Annual General Assembly
2024-09-13 11:00 - 14:30 (America/New_York) | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
Keynote: Désirée Rochat, PhD, FRQSC Postdoctoral fellow, COHDS
“Curating stories of Blackness in Montreal: on Black women’s community-anchored knowledge work (1970s-1980s)”
Désirée Rochat is a community educator and holds a PhD in Educational studies from McGill University. Guided by an integrative approach, her academic and community work connect historical research, archival preservation and education. She aims to document, theorize and transmit (hi)stories of community activism, through the preservation and promotion of archives of Black community-based organizations. Her latest project “Black lives in/and archives” aims to foster an archival ecosystem dedicated to caring for and activating the archives of Black communities in Montreal.

SCHEDULE:
11 a.m – 12 p.m.
Keynote Speaker
12 p.m. – 1 p.m.
Lunch
1 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Annual General Assembly

– Electing
– Reporting
– Envisioning

See here for last year’s AGA meeting minutes.
REGISTRATION

Register to attend in-person. For any questions regarding this event please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LB 1019 (Sunroom), COHDS

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Dictatorship, Disasters, and Diaspora: Gathering Collective Memories in Haiti and beyond
2024-09-17 11:00 - 13:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
(photo source: Centre International de Documentation et d’Information Haïtienne, Caribéenne et Afro-canadienne (the International Center for Haitian, Caribbean, and Afro-Canadian Documentation and Information), also known as the CIDIHCA Collections.)
with Virginie Belony and Rachel Douglas
English
This panel explores how Haitians at home and abroad have remembered and processed major historical traumas, from political oppression to natural catastrophes. It features two interconnected presentations examining collective memory and its role in shaping Haitian identity and diaspora experiences. Dr. Rachel Douglas analyzes Myriam Chancy’s creative explorations of disaster response, focusing on earthquake memory sites and the process of ‘re-membering’ Haiti’s traumas. Her presentation delves into healing practices, commemoration, and transformative visions for Haiti’s future. Dr. Virginie Belony’s research investigates how Quebec’s Haitian community has engaged with memories of the Duvalier dictatorship (1957-1986). Through oral histories and community activism records, her work reveals diverse perspectives on the regime and its ongoing impact from 1964 to 2014. Together, these presentations provide insights into the emotional and political dimensions of memory in postcolonial contexts, demonstrating how trauma, resilience, and survival are deeply woven into both past and present narratives of Haiti and its diaspora.

Virginie Belony is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, where she specializes in 20th-century Haitian history. She earned her Ph.D. in History from the Université de Montréal in 2023. Virginie Belony’s research examines Haitian intellectual thought before 1957, issues of contested memory following periods of state-sponsored violence, and collective memory in diasporic spaces. In addition to her research, she serves as an assistant editor for the annual publication Revue d’Histoire Haïtienne. Starting in January 2025, she will join the Department of History at the Université de Montréal as an assistant professor.
Rachel Douglas is Reader in French and Comparative Literature at the University of Glasgow. She is the author of two books: Making The Black Jacobins: C. L. R. James and the Drama of History (Duke University Press, 2019) and Frankétienne and Rewriting: A Work in Progress (Lexington Books, 2009). She works on Caribbean literature, history, film, visual art, and archives with a focus on Haiti. She is currently working on two book projects: Reimagining Haiti: Decolonial Visions, based on her Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Fellowship; and Archiving Creative Aftershocks of Disaster in Haiti, based on her current Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship.

REGISTRATION
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! Register here. For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
In person (max 30 people), LB 1019 (Sunroom)

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Come Walk With Us: Walkathon Fundraiser for "Award of Distinction in Oral History"
2024-09-20 12:00 - 15:00 | Québec
IMPORTANT: Meeting space changed due to construction: we will be meeting inside the “EV building (Engineering and Visual Arts)” at 12:15 p.m. to walk over to Loyola together. A member of our team will be holding up a sign “Team COHDS”.
This year, “Team COHDS” will be joining the Concordia Shuffle – an annual fundraiser for student scholarships and bursaries – to help raise funds for our annual “Award of Distinction in Oral History.”
We are warmly inviting all members of our community to come and walk with us from Concordia’s downtown campus to Loyola on Friday, September 20. We will be meeting at the “EV building (Engineering and Visual Arts)” at 12:15 p.m. to walk over to Loyola together. A member of our team will be holding up a sign “Team COHDS”.
Join our team: If you liked to “shuffle” with us, we invite you to join our team (click on “Join Team”). COHDS-affiliated faculty will be donating $ 10 for each COHDS affiliate who will join us at the shuffle.
Support from afar: For those members of our community who are not based in Montreal or have prior obligations on September 20, if you were interested in making a small donation to our campaign, you could do so at “Donate Now”. Rest assured that 100 per cent of your donation will go towards our annual student thesis prize.
We look forward to walking with you!

Celebrating Excellence in Research: Meet our 2023-24 Scholars-in-Residence
2024-09-24 15:00 - 17:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with Dany Guay-Bélanger, Patricia Branco Cornish, Kelann Currie-Williams, Kelly Norah Drukker, Lauren Laframboise, Cassandra Marsillo, and Eleni Polychronakos
English
In Fall 2023, we launched our Scholars-in-Residence program, seeking to bring together oral history practitioners, artists, and creative storytellers. Our call resonated beyond expectations. We were delighted to welcome to COHDS seven brilliant scholars and oral historians who have contributed, in manifold ways, to the intellectually vibrant life of our community this past year.
Join us for a roundtable conversation that features the work of our 2023-24 Scholars-in-Residence in an informal and convivial atmosphere.

Dany Guay-Bélanger is a FRQ and SSHRC funded PhD candidate in Game Studies at the Université de Montréal and holds a master’s degree in Public History from Carleton University. He created a podcast that explores the development and application of Deadplay, a methodology favouring a holistic approach for the preservation and study of videogames as cultural heritage artefacts. His research aims to perfect and concretize the methodology developed during his master’s in order to allow players and researchers, present and future, to access videogames from every eras of this medium’s history. Dany has also interned and was the Garth Wilson Fellow at the Canada Science and Technology Museum and is currently the Francophone Representative of the Canadian Game Studies Association.
Patricia Branco Cornish is a PhD candidate in the Communications Department at Concordia University. She draws on a feminist decolonial perspective to reveal women artists’ contributions to Brazil’s 1960s-1970s avant-garde art movement, which coincides with Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-1985). Patricia combines oral stories and visual art as a research method in which artists use their artworks as memory triggers to discuss the past. The art object’s materiality helps to create narratives embedded with personal, public, and artistic-political aspects of the artist’s life. Patricia holds an MA in Art History from University of São Paulo (MAC-USP) and is the co-author of an article on art collections placed under the custody of public art museums in cases of money laundering investigations.
Kelann Currie-Williams (they/she) is a writer, visual artist, and oral historian based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal.Kelann is a PhD student at Concordia University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, working at the intersections of Visual Culture, History, Black Studies, and Cultural Studies. Their research focuses on the image-making and photographic preservation histories of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora in Canada from the late 19th to late 20th centuries, and the scenes of migration, homemaking, community-building, and political mobilization that those photographs depict. Kelann is a long-time student affiliate of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling. Her critical work has appeared in academic journals such as Urban History Review, the Canadian Journal of History, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, and Philosophy of Photography.
Kelly Norah Drukker is a writer and doctoral candidate in Concordia University’s Humanities PhD program. As a research-creation scholar working at the intersection of creative writing, oral history, family history, and memory studies, she has presented her projects at Concordia University, Rutgers University, the University of Ulster, the University of Jyväskylä, and Sydney Catholic University. Kelly’s first collection of poems, Small Fires, was awarded the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and the Concordia University First Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Grand prix du livre de Montréal (2016). Her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in journals in Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia. Petits feux, the French-language translation of Small Fires by Lori Saint-Martin and Paul Gagné, was published by Le lézard amoureux in 2018. As a doctoral student, Kelly has been the recipient of a Faculty of Arts and Science Graduate Fellowship, a Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship, a United Irish Societies of Montreal Scholarship, a School of Canadian Irish Studies Bursary, and a Fr. Thomas Daniel McEntee Graduate Scholarship. She continues to live, work, study, and write in Montreal.
Lauren Laframboise is a Vanier Scholar and PhD student at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling in the Department of History at Concordia University. Her research explores the impacts of deindustrialization in the apparel industry in Montréal and New York City. In 2021, Lauren completed her MA in History at Concordia, and from 2020-2022 she was the Associate Director of Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time (DéPOT). She has worked on a variety of public history projects exploring labour and immigration history, including museum exhibitions, online oral history platforms, walking tours, and documentary films and radio, including the Voices of the Immigrant Workers’ Centre oral history project. She is also the External Affairs Officer for the Concordia Research and Education Workers’ Union (CREW–CSN) and convenes their Feminist Workplace Committee.
Cassandra Marsillo is a public historian, artist, and educator, based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal), telling and listening to stories about immigration, identity, collective memory, food, and folklore, particularly in relation to the Italian-Canadian experience and traditions from her family’s region, Molise. Her latest project is an oral history cookbook on the stories and recipes of Montreal’s molisani, Dalla valigia alla tavola: A journey through Molisan culinary heritage, which she completed in collaboration with the Federazione delle associazioni molisane del Quebec, photographer and artist Vee Di Gregorio, chef Joseph D’Alleva, and pastry chef Erica Marsillo. Currently, she is working on a zine/exhibit about the history and family stories of the iconic “Italian birthday case” in North America.
Eleni Polychronakos is a PhD candidate at Concordia University’s Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities. She is also a writer and teacher. She holds a Masters in Literature (McGill, 2000) and one in Journalism (UBC, 2007). Her short fiction appears in The Puritan, The New Quarterly, The Bath Short Story Award Anthology 2019 and other literary publications. One of her stories was long-listed for the 2020 CBC Short Story Competition. From 2011 to 2015, she was a member of the collective that edits and publishes Room magazine, a longstanding Canadian journal of feminist literature. Eleni is currently writing her dissertation “Girl’s Name: Seeking Narratives of Feminist Genealogy in Twentieth-Century Greece.” This SSHRC-funded research creation project uses oral history and literary criticism as both theory and methodology to collect, create, and analyze stories by and about women who came of age during Greece’s turbulent twentieth century.

