Umaira Ansari

Ms Umaira Ansari trained as a lawyer in Pakistan before taking up a keen interest in human rights and, more specifically, women’s rights in the country. She is an advocate of the human rights movement in Pakistan and an active and vocal supporter of the rights of women and girls.

In 2004 she joined CIET and to work with communities across Pakistan, connecting people with the government and building their voices into planning. From 2009 she worked in Bauchi State, Nigeria, on a project strengthening the health system, with a focus on maternal and child health.

Since 2015, she is part of a CIET team working closely with a local NGO (Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations of Nigeria) and with the State Ministry of Health. The team implemented a programme of home visits to share evidence about actionable risk factors for maternal health with pregnant women and their spouses, including using smart phones to show video clips in a soap-opera style. The team also worked with women and men in communities to systematise local knowledge about causes of kunika (short birth interval) and to co-design short docudramas to show during the home visits. The video clips about kunika, with English subtitles, can be viewed here. More information about these projects is available on the CIET website.

In her current work with adolescent girls and boys in Bauchi, Ms Ansari is a part of a team using fuzzy cognitive mapping to hear the views of adolescents and other stakeholders about factors that contribute to good adolescent sexual and reproductive health. Later in the project, she will work with girls and boys (10-19 years) to create cellphilms to share their experiences and views about their sexual and reproductive health.

Nesa Rashti Bandarchian

Nesa Bandarchian Rashti is a PhD Candidate, under the supervision of Dr. Claudia Mitchell, in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE) at McGill University. She is also a Research Assistant in the Institute for Human Development and Well-being and the Participatory Cultures Lab. Her research interests lie in the area of girlhood studies and Participatory Visual Methodologies. She is passionate about learning and helping others to learn!

Casey Burkholder

Dr. Casey Burkholder is an Associate Professor at the University of New Brunswick, interested in critical teacher-education, and participatory visual research. In choosing a research path at the intersection of resistance&activism, gender, sexuality, DIY media-making, art production and participatory archiving, Casey engages in research for social change through participatory visual approaches to local issues with youth and pre-service teachers. She is the co-founder of the Fredericton Feminist Film Collective, and is the co-president of the Language & Literacy Researchers of Canada (2021-2023). Dr. Burkholder began using cellphilm method in her doctoral work in Hong Kong (2015-2018) where she worked with racialized ethnic minorities (her former students) to create cellphilms about identity, belonging & resistance amidst the Umbrella Revolution. Together, they created We Are Hong Kong Too–a Youtube based archive of cellphilms. Since her doctoral work, she has worked with cellphilm method to explore existing and desired sex education with queer, trans, and non-binary youth in New Brunswick. She has also worked with cellphilm method to disrupt the erasures of queer and trans histories from Social Studies education in New Brunswick as well as in her work as a teacher educator at the University of New Brunswick.

Website: caseyburkholder.com

Twitter: @CM_Burkholder

Andrea Capstick

Andrea Capstick is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Applied Dementia Studies at the University of Bradford, UK, where she teaches on the MSc Advanced Dementia Studies programme, leading modules on dementia, human rights and practice change. Andrea worked with the late Professor Tom Kitwood and, with Clive Baldwin, later co-wrote and edited Tom Kitwood on Dementia: A reader and critical commentary.  She holds a Doctorate in Education (EdD) for her work on the use of film and first-person narrative biography in dementia education. In 2009 she completed her training in participatory video and began to adapt this method to the needs and abilities of people living with dementia.  She was funded by the UK National Institute for Health Research (School for Social Care Research) to carry out the study ‘Can participatory video improve social participation and well b-being for people with dementia in long-term care?’ She regularly uses enhanced methods such as film, photography, digital storytelling, walking interviews, graphic art and ethnodrama both to create and to disseminate data from research studies related to people living with dementia.  Her most recent research focuses on the experiences of care home staff working with people with dementia during the Covid-19 pandemic.  The research findings from this study have been turned into a piece of verbatim theatre (Voices from the frontline) which is currently being performed at festivals and conferences in the UK.

