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Bill Pechet,
Ba, Bfa, Barch Director, Pechet Studio Bill received degrees in Geography and Visual Arts from the University of Victoria, followed by a professional degree in Architecture in 1987 from the University of British Columbia School of Architecture. Through the interdisciplinary design office of PECHET Studio, he has been designing cemetery and memorial projects for over 25 years in Western Canada, the US and Asia. In addition to his leadership in the studio, Bill has been a faculty member at the University of BC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture since 2000. Bill is a frequent lecturer on issues of the built urban environment and the critical role that public space can play in the development of healthy and vibrant cities. |
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Amberlie Perkin, Amberlie Perkin is an interdisciplinary artist and arts educator. Her diverse creative practice includes painting, printmaking, sculpture, and immersive installations. Drawn to the interplay of grief and ecology, her recently completed thesis project Honoring Ghosts & The Nature of Grief explores wounded ecologies in relation to both the human body and our non-human kin in this time of environmental degradation and accelerated extinctions. Amberlie’s research pivoted from environmental grief to personal grief after losing three loved ones to cancer in a short time during her degree. Her artwork examines how curious and embodied engagement with the natural environment can provide a visual and material language to articulate the complex and often abstract emotions of grieving. Amberlie’s process enacts the materiality of mourning and metamorphosis, while exploring the regenerative potential of death to animate new growth in the natural world and our lives. Her installations are an invitation to make metaphoric connections to nature, to remember, to feel, and to commune with ghosts. |
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Lab4Living Group,
Lab4Living is a design-led interdisciplinary research group comprised of a collaborative community of researchers at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Over the last two decades Lab4Living has led a broad discourse about the value of design and creative practice in the field of design and health. Formally established in 2007 the Lab is recognised by the sector for its world-leading research that informs the design of innovative products, environments, and interventions that promote wellbeing and quality of life throughout the life-course. In 2019, Lab4Living was awarded funding by Research England through their Expanding Excellence in England (E3) fund to support the strategic expansion of the lab. One strand of this project looks at End of Life and new interventions which meet the physical, cognitive and emotional needs of an ageing population.
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Shaina Garfield,
Shaina Garfield is the founder of Leaves With You. She has dedicated her life to supporting healing processes in our cultural relationship to death and grief. She founded Leaves With You to help others remember the End of Life rituals their cultures have practiced for centuries, while also inspiring them to create new ones. She hopes to help others to feel more connected to one another and the earth through the intersection of art, sustainability, and End of Life. Shaina draws on her design background and meditation practice to hold space for the families with whom she co-creates funerary products and grief rituals. Shaina designs the biodegradable coffins provided by Leaves With You. She also teaches workshops on the use of art and meditation to process death and grief and designs custom End-of-life ceremonies. |
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Sonya L. Jakubec,
Sonya L. Jakubec, is a Professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary. A long-time community nurse, her research concentrates on health and environment connection across the lifespan. You will find her presenting as frequently at a local library book talk or volunteer training group, as at an international research or professional practice conference. You will see her research reported in edited book collections, textbooks and featured in international journals, as often as in practical training manuals, creative arts/film festivals, local news stories, and professional practice magazines. It is this work across sites and sectors that Sonya considers the “secret sauce” of her research program in parks and health connection! It is all connected. |
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Jennell Rempel,
Jennell Rempel, has made a career of connecting people with parks and natural spaces. As the Community and Partner Relations Team Lead with the Kananaskis Region of Alberta Parks, she works with non-profit societies and community partners to enhance people’s connections with parks through project work, volunteerism, and programming. Her 5 year collaboration in palliative and grief research has proven instrumental in informing how parks can better support people and those agencies supporting them when they most need the nurturance of nature. Her research interests involve the mechanisms of effective, multi-stakeholder partnerships with parks, where she continues to learn every day about the restorative nature of parks and natural spaces. |