REGISTRATION
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! Register here. For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
In person (max 25 people), LB 1019 (Sunroom)

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Introduction to Oral History
2024-10-04 15:00 - 17:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with Steven High
English
This workshop will provide you with some of the fundamentals in the interdisciplinary field of oral history. Participants will learn about an oral history approach to interviewing, ethics in research, and the many ways that oral histories are shared with the public. This workshop is strongly recommended to all new affiliates, as it is intended to present the methodology and ethics followed by our Centre.

Steven High is Professor of History and has published extensively in oral history. He was the principal investigator of the Montreal Life Stories project, which recorded the life stories of 500 survivors of mass violence, as well as the Living Archives of Rwandan Exiles and Survivors.

REGISTRATION
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! Register here. For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
In person (max 25 people), LB 1019 (Sunroom)

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Rescheduled to winter 2025 - Rethinking our Territorial Acknowledgment
2024-10-10 14:00 - 16:30 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
•••Please note this event has been postponed until Winter 2025. We look forward to seeing you then!***
with Catherine Kineweskwêw  Richardson and Mélissa-Anne Ménard
English
This gathering consists of an invitation to COHDS’ community members to come together and create a statement of commitment and appreciation for the land we live on and the traditional caretakers of the land.  For some time now, COHDS has wanted to develop its own unique expression of appreciation and acknowledgement, gratitude for the Kanien’kehá:ka nation, people and lands upon which we live and work. This gathering will be facilitated by Cathy Kineweskwêw Richardson together with Mélissa-Anne Ménard.  They will lead a process through which we can explore expressions of gratitude and form them into a statement that can be shared on our website and at our gatherings.

Catherine Richardson/Kinewesquao is a Métis scholar with Cree, Gwichin and English and Viking ancestry (Swedish/Orkney). She is the Director of First Peoples Studies and is the co-founder of the Centre for Response-Based Practice, an organization dedicated to helping people recover from violence in a spirit of dignity and social justice. Cathy has a background in practice and research in counselling and social work. Her degrees are in child and youth psychology, counselling psychology, French and Political Science. She has supported Indigenous survivors of genocide and racism to tell their stories in various contexts including in the counselling room, in community settings and in national inquiries, such as the TRC. Currently, Cathy is on the Yukon Task Force to develop protocols on the issue of MMIWG2S+. She was the Quebec-lead in the Canadian Domestic Homicide Prevention Initiative. Her work centres around gathering accounts of resistance and explorations of how people respond to mistreatment and humiliation, in attempts to preserve dignity and maximize safety. Cathy has travelled extensively and is enlivened by story-sharing, cultural exchange and stories of resistance to oppression. https://www.responsebasedpractice.com Indigenous Healing Knowledges In this project, Catherine Richardson, along with her team, interview Indigenous healers from across the globe, including from Greenland, Aotearoa, Venezuela and from Turtle Island. In these interviews she asks the healers to share important information about their worldview, cosmology, creation stories and how within that they work to help people achieve well-being, balance and a sense of belonging. The healers will talk about their community, including the various rituals and ceremonies as well as some of the current issues they face, such as aspects of ongoing colonialism and mistreatment. Catherine is working with Zeina Allouche and others to create a special edition journal as well as organizing an on-the-land retreat for students with the international healers.
Mélissa-Anne Ménard is an oral historian whose main research interests center on the history of childhood and emotions, stories of migration, and the production of archives. She first encountered oral history during an undergraduate seminar in childhood history. Mélissa-Anne holds a master’s degree in history from Concordia university, partially funded by a Concordia University Merit Scholarship. Her thesis explored the ethical and methodological ramifications of reusing archived oral history interviews conducted by other researchers to develop frameworks and protocols to allow us to engage with countless oral history collections that often lie dormant in archives. She additionally holds a music degree in jazz interpretation for violin from the Collège Lionel-Groulx and most enjoys playing the fiddle.

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Crafting the (de)Industrialised Culture of the City of Elefsina, Greece: The Openeleusis Oral History Research Project
2024-10-17 13:00 - 15:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with Regina Mantanika
The Openeleusis research project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers in anthropology, history and visual arts for community-based research in Eleusina, a city where Greek industrial history is heavily imprinted on people’s memories and everyday life. Eleusina is situated in Western Attika and has undergone various phases of (de)industrialisation since the late 19th century. The Openeleusis team has worked on the industrial culture of Eleusina through participant observation, workshops, individual biographical interviews, focus groups and ethnographic filmmaking. One of the results is an open digital archive, https://openeleusis.eu/?lang=en. It is a digital space, a living library and memory bank of the city, which presents in an inventive way the material resulting from the historical and ethnographic research in order to ‘return it back’ to the community.
The OPENELEUSIS archive includes texts, videos and documents such as photographs, videos, maps, testimonies, interviews, etc. To have an intergenerational approach in the field, our team organised docu-animation workshops for children aged 8-12 in Elefsina. Three different teams (schools) were trained in oral history and stop-motion animation techniques for one week each. Finally, the team organised oral history seminars for the local community, leading to the creation of the Oral History Group of Eleusina (OPIEL), which will have its own space on openeleusis.eu.

