Vancouver Book Launch: Forced Migration In/To Canada

Forced migration has profoundly shaped Canada’s past and present. Forced Migration In/To Canada is a critical resource exploring migration through lived experiences, policy analysis, and interdisciplinary perspectives. From Indigenous displacement and settler colonialism to contemporary issues like climate migration, the book highlights the intersecting identities and structures shaping forced migration today.

This event will feature:

• Territorial Acknowledgment by Norm Leech
• Presentation by editor, Christina Clark-Kazak Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa
• Panel of Respondents:
  • Aaniya Asrani, Vancouver-based interdisciplinary artist, graphic designer, and visual storyteller from Bangalore, India
  • Soodabeh (Soodi) Joolaee, Research ethics and regulatory specialist, Fraser Health Authority; Researcher and Professor of Nursing
• Local contributors to the book: Erin Goheen Glanville, Francisco-Fernando Granados, and Lois Klassen
• Reception with book sales (READ Books) and Weaving Belonging (interactive artwork by Anniya Asrani)

This hybrid event will include refreshments on site at Rennie Hall.

Registration is required for both in-person and online participation. If you have any access needs, please don’t hesitate to reach out Ece Arslan.

Aaniya Asrani is an interdisciplinary artist, graphic designer, and visual storyteller from Bangalore, India. She is a published children’s book illustrator and author whose practice spans a wide range of materials and forms that seek to unpack social, political, and cultural systems. The work she undertakes has the ultimate goal of facilitating understanding across diverse communities and systemic disparities to catalyze small actions of change. She is nurturing a community engaged in art practice, undertaking art, design and bookmaking projects and conducting workshops in community, in so called Vancouver. She serves as the Lead Community Artist at posAbilities, a social service organization supporting individuals with developmental disabilities. Additionally, Aaniya leads Neighbourhood Organizing, a Vancouver Coastal Health-funded project with the InWithForward team, aimed at building bridges across lines of difference.

Christina R. Clark-Kazak is a professor at uOttawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, past president of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, and immediate past editor-in-chief of Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees. She has previously worked for York University, Saint Paul University, the Canadian government, and the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. Her research focuses on age discrimination in migration and development policy; political participation of young people; and interdisciplinary methodologies.

Erin Goheen Glanville, PhD (McMaster University), is a community organizer and spiritual caregiver (a.k.a. Lead Pastor) at Artisan in the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver. This work brings together four persistent and interconnected passions: community, imagination, justice, and spirituality. Prior to that, she researched and taught refugee cultures at the University of British Columbia, as a lecturer in the Coordinated Arts Program. She completed a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University (2017–19). Her short multimedia documentary Borderstory (2020) is available online as an educational resource for classrooms and communities. Erin serves on the Executive Committee for UBC’s Centre for Migration Studies and is on the Board of Directors for Kinbrace Community Society.

Francisco Fernando Granados was born in Guatemala and lives in Toronto. Since 2005 his artistic and academic practice has traced his movement from refugee to citizen, using abstraction as a visual strategy to create projects that challenge the stability of cultural and civic practices of recognition. His approach has developed from the intersections of formal training in drawing and painting, working in performance through artist-run spaces, studies in queer and feminist theory, activism as a peer support worker and advocate with newcomer communities on unceded Coast Salish territories, and teaching in post-secondary institutions. Granados is a PhD student in the Media & Design Innovation program at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Soodabeh Joolaee , PhD currently works as the Research Ethics & Regulatory Specialist at Fraser Health Authority. Her scholarly work focuses on ethical challenges in healthcare, including patient rights, nurses’ moral distress, medication errors, end-of-life care, and MAiD. She has served as a professor at the Center for Nursing Care Research (CNCR) in Iran and as a status associate professor at the University of Toronto's Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing. Dr. Joolaee has held research roles at UBC’s Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics, the Centre for Advancing Health Outcomes (formerly CHEOS), and the Indigenous Department at BC Women’s and Children’s Hospital and Research Institute. She was honored with the Human Rights and Nursing Award in 2011 by the University of Surrey, UK, for her groundbreaking work in advancing patients' rights and nursing ethics in Iran.

Lois Klassen is a specialist of ethics in participatory art methods and research-creation. She is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Critical Media Art Studio in the School of Interactive Art and Technology at Simon Fraser University, and part-time coordinator of the Emily Carr University Research Ethics Board. Lois offers expertise on research-creation and Cultural Studies for the Circle of Experts of the Canadian Association of Research Ethics Boards. Her creative project, Reading the Migration Library, has produced artist books about migrations and failed migrations since 2017.

Norm Leech is the Executive Director of Frog Hollow Neighborhood House, and the former Executive Director of Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing. He is a frequent facilitator and speaker on the Indigenous experience with colonization. He was born and raised in East Vancouver, with ancestry in the T’it’q’et community of the St’at’imc nation where he served as Chief and then Administrator. He draws on his experiences as a recovering alcoholic/ addict, computer nerd, inter-generational survivor, and spiritual explorer to inform his current work. He is trained in facilitation with the Equitas and St’at’imc Restorative Justice. Norm worked with the National Centre for First Nations Governance developing Indigenous governance models. Norm facilitates the Indigenous cultural sessions for Police Academy and Sheriffs Academy at the Justice Institute. He teaches Indigenous Tools For Living (ITFL) across Canada and online. ITFL is built upon Indigenous Focusing Oriented Therapy (IFOT), which is an Indigenous, body-centred and land-based approach to trauma.

This event is a collaboration between READ Books and Emily Carr University’s Research Office.

We acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).