https://www.bradford.ac.uk/staff/ajcapstick
https://www.bradford.ac.uk/news/archive/2022/stage-play-puts-lockdown-dementia-issue-in-spotlight.php

Anne Cockcroft

Dr. Anne Cockcroft is a professor in PRAM (Participatory Research at McGill), department of Family Medicine at McGill university. She has a clinical background in respiratory and occupational medicine. Over the last 25 years, she has worked with communities in low- and middle-income countries, supporting them to collect information about their health concerns and access to services, and to use this to interact with service providers to seek solutions.  In Bauchi State, Nigeria, Dr Cockcroft and her team work closely with a local NGO (Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations of Nigeria) and with the State Ministry of Health. Together, they implemented a programme of home visits to share evidence about actionable risk factors for maternal health with pregnant women and their spouses, including using smart phones to show video clips in a soap-opera style. They worked with women and men in communities to systematise local knowledge about causes of kunika (short birth interval) and to co-design short docudramas to show during the home visits. The video clips about kunika, with English subtitles, can be viewed here.
More information about recent work of Dr Cockcroft and her team in Nigeria and Botswana is available in the CIET website and the PRAM website.
Dr Cockcroft and her team are novices in cellphilming! In their current work with adolescent girls and boys in Bauchi they are using fuzzy cognitive mapping to hear the views of adolescents and other stakeholders about factors that contribute to good adolescent sexual and reproductive health. They plan to work with girls and boys (10-19 years) to create cellphilms for sharing their experiences and views between genders and with others in the community and services.

Naydene de Lange

Naydene de Lange is Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Education at Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, South Africa. Her research focuses on using participatory visual methodologies in addressing gender-based violence and HIV&AIDS issues, and integrating HIV&AIDS into higher education curricula.

Sarah Flicker

Sarah Flicker is a York Research Chair in Community Based Participatory Research and Full Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University.  She is engaged in an exciting program of research that focuses on the engagement of youth and other actors in environmental, sexual and reproductive justice. More broadly, she is interested in community-based participatory methodologies and is active on a variety of research teams that focus on adolescent sexual health, well-being and responding to gender-based violence in Canada and South Africa. Recently, she has published in the areas of health promotion, sexuality, ethics, decolonizing methodologies, participatory visual methods and community-based participatory research methods. Her research has informed policy at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.  Sarah and her teams have won several prestigious awards for youth engagement in health research.  Sarah (she/her) is a straight, white, able-bodied, Jewish, cisgender female, of immigrant/settler descent who tries to understand the pervasive effects of privilege, and her roles and responsibilities as a treaty person.  She is an inaugural member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.
Sarah has used cellphilm method in her work with youth and adults to examine complex health and social relationships including trading sex, gender-based violence, settler colonialism and anti-black racism. She is currently writing a book about Cellphilm Method with Dr. Katie MacEntee

Profile: euc.yorku.ca/faculty-profile/flicker-sarah

Mona Ghadirian

Mona has been working with youth to produce videos that address social, health, and nutritional issues that adolescents are facing. Mona has a BASc in International Development and Biomedical Science from McGill University and a Master of Public Health from the University of Waterloo. She has over 15 years of experience working in community development and adolescent empowerment. Her doctoral research aimed to understand how participatory video nutrition education plays a role in influencing nutrition literacy among adolescent girls in rural Ghana.

For more information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2R-VGvYu7M

Yagana Muhammad Gidado

Mrs Yagana Muhammad Gidado is a Nigerian registered nurse and midwife, with a national diploma in Midwifery education. She has a certificate on Evidence Based Health Planning from the University of Guerrero, Mexico. She worked as Bauchi State Director of nursing services from 2002-2007. She served as President of the Bauchi State Chapter of the Federation of Muslim Women’s Association in Nigeria (FOWAN) and is currently a member of the board of governors and the health team lead for the organization.

