and Port Severn, ON based.

Wanda vanderStoop provides continuing support to Vtape’s artists, promoting over 5000 independent productions to worldwide markets including museums, national and international festivals, broadcasters, educational institutions and mobile platforms. She is a committed advocate for artist’s rights and fees and contributes to a policy consultation process on the changing methods of dissemination in video and new media.

Karen Knights is Manager of the Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive (CDMLA) and Development Officer at VIVO Media Art Centre (2013-present). She’s committed to the preservation and development of VIVO’s collection and oversees the CDMLA’s digitization projects of original media (most recently the Women’s Labour History Project Oral Histories; Celebration ’90 Gay Games III; Gayblevision community cable program). Previously, Knights was active in the artist-run community as a librarian, video art distributor, curator, and anti-censorship activist (1984-2000). As an independent curator and critic, she has completed several historical surveys of archives held by Canadian ARCs and contributed to solo exhibition catalogues for Sara Diamond and Jin-me Yoon. Knights is a Board member of the Audio-Visual Heritage Association of B.C.

Annaëlle is a PhD candidate at the Department of Library and Information Science (Université de Montréal). She holds a master degree in History and archival science from the University of Louvain (Belgium). Her research focuses on the notion of archive(s) in experimental films and videos. In parallel to her doctoral research, she is a programmer at the Montreal Underground Film Festival and artistic co-director of Groupe Intervention Vidéo (GIV).

Genne Speers is the Deputy Director of the CFMDC, one of Canada’s oldest artist run centres founded in 1967. The CFMDC is one of four member organizations of TMAC (Toronto Media Arts Centre). She is an advisory member of the TMAC board and serves on the boards of the Media Arts Network of Ontario and the Independent Media Arts Alliance. Genne holds a Masters of Cinema and Film Archiving from the University of East Anglia and is a PhD Candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at York University. Her current research concerns aerial images of violence and the interpretation and translation of instrumental aerial images within the context of the archive.

Anne Golden is an independent curator and writer whose programs have been presented at Musée National du Québec, Edges Festival and Queer City Cinema, among others. She has written for FUSE and Canadian Theatre Review. Golden has participated in numerous panels on curatorial practices, independent distribution and, more recently, horror films. Golden is Artistic Director of Groupe Intervention Vidéo (GIV). She teaches in the Media Arts Department of John Abbott College. Her novel FROM THE ARCHIVES OF VIDÉO POPULAIRE (Pedlar Press) was released in March, 2016. Golden has made over twenty videos including LES AUTRES (1991), FAT CHANCE (1994), BIG GIRL TOWN (1998) and THE HORROR CYCLE (2016-2018).

An experienced, passionate and committed Media Educator for the past 15 years, Jessie Curell has been teaching dynamic, production-based Media and Digital Literacy workshops across Canada, the US and Asia with the National Film Board of Canada and a wide variety of schools, museums, non-profit organizations and film festivals. She has met thousands of teachers and students, and has first-hand knowledge of specific needs and interests, which have helped shape the way she works with each group.

Shelly Rosenblum is Curator of Academic Programs at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (the Belkin). Inaugurating this position at the Belkin, Rosenblum’s role is to develop programs that increase myriad forms of civic and academic engagement at UBC, the wider Vancouver community and beyond. Rosenblum received her PhD at Brown University and has taught at Brown, Wesleyan and UBC. Her awards include fellowships from the Center for the Humanities, Wesleyan University and a multi-year Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Department of English, UBC. She was selected for the Summer Leadership Institute of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University (2014). Her research interests include issues in contemporary art and museum theory, discourses of the Black Atlantic, critical theory, narrative and performativity. Her teaching covers the 17th to the 21st centuries. She remains active in professional associations related to academic museums and cultural studies, attending international conferences and workshops, and recently completing two terms (six years) on the Board of Directors at the Western Front, Vancouver, including serving as Board President. At UBC, Rosenblum is an Affiliate of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies.