Co-creating a “usable past” for LGBTQ+ people in the present.
How We Work
As a “collaboratory,” this team-based project creates a virtual working space where members come together to share work, ideas, and new knowledge about the creation of LGBTQ oral histories in the digital age. Our team members are specialists in LGBTQ history, trans studies, and oral history, as well as key personnel in LGBTQ archives in Canada and the U.S.
The Collaboratory also works regularly with undergraduate and graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers, mostly in Toronto at the ArQuives; some of these positions are volunteer, whereas others are paid, depending on funding.
Current Members
ORGANIZATIONAL LEADS
Elspeth H. Brown is Professor of History at the University of Toronto and Associate Vice-Principal, Research at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. Her research focuses on modern queer and trans history; the history and theory of photography; and the history of US capitalism.
She is the author of Work! A Queer History of Modeling (Duke University, 2019) and The Corporate Eye: Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture, 1884-1929 (2005); co-editor of “Queering Photography,” a special issue of Photography and Culture (2014), Feeling Photography (Duke University Press, 2014), and Cultures of Commerce: Representation and American Business Culture, 1877-1960 (Palgrave, 2006).
Recent articles include “Trans Oral History as Trans Care” (with Myrl Beam); “Archival Activism, Symbolic Annihilation, and the LGBTQ+ Community Archive” (Archivaria 2020); and “It’s Raining Men: Physique Photography and Racial Capitalism,” in Brian Wallis, Tina Campt, Marianne Hirsch, and Gil Pasternak, eds., Imagining Everyday Life (Steidl, 2020).
She has published in GLQ, TSQ; Gender and History; American Quarterly; Radical History Review; Photography and Culture; Feminist Studies; Aperture; No More Potlucks, and others.
She is the Director of the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory, a multi-year digital history and oral history public, digital humanities collaboration. At the University of Toronto, she is also the Faculty Lead for the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative, a three-year Institutional Strategic Initiative. She is an active volunteer and former President of the Board for The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives, the world’s largest and oldest queer community archive.
Alisha Stranges is a queer, community-based, public humanities scholar, theatre creator, and performer. In January 2021, Stranges joined the Collaboratory as the Project Manager and Co-Oral Historian for the Pussy Palace Oral History Project. As lead interviewer, Stranges has collected 36 narrator accounts surrounding the September 2000 police raid of the Pussy Palace bathhouse events and is supervising a 5-member team in the preservation and creative activation of these interviews. Currently, Stranges also serves as the Collaboratory’s Research Manager, supporting Director Elspeth Brown in the planning, development, and execution of concurrent projects.
Stranges holds an M.A. in Women & Gender Studies from the University of Toronto, with a collaborative specialization in Sexual Diversity Studies (2020). Her master’s research project examines the therapeutic resonances of improvised rhythm tap dance for survivors of psychological trauma. Before entering the academy, Stranges received a Diploma in Theatre Performance from Humber College (2006) and spent a decade devising original plays within Toronto’s queer, independent theatre community. From 2010 to 2015, she returned annually to Buddies in Bad Times Theatre as a teaching-artist and co-facilitator for PrideCab, an intensive training program in collective creation and performance for queer, trans, and gender variant youth. In 2019, she launched the Qu(e)erying Religion anti-Archive Project, which blends elements of oral history with the art of whiteboard animation to document 10+ years of supportive programming for life-giving, queer spirituality at the University of Toronto.
COMMUNICATIONS
Ashley Gold is a queer Jewish educator and researcher based in Toronto. In 2021, she obtained an MA from the Women & Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. Situated in Marxist-feminist theory and anticolonial theory, her graduate research considered how a family abolitionist perspective might unsettle settler-colonial state formations. Ashley is a current Master of Teaching candidate at OISE, and is looking forward to teaching in high school history and social sciences classrooms upon graduation. She is thrilled to join the Collaboratory as a Social Media Manager.
Chase R. Thomson is a PhD student in Adult Education and Community Development in OISE at the University of Toronto. Chase holds a BA in English Literature from the University of British Columbia and an MA in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory from McMaster University. His recently completed master’s project examined the ethical expansion of queer archives to include gender non-conforming material. His research is interested in exploring how life narratives and collective histories–in the form of memoirs, auto/biographies, and archives–can aid in the identity formation, confidence, and survivance of marginalized youth.
Atticus Hawk (they/he) is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. His research looks at the role of Leatherdykes in the creation of medical knowledge and harm-reduction practices for fat, trans and disabled bodies in kink. Passionate about patient advocacy and low barrier access to care, Atticus regularly engages in patient navigation, medical file reviews and specialist recommendations for trans people with complex and chronic health conditions. As our resident blogger for Fall 2023, Atticus curates our new blog series, “The Gays Did What Now?” (TGDWN). Unearthing forgotten bits of queer Toronto history, TGDWN digs into the places and spaces that make and shape 2SLGBTQ+ neighbourhoods, hangouts, and cherished spots across the city.
CREATIVE SCHOLAR
IN VIRTUAL RESIDENCE
Megan Ingram (They/She) is a Teaching Adjunct in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University, and a creative scholar living and working between so-called Kingston, Ontario and Sooke, British Columbia. Their research interests include disability studies, queer and feminist theory, the sociology of education, and art activism and visual knowledge mobilization. Current research-creation projects include a counterarchiving project on queer and disabled activisms in so-called Tkaronto with the Collaboratory, and work on the intersections of medical records as governmental body archives. Her artistic practice draws on her academic research and lived-experience as a queer, multiply-disabled person to mobilize knowledge in accessible ways for the community it matters to. This work is primarily through documentary film, including an ode to queer friendship (ReelOut Queer Film Festival 2021), disability, sexuality, and gender (UBC Research to Practice Microgrant 2022), and miss/carry (Short Circuit Pacific Rim Film Festival 2024). Their current hyperfixation is the role of memory, and the hazy, complicated ways that our bodies hold stories.
Pussy Palace Oral History Project
FOR THE COLLABORATORY
Elio Colavito is a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Toronto, specializing in Sexual Diversity Studies. As a trans non-binary researcher, Elio’s passion lies in archiving and re-telling queer histories in Canada. Their research interests include policing, sex culture, and the intersections of lesbian and trans identities. They hold an M.A. in History from the University of Toronto and a BSc (Hons) in History and Political Science from Eastern Michigan University.
In 2020, Elio supported the Collaboratory as a research assistant for the Queer Peel Oral History Project. Since January of 2021, Elio has been the Co-Oral Historian for the Pussy Palace Oral History Project. Beginning in March 2022, they launched Traversing Temporalities, a bi-weekly blog series, featuring interdisciplinary reflections on queer and trans oral history. As the series curator, Elio self-authored 6 entries and edited 6 entries submitted by external authors. In September 2022, they launched a new iteration of the series, which features monthly Zoom interviews with practitioners and allies of queer and trans oral history, paired with Elio’s own critical reflections.
Ayisha/Ayo Tsalithaba is a visual artist, originally from Ghana and Lesotho. Their primary mediums include film, photography, and illustration. Their work explores questions of home, visibility, and (un)belonging as they relate to Black queer and trans* African diasporic subjectivity. From August 2021 to December 2022, Ayo served as Video Editor and Creative Producer for the Pussy Palace Oral History Project, developing project branding; editing interview access copies; creating digital paintings and animated video shorts; and originating a robust library of visual media assets for the project’s forthcoming immersive, digital exhibit.
Peter Luo is a Master of Information Student at the University of Toronto studying User Experience Design. As an undergraduate, Peter studied Digital Enterprise Management at the University of Toronto Mississauga where he wanted to pursue digital marketing. But sudden changes in his circumstances and career helped him discover his true passion for helping people and making a difference in society. This led him to his current career as a UX Designer where he seeks to create intuitive and pleasant digital experiences and products. Having finished year one of his Master’s program and a summer co-op with the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative, Peter assisted the Collaboratory in designing an immersive digital exhibit, featuring our collected oral histories for the Pussy Palace Oral History Project. Once complete, the web exhibit will invite users to explore the history of the Pussy Palace, to interact virtually with the physical space, and to hear directly from project narrators.
Matt Lefaive graduated from the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) in 2019 with an H.B.Sc. in Computer Science and Linguistics. Matt serves as the Digital Humanities (DH) Developer for the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative, aiding DH researchers in creating project websites and digital exhibitions. He is also the Project Manager for Bioline International — the longest running project currently housed in UTSC’s Knowledge Equity Lab — and Project Coordinator for UTSC’s Department of Language Studies. Matt is interested in open access research and developing web applications to assist in language preservation and learning. He is assisting the Collaboratory with the front- and back-end development of an immersive web exhibit that allows users to virtually explore and interact with the Pussy Palace and the oral histories the Collaboratory has collected.
