People

Faculty
Faculty

Alexis McGee

Alexis McGee

Assistant Professor

location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 218

Research / Teaching Area

Cultural Studies | Gender | WRDS (Writing Studies)
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

Research / Teaching Area

Cultural Studies | Gender | WRDS (Writing Studies)

Alice Fleerackers

Alice Fleerackers

she/her

SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Research / Teaching Area

Journalism
Alice Fleerackers (she/her) is a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, University of British Columbia (UBC) and the Scholarly Communications Lab, Simon Fraser University (SFU). She is the Vice President of the Public Communication of Science and Technology Net...Read more

Research / Teaching Area

Journalism

Andrea Crossan

Andrea Crossan

Assistant Professor Without Review
School of Journalism, Writing, and Media

phone604-822-5823
location_onSing Tao 207

Research / Teaching Area

Environment | Gender | Indigenous Journalism | Journalism
Andrea Crossan is a veteran radio journalist with over 30 years of experience. She’s reported from over 20 countries and has been based in the U.S. and the U.K. Crossan has worked for the BBC World Service, CBC News, Associated Press, and NBC News. As a radio journalist, Crossan produced and repor...Read more

Research / Teaching Area

Environment | Gender | Indigenous Journalism | Journalism

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

location_onSing Tao - Office No - 208

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 with GRC...Read more

Research / Teaching Area

Journalism

Connor Byrne

Connor Byrne

Sessional Lecturer

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

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

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)

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)

Frances Bula

Frances Bula

Adjunct Professor

Research / Teaching Area

Journalism
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

Journalism
Francesca 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

Heidi Tiedemann Darroch

Heidi Tiedemann Darroch

Sessional Lecturer

Research / Teaching Area

Cultural Studies | Gender | WRDS (Writing Studies)
Heidi Tiedemann Darroch holds a PhD in English from the University of Toronto and has taught at several universities and colleges in Ontario and British Columbia. Her teaching is focused on writing studies, Canadian literature, and Canadian studies. She publishes on contemporary fiction and dr...Read more

Research / Teaching Area

Cultural Studies | Gender | WRDS (Writing Studies)

Jaclyn Rea

Jaclyn Rea

Associate Professor of Teaching

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

Journalism
J.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

Jennifer Cowe

Lecturer

location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 206
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_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 204

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

location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 219

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

location_onSing Tao 111A

Research / Teaching Area

Journalism | WRDS (Writing Studies)
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

Research / Teaching Area

Journalism | WRDS (Writing Studies)

Kathryn Gretsinger

Kathryn Gretsinger

Associate Professor of Teaching

phone604 822 6084
location_onSing Tao 213

Research / Teaching Area

Journalism
Office 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

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

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

Assistant Professor of Teaching

location_onBuchanan Tower - BuTo 203
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

Research / Teaching Area

Journalism | Media Ethics
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

Research / Teaching Area

Journalism | Media Ethics

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

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)

Mary Ann Saunders

Mary Ann Saunders

Lecturer

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

Mary Lynn Young

Professor

phone604 822 9778
location_onSing Tao 205

Research / Teaching Area

Gender | Journalism
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

Research / Teaching Area

Gender | Journalism

Meredith Beales

Meredith Beales

Lecturer

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

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)

Peter Klein

Peter Klein

Professor

location_onSing Tao 207

Research / Teaching Area

Journalism
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 was the founder of the UBC Global Reporting Centre, and was director of the school from 2011 to 2015. He is also a faculty associate at the UBC Sc...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
Dr. Rebecca Carruthers Den Hoed is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media at UBC.

Rohan Karpe

Rohan Karpe

Sessional Lecturer

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

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)

Sharon Nadeem

Sharon Nadeem

Research / Teaching Area

Indigenous Journalism | Journalism | Media Ethics
Sharon Nadeem is an award-winning multimedia journalist who works as a producer and head of partnerships at the Global Reporting Centre, based at the University of British Columbia. She specializes in long-form reporting on complex topics like housing, supply chains, corruption and migration. Her in...Read more

Research / Teaching Area

Indigenous Journalism | Journalism | Media Ethics

Susan Blake

Susan Blake

Continuing Sessional Lecturer

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)

Thomas Bittner

Thomas Bittner

Lecturer

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

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)

William Green

William Green

Sessional Lecturer

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)