Faculty
Adrian Lou
Adrian Lou
Sessional Lecturer
emailadrian.lou@ubc.ca
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 205
Research / Teaching Area
Media Studies | Rhetorical Genre Theory | Social Media | WRDS (Writing Studies)Dr. Adrian Lou earned his PhD in English from the University of British Columbia. His research aims at identifying the cognitive properties of figurative language. In particular, his work examines the rhetorical functions of multimodal metaphors and similes in discourse.
Research / Teaching Area
Media Studies | Rhetorical Genre Theory | Social Media | WRDS (Writing Studies)
Alex Migdal
Alex Migdal
Adjunct Professor
emailalex.migdal@ubc.ca
Alex Migdal is an adjunct professor at the UBC School of Journalism, Writing and Media, where he co-teaches Decoding Social Media.
Alex is currently the senior producer for social media and audience development at CBC News. He oversees Canada’s largest social media news team, with the goal of s...Read more
Alexis McGee
Alexis McGee
Assistant Professor
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 218
Dr. Alexis McGee received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at San Antonio where she also received two certificates of concentration in Linguistics and Rhetoric and Composition.
Drawing from this background, McGee is an interdisciplinary scholar who engages with various fields and sub-discip...Read more
Alfred Hermida
Alfred Hermida, PhD, is an award-winning online news pioneer, digital media scholar and journalism educator, with more than two decades of experience in digital journalism. He is a full professor in the University of British Columbia School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, where he served as dire...Read more
Andrew Connolly
Andrew Connolly
Lecturer
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 214
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)My research revolves around three topics: religion, literature, and neoliberal capitalism. In the past, I have studied the way religion and ecstatic religious experience is represented in American fiction during the 20th and 21st centuries. More recently, I have turned to the way people use religi...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Britney Dennison
Britney Dennison
Sessional Lecturer
Research / Teaching Area
Journalism
Britney Dennison is the executive editor of the Global Reporting Centre (GRC), an award-winning journalism centre based at the University of British Columbia School’s of Journalism, Writing, and Media. She has been with the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media since 2014, and wi...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
Journalism
Candis Callison
Candis Callison
Associate Professor (on leave)
location_onRoom 203
Candis Callison (currently on leave) is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous journalism, media, and public discourse, and an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, and in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. Her research and teaching are focused on changes...Read more
Connor Byrne
Connor Byrne
Sessional Lecturer
emailconnor.byrne@ubc.ca
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 202
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Connor Byrne has Ph.D. in English literature from Dalhousie University, where he completed a dissertation examining depictions of the city in early twentieth-century British and American literature. His research interests include modernism, modernist literary theory, urban studies, and theories of e...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
David Newman
David Newman
Sessional Lecturer
emaildavid.newman@ubc.ca
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 202
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Creativity alchemist, facilitator, coach, entrepreneur, media historian, political economist
Originally from Aotearoa New Zealand, Dr. David Newman is a pedagogical innovator residing, playing, and working as a guest and settler on the traditional lands of the Coast Salish peoples. His long journ...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Dennis Foung
Dennis Foung
Lecturer
emaildennis.foung@ubc.ca
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 208
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Dennis Foung is a lecturer in Arts Studies in Research and Writing (ASRW). He holds a doctorate in language education and a number of academic qualifications in the fields of language studies, human resource management and development, professional and vocational education, and data science. Prior t...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Diane Burgess
Diane Burgess
Continuing Sessional Lecturer
emaildburgess@mail.ubc.ca
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 209
Diane Burgess completed her PhD in Communication at Simon Fraser University, where her dissertation examined the international film festival as a major institutional force in Canadian cinema culture. Her research interests include national cinema, cultural policy, multi-platform distribution, and th...Read more
Dilia Hasanova
Dilia Hasanova
Sessional Lecturer
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 205
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Dr. Dilia Hasanova is an applied linguist with a PhD in English and MS in Education from Purdue University, IN, USA. Dilia has extensive experience in teaching academic writing and research at various institutions in Canada and abroad. Her research interests are broad, ranging from sociolinguistic...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Dylan Cree
Dylan Cree
Sessional Lecturer
emaildylancre@mail.ubc.ca
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)I received my PhD in Communication Studies from Concordia University in 2017. My areas of research and publication are primarily media studies, technology and the philosophy of communication. Before my PhD, I received an MFA in the interdisciplinary Contemporary Arts program at Simon Fraser Universi...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Frances Bula
Frances Bula is a journalist specializing in urban issues and city politics in the Vancouver region, which she's covered since 1994. She covers a broad range of issues in this endlessly changing city: drug policy, bike lanes, billion-dollar development projects, homelessness, garbage debates, and mo...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
Journalism
Francesca Fionda
Francesca Fionda
Adjunct Professor
Research / Teaching Area
JournalismFrancesca Fionda is a freelance investigative and data journalist. Her past stories have uncovered fake Indigenous art in the tourism industry, exposed government failures in protecting sensitive health information and revealed new, in-depth data on Canada’s mobile workforce.