FOR THE ARQUIVES
Raegan Swanson serves as the Executive Director of The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2S+ Archive. She holds a BA from Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface and a Masters of Information from the University of Toronto iSchool. She has worked as an archivist at Library and Archives Canada, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute and as the Archival Advisor for the Council of Archives New Brunswick. She is currently working on her PhD focusing on the role of community archives in Aboriginal and Inuit communities. She is member of the Steering Committee on Canada’s Archives Taskforce to respond to the “Calls to Action” Report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Lucie Handley-Girard has worked at The ArQuives as an Archivist since 2017. She holds a BA and a Masters of Information, both from the University of Toronto. In the summer of 2016 she was the Archives Assistant at The ArQuives, and has previously worked in records management. She currently sits on the Association for Canadian Archivists’ Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Taskforce. Her research interests include community archives, archival performativity, and archives as spaces for activism, resistance, and identity formation.
Jordan Saroya has been the Administrative Assistant for The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2S+ Archives since January 2020, and in 2021 provided administrative support for the Pussy Palace Oral History project. He holds a BA (Hons) from the University of Toronto in Human Geography and Women & Gender Studies. He has worked in various administrative capacities and LGBTQ2+ community spaces. He personally values QTBIPOC (specifically trans) history and storytelling so is proud to be part of both The ArQuives and Digital Collaboratory teams for their work in this area.
Trans Activism Oral History Project
PROJECT TEAM
Dr. Aaron Devor, PhD, FSSSS, FSTLHE, has been studying and teaching about transgender topics since the early 1980s. He established and holds the world’s first Chair in Transgender Studies; initiated and hosts the international, interdisciplinary Moving Trans History Forward conferences; and founded and is the subject matter expert for the world’s largest Transgender Archives. He has published widely on transgender topics, including as an author of four books and editor of one. Devor’s opinions are frequently sought by the media, and he has delivered public lectures to audiences around the world, including more than 35 keynote and plenary addresses. He is a national-award-winning teacher, a Fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, and an elected member of the International Academy of Sex Research. Dr. Devor is a former Dean of Graduate Studies (2002-2012), and a professor of Sociology, at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.
Chase Joynt is a moving-image artist and writer whose films have won jury and audience awards internationally. His latest short film, Framing Agnes, premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, won the Audience Award at Outfest in Los Angeles, and is being developed into a feature film with support from Telefilm Canada’s Talent to Watch program. Concurrently, Chase is in production on a feature-length hybrid documentary about jazz musician Billy Tipton, co-directed with Aisling Chin-Yee. Joynt’s first book You Only Live Twice (co-authored with Mike Hoolboom) was a 2017 Lambda Literary Award Finalist and named one of the best books of the year by The Globe and Mail and CBC. His second book, Conceptualizing Agnes (co-authored with Kristen Schilt), is under contract with Duke University Press.
Lara Wilson is the Director of Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Victoria, and has worked in the areas of private records acquisition, access & privacy, and records management for 12 years. She holds a Master of Arts from the University of Victoria, and Master of Archival Studies from the University of British Columbia. She is the past president of the Archives Association of British Columbia, and chair of the Canadian Council of Archives.
Amelia Smith is a transgender lesbian emerging museum professional. Her work seeks to bridge the gap between trans studies and museum studies, revealing what the museum field can learn from a transgender perspective. She began this work during her Masters of Museum Studies at the University of Toronto, resulting in her first exhibition, Transition Related Surgery: The Fight For Access, on the history of gender affirming surgery in Ontario. She sits on an advisory committee for the Transition Related Surgery department at Women’s College Hospital. In 2021, Amelia worked with Collaboratory archival partner the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria to design Word of Mouth, a digital exhibit featuring interviews collected for the Trans Activism Oral History Project. Her writings can be found on her website, notyouraveragecistory.com.
Former Members
COLLABORATORS
Dr. Margot Wilson is an Associate Professor, Emerita, in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Victoria. Her academic interests include culture change, international development and planned change. Her research has focused primarily on Bangladesh but she has spent a considerable amount of time in India, mostly directing field schools for student groups.
