LLED Graduate Peer Advisors
Claire Ahn, Ph.D. Candidate
Claire Ahn is entering her fourth year of doctoral studies with a focus on visual rhetoric in environmental documentaries. This is her third consecutive year as an LLED peer advisor. Prior to graduate studies she was a high school English teacher in Alberta for ten years. Other research interests include teacher education, English curriculum, film, and visual literacy.
Kaye Hare, Ph.D. Student
Kaye Hare is a second year PhD student. Kaye is a feminist scholar and activist whose research focuses on youth’s (online) sexual knowledge exchange. Working at the intersection of literacy education and sexuality studies, Kaye employs youth’s experiences of making-meaning to consider and challenge the dominant ideological processes that regulate sexual knowledge and bodies. Kaye is LLED’s representative on the UBC Graduate Student Society and sits on the Board of OPT.
Jun Ma (马骏), Ph.D. Student
Jun Ma is a second year PhD student in LLED. Her research focusses on non-native English-speaking newcomers’ (including immigrants and international students) academic experience in English contexts, as in Canada. She has been in Canada for 5 five years. Prior to becoming a graduate student, she has been working as an English instructor in China for almost ten years.
Dr. George Belliveau Graduate Advisor
George Belliveau is a Professor of Theatre/Drama Education at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His research interests include research-based theatre, drama and social justice, drama and L2 learning, drama across the curriculum, drama and health research and Canadian theatre. His scholarly and creative writing can found in various arts-based and theatre education journals, along with chapters in edited books.
Ernesto Peña, Ph.D. Candidate
Ernesto’s research interests include Digital Humanities, Data Visualization, Critical Media, Creative Pedagogy and Gamification, Transmediation, Visual Semiotics, Design Education and everything in between.
Natalia Balyasnikova, Ph.D. Candidate
Natalia Balyasnikova is fourth year doctoral candidate. Her current research aims to examine the role of English language education in the lives of for senior immigrant learners. Natalia collaborates on a range of research and outreach projects with community-based initiatives in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and is a member of the advisory committee for Seniors Thrive Initiative at the UBC Learning Exchange.
Yuya Takeda, M.A. Student
Yuya Takeda is a second year MA student. His research interests include Critical Literacy, (Critical) Discourse Analysis, and Language and Identity. His current research investigates how participants of Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET Program) discursively construct their identities during the program with a particular focus on the issues of power.
Dr. Kedrick James
Kedrick James is a Senior Instructor with the Department of Language and Literacy Education and Director of the Digital Literacy Centre. His research interests include Automation of Literacy, Computational Thinking, Glitch Pedagogy, Transmediation, Digital Poetics and Poetic Inquiry. He also works in environmentalism and sustainability, focusing on BC’s Boundary Country.
Invited Presenters
Masayuki Iwase, Ph.D. Candidate
Masa is a PhD candidate in the Department of Educational Studies (EDST) at UBC. His doctoral research explores the performativity of race and relational intra-actions emerging from the digital video production he as a researcher-videographer carried out in collaboration with newly arrived Asian immigrant youth of a JSL centre in Japan.
[** Masa is leading a workshop on analyzing visuals/video on April 20. ]
Matt Hume, M.A. Student
Matt Hume (MA student in Language and Literacy Education) is a former secondary school Theatre teacher and current actor, director and playwright. As part of his thesis research, he facilitates a weekly Drama Club for senior-aged EAL (English as an Additional Language) learners in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside community.
Margaret McKeon, Ph.D. Student
Margaret is an outdoor educator, poet and doctoral student in Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. A person of Euro-Settler ancestry, her research focuses on relationships with place and land, particularly within her roots in Newfoundland and Labrador.