REGISTRATION
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! Register here. For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
In person, LB 1019 (Sunroom)

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Film Screening of Dorchester: In the Midst of the Fray
2024-10-22 19:00 - 20:30 | LB 1042.03 (Moonroom), 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
Join us for a visioning and sound exploration of Dorchester: au coeur de la mêlée. Please note that this film will be screened in English.
In the heart of the city of Montreal and in the midst of Montreal’s business district lies one of Canada’s most beautiful squares: Dorchester Square.
Neglected for years, its renovation was entrusted to landscape architect Claude Cormier in the early 2000s. The challenge was immense, for beneath the square lie the remains of 55,000 Montrealers, victims of five cholera epidemics between 1830 and 1850.
And so began an exceptional artistic and historical adventure. The 20-year project brought together a team of Montreal artists, architects and archaeologists, and resurrected the secrets of the city’s history. From the Catholic movement of the 1870s to the beheading of the John A. McDonald statue in 2020, via the two referendums and the Maple Spring in 2012, the square condenses 150 years of social conflict in modern Quebec in its architecture and public art.
The screening of Dorchester: au coeur de la mêlée will be followed by a Q&A with Director Eli Jean Tahchi (Nemesis Films), Producer Karim Haroun and Composer and COHDS Scholar-in-Residence Jad Orphée Chami.
Watch the trailer
REGISTRATION
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! Register here. For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
In person, LB-1042.03 (ALLab), 10th floor of 1400 de Maisonneuve West.
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

What Travels Through Us: Exhibition Vernissage and Roundtable
2024-10-24 17:00 - 19:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with Naomi Frost, Rémy Chhem, Eva-Loan Ponton-Pham, and Marie-Ève Samson
English
This vernissage event and roundtable discussion, a collaboration between the Super Boat People Collective, COHDS, and Concordia University Library, introduces and celebrates the launch of the “What Travels Through Us: Exhibition,” on display at Concordia University Library from September 12 until December 12, 2024.
The Super Boat People Collective is happy to present the exhibition born from the project “What Travels Through Us: Family History Workshops.” From Fall 2023 to Spring 2024, the project brought together a cohort of fifteen participants of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese descent, whose families were affected by war and exile. Organized in the form of sharing and creation circles, these workshops encouraged participants to delve into the layers of their family histories, often fragmented and intricate. In each session, guided by a documentarist or an artist of Asian descent who incorporated these experiences into their practice, participants explored a variety of mediums and approaches.
This community art exhibition is the imperfect culmination of the cohort’s reflections, sharing and work. For most of the participants, this is the first time that they have created such work, and for a general public. Artworks, everyday objects, crafts, interview extracts, personal notes, archives blend together within a setting that echoes domestic spaces, to evoke the character both familiar and strange of each person’s family past. These are candid, magnificent and touching works, slowly thought out and shaped. They speak, among other things, of attachment, filiation, memory, silence, absence, gift, gratitude, departure and discovery. We also aimed to highlight the calming and restorative power of the group, along with the collaborative essence of the entire process.
The vernissage and round-table event delves deeper into the process of the workshops, the community and family memory work of participants, as well as the collaborative process of taking this public through the exhibition. The roundtable discussion will center on the transmission of family histories and memory in the context of exile, and how oral history, the arts and family histories intersect in the process of memory work. The participants and co-curators will also introduce the exhibit and the works, the process of their creation.

Naomi Frost is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Concordia University. She completed her MA in history at Monash University in Melbourne, where she served on the committee for Oral History Victoria. Her research centers on the oral histories of 1.5 and second-generation Cambodian Australians, Canadians and Americans who grew up in the diaspora, intergenerational memory and family storytelling. She was appointed as Concordia University Library’s Researcher-in-Residence (2023-2024) and is a research assistant for the project Cemetery as Metaphor: An Oral History of Montreal’s Back River Memorial Gardens.
Rémy Chhem is a social scientist specializing in the governance and management of natural resources in the Mekong region and within indigenous contexts. In his free time, Rémy acts as a community organizer for Asian diasporas in Montreal. As the co-founder of the Super Boat People Collective, he is dedicated to developing dynamic projects that build connections, foster collaboration, and encourage dialogue and cultural continuity between communities and across generations. His current work seeks to understand and frame the experiences of boat people refugees beyond the good and grateful refugee trope.
Eva-Loan Ponton-Pham is a multidisciplinary artist with a degree in Art History & Visual Arts from Concordia University. In all her projects, whether as co-founder of Atelier La Coulée, as a member of the feminist zine collective Les Bêtes d’hier or as a cultural mediator in various community projects, it’s important to her to make space for voices that are too often marginalized, by focusing on personal and collective narratives that challenges dominant discourses. Her personal work deals with confluent identities and the complexities of cultural transmission in diasporic contexts.
Marie-Ève Samson is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at the Université de Montréal. Her research centers on the experiences of ageing, end-of-life and care for immigrant elderly and their caregivers, particularly in the context where Quebec’s social protection and healthcare systems are facing significant change. Co-founder of Super Boat People, she was also involved in the Montreal Life Stories project in the early 2010s. Her thesis is informed by these various engagements and focuses more specifically on intergenerational issues in elder care within families of Cambodian, Vietnamese and Laotian origin in Montreal.
Super Boat People is a collective dedicated to mobilizing Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese individuals in Quebec, encouraging them to reclaim their histories, reconnect with their culture and communities, ensure fair representation, and defend and promote the interests of immigrants and refugees. To this end, the collective develops various initiatives, focused on community and family history, literature, social mobilization, urban agriculture and cooking.
PROGRAM
5:00 – Welcome
5:15 – Roundtable Discussion
6:10 – The artists introduce their work
6:45 – Library exhibition visit and closing remarks
REGISTRATION
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! Register here. For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
In person (max 45 people), LB 1019 (Sunroom)

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Women and Invisible Labour: Re-Imagining the Archive
2024-10-29 14:00 - 16:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with Varda Nisar and Lola Rémy
English
This workshop offers to reflect on archives as sites of contested knowledge, and to envision avenues and methodologies to open them to more inclusive decolonial and feminist perspectives. Dr. Lola Rémy examines how the archives of experimental filmmakers rest on the invisible labour of their wives and daughters, whose affective work is rooted in kinship and care. Her presentation reflects on how a mixed methodology of close archival research and oral history can recentre archival margins and rewrite a history of film more inclusive of women’s diverse and central roles. Varda Nisar reflects on the notion of archives itself within the context of Pakistan, and how social media platforms provide community and grassroot movements a space to counter military regimes. Understood as countervisual sites that challenge the master-narrative of the nation-state, her presentation brings forth examples of these emerging archives and how they have become spaces of both record-keeping and of critical pedagogy. Together, these presentations bring attention to the gendered labour that goes into building archives and how oral testimonies and interview can offer an alternative reading of these institutions.

Varda Nisar (she/her) is a mother, daughter, and sister. She is also a doctoral candidate in Concordia’s Department of Art History and Public Scholar (2022-23). Her work diverges in several directions, including art education, community outreach and art education. During her time in Canada, she has consistently tried to foreground the work of artists from Pakistan and South Asia. In 2021, she convened a speaker series titled (Art+Micro)History: Contemporary Artistic Voices from the South, which drew attention to artistic modes of resistance in Pakistan. In 2023, she co-curated a multi-venue exhibition, “re* imagining / créer / building / faire / mapping / connaissance /…” She was a 2015-16 Arthink South Asia Fellow and worked with Spark Arts for Children as part of her secondment. Her current research draws attention to cultural production under military regimes in Pakistan, particularly focusing on museums and archives.
Lola Rémy (she/her) is an FRQSC postdoctoral fellow at McGill University, Montreal. She completed her PhD at Concordia University in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. Her project is an oral history that recenters women’s affective and gendered labor in experimental film archives. Her work on archives as sites of cultural encounters, racial and gendered violence, and reappropriation by communities and artists has appeared or is forthcoming in The Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Frames Cinema Journal, NECSUS European Journal of Media Studies, and Synoptique, An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies. She is one of the 2024-25 Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling Scholars-in-Residence.

REGISTRATION
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! Register here. For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
In person (max 25 people), LB 1019 (Sunroom)