As a collaborator in the first iteration of the Collaboratory (2014-2019), Margot worked closely with Dr. Aaron Devor, Transgender Archives, in interviewing trans elders whose papers were in the Transgender Archives, especially Stephanie Castle. in 2018, Margot published Girl in the Dream, a life history of Castle, a Canadian transgender woman and early advocate for the rights of transgender people and, more specifically, for transgender people incarcerated in the Canadian prison system. Margot has founded TransGender Publishing, a small independently owned publishing house focusing specifically on publishing transgender manuscripts.
Dr. Maureen FitzGerald is a retired senior lecturer at the University of Toronto, and a long-time advocate of LGBTQ youth and studies. She was part of the founding of the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto, and held the position of Director of the undergraduate program from 2000–2006. As an alumna of the University of Toronto she helped form, activate and maintain the Rainbow Triangle Alumni Association from 1995–2000. In the 1990s she was involved in Lesbians Making History, a community based history project centred on “gay” women in 1950’s and 60’s Toronto that the Collaboratory has collected and digitized for The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBQT2+ Archives.
El Chenier is a Professor in the Department of History and an associate faculty member of the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Department at Simon Fraser University where they teach courses in the history of sexuality, oral history, and Canadian social history. Their published research includes studies of interracial relationships from 1910 to 1950, butch/femme bar culture in postwar Toronto, Canadian and American male prison sex and sexuality, debutantes and elite femininity in interwar Montreal, and the origins of sexual deviance in legal and medical discourse. Her 2008 book, Strangers in Our Midst: Sexual Deviancy in Postwar Ontario, was awarded an honorary mention for the Law and Society Book Prize. Currently, Dr. Chenier is completing a book on same-sex weddings in the United States in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. They are also the founder and director of the Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony (ALOT), an open-access online archive of digital oral history, and interracialintimacies.org, an open-access online teaching and learning tool and archives.
During the first phase of the Collaboratory (2014-2019), Nailisa Tanner worked as a Librarian at Simon Fraser University and as Project Archivist for the Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony. Currently, Nailisa is a librarian at OISE, University of Toronto.
Dr. K.J. Rawson is Associate Professor of English and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Northeastern University and Director of the award-winning Digital Transgender Archive. His research focuses on the intersections of queer, feminist, and rhetorical studies. Most of his work focuses on trans* archives and the ways that they facilitate the collection, organization, access, and preservation of queer pasts.
His work has been published in Present Tense, QED: A Journal of Queer Worldmaking, Transgender Studies Quarterly, The Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader, and several additional edited collections. K.J. was a collaborator in the first phase of the Collaboratory, with a focus on trans periodicals.
Sara Davidmann is a Reader in Photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. Since 1999 she has taken photographs in collaboration with people from U.K. trans* and queer communities. For 14 years (1999-2013) Sara took photographs and carried out oral history recordings in collaboration with people from UK transgender and queer and communities. Since 2013 Sara’s work has focused on her own family and family history. Her project, Ken. To be destroyed, about her transgender uncle, has been published as a monograph (Schilt 2016) and exhibited in Germany, Canada, India, Northern Ireland and the UK. She is currently working on a project based on her German Jewish family history for which she has been awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize. Sara worked with the Collaboratory for the first iteration of the project, in 2014-2019.
Dr. Karen Stanworth is an Associate Professor, Emerita, at York University in the Department of Visual Art and Art History. Dr. Stanworth has published on topics related to visual culture and pedagogy; higher education and the arts; feminist cultural theory and production; and narrative and history. She was an active volunteer and Board Member with the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (now, The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives), and functioned in that capacity to support the work of the Collaboratory from 2015-2018.
POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS
Juan Carlos is a historian of sexuality, race, and visual culture in Mexican and transnational contexts. He holds a B.A. (Hons) in History from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (2014) and an M.A. (2016) and Ph.D. in History from the University of Toronto (2022). His research and teaching focus on Mexican, Latin American, LGBTQ+, and Indigenous history. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, and he is writing a book that examines the relationship between transnational gay liberation politics, print culture, and visuality in the Americas from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s. In 2017, Juan Carlos assisted the Collaboratory in the digitization and processing of audio tapes and transcripts for the Foolscap Gay Oral History Project. He briefly rejoined the team in summer 2023 as our resident blogger, offering monthly reflections on LGBTQ2+ public and digital history projects, creative interventions, and the people behind them.
