DocuAsia Forum 2018: Displacement

Angelica Poversky is a spoken word artist, performing artist and arts programmer residing in Vancouver BC. She is 5’3″ (moving into the 5’4″ realm) of vertically challenged creative passion who wants to use spoken words to create movements of thought. Interested in clown, music and media art, Angelica is Vancouver’s Top 24 under 24, a TD Scholar, Richmond’s 30 under 30 and a Richmond Arts Award Winner. She’s been on the author panel at National Culture Days, a speaker at The Top 25 under 25 Canadian Environmentalists Awards and the feature performer at the CHIMO Violence Against Women Conference. Other notable performances include Word Vancouver, The Vancouver Sustainability Conference and The Vancouver Earth Day Parade.

Dr. Ross Michael Pink is a Lecturer in the Political Science Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, teaching in the areas of Politics, Sustainability and International Relations. His 2016 book, ‘Water Rights in Southeast Asia and India’ was published by Palgrave Macmillan. He has been a guest speaker on water rights and sustainability issues at the United Nations WaSH and Well-Being Symposium in 2013 at McMaster University, The Central Tibet Administration in Dharamshala, India, the National University of Singapore, Thammasat University, The University of Yangon, and the KPU TALK Speaker Series. He is Co-Founder of the educational NGO, Global Water Rights. Ross wrote and directed the groundbreaking TV documentary ‘Aids and the Streetchild in Bombay’, co-produced with the National Film Board of Canada and broadcast in 7 countries. As a journalist he has written many articles on human rights and politics in several publications including Policy Options, The Nation, and Mid-Day Publications.

Moharram Aghazadeh, PhD, CTDP is a senior executive originally from Tehran, Iran. He holds a PhD and MA in Curriculum and Learning, with a BA in Educational Technology. A scholar and educator, Moharram was a professor at the University of Tehran, University of Beheshti and Allameh Tabatabee University. Moharram also worked as national and international consultant for UNICES, UNESCO and UNDP. He developed learning and development programs for more 1.5 million Afghan Refugees including women, girls, youth, out of school youth and students. He also developed basic life skills modules for refugees who lived in camps and remote areas. The programs that Moharram had developed for UNESCO, UNDP, Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) and UNICES were implemented in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan with the assistance of Nongovernmental Organizations.

Juliane Okot Bitek is a Liu Scholar alumna and PhD candidate (Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Program) with her home department at the Liu Insitute for Global Issues. Her research around identity, citizenship and forgetting has led her to do fieldwork in Arusha, Kigwa, Tabora, Gulu, Musoma, Tarime, Butiaba, Bukoba, Kampala, Lira, London and Mwanza. Her latest publication, 100 Days (U of Alberta Press 2016), is a collection of poetry that negotiates ways to remember the 1994 Rwanda Genocide. 100 Days has been shortlisted for the 2017 Pat Lowther Award, the 2017 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry and won a gold prize for the 2016 Foreword INDIES Award for Poetry.

Carla Hilario is a PhD candidate in the School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia and a research associate in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. Her work focuses on community-engaged research aimed at improving mental health outcomes for immigrant, refugee, and visible minority populations at the intersections of gender and race.

Yasin Kiraga Misago is Founder and Executive Director of African Descent Society BC, founder of African Descent Festival BC and the Creative Director for Hogan’s Alley Historic Memory Traveling Exhibition and History Research for people of African descent in Canada and BC. He is an urban historian and heritage walking tour guide in Vancouver with Black Strathcona Heritage Walking Tour in East Vancouver and other places of historical signifiance for people of African Descent in BC.</p> <p>Yasin is also the coordinator for UNESCO General History of Africa Project within Vancouver, working to advance the Canada Commission on UNESCO General History of Africa and United Nations International Decade for the people of African Descent 2015-2024.

Minah Lee is a world citizen who was born and raised in South Korea. She is currently one of the unlanded on this land today and also a proud member of a secret army called ESL poetrees planted in the soil. She wants to use her privilege of standing in academia as a researcher/artist to delve deeper into the issues of being and belonging against the commodification of citizenship; human security; identities of migrants, located in the state-driven paradigms. Minah wants to inspire new ways of becoming and longing by re-imagining Home and borders. She believes that securing more places to summon and share personal/social traumas and memories is essential.

1980 : Christian Abi Abboud was born >> 1999 : french baccalaureate // 2003 : diploma of audiovisual arts - university saint joseph beirut >> 2003 - 2004 : freelancer sound engineer >> 2004 - 2007 : freelancer editor >> 2008 - 2013 : owner / partner at tic motion post production house >> 2014 - current : filmmaker & videographer

Amal Rana is a queer Pakistani poet and social justice educator. In a time when even exhaling while being Muslim is considered a crime, she conjures poetry as an act of collective liberation. Her work has appeared in several publications and literary journals including the acclaimed anthology, Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices. Amal is a founding member of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Vancouver and Breaking the Fast, an arts collective centering LGBTQ Muslims and Muslim women. Recently, she has initiated several collaborative projects envisioning liberatory futures for those on the margins.

1980 : Christian Abi Abboud was born >> 1999 : french baccalaureate // 2003 : diploma of audiovisual arts - university saint joseph beirut >> 2003 - 2004 : freelancer sound engineer >> 2004 - 2007 : freelancer editor >> 2008 - 2013 : owner / partner at tic motion post production house >> 2014 - current : filmmaker & videographer

Laura U. Marks works on media art and philosophy with an intercultural focus. Her most recent book is Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image (MIT, 2015). Marks curates media art programs for venues around the world. She teaches in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.

Pia Massie is a multi-media artist, environmental activist, and teacher. She is currently at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, in the faculty of Culture + Community, as the artist/designer/scholar in residence. Her work has been exhibited in museums, festivals, and galleries throughout North America and Europe, including The Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Musée Cantonal des Beaux Arts, Lausanne; and the grunt gallery in Vancouver, BC. - receiving international awards, including: the American Film Institute’s Independent Filmmakers award (LA), Prix St. Gervais (Geneva), and Prix de l’Institut de Design de Montréal. Her writing has appeared in DAMP: Contemporary Vancouver Media Art, Foret-Frontiere : Une Action Art / Nature, The Bulletin, Adbusters and Ricepaper magazines. She is deeply grateful to work and live in the Pacific Northwest unceded traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

Simone Rapisarda is a Professor of Film in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University as well as internationally acclaimed filmmaker whose work challenges the traditional border between creative and critical practice. His feature-length films have garnered accolades at major festivals worldwide and are part of the permanent collections of<br /> museums and galleries, such as the MoMA in New York and the National Gallery in Washington D.C. He was the recipient of the Best Emerging Director award at the Locarno Film Festival in 2014. His films have been reviewed in Artforum, Film Comment, Sight & Sound, Cinema Scope, IndieWire, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times, and Filmmaker Magazine.