She’s worked wit...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
Journalism
Jaclyn Rea
Jaclyn Rea
Associate Professor of Teaching
emailjackie.rea@ubc.ca
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 221
Jaclyn Rea is an Associated Professor teaching in Writing, Research and Discourse Studies. Her areas of expertise include language ideologies, writing studies, rhetorical genre studies, and discourse analysis. Her current research investigates the interplay between epistemology and affect in a range...Read more
James MacKinnon
James MacKinnon
Adjunct Professor
Research / Teaching Area
JournalismJ.B. MacKinnon is the author or coauthor of four books of nonfiction. His latest, The Once and Future World, is a national bestseller in Canada and won the U.S. Green Prize for Sustainable Literature. Previous works are The 100-Mile Diet (with Alisa Smith), a bestseller widely recognized as a cat...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
Journalism
Jennifer Cowe
Dr. Cowe earned her PhD in American Studies from the University of Glasgow. Her doctoral thesis focused on the influence of Zen Buddhist philosophy on the life and work of Henry Miller. A monograph derived from this research, entitled Killing the Buddha: Henry Miller’s Long Journey to Satori, was ...Read more
Jennifer Gagnon
Jennifer Gagnon
Lecturer
location_onPonderosa Office Annex G Room 23
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Dr. Jennifer M. Gagnon (she/her/hers) (PhD, Political Science, University of Minnesota, BA, University of British Columbia) is a Lecturer in the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She has taught in a wide range of programs including Political Scienc...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Jonathan Otto
Jonathan Otto
Lecturer
emailjonathan.otto@ubc.ca
location_onPonderosa Office Annex G Room 28
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Jonathan earned a PhD in geography from the University of Kentucky in 2014, and taught in the International Studies Program and the Department of Global and Intercultural Studies (GIC) at Miami University in Ohio from 2014-2018. His research draws on work within political ecology and economic geog...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Kamal Al-Solaylee
Kamal Al-Solaylee
Director and Professor
School of Journalism, Writing, and Media
emailjwam.director@ubc.ca
Kamal Al-Solaylee is the author of the national bestselling memoir Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes which won the 2013 Toronto Book Award and was a finalist for the CBC’s Canada Reads, the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Lambda Literary Award for memoir/biography and th...Read more
Kathryn Gretsinger
Kathryn Gretsinger
Associate Professor of Teaching
phone604 822 6084
location_onRoom 213
Research / Teaching Area
JournalismOffice hours: By appointment
Kathryn Gretsinger is an associate professor of teaching at the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media. She is a long time public broadcaster at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, with a record of creating award-winning work at the local and national level in Ca...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
Journalism
Katie Fitzpatrick
Katie Fitzpatrick
Lecturer
emailfitzpatr@mail.ubc.ca
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 203
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Dr. Fitzpatrick received her BA from UBC, where she studied in the English Honours program. She went on to pursue her Masters and PhD in English at Brown University. Since graduating from Brown in 2017, she has taught writing and literature in the US and at UBC. She is particularly passionate ...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Katja Thieme
Katja Thieme
Associate Professor of Teaching
emailkthieme@mail.ubc.ca
phone604 822 4738
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 217
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Dr. Katja Thieme analyzes contemporary and historical Canadian writing from a rhetorical and genre-theoretical perspective. In previous work, she studied the discourse of the Canadian women’s suffrage movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In publications on the genres of the...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Kimberly Richards
Kimberly Richards
Lecturer
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 215
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Kimberly Skye Richards is a settler scholar whose writing, teaching, activism, and artistic work engages performance as a vehicle for resisting extractivism and inspiring a just energy transition. She recently co-edited an issue of Canadian Theatre Review on “Extractivism and Performance” (April...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Kirby Manià
Kirby Manià earned a PhD in English from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa) and holds a Master of Arts in Modern Literature and Culture from the University of York (United Kingdom). She has taught courses in the environment, literary studies, and academic writing at un...Read more
Kirk LaPointe
Kirk LaPointe
Adjunct Professor
emailkirk.lapointe@cbc.ca
Kirk LaPointe is a media executive who serves as Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Business in Vancouver (BIV) and Vice-President, Editorial, of the Glacier Media chain of publications across western Canada. He writes a twice-weekly column, hosts a podcast on business and politics and about two dozen...Read more
Krista Sigurdson
Krista Sigurdson
Sessional Lecturer
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 202
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)I am a qualitative researcher and medical sociologist interested in human milk, preterm birth, health disparities, and science and technology studies. I completed my PhD in medical sociology at the University of California, San Francisco where I conducted a multi-sited ethnography of human milk exch...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Laila Ferreira
Laila Ferreira
Assistant Professor of Teaching
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 207
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Dr. Ferreira’s pedagogical practice and research is informed by her background in print culture and interest in how media and communication processes intersect with human sensation, perception, and understanding. Her approach to the teaching and learning of academic discourse and communication is ...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Laura Baumvol
Laura Baumvol
Lecturer
emaillaura.baumvol@ubc.ca
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 219
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Dr. Laura Baumvol is a lecturer at the UBC School of Journalism, Writing, and Media. She has taught a range of discipline-specific communication courses, as well as research and academic writing courses in Canadian and international institutions for over fifteen years. Her research interests are sch...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Louis Maraj
Louis Maraj
Assistant Professor
emaillouis.maraj@ubc.ca
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 216
Research / Teaching Area
Cultural Studies | Gender | Media Studies | Social Media | WRDS (Writing Studies)Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Louis M. Maraj, PhD, thinks/creates/converses with theoretical black studies, rhetoric, digital media, and critical pedagogies. More specifically, his work addresses anti/racism, anti/blackness, and expressive form.
