After completing a series of international searches, we are welcoming an amazing group of regular faculty members:

Faculty of Design and Dynamic Media (DDM):

Leo Vicenti, an enrolled member of the Jicarilla Apache Nation, joins DDM as an Assistant Professor, Communication Design. He identifies creatively as a human, an artist, educator, and visual communication designer, all of which inform his approach to making. Receiving his M.F.A. in visual communication design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a B.A. in graphic design from Fort Lewis College, Leo comes to ECU from Columbia College in Chicago, where he worked as an adjunct professor. He has also worked as an exhibition design consultant for the Field Museum (Chicago, IL), and as an Exhibit Designer / Project Specialist for the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center (Albuquerque, NM).

Manuhuia Barcham (Ngāti Kahungunu, Te Arawa, Ngāti Tuwharetoa) works at the intersection of interaction design, service design, and strategic design. He has held tenured positions at Universities in New Zealand and Australia and he has over twenty years of experience working across the Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America for a wide range of clients including the United Nations, the Australian Federal Government, and Snap Inc as well as a range of First Nations and Tribal Governments across Canada and the USA. Most recently, Manahuia served as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Washington and Managing Director at Archetekt. He will join DDM as an Associate Professor, Interaction Design (starting in January 2022).

John (Shiu Cheung) Li has been working as a professional 3D animator in Television, Film, and Games for over 18 years. He has had the pleasure of working at some of the biggest names in the industry in Canada and the US, such as Microsoft, Sony, and Disney, and has gained many years of experience in different production methods and leadership roles. He has a BSc in Biology from the University of Western Ontario and pursued 3D Animation and Digital FX studies at the Vancouver Film School. For the last 4 years, John has dedicated part of his time teaching 3D Computer Animation at Emily Carr as a sessional instructor and has helped shape and improve the 3D Computer Animation curriculum. He will be starting this fall as an Assistant Professor, 3D Animation.

Faculty of Art (ART):

Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez comes to ECU as an Assistant Professor, Photography (starting in January 2022). Gonzalo is a visual artist, whose work frequently draws on images as material and manifests itself primarily as photography, video, or multi-screen installations. Recent projects include solo exhibitions at Terremoto/La Postal, Mexico City, Roots & Culture, Chicago, and at Blinkers, Winnipeg. His work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Contemporary Art Daily, Public Parking, and the Daily Lazy. He has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Acre, and at MassMOCA. Gonzalo received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to his appointment at Emily Carr, he was Visiting Faculty, MFA Visual Studies, Minneapolis College of Art & Design, in Minnesota.

As announced earlier this year, after serving as a non-regular faculty since 2013, Brendan Tang will begin as Assistant Professor, Ceramics. Brendan's work explores issues of identity and the hybridization of our material and non-material culture while simultaneously expressing love of both futuristic technologies and ancient traditions. Although he is primarily known for his ceramic work, Tang continues to produce and exhibit work in a wide variety of mixed and multiple mediums. He received an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, including the 2016 Biennale Internationale de Vallauris Contemporary Ceramic Award, France, shortlisted for the Sobey Art Prize, and a finalist in the Loewe Foundation’s International Craft Prize, Madrid, Spain. Tang’s work has been exhibited widely, including at the Museum of Anthropology (Vancouver, BC), the Gardiner Museum (Toronto, ON), the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche (Faenza, Italy), the Musée d'Art Contemporain (Montréal, QC), the Museum of Fine Art (Boston, MA), and the Foundation d’Entreprise Bernardaud (Limoges, France), to name a few.

Faculty of Culture + Community (CAC):

Sara Osenton, Learning Specialist, Writing Centre, joins us from her previous position as an instructor of writing, reading, and academic skills at the University of Toronto’s Woodsworth College Writing Centre, Graduate Centre for Academic Communication, and Scarborough Campus Centre for Teaching and Learning. Raised in Vancouver, she graduated from Emily Carr with a BFA in visual arts before going on to pursue an MA and Ph.D. in Contemporary Japanese Art in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation explored the ways contemporary Japanese art responds to World War II with a particular interest in cyborgs. Her current research examines how Japanese disabled veterans represented themselves in the postwar and has recently published an article on the comic strips of the Veterans Gazette in the Journal Asian Studies Review. She has also taught undergraduate courses in Japanese and East Asian history, art history, pop culture, and visual culture at the University of Toronto, York University, and the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Sanem Guvenc-Salgirli begins a two-year appointment as a Visiting Scholar in CAC. Prior to moving to Vancouver in 2016, she was an assistant professor of sociology at Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey. Trained as a sociologist, Sanem is currently working on critical social and political theory broadly defined to explore intersections between science and technology studies, political philosophy, and critical-cultural practices, including art and psychoanalysis. Her most recent work explores the concepts of the swarm and the cloud and is particularly inspired by, and a product of the social movements of the post-2010 period. Since 2018 she is a collaborative group member in the “Leaning out of Windows: Art and Physics Collaborations Through Aesthetic Transformations” project directed by Randy Lee Cutler and Ingrid Koenig. Before coming to ECUAD she completed two research projects: eugenics in 1930s Istanbul, and neoliberal governmentality in contemporary Turkey. She has published articles on those subjects in journals such as Social History of Medicine, New Perspectives on Turkey, and Comparative Studies on South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She is the co-editor of Natural Sciences in the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Formations, Practices, Intersections (Istanbul, 2019). In addition to these empirical and archival researches, she has written on political theory within the context of Turkey's 2013 Gezi movement and on Michel Foucault's governmentality. Currently, she is working on a book manuscript titled "Topologies of the Void: Art and Politics in a De-forming Age”.

ECU Library:

D. Vanessa Kam brings a wealth of experience to her position as Electronic Resources Librarian, as she previously served as the head librarian of the Bowes Art & Architecture Library at Stanford University (from 2016). Prior to her time at Stanford, Vanessa was head librarian of the University of British Columbia’s Music, Art and Architecture Library in Vancouver (2005–2016); Associate Art Librarian and Exhibits & Publications Manager at the Stanford Libraries (2000-2005); Kress Fellow at the Arts Library, Yale University (2000); and Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin (1997–1998). She holds two Master’s degrees in Art History and Library and Information Science from the University of Texas at Austin. Vanessa is a recipient of the Art Libraries Society of North America's Worldwide Art Books Publications Award (2015), and an H.W. Wilson Foundation Research Award (2013).

We are also exceedingly fortunate to have an amazing group of non-regular faculty join our ranks this year, including Andrea Alcaraz, Scott Devan, Tom Zuber in DDM; Avery Alder, Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte, Twyla Exner, Pete Fung, Christine Germano, Amy Kazymerchyk, Lois Klassen, Parvin Peivandi, and Samein Shamsher in CAC; Katie Bethune-Leamen, Osvalso Castillo, and Josephine Lee in ART; and Lisa Baldissera in Graduate Studies.

Stephanie Buer (Foundation), Meghna Mitra (Communication Design), Soumya Na (Communication Design), Shankar Padmanabhan (Interaction Design), Kyla Gilbert-Heaney (Foundation), and Garima Sood (Foundation) will be joining the faculty as Graduate Teaching Fellows!

Thank you for your inspiring contributions to the teaching and learning environment! Welcome!!