From 2009-2013 she worked in collaboration with CIET and the Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Agency CIET on a project to support evidence-based planning of health services in Bauchi, especially for maternal and child health. She was principal investigator for two projects in Bauchi funded under the Innovating for Maternal and Child Health in Africa (IMCHA) initiative. One project demonstrated the impact of universal home visits to support maternal and child health and the other explored local knowledge about causes of kunika (short birth interval) and developed communication materials about this for inclusion in the home visits. The video clips about kunika, with English subtitles, can be viewed here. More information about these projects is available on the CIET website. Mrs Gidado is part of the research team that is hearing the views of adolescent girls and boys about their sexual and reproductive health and will later work with Bauchi adolescents to create cellphilms.

Katie MacEntee

Dr. Katie MacEntee is a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Dalla Lana School of Public Healthin the University of Toronto and in the Faculty of Health at York University. Her research is interdisciplinary and spans the areas health and education with a focus on the use of participatory visual methodologies to study HIV and AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, gender-based violence, youth homelessness and inclusive education. As a post-doctoral fellow on the Peer Navigator Project (funder: CIHR, PI: Paula Braitstein) she has been studying the adaptation and implementation of a peer navigator model to support street-connected youth access HIV and AIDS health services in Canada and Kenya. At York University, she is based in the LaMarsh Centre for Child and Youth Research and studying the concept of thriving as it relates to the intersections of youth marginalization. 

Katie is a leader in the field of cellphilm method. In 2016, she co-edited What’s a Cellphilm: Integrating mobile technology into research and activism. She has used the cellphilm method with young people and adults in diverse contexts internationally to explore a range of topics. In 2021, she published the article The Quilted Cellphilm Method (Journal of Global Public Health), which presents unique adaptations to the method that support marginalized groups to explore highly stigmatized topics. She is currently co-authoring a second book on cellphilm method with Sarah Flicker, entitled Using Cellphilms in Research and Teaching for Social Change. It is due to launch with Routledge in winter 2022/23

Rukmini Panda

Rukmini Panda currently works with Breakthrough India as State Head for Odisha, an eastern Indian state. Breakthrough works towards making all forms of VAWG (violence against women and girls) unacceptable. Rukmini was working with Oxfam India as the Project Lead for Exploring the Gender Transformative Power of Feminist Research to address Knowledge gaps in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and Gender-Based Violence. She has a long history as a women’s rights activist in India with 23 years of experience. She has prolific experience on research, development program planning and implementation on the themes of VAWG, SRHR, livelihood and migration.

As lead for the research project on SRHR in which Cell Philms was used as a method, Rukmini received training from Mc Gill University on PVM methods. Subsequently, Rukmini offered handholding support to 20 Youth Researchers to co-create Cell Philms and Photo Stories on SRHR as well as different awareness videos during COVID. Rukmini writes issue based articles on women’s rights which are published in various monthly magazines. She has received Laadli media award in the year 2016 for her writing on women’s issues. The Award is conferred by Population First and UNFPA for promoting gender sensitive creative writing in media.

Rukmini has also been felicitated by a magazine called “Sindhuja” which is a monthly feature magazine on women’s issues. Two of her translated books have been published by National Book Trust India, which is a premiere publishing trust by government of India. Rukmini holds a degree in M.Phil in Economics and continuing her PhD in Women’s Studies on the topic of social protection for women migrant workers.

Rocio Macabena Perez

Rocio Macabena Perez is a PhD candidate in psychoeducation at the University of Montréal, an artistic educator, and a clinical worker. She is interested in the development of innovative and artistic programs from the perspective of positive youth development. Rocio discovered cellphilming at the start of the pandemic when she was asked to facilitate several workshops with youth. Although her expertise focuses more on street art and classical artistic mediums like painting and drawing, cellphilming is definitely a medium she has learned to love.