Dr. Evan Taylor is currently Assistant Professor, School of Social Work and Human Services, University of the Fraser Valley, British Columbia. From 2019-2020, they worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Trans Oral History with the Collaboratory, and was our lead interviewer for the Trans Activism Oral History Project, in collaboration with the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria. As our postdoc, Evan collected 22 oral history interviews with trans elders in the US and Canada, focusing on their history of activism on behalf of trans people and communities. They currently teach at the University of the Fraser Valley, in British Columbia.
Dr. Cait McKinney is currently assistant professor in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, specializing in sexuality studies, media history, feminist media studies, and activist media. At the Collaboratory, Cait developed an audiotape digitization station and volunteer training program, as well as a digital collection for the Lesbians Making History Project. Cait’s research on the media histories of LGBTQ social movements explores how queer activists have taken up and re-configured digital and online media in the late 20th century. Cait was previously a Media@McGill Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University, Montréal, and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information.
Cait’s’s research has appeared in GLQ, Continuum: Journal of Media and Culture, Radical History Review and Feminist Theory, among other publications. They are the co-editor of Inside Killjoy’s Kastle: Dykey Ghosts, Feminist Monsters, and Other Lesbian Hauntings (UBC Press and AGYU Press, 2019). Their first monograph Information Activism was published with Duke University Press in August, 2020.
Nicholas Matte is a politically conscious, interdisciplinary historian whose research interests include the historical, social and scientific constructions of bodies in relation to sex, gender, sexuality, health, disability and race. In addition to working as the Collaboratory’s Project Manager, Nick was responsible for developing the Trans Collections Guide, in collaboration with K.J. Rawson of the Digital Transgender Archives and team members from the Collaboratory and The ArQuives.
Nick has presented at numerous conferences and his work has appeared in GLQ; International Journal of Transgenderism; Canadian Bulletin of Medical History; Transgender Studies Reader and Trans Activism in Canada. His dissertation, “Historicizing Liberal American Transnormativities: Medicine, Media, Activism, 1960-1990” traced the consolidation of trans activism and transnormativity as a cultural formation and in relation to liberalism.
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Emily Mastragostino is a PhD student in Counselling and Clinical Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) in the University of Toronto. From a positive psychology lens, Emily’s research focuses on investigating the ways in which marginalized communities cultivate wellbeing, despite institutional and social barriers. From May 2021 to August 2022, Emily supported the Pussy Palace Oral History Project in coding narrative interviews. Through the coding process, she identified and organized themes in the lived experiences of organizers, patrons, and community members involved in the police raid of the 2000 Pussy Palace bathhouse event. She holds an MA in Counselling and Clinical Psychology from the University of Toronto and a BA (Hons) double major in Psychology and Humanities, with a research background spanning classic quantitative methods to participatory arts-based qualitative approaches.
Originally from Baltimore, MD, Aisling Murphy graduates in August 2022 with an MA from the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include contemporary theatre criticism, the canon and critical legacy of queer British playwright Sarah Kane, and multilingual/translated dramaturgies. Aisling is the Senior Editor at Intermission Magazine in Toronto, and graduated Magna Cum Laude with her Honours BA in Theatre from the University of Ottawa in June 2021. As the resident Social Media Manager for the Collaboratory from September 2021 to June 2022, Aisling ran all Collaboratory social media accounts and generated shareable, conversation-starting content about our oral history collections.
Eli Holliday graduated with an MI from the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, specializing in Library and Information Sciences, in May 2021. With a Certificate in Integrated Performance from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and a BA in Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice from the University of British Columbia, Eli has worked at the intersections of media and marginalized access to and creation of media in formats ranging from radio to magazines (print and online), books, and theatre. Eli worked closely with the Collaboratory for two years on a range of projects, including the Trans Activism Oral History Project (where they made a number of video shorts) and on the Trans Collections Guide.
Dan Guadagnolo is Assistant Professor, in the teaching stream, at the Institute of Communications, Culture, Information and Technology, University of Toronto, Mississauga. While a PhD candidate in US history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dan worked on the Lesbians Making History project and supported Director Elspeth Brown with outreach and community engagement.