Maraj’s book Black or Right: Anti/Racist ...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
Cultural Studies | Gender | Media Studies | Social Media | WRDS (Writing Studies)
M Gillian Carrabré
M Gillian Carrabré
Sessional Lecturer
emailm.g.carrabre@ubc.ca
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 220
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)M Gillian Carrabré is a PhD candidate in Musicology at the University of Western Ontario, with a focus on Canadian rave music and culture. A graduate of Mount Royal University (Performance Diploma), McGill (BMus in Violin), and The University of Ottawa (MMus in Violin), Gillian also enjoys a profe...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Mary Ann Saunders
Mary Ann Saunders
Lecturer
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 206
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Mary Ann Saunders' teaching in WRDS is shaped in part by her research (outlined below) and by a writing studies pedagogy drawing on the insights of new rhetorical genre theory. Her WRDS 150 classes invite undergraduate students into the research culture of the university and gives them the tools the...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Mary Lynn Young
Office hours: by appointment
Mary Lynn Young, PhD, is a full professor, co-founder and board member of The Conversation Canada, a national non-profit journalism organization, and affiliate of The Conversation global network. She has held a number of academic administrative positions at UBC, inclu...Read more
Meredith Beales
Meredith Beales
Lecturer
emailm.beales@ubc.ca
phone604 822 5104
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 213
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Meredith Beales earned her PhD in English literature at Washington University in St Louis in 2015. Her doctoral work explored the uses and manipulations of history on the English stage; in particular, her dissertation focused on early modern English medievalism and the place of British antiquity i...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Mi-Young Kim
Mi-Young Kim
Lecturer
emailmi-young.kim@ubc.ca
phone604 827 0602
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 204
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Mi-Young Kim earned her Ph.D. in Language and Literacy Education at UBC and M.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her dissertation topic as well as her main research focus is on academic socialization of second language learners, ...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Michael Schandorf
Michael Schandorf
Lecturer
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 214
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)At one time a scientific-medical editor and writer in the US and Hong Kong, I have taught writing, communication, and rhetoric at American universities for over a decade. My research and teaching interests are rooted in questions about how and why people believe the things that they do, and how lang...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Nazih El-Bezre
Nazih El-Bezre
Lecturer
phone604 822 9420
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 213
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Nazih has a PhD in Writing Studies from McGill University. His dissertation focused on the social, cultural, and writing experiences of international graduate students in Canadian universities. His research interests include: rhetorical genre theory, writing across the curriculum/in the disciplines,...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Ori Tenenboim
Ori Tenenboim, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media. His main areas of interest include digital journalism, political communication, and media economics. Tenenboim investigates how journalists and news organizations blend older and newer norms, behaviours, a...Read more
Peter Klein
Office hours: By appointment
Peter W. Klein is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and full professor at the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media. He is executive director of the UBC Global Reporting Centre, and was director of the school from 2011 to 2015. He is also a faculty associate at the ...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
Journalism
Rebecca Carruthers den Hoed
Rebecca Carruthers den Hoed
Chair of WRDS, and Assistant Professor of Teaching
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 210
Research / Teaching Area
Discourses of Health | Discourses of Science | Rhetorical Genre Theory | WRDS (Writing Studies)Dr. Rebecca Carruthers Den Hoed is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media at UBC. Her teaching and research are focused on academic discourse, academic writing across the disciplines, research genres and genre instruction, team based learning (TBL) in writ...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
Discourses of Health | Discourses of Science | Rhetorical Genre Theory | WRDS (Writing Studies)
Rohan Karpe
Rohan Karpe
Sessional Lecturer
emailrohan.karpe@ubc.ca
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 212
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Have you noticed how, for example, doctors think differently to engineers, scientists think differently to lawyers, entrepreneurs think differently to graphic designers, managers think differently to mathematicians and so on? How does thinking in a certain way influence what you do and who you becom...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Sang Wu