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Voices from the field: Working with oral history in Armenian contexts
2024-11-01 12:00 - 14:00 | Online
with Hourig Attarian, Melissa Bilal, Arpine Ghambaryan, Houry Pilibbossian, and Julia Cabral Tordeur
English
This roundtable brings together an intergenerational group of oral historians working in diverse Armenian contexts: Melissa Bilal, Houry Pilibbossian, Julia Cabral Tordeur, Arpi Ghambaryan, and Hourig Attarian. The conversation will focus on various facets of research creation in the projects the panelists have been working on, from photography archives, to documentary filmmaking, to creative writing, to music. Hourig will introduce and moderate the discussion.
Melissa will focus on the life narratives and expressive culture of Armenians displaced from Burunkışla, a village in Yozgat, central Turkey. There is a growing scholarly literature on Armenian genocide survivors who continued living in Turkey. Yet this literature rarely includes the accounts of those who stayed outside Istanbul in the decades following the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. Drawing on oral history interviews conducted in the village and its diasporic “extensions” in and outside Turkey, Melissa will talk about the production of an embodied knowledge of the unwritten history of the village through everyday performances of storytelling and singing. Her talk will explore the multiple versions of narratives of escape throughout the twentieth century: From violence, from the physical space of the village, from a condition of being, from negotiating a livelihood side by side with the perpetrators and their descendants.
Houry will address issues of maintaining and losing archives in times of war and the role of visual anthropology and ethnography in creating a repository of a collective visual memory of the Armenian community of Aleppo that was forced to migrate a second time after the genocide. The challenges of building a community photography archive, ethical, ownership and copyright issues become focal points of reflection. How does the creation of “Haleb Album” (within the larger Hi Haleb archival project) bridge the gap and bring together the community and unearthed parts of Aleppo’s Armenian life that have not been documented, curated and accessible? And finally, what is the role of photographic archives in historical knowledge production?
Julia’s research focuses on the Armenian Brazilian community and the lack of studies on Armenian women’s experiences in Latin America. Her PhD project collects their oral histories, aiming to preserve these narratives through both written and audiovisual formats. She is currently developing a documentary at COHDS and will share a brief preview during the panel.
Arpi will present her ethnographic research project that explores the daily practice of coffee drinking among Armenian women living in eight different communities in Armenia. Her research is rooted in an earlier project she conducted which focused on the coffee drinking ritual of her grandmother and her neighbor. For Arpi, this project serves as a diary of a feminist researcher intertwining academia and the everyday, the personal and the public, the joy and the sorrow. She transformed her observations into short fictionalized stories, each capturing the emotional and cultural significance of coffee within these communities.
As we engage in a critical inquiry of the storying act itself in this roundtable–storying the narrator, the (researcher)-self, the memory, the process, the story itself– we ponder how our works speak to one another and construct a larger narrative.

Hourig Attarian is an Associate Professor in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at the American University of Armenia (AUA). She holds a PhD in Education from McGill University and is a Core Member of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University. Visual arts-based methodologies are a core facet of Hourig’s research endeavours. Anchored in the blurred genre of life history and autobiographical inquiry, her work focuses on storying memory and identity through visual and narrative explorations. Her research-creation projects merge creative writing, photo collages, installations and performance, drawing together difficult memories and marginalized histories of violence within a framework of public pedagogy. Hourig teaches education, oral history, and gender studies courses at AUA.
Melissa Bilal is a sociocultural anthropologist and historian specialized in Music and Performance Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Memory Studies. She is an Assistant Professor and the Promise Chair in Armenian Music, Arts, and Culture at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music where she also serves as the director of the Armenian Music Program. Her ethnographic research explores the role of music in the transmission of Armenian memory in Turkey, while her archival research is focused on the musical and intellectual history of Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire and early republican Turkey. Her most recent book is the co-authored volume Feminism in Armenian: An Interpretive Anthology (Forthcoming 2025) which unearths the lives and works of twelve Armenian feminist writer-activists in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman contexts. Bilal is currently working on a biography of pianist and composer Koharik Gazarossian (1907-1967) and on her book project Injuries of Reconciliation: Music, Memory, and Everyday Survival of Armenians in Turkey.
Arpine Ghambaryan is pursuing an MA in Gendering Practices at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English and Communications with a minor in Gender Studies from the American University of Armenia. Her research interests focus on exploring the personal narratives of marginalized communities through oral history and visual modes of study. Arpine is one of the founding members of the Oral History Matters initiative at AUA, which seeks to challenge controversial narratives and bring oral history to the forefront of research.
Houry Pilibbossian is a sociocultural anthropology PhD student with a minor in Gender and Women’s studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is a photographer and a researcher of Syriac-Armenian origins. Houry received an MA in social anthropology from Goldsmiths University of London and a BA in English and Communications from the American University of Armenia. She is the co-founder of “Hi Haleb-Հայ Հալէպ”– a digital archive about the Aleppo-Armenian community. She’s a founding member of Oral History Matters – oral history based initiative at the American University of Armenia. She is also a research assistant in a collaborative oral history project mapping traces and memories of genocide in Armenia’s urban landscapes.
Julia Cabral Tordeur is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in History, Politics, and Cultural Heritage at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) with a master’s degree in political science from the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) and a bachelor’s degree in History from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She also specialized in Collective Memory, Human Rights, and Resistance through the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO). Julia’s research, titled “The Women who Survived the Desert: An Oral History of Armenians in Diaspora”, explores the memory of the Armenian genocide as a central aspect of Armenian identity, or “armenianness”, within the Armenian diaspora in Brazil. Her work involves collecting life narratives through in-depth interviews with women from these communities, aiming to capture diverse perspectives across various backgrounds. Currently, she is a visiting researcher at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS), where she is organizing the audiovisual material from her interviews into a documentary format.

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Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! This is a virtual event. Register here to attend. For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Beyond Transplant Stories: Weaving Community-Based Knowledge in Solid-Organ Transplantation through Arts Based Methods and Digital Storytelling with Patients
2024-11-15 10:00 - 12:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with the Frictions of Futurity & Cure in Transplant Medicine project team
English
Digital storytelling (DST) is of growing interest within health care settings to better understand patient experience and translate knowledge between health care professionals and patients. DST is a relational tool that can be used for education, advocacy, creative expression, and therapeutic intervention.
In this project, we engaged with DST to amplify the voices of patients in the transplant community by layering patient-experience through multimodal practices alongside the dominant biomedical transplant narratives. We led a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of transplant-educational materials to identify common themes, gaps, and narratives between solid-organ groups. Arts-based methods and digital storytelling workshops were used in addition to ethnographic interviews with patients from heart, liver, lung, and kidney transplantation programs at the Ajmera Transplant Centre at the University Health Network.
Digital stories encouraged conversations between patients, clinicians, family members and solid-organ groups. The main themes that emerged from the CDA of transplant manuals and eighty-four ethnographic interviews demonstrated the transformative experience of transplantation, the overwhelming emotions, and the interpersonal or professional misunderstandings. Eight digital stories were created and screened by transplant patients with the Liver Transplant Program at the Toronto General Hospital, and the Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program (CDTRP). Arts-based methods facilitated patients to engage in redefining their transplant narrative through unspoken emotional experiences such as anger, grief, and loss, which sit alongside the more spoken feelings of gratitude and hopefulness for the future.
Community-based learning emerged from sharing patient-experience and knowledge. The digital storytelling workshops and ethnographic interviews empowered patients by regaining control over their stories and engaging in multiple transplant narratives.

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For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
Hybrid, LB 1019 (Sunroom)

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Photo-Interviewing: Bridging Oral History and Photography
2024-11-19 13:00 - 15:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
(photo credit: Kelann Currie-Williams)
with Kelann Currie-Williams and Lea Kabiljo
This event brings together Lea Kabiljo and Kelann Currie-Williams, oral historians and photographers, who rely on the multi-faceted technique of “photo-interviewing” in their respective work. We will invite attendees to reflect on the relationship that exists between images and storytelling in the context of the oral history interview. What are the benefits and tensions associated with combining oral history and photography as an interviewing methodology? How do photographs and photo albums transform the space of the interview and help interviewees remember differently? Through workshop and discussion we will share different approaches to integrating photography into oral history interviews – from bringing existing photographs into the interview to capturing portraits of the interviewees.

Kelann Currie-Williams is a writer and PhD student at Concordia University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, working at the intersections of Visual Culture Studies, History, Black Studies, and Cultural Studies. Kelann’s research focuses on the image-making and photographic preservation histories of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora in Canada from the late 19th to late 20th centuries. Their work has appeared in Urban History Review, the Canadian Journal of History, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, and Philosophy of Photography. Kelann was a 2023-2024 scholar-in-residence at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling.
Lea Kabiljo, assistant professor of art education at Université Laval, is a multidisciplinary researcher with expertise in the arts, education, and oral history. She holds a PhD in Art Education from Concordia University and has a particular interest in integrating photography and oral history into the research-creation process. Her research explores the educational potential of this multidisciplinary approach in art education. With experience teaching in school, community, and university settings, Lea is actively engaged in teacher training, with a special focus on the development of socio-emotional skills. She is also recognized for her expertise in oral history and has led numerous research projects in Canada and internationally.

