Diyan, a longtime faculty member who served as ECU’s Interim VP Academic + Provost since 2023, will begin their appointment April 1, 2025.
Emily Carr University of Art + Design is pleased to announce the appointment of Diyan Achjadi as Vice-President Academic + Provost.
Reporting to the President, the VP Academic + Provost is responsible for representing faculty, and holding accountability and oversight for academic programming at the university. Diyan’s appointment follows an external search vetted by a committee with faculty, staff, student and board representation.
“Diyan’s extensive experience in practice-based art and design education and deep knowledge of the sector is an enormous asset for the university, and I can’t wait to see how they flourish under this new, permanent mandate,” says Trish Kelly, President + Vice-Chancellor at ECU.
“In the interim role, they stewarded their extensive portfolio with great care and curiosity, and over their two decades at ECU have proven themselves a generous collaborator and fierce advocate. Their contribution to projects including the Strategic Plan, equity initiatives and student and faculty recruitment has been invaluable. We are very fortunate to have someone so thoughtful, compassionate and capable helping to shape the university’s future.”
Diyan, a queer, Vancouver-based artist working in drawing, printmaking and animation, takes on the permanent role having served as Interim VP Academic + Provost since 2023.
During that time, Diyan has worked collaboratively across Academic Affairs, Student Services, Counselling + Wellness, the Emily Carr Students’ Union and Facilities to support wellness and food initiatives including pantry and kitchen upgrades, microwaves and other resources for student use and community programming.
They have also been a key contributor to the work of improving space and capital planning processes, including working with partners such as the Centre for Digital Media to develop new grad studios and classrooms in the neighbouring building, and helping to shape improvements for the administration of exhibitions on campus.
“An exciting synergy has been building at ECU,” Diyan says. “Working with talented people – and being able to understand and support the university much more holistically – has been incredibly fulfilling and is the great privilege of this role. A lot of the work people do can be invisible, but we’re starting to see our investment in things like policy and systems improvement pay off. I’m extremely proud to have been granted the confidence of the community to continue this important work and help foster more positive change throughout ECU.”
More about Diyan Achjadi
Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, Diyan Achjadi’s formative years were spent moving between multiple educational, political and cultural systems. They received a BFA in 1993 from the Cooper Union in New York, and an MFA in 2002 from Concordia University in Montreal.
Diyan has been an educator for more than 25 years, including at the Cooper Union, Concordia University, the University of Maryland Baltimore Country, and at ECU since 2005. They have taught throughout the visual arts undergraduate and graduate programs and were promoted to full professorship in the Audain Faculty of Art in 2020.
They have served on numerous governance committees, including Senate, Academic Affairs, Academic Planning + Priorities and the Strategic Enrollment Management Committee. They have supported Admissions + Recruitment through their work on the Direct Entry Committee, the Faculty Admissions Team, and as a presenter or representative at events.
They have served as president of the board of directors at grunt gallery (2020-2022); as vice chair of the City of Vancouver Public Art Committee (2023-2024) and have worked as a mentor in the Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design BIPoC Academic Leadership Institute since 2022.
They are currently a member of the Advisory Committee on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Policy for the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat, which is responsible for the day-to-day administration of the SSHRC Research Support Fund.
Diyan has also been actively involved in developing Equity, Diversity and Inclusion policy and practice at ECU, including as part of the University Employment Equity Committee, the Intersectional Working Group and the Advisory Committee for EDI Capacity Building
They have regularly mentored both faculty and students through teaching and research assistantships and fellowships, and as a graduate thesis and teaching fellowship supervisor.
Additionally, they have served twice as Assistant Dean in the Faculty of Culture + Community, and for two years as Interim Dean of the Faculty of Culture + Community.
As an artist, Diyan has exhibited widely, and their work is included in public collections across Canada and the US. Through drawing, printmaking, and animation, they use modes of fiction and storytelling to examine interrelated and conflicting histories of place. Their work explores the ways that surface ornamentation and illustrated printed matter can function as archives documenting the circulation of ideas in visual form.
Recent exhibitions include Enfoldings (2025); Stories for Futures, Real and Imagined (2024); Godzilla: Echoes from the 1990s Asian American Arts Network (2024); Between Line and Thread: Connecting the Asian American Arts Centre Collection (2023); Carried Through the Water (2022); Hush (2021); and Whose Stories? (2021).
They are a recipient of the VIVA Award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation (2021) and were inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Art in 2023.
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