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Katie Gach,
Katie Gach is a 5th-year PhD Candidate in the ATLAS Institute at CU Boulder, researching death and social media in Dr. Jed Brubaker's Identity Lab. Katie has worked with Facebook's Memorialization team since 2016 to understand and improve their options for post-mortem profile management. She holds a BA in Anthropology from Kansas State University, an MA in Communication, Culture and Technology from Georgetown University, and was recently certified as a Death Doula. |
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Dr. Candace Couse,
Dr. Candace Couse is an Interdisciplinary Humanities scholar. Her research investigates Westernized thought in relationship with death and dying through autobiographical accounts of illness narratives in visual art, interested in what these works do for the artists, viewers and broader understanding of health towards a more humanistic medicine. Also an artist (MFA, University of Calgary), Couse brings her knowledge of art as a site of entanglement between rhetoric, poetry, and event to her research. Highlights of her practice include writing/directing the film Sick/Malade with the NFB/ONF and being a prize winner in the Premio Arte Laguna (Italy, 2012). |
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Anne Isabelle Leonard, Interdisciplinary artist and art educator, community builder and outdoor lover, Anne Isabelle Leonard draws inspiration from everyday interactions as well as her passion for wilderness, which she then intertwines with concepts from various disciplines like psychoanalysis, philosophy, ethology, and anthropology. For years she has explored the landscapes of the world, using art as a catalyst to (re)define her relationship to the environment while contextualizing her insignificance in order to find significance. Her practice, shaping itself as a poetic archeology of the body and its consciousness, explores human fragility and its impact and consequences on its environments: the tensions between instinct and rationality, intention and reaction. Her journey to find significance has taken many expressions, such as sculpture (sound and material), performance (Butoh), drawing, painting, social art (workshops, collectives) as well as video and photography. In addition to her art practice, Leonard built dance communities through freedance events called Danser Dans l'Noir and is presently initiating projects in the world of creative collectives and residencies aiming to bridge art, community and nature. *photo by Talon Gillis INSTA : @aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaai WEBSITE : www.anneisabelleleonard.com |
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Karen Oikonen,
Karen Oikonen, is an Innovation Designer with The Moment. Equal parts designer and researcher, Karen has led projects in design research, service design and participatory design. Her work in health care has focused on exploring experiences with death and dying, co-designing hospice services, supporting communication in home care and improving patient and family experience of cardiac surgery. Karen has a Masters of Design in Strategic Foresight & Innovation from OCAD University and has presented end of life projects at both healthcare and design conferences across Canada. |
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Kate Wilkes,
Kate Wilkes is a Toronto-based designer. Passionate about meaningful collaboration, Kate is always keen for opportunities to leverage diverse perspectives to tackle complex problems in pursuit of compassionate and impactful solutions. Currently, Kate is a Service Designer at OMERS pension plan, exploring how to better serve members as they contribute to and later rely upon retirement income as they age. Kate's interest in the death, dying, and the end of life period is rooted in her own experience navigating her mother’s illness and death in 2015. |
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Sarina R. Isenberg,
Sarina R. Isenberg, is the Bruyère Chair in Mixed Methods Research at the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa, as well as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine – Division of Palliative Care at the University of Toronto. Sarina's ongoing work focuses on examining access to palliative care for marginalized and non-cancer populations, as well as testing ways to improve access and quality of palliative care. One of her research programs focuses on ways to improve the transition from hospital-to-home for palliative care patients near the end of life. Sarina received her PhD in Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and previously worked as a management consultant on Deloitte’s National Health Services Team (Canada). |
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Stephanie Saunders,
Stephanie Saunders, is a first year MScPT/PhD dual degree student at McMaster University in Rehabilitation Sciences, where her PhD work will examine fall risk in community dwelling older adults. She completed her Master’s in Human Kinetics at the University of Ottawa and previously worked as a Kinesiologist after completing Kinesiology and Political Science bachelor degrees. Prior to starting her current program, Stephanie worked as a Research Coordinator in Palliative Care at Mount Sinai Hospital’s Temmy Latner Centre for Palliative Care. Her past research experience has looked at physical activity behaviours in adults with cancer, creative practices for improving quality of life in cancer survivors, experiences of transitions between settings in palliative care patients, and a cross-organization communication tool for individuals with serious illness. |