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Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! Register here. For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
In person, LB 1019 (Sunroom)

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

How to Storyboard: A Hands-On Workshop in Digital Storytelling and Interactive Exhibit Design
2024-11-22 14:00 - 16:30 | Concordia University, LB-1042 (COHDS), 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd O, Montreal
with Hannah Pinilla
English
Join us in the COHDS Computer Lab for an engaging 2 to 2.5-hour workshop designed to enhance your skills in digital storytelling and interactive exhibit creation. Participants will be asked to develop a mini exhibit concept incorporating edited digital content gathered from a brief exercise in conversational interviewing.
In pairs, participants will conduct open-ended interviews with each other, to learn how to draw connections between different narratives. Using IMovie to edit the audio and visual components gathered from the interviews, and Genially software to transform these elements into interactive panels, participants will focus on transforming raw material into a polished, thematic digital story.
By the end of the workshop, you’ll have hands-on experience with digital storytelling tools, practical skills in editing and exhibit design, and a finished interactive panel to showcase your creative ideas. This session is ideal for anyone interested in exploring the intersection of technology and storytelling in a dynamic, collaborative environment.

Hannah Pinilla is an oral historian and MA student in public history with a specialization in digital humanities at Carleton University. Her SSHRC-funded master’s research project, “El Sabor del Hogar: The Transformation of Identity and Memory Through the Food Practices of Colombian Migrants in Quebec,” engages nine Colombian migrants, living in Montreal and Longueuil in oral history interviews facilitated through cooking sessions, to explore how the narration, preparation, and consumption of ‘home foods’ is a form of embodied and interactive diasporic memory work. Her research question was guided by my own lived experiences as the granddaughter of a first-generation Colombian-Canadian: how does the dialectical relationship between identity and memory manifest through food practice and what impact does it have on the process of home-building?

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Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! Register here. For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
In person, LB 1042 (Computer Research Lab)

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Saathis: A Conversation about Queer Brown History in Tiohtia:ke/Montreal
2024-11-28 15:00 - 17:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with the Saathi Montreal Archive Project
English
A conversation between some of the members of the 1990s Tiohtia:ke/Montreal-based, South Asian-focused LGBTQ+ group the Saathis. As many of the Saathis are artists, performers and activists, they are also invited to reflect on their creative journeys as racialized queer people in Montreal.

The Saathi Montreal Archive Project documents the experiences and stories of the Saathis, a queer South Asian collective founded in early 1990s Montreal, through digital archiving and oral history interviews, conducted by Sunjay Mathuria, a PhD Candidate in Department of Geography, Planning & Environment (Concordia University) and student affiliate of COHDS.

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Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! Register here. For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
In person, LB 1019 (Sunroom)

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Dancing Life Stories/Dancing Biographies/ Forming the WE
2024-11-29 15:00 - 17:00 | Dance Studio, MB 7.265, 1600 Blvd De Maisonneuve West, Montreal, Quebec, H3H 1J5, Canada
* Please note this event has been moved to the Dance Studio at MB 7.265, 1600 Blvd. De Maisonneuve Ouest
English
Join us for an evening of dance as students from the Department of Contemporary Dance bring embodied (auto-)biographical narratives to the Acts of Listening Lab. Such storytelling in motion – based on life history interviews that students conducted with one of their peers – constitutes what Christine Thurner once called “emphatically fragile, deliberately contingent narrative acts.” These gestural narratives break free of the frame of linear, literary (auto)biography. Seen in relation to one another they form a complex and rich society.
This event is based on students’ coursework in the Department of Contemporary Dance, who, under the guidance of Professor Lília Mestre, are exploring the possibilities of danced life narration, this time in a collective improvisation setting.

With the DANC 202 Cohort: Angel Buell, E.V. Cloix, Valeria Cortes Pardo, Karlanne Dusablon Girard, Gabrielle Forget, Magdalen Fortin, Marina Gris, Isabelle Grondin Hernandez, Lauriane Houle, Isabella Jenkin, Kathy Jin, Meryam Joober, Sabrina Konstas, Berdelia Loemba Tchiss, Thaïna Louis-Jeune, Ruben Macas, Maria Marsli, Arezoo Mohadjeri, Ro Paloma, Valentina del Mar Rojas Baquero.

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Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! Register here. For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
In person, LB 1042.03 (Moonroom), ALLab

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Community Choral Music in Reperforming Oral Histories
2024-12-03 15:00 - 17:00 | Online
With Sara Lucas and Luis Sotelo
Dr. Luis Sotelo Castro and PhD candidate Sara Lucas from the Acts of Listening Lab and The Listening Choir will discuss how musical interventions, particularly community choral music, can catalyze dialogue in communities that have experienced collective trauma. We will explore how this form of participatory art, whether used in reperformances of oral histories or ancient plays, can be used as a tool for performing listening in a restorative justice context. Speaking to their experiences producing “Llamado y Respuesta: ¿Quién escucha a César Lasso?,” Dr. Sotelo Castro will highlight how he used community collaboration to support further audience participation within these dialogic spaces.
“Llamado y Respuesta: ¿Quién escucha a César Lasso?” uses headphones verbatim (a documentary theatre technique) and choral singing to reconstruct moments of a hearing of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace set up in 2016 in Colombia as a war crimes tribunal to enable victims of war crimes to be heard and ex-rebels and other offenders to admit responsibility and contribute to repairing the damages caused. It focuses on the statements by Cesar Lasso, a police officer who was held hostage for thirteen years, five months and one day by the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).”

Sara Lucas is a St. Louis raised, Montreal-based, vocalist, guitarist, composer and educator and a PhD student in the Individualized Program in Fine Arts at Concordia University. With her groups LADAMA and Callers she has co-written and co-produced five albums of original music and toured internationally as an independent artist. She designs culturally-relevant music curriculum that is currently in use in K-5 classrooms in the United States. Her work experiments with time, language, and form and is dedicated to accessing humanity regardless of genre. As a collaborator, she uses music as an intercultural exploration of communication, to create original works as part of community music making, and is invested in the activation of participant-led experiences.
Luis C. Sotelo Castro is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at Concordia University, Montreal (Quebec, Canada). In 2018 he founded at Concordia the Acts of Listening Lab, a hub for research-creation on the transformative power of listening to painful narratives, with particular reference to testimonies by exiles from sites of conflict. His latest publications explore listening in the context of post-conflict performances of memory. For instance, see ‘Facilitating voicing and listening in the context of post-conflict performances of memory. The Colombian scenario.’ In: De Nardi, S., Orange, H., et al. Routledge Handbook of Memoryscapes. Routledge: London. (2019), and his article ‘Not being able to speak is torture: performing listening to painful narratives’. International Journal of Transitional Justice, Special Issue Creative Approaches to Transitional Justice: Contributions of Arts and Culture.

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Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register!
This is a virtual event. Register here to attend. For any questions contact, cohds.chorn@concordia.ca

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Deep Listening to Life Stories
2024-12-05 10:00 - 12:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
* Please note this event has been rescheduled to 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
with Steven High
The workshop will invite you to engage deeply with a videotaped interview of a Rwandan genocide survivor recorded as part of the Montreal Life Stories project. We will explore different ways of interpreting an interview recording and transcription including narrative analysis, life course visualization, analysis of emotion, etc.  We will send the interview link to those registered ten days before the workshop. It is essential that everyone attending listen to the interview and take some notes for reference.

Steven High is Professor of History and has published extensively in oral history. He was the principal investigator of the Montreal Life Stories project, which recorded the life stories of 500 survivors of mass violence, as well as the Living Archives of Rwandan Exiles and Survivors.

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Please note that registration for this even is now closed.
In person, LB 1019 (Sunroom)

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Book Launch: The Left in Power
2025-02-07 13:00 - 15:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with Steven High
English

You are cordially invited to the launch of Steven High’s The Left in Power: Bob Rae’s NDP and the Working Class. At the end of the 20th century, as social democratic parties around the world struggled to produce a coherent response to the end of the post-war boom, many pivoted towards neoliberalism. Based on extensive archival research and oral history interviews, The Left in Power examines the response of the political Left in Ontario in the 1990s.
This may be Steven’s most personal work to date (though he would quick to point out that this is “no political memoir”!). He joined the NDP at age sixteen in 1984, was elected president of the national party’s youth wing a few months before the Ontario NDP victory in 1990, and spent three years criss-crossing the country, organizing youth from Newfoundland to northern British Columbia. This study arose from his interest in exploring the apparent failure of the centre-left to respond to the industrial crisis and its betrayal of working-class communities.
Please join us in celebrating the launch of a work that that Edward Dunsworth (Department of History, McGill University) has called “[e]ssential reading for anyone interested in bringing about a very different version of the Left in power.” The launch will take place on Friday, February 7, 13:00-15:00 in the Sunroom of COHDS (LB-1019). Light refreshments will be served.