Sajdeep Soomal is currently a PhD candidate in History at the University of Toronto. He worked closely with Elspeth on the Queering Family Photography exhibition and on the Scholars in Residence Program (2017-2018). When Saj began working with us, he was a writer, researcher and public programming specialist working at the South Asian Visual Arts Centre where they were completing a three-year oral history project about the Toronto-based South Asian arts festival Desh Pardesh (1988-2001) with the launch of a digital archive, podcast series and educational guide. His research focuses on science and technology studies, the history of consciousness and madness, and contemporary art practices within and beyond South Asia. Recent publications include: An Architecture Against Dacoits, Mad Building Syndrome (MBS) and Migrancy in the Garage. Out of the office, Sajdeep re-invents his many drag personas – expect more Punjabi boliyan, more Pakistani pop songs from the 80s and–of course–more of her laal dupatta.
Sid Cunningham is a PhD student in York University’s English department. His work sits uneasily sandwiched between queer theory and speculative realism, using contemporary webcomics and novels to explore perception beyond the gender binary (and other fantastic or phantasmic possibilities). York’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit internship program brought him to Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (now, The ArQuives), where he worked with members of the Collaboratory to process and digitize elements of the Mirha-Soleil Ross fonds.
When Rebecka Sheffield worked with the Collaboratory, she was a doctoral candidate at the iSchool at the University of Toronto, in collaboration with the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. Rebecka stewarded the development of the Collaboratory’s Islandora platform, designed metadata standards for the project, and created partnership agreements between collaborating institutions. Since leaving the Collaboratory, her book Documenting Rebellions, a study of four archives that were constituted with a common desire to preserve the memory and evidence of lesbian and gay people and which was based on her dissertation, has been published to great acclaim. Rebecka is now a professional archivist working in Ontario.
Al Stanton-Hagan holds a BA from the University of Toronto in Sexual Diversity Studies and Canadian Studies, and then worked towards a Master of Information, specializing in Archives and Records Management in a collaborative program with Sexual Diversity Studies, also at U of T. Their work with the Collaboratory focused on digitization, Mirha-Soleil Ross fonds, and Omeka. Al’s research interests include queer and trans archives, the history of sexuality in Canada, and digital collections management.
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Katherine Zheng holds a BA in English and Women and Gender Studies from the University of Toronto. Along with passions in graphic design and literature, they are interested in topics of identity, sexuality, and gender, particularly as they relate to East-Asian diasporic queerness. In September of 2022, Katherine joined the Collaboratory as the Social Media Manager. They were responsible for developing content for social media to help amplify queer voices and broaden the public engagement with our oral history collections.
In fall 2021, Collaboratory member Chase Joynt invited the PPOHP team to participate in a practicum assignment for an undergraduate research seminar at the University of Victoria. Students spent 10 hours reading about the Pussy Palace, screening oral histories, and discussing their reflections with their peers, PPOHP team members, and project narrators. In January 2022, the Collaboratory invited these undergraduates to participate in a 4-week volunteer internship with the PPOHP, supporting the team in the final stages of the archival and coding processes.
Faith Lapointe is an undergraduate student at the University of Victoria working towards a BA in English and Philosophy. Faith assisted the team with drafting interview transcripts to help aid in the preservation of marginalized voices. She is interested in queer history as well as the power of language.
Ellis Martiskainen is a first-year student studying the Humanities at the University of Victoria. He assisted the team with drafting interview transcripts in order to support the queer community and preserve marginalized voices for future generations. In his free time, Ellis also enjoys writing, hiking, and baking loads of cookies!
Amanda Thomson is a fourth-year student majoring in Psychology and minoring in Gender Studies at the University of Victoria. Amanda assisted the team in coding the interview transcripts to uncover relevant themes within the data set, highlighting the nuances expressed across narrator accounts. Amanda intends to further her social justice and equality research interests upon graduation.