Shannon Roy

Shannon Roy has over 12 years of experience as a professional educator, having taught a range of students from elementary to adult. As a photographer, creative writer, and painter, she has a keen interest and dedication to the arts and is passionate in her advocacy for strong arts programs in schools. Shannon is in the first year of her Ph.D. in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University and is interested in how art-based research can be used as a catalyst to access educators stories.

Hani Sadati

Hani Sadati is a Postdoctoral Researcher at McGill University’s Faculty of Education, where he received his Ph.D. degree as well. The project he is currently involved in looks at the Canadian youth experience during the pandemic. His doctoral project focused on the participatory development of a serious game to address sexual and gender-based violence in Ethiopian Agriculture colleges. He used participatory arts-based game design process in his phd research. This project led to the development of the Mela serious game, which was awarded the Bronze medal (in the students’ category) at the 2021 Serious Play Conference. Hani’s background is in Social Science (BA) and Women Studies (MA)

Max Schleser

Max Schleser is Associate Professor in Film and Television and Researcher in the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies (CTMT) at Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne, Australia), Adobe Education Leader, Founder of the Mobile Innovation Network & Association (www.mina.pro) and Screening Director of the International Mobile Innovation Screening & Festival. Max is an award-winning filmmaker with expertise in Immersive Media and Creative Arts 4.0 with a focus on Cinematic VR and interactive filmmaking. His research explores Screen Production, Emerging Media and Smartphone Filmmaking for community engagement, creative transformation and transmedia storytelling. His experimental films, moving-image arts and cinematic VR projects are screened at film festivals, in galleries and museums including FLEFF Film Festival (USA), Festival de La Imagen (Columbia), Museu da Imagem e do Som – Museum of Moving Image (Brazil), London Gallery West, South London Gallery (both UK), Ng_ Taonga Sound & Vision – New Zealand Film Archive, Te Papa Tongarewa – Museum of New Zealand (both Aotearoa/New Zealand), Pocket Film Festival and Videoscope (both France). His mobile feature film Max with a Keitai (2007) is included in the public film archive in the Forum des Images in Paris (France) and the smartphone documentary feature Frankenstorm (2014) broadcasted on CTV, Canterbury Television (Aotearoa/New Zealand).
Max co-edited the books Mobile Media Making in an Age of Smartphones and Mobile Story Making in an Age of Smartphones, published with Palgrave MacMillan, and edited journals for Ubiquity, the Journal of Pervasive Media and the Journal of Creative Technologies. His monograph Smartphone Filmmaking: Theory and Practice is published with Bloomsbury in 2021. He conceptualised and conducted digital storytelling workshops for a number of cultural institutes, city councils and government bodies in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. His industry consultancy includes projects for Adobe, Australian Red Cross, BBC, Nokia, Frontier Strategy, Open Lab and Telstra, among other agencies and production companies. Smartphone Filmmaking for community engagement, creative transformation and transmedia storytelling. The cellphilm method will be explored as a framework for interdisciplinary research and to give communities a voice.

Twitter: @MaxMobile
www.schleser.nz
https://www.behance.net/MaxSchleser
https://transformativemedia.swinburne.edu.au/projects/free-from-violence/
https://transformativemedia.swinburne.edu.au/projects/60-online-enhancing-social-inclusion-through-digital-stories-and-social-media-participation/
https://transformativemedia.swinburne.edu.au/projects/nucleus/

Josh Schwab Cartas

Dr. Schwab Cartas is a bi racial Indigenous Zapotec scholar (Zapotec/Austrian) born in Canada. He has recently completed a PhD in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University. His doctoral project focuses on the use of participatory visual methodologies, specifically cellphilm (participatory videos made with cell phones) as a means to revitalizing and documenting his ancestral language of Zapotec. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at UBC in the department of Language and Literacy Education Department, where he is using a participatory development approach to creating a Zapotec language learning app aimed at young children. Schwab Cartas is one of three editors, alongside Casey Burkholder, Funk Aladejebi, of recently published an edited collection with Routledge press entitled Leading and Listening to Community: Facilitating Qualitative, Arts-Based & Visual Research for Social Change.