Steven High is Professor of History and has published extensively in oral history. He was the principal investigator of the Montreal Life Stories project, which recorded the life stories of 500 survivors of mass violence, as well as the Living Archives of Rwandan Exiles and Survivors.

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Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca

LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Sharing Black Stories with Care, Intentionality and Authenticity
2025-02-12 18:00 - 20:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with Martha Nduwayo, Methsaïca Philippe, and Lourdenie Jean
Bilingual
Join us for an immersive experience that highlights the art of storytelling of black communities. Through a captivating multimedia exhibition, a panel with experts and an engaging interactive component, this workshop invites you to explore how to collect, tell and value these essential narratives.
Whether you’re a creator, researcher, entrepreneur, oral history enthusiast or simply a human willing to share with intention, this event is an opportunity to rethink how we bring the stories of the black community to life. Leave inspired, better equipped and ready to become agents of change through ethical, empathetic and transformative storytelling.
Art and activism
Lourdenie Jean: is deeply is passionate about the humanities, particularly sociology, psychology and anthropology. Beneath this passion for justice lies an unconditional love of the arts, as well as a childlike heart. As an author, visual artist, actress and singer in her spare time, she uses art as the main emancipatory tool in her daily life.
Today, she marries her experiences to express herself through a variety of mediums in the breadth of her personal practices. Today, she marries all of her experiences to express herself through a variety of mediums in the breadth of her personal practices.
Her achievements include:

Founding of the platform L’Environnement, c’est intersectionnel – ECI (2019)

Publication of her short story Car Tu es avec moi in the book Il y a des joies dont on ignore l’existence (2022)

Appearance on On est rendu là (2023)

Publication of her Afrofeminist essay L’amour, l’élément manquant de la justice climatique in the book 11 brefs essais sur la justice climatique (2024).

Martha Nduwayo is deeply committed to amplifying Black voices and fostering mental health and wellness within her community. She co-founded the Black Healing Fund and served as Operations Director at the Black Healing Centre, roles that reflect her dedication to creating spaces for healing and empowerment.

Currently, Martha is the Quebec Regional Coordinator for the Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (Q-BEKH), where she bridges academic research and community needs. She is also a co-founder of the Community Capacity Building Initiative (CCBI), a tax and finance clinic providing programming for Two-Spirit, trans, non-binary, and gender-diverse communities.
Martha recently collaborated with the Black Inc Podcast team to produce a series highlighting Black entrepreneurship and community innovation. Her passion for storytelling continues with this upcoming workshop, where she invites participants to explore the transformative power of Black narratives and their impact on community, identity, and resilience.
Methsaïca Philippe is an independent and creative marketing strategist whose mission is to create a positive and lasting impact within the environments in which she operates by amplifying meaningful voices and fostering innovative creation. Dedicated to empowering creators, entrepreneurs, and small businesses through an authentic and impactful online presence, she specializes in brand strategies, content creation, and social media management. As the co-producer of the Black Inc. Podcast, a platform that highlights the experiences, expertise, and excellence of entrepreneurs and business leaders from Black communities, Methsaïca stands out for her thoughtful and intentional narrative approach. By combining strategy, creativity, and storytelling, she helps build memorable brands and share impactful stories, all while staying true to her mission of inspiring, uplifting, and connecting communities.
En collaboration avec / In collaboration with:
Black Inc. Podcast
Q-BEKH
Office of Community Engagement
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Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Casual COHDS
2025-02-18 14:00 - 16:30 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
With Kelly Norah Drukker
Join us for the inaugural session of “Casual COHDS,” a monthly drop-in event for members of the COHDS community and anyone curious about oral history to gather, converse, and connect over coffee, tea, and snacks in a relaxed setting. If you would like to meet other members of the COHDS community, or simply take a moment to pause, recharge, and connect with other oral history practitioners and enthusiasts, “Casual COHDS” is an opportunity to foster these exchanges. Held in the afternoon, each monthly meeting will be loosely designed around a theme, to get the conversation started. For February’s session, participants are invited to bring a favourite book, or a question, quandary, or story around an interview encounter that they would like to share—or to simply bring themselves. We look forward to welcoming you on Tuesday, February 18th, anytime between 14:00 and 16:30 p.m. in the Sunroom (LB- 1019).
REGISTRATION
Register now
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1040.02 (ALLLAB), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Introduction à l’histoire orale
2025-02-20 13:00 - 16:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
avec Mélissa-Anne Ménard
Français
Cet atelier vous permettra d’explorer certains des éléments fondamentaux dans le domaine interdisciplinaire de l’histoire orale. Les participants découvriront une approche aux entretiens spécifique à l’histoire orale, l’éthique de la recherche et les nombreuses façons dont les histoires orales sont partagées avec le public. Cet atelier est fortement recommandé à tous nos nouvelles.eaux affilié.e.s, car il a pour but de présenter la méthodologie et l’éthique suivies par notre Centre.
Cet atelier offre des conseils sur la réalisation d’un projet d’histoire orale du début à la fin, y compris la planification du projet, les méthodes d’entretien, la gestion des données et le traitement des dossiers, ainsi que la diffusion de ceux-ci. L’atelier comprend également des moments interactif qui permettront aux participant.e.s de discuter des concepts clés et de mettre en pratique les stratégies d’entretien.
Mélissa-Anne Ménard est une historienne orale qui s’intéresse principalement à l’histoire de l’enfance, aux récits de migration, à l’histoire des émotions et à la production d’archives. Elle a découvert l’histoire orale lors d’un séminaire de premier cycle en histoire. Elle a obtenu sa maîtrise en histoire en 2023, année au cours de laquelle elle a reçu la bourse de mérite de l’Université Concordia. Sa thèse portait sur les ramifications éthiques et méthodologiques de la réutilisation d’entrevues d’histoire orale archivées menées par d’autres chercheurs afin d’élaborer des cadres et des protocoles nous permettant de réutiliser les innombrables collections d’histoire orale qui sont préservées et qui demeurent souvent dormantes dans les archives.
INSCRIPTION
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Veuillez noter que tous nos événements sont gratuits et ouverts à toutes et à tous. Cependant, vous devez réserver votre place. Pour participer à l’événement en présentiel évrivez à: cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LIEU
Le CHORN/ALLAB sont situés sur le territoire non-cédé de Kanien’kehá:ka à Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal.