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Chiara Di Michele,
I pursued my education in industrial & environmental design and later complemented it with a master in communication design. I am currently working as a creative producer, an hybrid between an art director and a producer. I manage projects and their crew from the client's brief to their realization. I have previously worked in advertising as art director jr, creative consultant and graphic designer for different companies, and also as a director assistant and producer in adv and music video production. My philosophy: innovation stands in the meaning of things. I can't stop creating, curiosity leads my way of thinking and my life, that is my job. Persephone explores the relationship between human and grief with a long research journey in different fields like anthropology, sociology, semiotics, design. The project purpose is to use an object, the lamp, to communicate a meaning. Light, life-generating principle, meets the gesture. This interaction links to the memory of a loved person who passed. The object only works with the constant interaction: Persephone lights up when you touch it, remains on with your proximity and turns off when you go away." |
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Susan Cadell,
PhD, RSW (she/her), Susan Cadell, is a social work researcher and Professor in the School of Social Work at Renison University College at the University of Waterloo. Susan's research concerns death, dying and bereavement, particularly positive outcomes of caregiving and grief. Susan’s most recent projects concern the public health model of bereavement support, grief after Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), and tattoos that disrupt, celebrate or memorialize. |
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Melissa Reid Lambert,
Melissa Reid Lambert is a grief counsellor at Calming Tree Counselling in Kitchener, Ontario. She is a Master’s level trained social worker who has concentrated her education and training in grief, bereavement and trauma. Melissa has been a contributor to the Tattoo Research Project since the inception of the project in 2016. In addition to her professional contributions to the field, Melissa is a tattooed, bereaved mother with four living children at home. |
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Jin Sol Kim,
Jin Sol Kim, is a fourth year PhD candidate in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. Her research areas include new/digital media and related fields such as online communities and platform studies, as well as visual culture, critical race theory, and gender and sexuality. More specifically, Jin Sol’s research focuses on the ways in which digital media shapes and negotiates identity politics. |
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Mary Ellen Macdonald,
PhD, Mary Ellen Macdonald, is a medical anthropologist. Her current research program in palliative care focuses on bereavement, including sociocultural analysis of child death and parental bereavement, grief after assisted dying, and private and public acts of memorialization. |
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Gertrude Kearns,
Gertrude Kearns, is a self-taught independent Toronto artist whose practice explores the nature of Canadian Forces officers’ war zone commands and the effects on them as leaders and individuals. Her conflict-related paintings and image/text prints incorporate elements of traditional military and war art towards projecting contemporary defence sensibilities and urgencies. Her works are published and collected internationally. She was appointed as Member of the Order of Canada June 27, 2019 “for her contributions to preserving and understanding Canadian war history as a contemporary artist.” |
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Cailleah Scott-Grimes,
Director, Illustrator & Producer of “Rockin’ the Coffin” A perpetual asker of big questions, Cailleah has appeared on both sides of the camera, seeking to shed a little light on the human experience. Her directing projects have led her to work in the US, Europe and Japan. She holds an honours BA in Visual Studies and East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto and an MFA in Film at York University. From death positivity to struggles with gender identity, Cailleah's work brings an intimate lens to transgressive topics that are difficult to talk about. Directing credits include Between Us, about a trans-queer couple in rural Japan, and The Tent, about a Deaf woman who teaches her niece a new way of listening. Cailleah is also the editor of feature documentary Diary of a Rape Trial, which premiered at the Hot Docs Festival and is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Rockin’ the Coffin is her first animated film, inspired by illustrators and woodcut artists who delve into the intersection of beauty, humour and the macabre. The film was generously supported by CBC’s Creative Relief Fund and is now streaming on CBC Short Docs. |
