Sharon Gubbay Helfer

Sharon Gubbay Helfer is a professional oral historian specializing in life stories, a multimedia artist and a researcher/practitioner in the area of difficult dialogues and listening skills. Following a PhD in Jewish Studies focusing on Montreal’s Reconstructionist Synagogue, she carried out postdoctoral research in Jewish-Catholic dialogue at the Université de Montréal and then worked on the major Oral History Centre project “Life Stories of Montrealers Displaced by Wars, Genocides and Other Human Rights Violations” where she produced a Palestinian Canadian Life Stories project. Dr. Gubbay Helfer is a certified facilitator with the Compassionate Listening Project and with the Compassionate Integrity Training curriculum. She has offered Compassionate Listening workshops and Circles to participants in the US, Canada, Europe and Israel. In February 2023 she was awarded a 13-month Research and Creation grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, to research and write the first draft of a book about Germaine Kanova, the charismatic Frenchwoman who taught her mother, Aline Gubbay, portrait photography in London between the wars.