CANCELED: How to Say 'Longing'
2025-02-20 19:00 - 21:00 | Concordia University, LB-1042 (COHDS), 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd O, Montreal
with Jad Orphée Chami and Noël Vezina
Join us on Thursday, February 20th, at 7 PM, at the ALLab, Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, for How to say ‘longing’, a contemplative performance by movement artist Noël Vézina and composer Jad Orphée Chami.
This intimate exploration of dualities—music and movement, composition and improvisation, the said and the unsaid—delves into the boundaries of closeness, vulnerability, and technology. Using a MIDI controller, a chain of touch-sensitive sensors, the performers weave a digital soundscape that shifts with their physical interactions, crafting a dialogue of embodied listening.
Jad Orphée Chami is a Lebanese-Canadian artist-researcher, composer and performer born in Beirut and living in Montreal. He notably composed the original music for the feature film Antigone by Sophie Deraspe, which represented Canada at the 92nd Academy Awards. He was nominated at the age of 21 for the Iris prize for best original music at the 22nd Gala Québec Cinéma, notably alongside Jean-Michel Blais and Howard Shore. After having provided the soundtracks for more than fifteen short films and three web series, he composed his second film score in 2023 in collaboration with director Eli Jean Tahchi for the documentary Dorchester: In the Midst of the Fray, produced by Jonah Mallak (Nemesis Films).
In addition to his music work for the image, he composes and designs works for the contemporary scene, notably for the École de Danse Contemporaine de Montréal and for the Acts of Listening Lab in collaboration with the Center for Restorative Justice. He explores through research-creation the dialogue between music and oral history. In 2022, he is part of a trio of artists commissioned by the MAI for the realization of the work Justement (en)raciner on the theme of Justice, among others alongside Kimura Byol-Lemoine, Angelina Guo and Moe Clark. The same year, he presented with Noël Vézina the performance How to say ‘longing’, mixing dance-theatre, music and new technologies, at the RIPA performance evening. The testimonies of the disappeared from Lebanon are central to his approach. He is affiliated with the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling and is developing his oral history performance Rhapsody for the disappeared.
He is also interested in contemporary issues of art and presents conferences on themes such as the question of the author, the ethics of research-creation and gender and sexuality in music history.
Noël Vezina is a queer, interdisciplinary, dance and movement artist based in Montreal (Tiohtiá:ke / Mooniyang). Largely self-taught, her process is highly intuitive and organic. Approaching performance as a tool to connect deeply, to herself and to others, her work often takes on ephemeral and intimate forms.
Noël’s latest accomplishments include: presenting Stardust and Parallax with Festival Quartiers Danses (2021), sharing a first version of a cloud, a distance (September 2020), creating We live together now – a video performance presented by Sanskar Festival (August 2020) and Festival Bouge D’ici (March 2021), performing 05062020live via Zoom for National AccessAbility Week with the DisAbled Women’s Network of Canada (June 2020), and her ongoing collaboration with A Safe Space, initiated by Nicholas Bellefleur in 2019. In February 2020 she hosted the first of many editions of 5×8/6 – a free-from experimental performance evening that takes place in her kitchen – where she premiered Soft Warm Light (an autobiographical solo piece in progress).
Noël is one sixth of the winning team of the 2021 Dansathon in Liège, recognized for their imagining of ‘the future of dance’ through a new interactive performance experience The
Living Room. They will continue questioning the place of technology in promoting embodiment soon, with the support of the Maison de la Danse de Lyon, Sadler’s Wells and the Théâtre de Liège.
Noël strives to be radically soft, honest and vulnerable. She values not-knowing and never perfecting. To be kind and loving is essential.
REGISTRATION
Register now
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1040.02 (ALLLAB), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Best Recording Practices for Oral Historians and Digital Storytellers - Part One (Registration Closed)
2025-02-21 14:00 - 17:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with Andrés Torres
Please note registration is full, email cohds.chorn@concordia.ca for more information if needed.
This two-part, hands-on workshop offers Oral Historians and Digital Storytellers a practical introduction to audiovisual recording and editing. Participants will learn to use recording devices like cameras and microphones while exploring the foundational principles of audiovisual practice. The workshop emphasizes how technical choices in production—shaped by audiovisual theory—can enhance storytelling and research. Participants will gain the skills to effectively capture and edit high-quality material, preparing it for dissemination or archiving.
Part 1: Recording – Practical and Creative Foundations
In Part 1, participants will become familiar with cameras, microphones, and other recording devices available at the COHDS Center. You will learn the fundamentals of operating these tools, as well as best practices for capturing clear and compelling audio-visual media. Through practical exercises, you will gain confidence in your ability to record high-quality material; while also considering the aesthetic and linguistic choices you make during the process. This session will set the stage for creating work that is not only technically sound but also consequent with your practice and visually engaging.
Who Should Attend:
This workshop is ideal for Oral Historians, Digital Storytellers, Scholars, and anyone involved in creative or research projects who wishes to enhance their skills in audiovisual production, from recording to editing. No prior experience is necessary, but an interest in exploring both the technical and conceptual aspects of media creation is encouraged.
Equipment:
All equipment, including cameras, microphones, and editing software, will be available for current COHDS affiliates, ensuring an immersive and practical learning experience.
Andrés F. Torres is a filmmaker and screenwriter with extensive experience in fiction and non-fiction, digital storytelling, audiovisual archives, and oral history. He holds an M.F.A. in Film and Media from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently engaged in various projects across his native Colombia, the United States, and Canada. Andrés joins COHDS as the Technical Coordinator after serving for five years as the Head Videographer and Digital Archivist at the Voces Oral History Center in Austin.
REGISTRATION (Closed)
Register now
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
Find out more about Part 2 of this workshop
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Walking as a Way of Knowing: Amy Starecheski in Conversation with Luis C. Sotelo
2025-03-06 15:30 - 17:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with Dr. Amy Starecheski, Director, Columbia University’s Oral History MA program and Dr. Luis C. Sotelo, Director, Concordia’s Acts of Listening Lab
What and how do we learn about the past when we use our bodies as research instruments? Dr. Starecheski will open this conversation by sharing a paired soundwalk she created as a way of “walking other people’s memories into our bodies” and building enduring relationships grounded in history sharing in her South Bronx neighborhood.
In her current research about how people decide what is true about the past, Dr. Starecheski is doing participant observation and archival research in communities of history practitioners in the Bronx, from journalists and historians to genealogists and history buffs. While most say that they are carefully weighing textual evidence to find out what happened in the past, in practice many rely as much or more on affective and embodied ways of knowing – including walking – when trying to make sense of all the messy traces of the past they encounter. Dr. Starecheski will share some of these preliminary findings and invite you to think with her about walking, and embodied practice more broadly, as a way of knowing about the past. Dr. Sotelo Castro will respond remotely from the United College at the University of Waterloo, where he is currently acting as a visiting associate professor in the humanities.
Dr. Amy Starecheski consults and lectures widely on oral history education and methods, is co-author of the Telling Lives Oral History Curriculum Guide, and co-founded the Pedagogy of Listening Lab. She was lead interviewer on Columbia’s September 11, 201 Narrative and Memory Project, for which she interviewed Afghans, Muslims, Sikhs, activists, low-income people, and people who lost work. From 2020-2023 she was Co-Director of the NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Project.
Luis C. Sotelo Castro is an Associate Visiting Professor in the Humanities at United College (University of Waterloo) and Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at Concordia University, Montreal (Québec, Canada). Between 2016 and 2021 he held the position of Canada Research Chair in Oral History Performance at Concordia. With funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, he established in 2018 the Acts of Listening Lab, a hub for research-creation on the transformative power of listening.
REGISTRATION
Register to attend (in person only)
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1042 (Acts of Listening Lab), COHDS / Online: You will be sent the Zoom link upon registration (see above).
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Best Recording Practices for Oral Historians and Digital Storytellers – Part Two
2025-03-07 14:00 - 17:00 | LB 1042.03 (Moonroom), 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with Andrés Torres
This two-part, hands-on workshop offers Oral Historians and Digital Storytellers a practical introduction to audiovisual recording and editing. Participants will learn to use recording devices like cameras and microphones while exploring the foundational principles of audiovisual practice. The workshop emphasizes how technical choices in production—shaped by audiovisual theory—can enhance storytelling and research. Participants will gain the skills to effectively capture and edit high-quality material, preparing it for dissemination or archiving.
Part 2: Editing and Disseminating – Bringing It All Together
In Part 2, the focus shifts to editing the images and sounds captured in Part 1. You will learn basic editing techniques to refine your recordings, integrating the process of exporting your final product for archiving and dissemination. You will explore how to make intentional choices in your editing and how these choices enhance the effectiveness of your work as it goes to preservation and/or dissemination. By the end of this session, you will have the basic skills to edit your audiovisual materials to present to an audience and ready for dissemination in research or creative contexts.
Who Should Attend:
This workshop is ideal for Oral Historians, Digital Storytellers, Scholars, and anyone involved in creative or research projects who wishes to enhance their skills in audiovisual production, from recording to editing. No prior experience is necessary, but an interest in exploring both the technical and conceptual aspects of media creation is encouraged.
Equipment:
All equipment, including cameras, microphones, and editing software, will be available for current COHDS affiliates, ensuring an immersive and practical learning experience.
Andrés F. Torres is a filmmaker and screenwriter with extensive experience in fiction and non-fiction, digital storytelling, audiovisual archives, and oral history. He holds an M.F.A. in Film and Media from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently engaged in various projects across his native Colombia, the United States, and Canada. Andrés joins COHDS as the Technical Coordinator after serving for five years as the Head Videographer and Digital Archivist at the Voces Oral History Center in Austin.
REGISTRATION
Register now
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom, Computer Research Lab, Moonroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

