Research Affiliates & Alumni

Graduate Research Affiliates

---

Sarah Cipes

Affiliation: The SpokenWeb Project

Sarah was the 2022 AMP Lab PRC fellow and is a PhD student in the IGS Digital Arts & Humanities theme at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. Her research combines audio digitization, vocal studies and humour philosophy, and incorporates recorded comedic performances. She has contributed to digitization efforts with the British Columbia Regional Digitized History project. Sarah graduated with a master’s degree in information science (Archives and Record Management focus) from the University of Toronto in 2021 and holds a BA in English from UBC Okanagan. She acknowledges that she lives and works on Syilx Okanagan territory.

---

Tara Nicholson

Affiliation: The SpokenWeb Project

Tara Nicholson is an artist and SSHRC-funded PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies (IGS), Digital Arts & Humanities theme. Her research documents Arctic extinction and permafrost studies through a more-than-human lens. She has exhibited across Canada and internationally while receiving funding from the BC Arts Council and Canada Council. She attended ‘Earthed’ an international eco-art residency at the Banff Centre and was awarded the Künstlerhaus Dortmund Artist-in-Residence Award. She teaches at the University of Victoria and holds degrees from Toronto Metropolitan and Concordia University. Her work was recently part of the UBC & Exeter University Catalyst Grant and will exhibited at the Lake Country Art Gallery this fall.

---

Erin Scott

Affiliation: The SpokenWeb Project

Erin Scott is a poet/performer, artist/scholar, Scottish/Canadian living on the unceded territory and ancestral lands of the Syilx/Okanagan Peoples (Kelowna, BC). They hold an MFA in Writing and Performance from UBC Okanagan. Erin is a PhD student in IGS Digital Arts and Humanities whose research-creation work contemplates a ‘both/and’ identity in relation to cultural, geographical, and traditional belonging through the creation of digital poetic texts and dialogic performance. Erin is a founding member of the literary arts organization Inspired Word Café. Their performance work has presented at festivals across Canada, she has won the John Lent Poetry/Prose Award and the Okanagan Short Story Contest, and is a graduate of the Banff Centre’s Writing Studio program. They have two chapbooks, two spoken word albums, two cats, four kids, and one incredible partner. She held the 2023 PRC Fellow position and is a current GRA on the SpokenWeb project.

---

Jordanna Marshall

Affiliation: The Negative Heritage Project

Jordanna is a Master’s student and Graduate Research Assistant in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Her ethnographic research explores the intersections of animal welfare and conservation from the perspectives of wildlife rehabilitators in the Thompson-Okanagan. Jordanna received her Bachelor of Arts at the UBC Okanagan campus in 2019, where she held an Undergraduate Research Assistant position on the Disruptive Technologies and Negative Heritage Project. This project investigates the use of digital technologies as a conservation strategy for the archaeological site of Palmyra. Jordanna has since resumed working on the project and is eager to contribute to informing policy making and best practices concerning the conservation of heritage sites.

---

Postdoctoral Research Associates

Klara Du Plessis

Affiliation: SpokenWeb SSHRC PG (Supervisor Karis Shearer)

Klara du Plessis holds a PhD in English Literature from Concordia University. Her ongoing research looks at literary studies off of the page to incorporate insights from a sound and curatorial studies perspective too. It focuses on curatorial structures in the context of twentieth century and contemporary Canadian poetry in performance, thinking critically about the poets’ and curator’s often neglected labour, and how it shapes poetry reading events, whether live or in the audio archive. She is also currently interested in connecting the practical and conceptual labour of organizing literary events to the subjective act of listening relationally to that curation. This thinking has also materialized in an ongoing research creation project of poetry reading organization called Deep Curation. Here Klara works with other contemporary poets, such as Oana Avasilichioaei, Kaie Kellough, Kama La Mackerel, among others, to design deliberately interwoven and discursively sounded and public-facing presentations of their work. Klara is also a critically acclaimed writer known for her contributions to long-form and translingual poetics (mainly between English and Afrikaans). Her debut poetry collection, Ekke, won the 2019 Pat Lowther Memorial Award. The book-length narrative poem, Hell Light Flesh, was adapted and produced as a mono-opera film, composed by Jimmie LeBlanc, and premiered at the International Festival of Films on Art in 2023. She is the author of three more books of poetry and literary criticism, most recently Post-Mortem of the Event (2024). This collection encompasses creative work mobilizing audiovisual media, transcription, waveform visualization, and digital humanities and interdisciplinary methods. Klara develops her writing practice to include visual, sound, and moving image installations, and has exhibited work at Artexte, Centre Clark, and the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, among other venues. She joins the SpokenWeb UBCO team as the Critical Remediations postdoctoral fellow.