Sarah Switzer

Sarah Switzer is an adult educator, interdisciplinary scholar, and community-based participatory researcher with fifteen years of experience supporting community-based approaches to social change. She believes in working collaboratively, imaginatively, and equitably for social justice and is committed to research done in partnership with communities and community-based organizations. Her larger program of research focuses on how to meaningfully engage communities who experience marginalization in program or policy change. Within this, she has a specialized interest (and passion!) for participatory visual methods, including cellphilms, for engaging audiences, participants, and students in dialogue and exchange. During the pandemic, Sarah led participatory research on how community-engaged practitioners (participatory researchers, community artists and community facilitators) are adapting their participatory work with communities to online and remote settings during COVID-19, and the unique ethical and pedagogical issues that emerge (see: www.beyondthetoolkit.com). Her lived experiences as a white, cis, queer settler, with an invisible disability has motivated her desire to co-design and co-imagine participatory spaces with accessibility, anti-racism and social justice at the centre.

Sarah has published in the fields of:  participatory visual methodologies; community-based participatory research; creative knowledge translation and co-design; harm reduction and HIV/AIDS; participatory research ethics; and the critical study of participation and engagement.

She is currently a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Community-Based Research

Jennifer Thompson

Jen Thompson is an interdisciplinary visual researcher interested how social justice intersects with environmental issues. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Public Health Research (CReSP) at l’Université de Montréal, supporting the MYRIAGONE McConnell-UdeM research chair in youth knowledge mobilization. Jen is also teaching faculty in the Department of Anthropology at Dawson College. Jen has worked with or supported the use of cellphilming through several collaborations, including in Cameroon, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, the UK, as well as in her home province of Quebec in Canada. Jen also uses cellphilming for inquiry-based learning in the classroom. Jen has developed a number of tools to support cellphilming, including a short documentary video, Cellphilm! Teachers as agents of change and accompanying facilitator’s guide, Cellphilming: A took for addressing gender equality, as part of the BETTER teacher education project in Mozambique with the NGOs CODE and Associaçao Progresso. She also co-produced a series of instructional cellphilms, How to make a cellphilm/Comment faire un cellphilm as part of a MYRIAGONE project about youth wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. These cellphilm tools are available on the International Cellphilm Festival website: https://internationalcellphilmfestival.com/2013/10/24/cellphilm-tips/line-enhancing-social-inclusion-through-digital-stories-and-social-media-participation/
https://transformativemedia.swinburne.edu.au/projects/nucleus/

Lisa Wiebesiek

Lisa Wiebesiek is the research manager of the Centre for Visual Methodologies for Social Change at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. From 2016 to 2021, she was the project coordinator of the South African arm of the Networks for Change and Well-being: Girl-led ‘from the ground up’ policy making to address sexual violence in Canada and South Africa project (Networks for Change). Cellphilms were one of the participatory visual methods used in the project. Lisa also used cellphilm data generated in the Networks for Change for her doctoral study completed in 2021. Lisa’s current research interests include participatory visual methodology, rurality, gender and sexuality, and feminist post-colonial studies. 

Ntomboxolo Yamile

Dr. Ntomboxolo Yamile is currently the Technical Vocation Education and Training Coordinator in the Faculty of Education, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Her research interests focus on participatory visual methodology, gender and education, with emphasis on rural girls and women. Her interest in using visuals developed when doing her doctorate, working with school girls from a rural town in the Eastern Cape, focusing on addressing sexual violence in their rural community. Her work is published in an article, Schoolgirls leading their rural community in dialogue to address gender-based violence. In this article she explores the schoolgirls’ use of a digital dialogue tool  consisting of visual artefacts such as policy posters, action briefs and cellphilms which the schoolgirls had made, to facilitate a community dialogue.