{"id":41,"date":"2018-08-31T00:25:08","date_gmt":"2018-08-31T00:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s158.ok.ubc.ca\/?page_id=41"},"modified":"2026-03-03T14:32:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T22:32:01","slug":"all-research-associates","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/amplab.ok.ubc.ca\/index.php\/all-research-associates\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Affiliates & Alumni"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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SpokenWeb Project Coordinator<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Cole Mash<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Cole Mash (he\/him) is a writer, scholar, teacher and community arts organizer who lives on unceded Syilx-Okanagan territory in Kelowna, BC. He has performed poetry locally and nationally for over 10 years, and his creative work has been published in magazines throughout Canada, including CV2<\/em>, Pinhole Poetry<\/em>, Forget Magazine<\/em>, and N\u014dD <\/em>magazine. His lyric-memoir, What You Did is All it Ever Means<\/em>, was published with Broke Press in 2021. Cole\u2019s critical work has been published in Scholarly and Research Communication<\/em> and the SpokenWeb Blog<\/em>, and he is the co-editor of Resistant Practices in Communities of Sound<\/em> from McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press. He is the co-founder and Executive Director of non-profit arts organization Inspired Word Caf\u00e9, holds a PhD in English from Simon Fraser University, and teaches English and Creative Writing at Okanagan College. After many years with the SpokenWeb project at SFU, Cole is incoming as the 2024 SpokenWeb UBCO Coordinator. He has a wonderful partner, four kiddos, and two kitties whom he loves all the way to the bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Digital General e grand estoria <\/em>Project Manager<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Brianna Wells<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Dr. Brianna Wells comes to this project by way of the UBC Okanagan Research Services team, where she has helped faculty develop and refine their Social Science and Humanities research grant proposals since 2018. Her PhD research traces the connections between opera and emergent mass media in 20th century US and Canadian contexts. She has balanced academic and artistic work since also becoming Managing Director of the Opera Kelowna Society in 2020, and joined Dr. Pe\u00f1a Fernandez and the General Estoria team in 2025 after they were awarded a SSHRC Partnership Grant. Brianna is published in 19th Century Music <\/em>and The University of Toronto Quarterly<\/em>, and never misses an opportunity to talk about the capacity of the arts and humanities to change minds, open hearts, spark curiosity, and generally make life worth living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Research Affiliates<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

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Undergraduate Research Assistants<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Ana Carla Vallejo P\u00e9rez<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Affiliation: General Estoria project<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Ana Carla Vallejo P\u00e9rez is a Cuban-Ecuadorian queer disabled multidisciplinary artist, videographer, editor, writer, and musician. She is studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of British Columbia, majoring in Creative Writing and minoring in Visual Arts, with a focus on film studies. They have produced various short films that have been featured at film festivals such as the Okanagan Screen Awards (OSA) and the Student Okanagan Film Festival (SOFF). She showcased her editing skills in the short documentary, “As Long As I’m Allowed” (2024), which won Best Documentary at SOFF in 2024, as well as Best Storytelling at OSA in 2025. She has had various poetry and short fiction publications in magazines such as Papershell<\/em>, Inkwell<\/em>, and an original chapbook called unreasonable thoughts from an unfeasible head<\/em> (2025). She has interests in cultural studies, art history, world literature, and social justice, which she likes to integrate into her art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Karla Cisneros<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Affiliation: General Estoria Project<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Karla is a first-year chemistry student at UBCO. Born in Mexico City and raised in Texas, she eventually moved to Canada right before the pandemic. After taking a class with Dr. Pe\u00f1a, Karla was inspired to pursue a minor in World literature and is now the social media manager for the project<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Graduate Research Affiliates<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Sandra O. Yeboah<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Sandra O. Yeboah is a student in the MA English program at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan where she is supervised by Dr. Karis Shearer. Having worked across various forms of publication, her research explores the evolving landscape of African literature as it intersects with Western publishing practices. She is particularly interested in how African narratives are curated, represented, and received in Western literary markets, and how issues of voice, authenticity, and cultural translation shape the publishing process. Her work seeks to contribute to broader conversations around literary gatekeeping, representation, and the politics of storytelling.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She holds a degree in Publishing Studies from Kwame Nkrumah University of  Science and Technology and has professional experience in African media publishing and digital marketing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sandra values authenticity: from living in diverse cultures to engaging with the world through art and literature. She finds joy in spoken word, painting\/drawing, public speaking, and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sarah Cipes<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Affiliation: The SpokenWeb Project<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Sarah was the 2022 AMP Lab PRC fellow and is a PhD student in the IGS Digital Arts & Humanities theme<\/a> 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<\/a> project. Sarah graduated with a master\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Erin Scott<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Affiliation: The SpokenWeb Project<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a> whose research-creation work contemplates a \u2018both\/and\u2019 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 Caf\u00e9<\/a>. Their performance work has presented at festivals across Canada, she has won the John Lent Poetry\/Prose Award<\/a> and the Okanagan Short Story Contest<\/a>, and is a graduate of the Banff Centre\u2019s Writing Studio program<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lauren St Clair<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Affiliation: Data Transparency Cluster<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Lauren is a Master\u2019s student at the University of British Columbia, completing a Dual Master of Archival Studies and Library and Information Studies<\/a>. She holds a BSc in Computer Science from UBC Okanagan, where in her final year (2019-20) she worked as an Undergraduate Research Assistant on the SpokenWeb Project under Dr. Karis Shearer. Her research interests focus on data sovereignty, community archives, and infrastructures of solidarity. Currently, Lauren is a Graduate Research Assistant in the Digital Transparency Cluster, contributing to the Secondary Data Project, supervised by Dr. Shearer. Outside of academia, she explores field recording, communal and careful technologies, and practices of repair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jordanna Marshall<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Affiliation: The Negative Heritage Project<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Jordanna is a Master\u2019s student and Graduate Research Assistant in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia<\/a>. Her ethnographic research explores the intersections of animal welfare and conservation from the perspectives of wildlife rehabilitators in the Thompson-Okanagan<\/a>. 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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Postdoctoral Research Associates<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Klara Du Plessis <\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Affiliation: SpokenWeb SSHRC PG (Supervisor Karis Shearer)<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019 and curator\u2019s 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,<\/em> won the 2019 Pat Lowther Memorial Award. The book-length narrative poem, Hell Light Flesh<\/em>, 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<\/em> (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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Former Principal Investigators<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Constance Crompton<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa.
Professional Link: https:\/\/uniweb.uottawa.ca\/members\/3039<\/a>
Personal Link: http:\/\/constancecrompton.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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AMP Lab Alumni<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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SpokenWeb Project (PI: Dr. Karis Shearer)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Undergraduate Research Assistants<\/p>\n\n\n\n