---

Former Principal Investigators

Constance Crompton

Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa.
Professional Link: https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/members/3039
Personal Link: http://constancecrompton.com/

AMP Lab Alumni

SpokenWeb Project (PI: Dr. Karis Shearer)

Undergraduate Research Assistants

• Atmaza Chattopadhyay (2022-23)
• Rowan Pickard (2022-23)
• Nour Sallam (2019-20)
• Lauren St. Clair (2019-20)
• Amy Thiessen (2018-21)
• Megan Butchart (2018-20)
• Evan Berg (2018-19)
• Stephen French (2018-19)
• Emma Smith (2018)
• Cole Mash (2013-14)
• Justin Kroeker (2013-14)
• Eric Huang (2013-14)
• Lee Hannigan (2012-13)

Graduate Research Assistants

• Xiaoxuan Huang (2021-23)
• Erin Scott (2022-23)
• Jon Corbett (2021-22)
• Judith Burr (2020-22)
• Yasaman Lotfizadeh (2019-22)
• Ahlam Bavi (2020-21)
• Craig Carpenter (2020-21)
• Caitlin Voth (2018-19)
• Mathieu Aubin (2018-19)
• Deserae Gogel (2018-19)
• Cole Mash (2014-16)

Press Play! Research Creation, Arts Entrepreneurship, and The Digital Archive (Co-PIs: Dr. Karis Shearer and Dr. Emily Christina Murphy)

Undergraduate Research Assistants (UBCO)

• Ronnie Cheng (2023-24)
• Kailee Fawcett (2023-24)
• Kai Hagen (2022-24)
• Wanling He (2023-24)
• Asana Hughes (2023-24)
• Yashvardan Joshi (2023-24)
• Matthew Kenney (2022-24)
• Lauren Naidoo (2023-24)
• Rowan Pickard (2023)
• Ains Reid (2022-23)
• An Tran (2023-24)
• Sabrina Warwick (2023-24)

Graduate Research Assistants

• Tara Nicholson (2023-24)
• Yasaman Lotfizadeh (2021-22)
• Ahlam Bavi (2019-20)

The Confluence of Religious Cultures in Medieval Historiography (PI: Dr. Francisco Peña)

Undergraduate Research Assistants

• Nyshaya Leck (2018-19)

Graduate Research Assistants

• Saifullah Mafuz (2019-21)
• Cassidy Acheson (2019-20)

Postdoctoral Fellows

• Miguel Las Heras Calvo (2022-23)

Digital Reconstruction of Cultural Heritage (PI: Dr. Lindsay Der)

Undergraduate Research Assistants

• Shanneen Chiu (2019-20)
• Jordanna Marshall (2018-20)
• Haley Seven-Deers (2018-20)

Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada (PI: Dr. Constance Crompton)

• Caitlin Voth
• Cole Mash
• Cole Smith
• Rebecca Desjarlais
• Candice Lipski
• Seamus Riordan-Short
• Nikita Gush
• Reba Ouimet
• Raymon Sandhu
• Sabrina Schoch
• Travis White
• Juawana Grant
• David Lacho
• Maggie Shirley
• Nishat Tasnim