Kaytlyn Barkved
M.A. Student in Digital Arts & Humanities
Kaytlyn Barkved is a queer disabled digital
artist building a practice of generative art methods framed by Critical Disability Studies. Fueled by passions for feminism, social justice, and activist art, she completed her Bachelor of Arts with a major in Gender and Women’s Studies and a minor in Visual Arts. She has participated in many drawing projects, most recently, completing a 100 day drawing project, exploring the interconnected nature of Autism Spectrum Disorder, mental illness, and queer identity. Visit her on Instagram to see her entire digital body of work and drawn responses to readings from her graduate coursework: @kaytlynbarkvedart.
Ahlam Bavi
Ph.D. Candidate in Digital Arts & Humanities
Ahlam Bavi is a conceptual artist, industrial
designer, and a digital humanist. She has studied and researched at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland and the University of Calgary, where her digital sculpture work was recognized by an award. She is trained in the Reggio Emilia Educational approach, as well as in VR and AR and digital technologies.
Ahlam’s visual artworks consist of conceptual sonic sculptures, digital remediate artworks, 3D calligraphy, and algorithmic 3D printed sculptures. She also collaborates with museums to improve the experience of low vision visitors and to re-imagine of artworks through digital technology.
Jon Michael Corbett
Ph.D. Candidate in Digital Arts & Humanities
Jon Corbett has a well-established career in technology as a web programmer. He completed his BFA at the University of Alberta, and his MFA at the UBCO in 2015, merging his technology skills with his artistic practice. He is currently pursuing his PhD, continuing this exploration. His research proposal focuses on the lack of cultural representation in programming languages, and he is building an Indigenous computer programming language based on the Cree language and syllabary.
Isabel Gomez Velez
M.A. Student in Digital Arts & Humanities
Isabel Gomez Velez is an instructional designer, experiential
educator and creativity, sustainability and experience design lecturer for design and engineering students. She holds a bachelor degree on environmental engineering, a graduate diploma on creative intervention, and a master in education, with a magna cum laude mention from Universidad de los Andes-Colombia.
As the digital world permeates every aspect of life and cultural data is created at increasingly high rates, understanding their implications in worldviews is crucial to create profound learning experiences to promote a sustainable world. Hence, her interest to investigate how to create educational experiences that link the digital world as a learning space, where the constitution of an ethical, political and aesthetic subjectivity for sustainability is promoted. Furthermore, she seeks to create learning spaces where participants re-signify their way of thinking, seeing and relating to the world.
Melissa Hart
Ph.D. Student in Digital Arts & Humanities
Melissa Hart is a doctoral student currently working on a
creative research project: Judas-Kiss—Betrayal of our Primordial Comrade in the Rarest Rainforest on Earth: wolves, humans, and British Columbia’s Southern Interior Rainforest. Hart’s current research interests lie in wolf creative narrative, digital painting, regenerative-culture, eco-art activism, and in-situ, practice-based methodology.
Yasaman Lotfizadeh
M.A. Student in Digital Arts & Humanities
Yasaman is a professional Graphic Designer
and an Art History enthusiast. In her first year as a masters student, she works both as a Research Assistant, supervised by Dr. Hussein Keshani, and a Graduate Academic Assistant, affiliated with the AMP Lab. Her current study focuses on applying Digital Humanity theories and tools in connection with the sixteen-century Persian illustrated manuscripts. She is interested in historiography through Social Network Analysis and Data Visualization.
Yasaman completed her previous studies in Graphic Design, where her artworks focused on cultural and historical contexts. In her research, she worked on two Persian illustrated manuscripts, with a focus on miniature’s decorated Shields.
Having a variety of teaching experiences, including private institutions, high schools, vocational colleges, and universities, in her career, Yasaman found herself passionate about teaching. From 2014 to 2019, she taught several Art History, Graphic Design principle workshop and Design software courses. As a former skating instructor, player and referee, and in her free time, she likes to skate.
Heather Magusin
M.A. Student in Digital Arts & Humanities
Heather Magusin is a professional
photographer, a cyclist, and a writer. Her research centers on the influence of public discourse on our responses to complex social-environmental phenomena; currently, wildfire is her focus. Her thesis analyzes the Twitter response to the 2016 Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo wildfire, and her GRA work on the Living with Wildfire research project focuses on wildfire in the Okanagan region. Her other research interests include the intersections of urban design, active transport, and socio-environmental justice, specifically around bike commuting as a tool for emancipation and revolution. In her free time, you can find her outside riding her bike, hiking in the backcountry, nerding out over plants and lichens, or debating passionately about obscure topics.
Tara Nicholson
Ph.D. Candidate in Digital Arts & Humanities
Tara Nicholson incorporates photography and installation within her research creation. She has travelled throughout the Arctic to document climatology sometimes with a blurred line between sci-fi and actual science to render new experiences of northern landscape. Nicholson has exhibited across Canada, teaches at the University of Victoria and holds an MFA from Concordia University. Recently she attended ‘Earthed’ a climate-centered residency at the Banff Centre and has received funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council. taranicholson.com
Her PhD research will produce a connected body of exploratory landscape studies linking escalating changes within the Anthropocene. Examining rewilding, resurrection biology and extinction studies while witnessing connected waves of Indigenous and setter-allied land activism, Nicholson will explore the role of art within activism and how the interpretation of climate research can affect its outcomes.
Sepideh Saffari
Ph.D. Candidate in Digital Arts & Humanities
Sepideh Saffari is an award-winning artist and
architect currently pursuing her IGS Ph.D. in Digital Arts & Humanities at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan Campus. She is also a graduate research associate of the AMP lab and a member of the Centre for Culture and Technology. In these affiliated research centers of the university, she has been collaborating on projects such as Aga Khan Garden web app and Water Ways. In 2006, she started her academic education in Architectural Engineering in which she ranked third and first among students in her BA and MA programs respectively. Since then she has held artistic and architectural positions, namely teaching at universities, designing constructed buildings, and working at game and animation companies.
Meg Yamamoto
Ph.D. Student in Digital Arts & Humanities
Meg Yamamoto was born and raised in
Calgary, Alberta. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction in Visual Studies at the University of Calgary, completing her degree through a Study Abroad program in Berlin, Germany in 2014. She was awarded the University of Calgary Silver Medallion in Art in 2015 and spent the following two years studying the geometric, structural, and symbolic properties of Hiberno-Saxon Knotwork. Meg completed her Master of Fine Arts degree in Visual Arts at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus. Her master’s thesis research was funded by the Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Master’s Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and she received a University Graduate Fellowship as well as the Graduate Dean’s Entrance Scholarship from the University of British Columbia. Her PhD research looks at how experiential and artistic responses to the local flora and fauna can be documented in online archives and databases.