Haig Armen is a designer, professor and professional musician exploring the intersection of technology, musical instruments, and digital interfaces. He has been faculty at ECU since 2010. His courses include Making Data Interactive, Designing for Startups, and Creating Networked Objects.

Gil is a multidisciplinary designer, researcher and educator specializing in interaction, communication and service design. Originally from Brazil, he holds a PhD in Architecture and Design, an MSc in Electrical Engineering, and a degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the University of São Paulo. Gil was a Visiting Professor at UBC’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and a professor at FAUUSP (Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo), one of the world’s top design programs.

Annette Blum is Adjunct Faculty teaching in the Jake Kerr Faculty of Graduate Studies. She holds the position of Associate Professor Emerita at OCAD University, Toronto, where she taught in the Faculty of Design as permanent full-time faculty, and in the Faculty of Visual Arts as Sessional Faculty at York University and Seneca at York, Toronto. She holds an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies from York University, and a BFA (Hons) from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, where she also taught painting and drawing in the Department of Fine Arts before emigrating to Canada. 

Keith Doyle’s interests include collaborative practices in art and design through modalities of making and knowledge mobilization. He has led projects investigating New Craft and transformational design practices, material production technologies, regenerative material creation and textiles and design research. His projects include Pedestrian Protest, cloTHINGS as conversation, Here//Too//For, Charred Wood and the 21st Milano Triennale’s Liminal Labs.

Hélène Day Fraser is a founding member and co-director of the Material Matters Research Commons at ECU, and a member of ECU’s DESIS lab. From 2013 to 2018 she led the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight-funded cloTHING(s) as Conversation project. In her role as ECU’s Academic Co-ordinator for Sustainability she established Creatives with Intent, a group that promoted agency and communication around sustainability. In 2018 she founded the Material Matters Textile Adaptation Research Program (TARP).

Chris Jones is an artist, researcher and educator whose interests are focused on the relationship between technical image media (primarily photography) and modes of knowledge production.

Ingrid Koenig was the inaugural Artist in Residence at TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator centre, where she co-organized collaboration between artists and physicists in a project called Leaning Out of Windows. Her art practice traverses fields of physics, social history, and feminist theory. Ingrid is the recipient of grants from Canada Council for the Arts, Goethe Institute, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). She has exhibited work in public galleries across Canada, Europe, New Zealand.

Laura Kozak has published and presented papers at Participatory Design Conference, PIVOT: A World of Many Centers, Cumulus, The Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design (AICAD) and the Service Design and Innovation Conference (ServDes). She is a past president of 221A Artist Run Centre Society and a recipient of ECU’s Ian Wallace Award for Teaching Excellence. She holds a Master of Advanced Studies in Architecture from UBC and a BFA from Emily Carr.

Allison Yasukawa is an interdisciplinary maker, educator and language nerd. She holds an MFA in Studio Arts and an MFA in TESOL/Applied Linguistics from the University of Illinois. Allison investigates asymmetries of power in language and interaction and examines crossings from the personal to the global.

Reyhan Yazdani is an interdisciplinary artist and designer currently based in Vancouver, the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) people. Her research-driven work migrates between a range of media including works on paper, objects, social invitations and poetry to engage with ontological, material and spatial inquiries around and about themes of exile, language, and diaspora.