“Vivre avec le trouble” – Trouble in Oral History and Storytelling 12th Emerging Scholars Symposium (Friday, March 14)
2025-03-14 08:45 - 17:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
How might trouble and troublemaking (re)shape our fields? How might oral history and storytelling help us survive the current moment of poly-crisis? How might we mobilize oral history and storytelling to engage in necessary troublemaking? This year’s symposium brings together twenty emerging scholars from Concordia and beyond in an interdisciplinary conversation on “Vivre avec le trouble” and the transformative potential of oral history in troubled times.
Over the course of our day-long conversations, panelists and conference attendees will explore ways of knowing, interrogate the politics of the archive, listen to oral histories on the ground, and examine how oral history and storytelling might be used in creating a more just society. We will delve into intergenerational conversations and contemplate ways of feeling memory. There will be “ghost stories” too. The program will culminate in a series of four brief performances, followed by a conversation with the researchers-artists.
Our keynote speaker, Dr. Lea Kabiljo (Université Laval), the 2024 recipient of the Award of Distinction in Oral History, will reflect on the complex ethical and relational dynamics of sharing authority in works of research-creation. Her keynote – “Oral History x Photography: Negotiating Authority in Participatory Research-Creation” – brings oral history and photography into a single analytical frame to explore the tensions between researcher subjectivity and participant agency.
The Emerging Scholars Symposium is one of the highlights of our COHDS year. We’d be delighted if you could join us! ,
See the program at a glance.
See the full program (including panel description and biographies of panelists)

The Program Committee | Le comité organisateur
Samia Dumais is a PhD student in history at Concordia University. A transdisciplinary researcher, she is interested in Afro-descendant and Black transnational discourses and their materialization in Quebec and Canadian educational structures. Member of the editorial board of HistoireEngagée.ca, Samia is the archivist for the afro-feminist community organization Harambec and a Scholar-in-Residence (2024-25) at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS).
Varda Nisar is a mother, daughter, and sister. She is also a PhD Candidate in Concordia’s Department of Art History and a Concordia Public Scholar (2022-23). She is currently a Fellow at the Social Justice Center and a COHDS Scholar-in-Residence (2024-25). Varda is the co-founder of the Art History Decolonial Action Group (AHDAG), which actively challenges the silence around Palestine in academia. Her doctoral research draws attention to cultural production under military regimes in Pakistan, mainly focusing on museums and archives. She currently sits on the executive committee of the South Asian Women’s Cultural Centre as the Vice-President of the Board and on Concordia University’s Graduate Student Association Council as the Director of the Faculty of Fine Arts.
Anna Vigeland is a PhD student in Concordia’s INDI program and a COHDS Scholar-in-Residence (2024-25). Her research is driven by overlapping interests in oral history, performance histories, translation, memory, and interdisciplinary forms of creation. Her approach also draws on over 15 years working in circus and on a translation practice that is increasingly interwoven with her research and artistic practices.
REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom) and LB-1042 (Moonroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Casual COHDS
2025-03-25 14:00 - 16:00 | LB-1019 (sunroom), COHDS
With Lea Kabiljo
Join us for our second session of “Casual COHDS,” a monthly drop-in event for members of the COHDS community and anyone curious about oral history to gather, converse, and connect over coffee, tea, and snacks in a relaxed setting. If you would like to meet other members of the COHDS community, or simply take a moment to pause, recharge, and connect with other oral history practitioners and enthusiasts, “Casual COHDS” is an opportunity to foster these exchanges. Held in the afternoon, each monthly meeting will be loosely designed around a theme, to get the conversation started. For our gathering in March, participants are invited to bring a favourite story around an interview encounter or a photograph that they would like to share — or to simply bring themselves. We look forward to welcoming you on Tuesday, March 25th, anytime between 14:00 and 16:30 p.m. in the Sunroom (LB- 1019).
Lea Kabiljo, assistant professor at Université Laval, is a multidisciplinary researcher whose expertise spans the fields of the arts, education, and oral history. She has a particular interest in integrating photography and oral history into her research-creation process. Holding a PhD in Art Education from Concordia University, Lea’s research highlights her multidisciplinary approach by exploring the educational potential of oral history and photography in art education. Having taught in school, community, and university settings, Lea is actively engaged in teacher training, with a special focus on the development of socio-emotional skills. She is also recognized for her expertise in oral history and has led numerous research projects in Canada and internationally.
REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Kids on the Street: Queer Oral History, Performative Storytelling
2025-03-26 15:00 - 17:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with Joseph Plaster
Joseph Plaster’s prize-winning Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco’s Tenderloin (Duke University Press, February 2023) explores the informal support networks that enabled abandoned and runaway “kids on the street” to survive in central city tenderloin districts across the United States, and San Francisco’s Tenderloin in particular, over the past century. Centering the experiences of street kids enabled him to articulate—indeed excavate—a history of queer sociality that has been overshadowed by major narratives of gay progress and pride. He ultimately represents a politics where the marginal position of street youth—the self-defined “kids on the street,” hair fairies, hustlers, queens, and “undesirables”—is the basis for a moral economy of reciprocity and mutual aid.
Joseph Plaster is an interdisciplinary scholar trained in queer studies and public humanities, with teaching and research fields at the intersection of American 20th-century urban history, oral history, performance studies, public history, and LGBTQ studies of religion. He is a Lecturer in the Program in Museum and Society and Director of the Winston Tabb Special Collection Research Center at Johns Hopkins University, where he develops cross-departmental, community-based research initiative in collaboration with Baltimore’s ballroom and voguing scene, grassroots trans and non-binary activities, and local artists of colour.
REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Looking at the World from Inside Mosques: Questioning Prejudice Through Art Photography
2025-04-03 16:00 - 18:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with Marwan Bassiouni. Hosted by Chedly Belkhodja (Concordia) and Paul May (UQAM)
Islam comes in all shapes and colours. It is now Western and a part of the national identity and landscape of many countries. Since January 2018, Marwan Bassiouni has visited mosques in various countries in order to document their presence in the landscape from the inside. He was led into the hearts of cities, suburbs, villages, industrial zones and remote areas, alongside rivers, lakes and mountains. Mosques were able to become a part of the Western landscape by adapting to the shapes and colors of the local architecture – by building minarets and prayer rooms out of bricks, wood and various other materials. Through this journey, Marwan Bassiouni not only witnessed the diversity of locations in which Muslims are living today, but also the diversity within the Muslim community itself.
Unfortunately, Muslims are the most targeted minority when it comes to hate crimes, and recent terrorist attacks have contributed to an increase in islamophobia, racism and xenophobia towards Muslims. Many Western medias are biased in their representation of Muslim peoples and contribute towards negative and unwelcoming sentiments towards this multi-ethnic and multi-cultural minority demography. The mosques contained in this project were therefore left unidentified to respect the wishes of mosque representatives who feared for their safety. All photographs in this series document views of actual mosques within their original surroundings.
Marwan Bassioni’s images, often presented large-scale, lie at the intersection of documentary practice, fine art, and intercultural mediation. In his photographs, he explores the poetics and aesthetics of documentary photography while focusing on the Western landscape and themes related to identity, spirituality, culture, and the politics of representation.
His work is held in private and public art collections such as Kunsthaus Zürich, Kunstmusem Bern, Kunstmusem Den Haag, The Nederlands Fotomuseum, and many other arts centres. Marwan Bassioni is the recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Student Grant, the Harry Pennings Prize, the Prix Circulation(s)-Fujufilm and several other awards and nominations. His book New Dutch Views was a finalist for the Aperture First Book Award at Paris Photo.
Chedly Belkhodja is Professor and former Principal of the School of Community and Public Affairs at Concordia University. He holds a BA (1988) in Political Science from l’Université de Moncton and an MSc (1990) in Political Science from l’Université de Montréal. He completed his Diplôme d’études approfondies (1991) and his PhD (1996) in Political Science at l’Université de Montesquieu (Bordeaux, France). His research focuses on immigration policies and mobility of migrants in the case of less common destinations. He is also interested in the processes of integration and inclusion.
Paul May is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the Université du Québec à Montreal. He holds a PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and UQAM. His research focuses on the consequences of immigration for Western societies, with a particular focus on debates on multiculturalism, public controversies related to identity politics in the public sphere, and the agency of migrants during their migratory journey. Before joining UQAM, he was a post-doctoral researcher at Queen’s University (Canada) and Harvard (United States). Dr. May was awarded the Vincent Lemieux Prize for the best thesis in political science in Canada as well as two awards for teaching excellence at Harvard University. He regularly writes articles and op-eds, notably including the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post US, Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Liberation.
REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.