Sang Wu
Sessional Lecturer
emailsang.wu@ubc.ca
phone604 822 6243
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 220
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)I am a Ph.D. candidate in English at Cornell University. My research focuses on Romanticism, deconstruction, and discourses of knowledge. I am currently completing a dissertation which reads the figures and syntax of Romantic literary and theoretical texts to rethink how their formal elements struct...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Saranaz Barforoush
Saranaz Barforoush
Assistant Professor of Teaching
phone604 827 3540
Office hours: By appointment (Room 206)
Saranaz Barforoush is a tenure-track assistant professor of teaching at the UBC School of Journalism. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, College Park in 2017 with her dissertation, “The Dictator & The Charmer: U.S News Media Covera...Read more
Stephen Dadugblor
Stephen Dadugblor
Assistant Professor
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 211
Research / Teaching Area
Cultural Studies | Rhetorical Genre Theory | Social Media | WRDS (Writing Studies)Stephen Dadugblor earned a PhD in English (concentration in Rhetoric and Writing) from The University of Texas at Austin. His research is situated in cultural and comparative rhetorics, public deliberation, and rhetorical genre studies, with special attention to the rhetorical practices of postcolon...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
Cultural Studies | Rhetorical Genre Theory | Social Media | WRDS (Writing Studies)
Susan Blake
Susan Blake
Continuing Sessional Lecturer
emailblakesj@mail.ubc.ca
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 209
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Susan J. Blake has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from UBC (2001) and has done fieldwork and research on a number of Central Coast Salishan languages — most notably Sliammon, Homalco, and Downriver Halkomelem (Musqueam dialect). Her dissertation research focused on the distribution of schwa in Sliammon an...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Tamara Baluja
Tamara Baluja
Adjunct Professor
Research / Teaching Area
Social MediaTamara Baluja is an adjunct professor at the UBC School of Journalism where she co-teaches Decoding Social Media. She is an award-winning Canadian journalist with a passion for storytelling and audience engagement. Tamara currently works at CBC British Columbia as the producer of the social media te...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
Social Media
Tara Lee
Tara Lee
Lecturer
emailtara.lee@ubc.ca
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 215
Research / Teaching Area
Cultural Studies | Gender | Media Ethics | Social Media | WRDS (Writing Studies)
Tara Lee completed a PhD (Simon Fraser University) in Asian Canadian literature, with field specialties in Canadian Literature and eighteenth-century British Literature. Previous to joining WRDS, she taught in the Department of English Language and Literatures, as well as in the Department of ...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
Cultural Studies | Gender | Media Ethics | Social Media | WRDS (Writing Studies)
Thomas Bittner
Thomas Bittner
Lecturer
emailtbittner@mail.ubc.ca
phone604 827 0602
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 202
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)Thomas Bittner earned a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Washington in 1995, and since then he has taught at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Wellesley College, arriving at UBC in 2003. His research is mainly in the philosophy of mind, but he is also interested in ethical, le...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Tom Andrews
Tom Andrews
Continuing Sessional Lecturer
emailtandre02@mail.ubc.ca
location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 208
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)My area of focus for my PhD is a sub-genre of sci-fi and fantasy literature called the “New Weird.” More specifically, I’m looking at climate change in new weird fiction with a focus on China Mieville and on Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.
I’ve taught English Composition and Rhetoric ...Read more
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)
Uytae Lee
Uytae Lee
Adjunct Professor
emailuytaelee@mail.ubc.ca
Uytae Lee is a columnist and filmmaker whose work covers the complex issues surrounding our cities. He’s the creator of the CBC series ‘Stories About Here’, where he explores topics such as underground streams, zoning reform, public washrooms, street-food, and much much more. In addition to hi...Read more
William Green
William Green
Sessional Lecturer
emailWilliam.Green@ubc.ca
location_onPonderosa Office Annex G Room 21
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)William Green completed his PhD in English at UBC in 2018. His dissertation examined the literary aspects of the calculation of time in medieval England. In addition to time and temporality, his research interests include multilingualism in medieval England, medieval science, and historiography.
Research / Teaching Area
WRDS (Writing Studies)