Andy Huynh completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto in May, 2021 with majors in History and Political Science and a minor in French. Her research interests have ranged from topics of decolonizing the mind to the concept of gender in queer theory. As an aspiring polyglot, she currently speaks English, Vietnamese, French and Chaldean Neo-Aramaic. Having already completed a Certificate in Global Perspectives, she aims to further her insight into cultural and socio-political global issues. As our Communications Assistant, Andy was in charge of our social media presence during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Tomasz Glod holds a BA from the University of Toronto Mississauga (class of 2021), completing a joint-specialist in political science and history. Although Tomasz has a variety of research interests, he is particularly interested in queer oral history. After assisting in the completion the Queer Peel Oral History Project, he supported long-time activist Ed Jackson with the execution of a community-based oral history project, which focuses on collecting oral histories from Toronto gay activists involved in 1970s and 1980s activism.
Luke Drummond graduated from the University of Toronto Mississauga with a BA in English (class of 2020). Working as Dr. Elspeth Brown’s research assistant in his last year as an undergrad, Luke helped to develop her course on queer oral histories of Peel. Fun fact: Luke is fluent in American Sign Language! We wish Luke all the best in his life after UTM!
When Zohar Freeman worked with us as an undergraduate researcher in the Jackman Humanities Institute’s Scholars-in-Residence Program, he was an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto studying mathematics and statistics. In his personal life, Zohar has been a social justice advocate and active voice in the queer community. Zohar worked on the Foolscap Oral History Project, a 1980s oral history project conducted by John Grube and Lionel Collier about gay men in Toronto before Stonewall (125 interviews). He co-created the digital exhibition Mapping Foolscap: Gay Oral Histories, 1981-1987. After completing the Scholars-in-Residence program, Zohar stayed on with the Collaboratory for two more years, working mainly on the Foolscap oral histories, all of which he digitized and wrote metadata for, so that they can be used by researchers at The ArQuives. Zohar is now in school at Harvard Law School.
When Caleigh Inman worked with us as an undergraduate researcher in the Jackman Humanities Institute’s Scholars-in-Residence Program, she was a fourth year Equity Studies student at the University of Toronto. Her research on the Mirha-Soleil Ross fonds, for which she co-created a digital exhibition entitled gendertrash: Transsexual Zine 1993-1995. Caleigh is now an occupational therapist at Lake of the Woods District Hospital in Kenora, Ontario.
When Alisha Krishna worked with us as an undergraduate researcher in the Jackman Humanities Institute’s Scholars-in-Residence Program, she was a student of cinema and philosophy at the University of Toronto. While working with the Collaboratory, Alisha worked on the Desh Pardesh Oral History Project and co-created a digital exhibition on this important queer South Asian arts festival entitled “Not a Place on the Map”: Desh Pardesh, 1988-2001. Alisha is currently a student in the University of Toronto law school.
When Mackenzie (Mac) Stewart worked with us as an undergraduate researcher in the Jackman Humanities Institute’s Scholars-in-Residence Program, he was a U of T student majoring in English and Sexual Diversity Studies. Originally from Lloydminster, Alberta, he specializes in studying transgender communities and transgender community building. Mac worked on the Mirha-Soleil Ross fonds, for which he co-created a digital exhibition entitled gendertrash: Transsexual Zine 1993-1995.
When Amal Khurram worked with us as an undergraduate researcher in the Jackman Humanities Institute’s Scholars-in-Residence Program, she had just finished her second year, majoring in sociology and education. While working with the Collaboratory, Amal worked on the Desh Pardesh Oral History Project and co-created a digital exhibition on this important queer South Asian arts festival entitled “Not a Place on the Map”: Desh Pardesh, 1988-2001. Amal completed her MA in teaching at OISE, University of Toronto, in 2021.
When Taryn Parker worked with us as a work-study student in 2016, she was an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, studying Sexual Diversity Studies and Women & Gender Studies. Taryn managed social media, reduced noise on audio files, and worked on the video crew for the Trans Health Activism Project interviews. She is passionate about social justice and advocacy work, and is active within the LGBTQ+ community in Toronto.
When Oli Bédard worked with us as a work-study student in 2016, he was an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto Mississauga, studying English and Women & Gender Studies. He focused on the digitization of an array of oral history interviews. He is now a PhD student in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia, and managing editor for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the flagship journal of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS).
Haley O’Shaughnessy worked on digitizing audio cassette tapes and gathering metadata for the Trans Collections Guide.
Jenna Lee Ford, a University of Toronto undergrad (class of 2014), worked with the Collaboratory in the summer of 2014 on the Lesbians Making History project and the Trans Partners Oral History Project.