Conference marks Canadian Association for Theatre Research’s 50th anniversary

by | May 29, 2026 | Alumni, Events, Faculty, indigenous, Research, Theatre

Keynote speaker Nininsky Lee Aquino

Our Department of Theatre was proud to support the 50th annual Canadian Association for Theatre Research conference, which took place at UVic from May 26-29 and welcomed an exciting mix of theatre artists, scholars and researchers from across Canada plus Phoenix students, faculty & alumni.

Co-chaired by Theatre professor Sasha Kovacs & University of Toronto’s Sarah Robbins, CATR50 brought together over 200 people to investigate questions of inheritance, transition, transformation and change. The conference was highlighted by passionate conversations — kicked off by keynote speaker Nininsky Lee Aquino — and performances by Git Hayetsk dancers, Theatre SKAM’s Aster Brae plus drag performances at The Vicious Poodle. Other highlights included the conference exhibition, panel, roundtable, praxis workshop, seminar and working group contributions.

The Canadian Association for Theatre Research was originally created in 1976 under the name “The Association for Canadian Theatre History.” Since its inception it has been the principal catalyst for expansion of theatre research in Canada, as evidenced by the change in name in 1990. It aims to shape Canada’s theatrical present and future by preserving and interpreting our theatrical past and investigating areas of contemporary theory and performance. Specifically, the Association works to promote research and publication of the results of this research into Canadian theatre and drama, to encourage the collection and analysis of Canadian theatre materials, and to maintain a communications network for the exchange of information and research in progress.

Sasha Kovacs & Sarah Robbins

This event wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada Connections grant program, the Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories Partnership, Canada’s Theatre Museum, Playwright’s Guild of Canada, Playwright’s Canada Press, Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, Talon Books, Belfry Theatre, the Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre plus numerous other departmental and community sponsors.

Special appreciation to Kurt Archer and previous co-chair Kara Flanagan for facilitating community artist engagement in this year’s event, Jenn Boulay for supporting accessibility plus all members of the incredible programming and local arrangements team for contributing to this memorable gathering!

Act 2 continues online June 11-12. See the CATR website for more info to join the digital act of the event.

Students & volunteers participating in Git Hayetsk performance

Three instructors earn teaching accolades

by | May 27, 2026 | Alumni, Art History & Visual Studies, Award, Faculty, Visual Arts

Congratulations go out to three Fine Arts instructors who earned accolades for their teaching this month: Ambreen Hussaini (left) won the Andy Farquharson Teaching Excellence Award at UVic’s REACH Awards, while Michael Reed received the Fine Arts Award for Teaching Excellence (Sessionals & Music Performance Instructors) and Laura Dutton earned the Fine Arts Award for Teaching Excellence & Educational Leadership.

Hussaini (AHVS) is recognized for advancing innovative, learner-centred teaching and mentorship. She fosters creativity, dialogue and critical thinking through reflective writing, visual analysis and community-engaged learning. Grounded in equity, curiosity and compassion, she brings decolonial frameworks and experiential practices — such as personalized territorial acknowledgments — into culturally responsive classrooms. By mentoring peers and TAs, facilitating workshops and developing curricula, Ambreen strengthens teaching practices across the university and inspires students to engage deeply with art, culture and one another.

Dutton (VISU) cultivates classroom environments in which students feel empowered, supported and recognized as individuals: her teaching approach fosters intellectual curiosity, critical thinking and professional confidence, supporting students as emerging artists with distinct voices and ambitions. Her dedication to teaching extends well beyond the classroom, serving as undergraduate curriculum representative, working closely with the program committee to develop curriculum and program navigation strategies. She is also one of the department’s strongest advocates for equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility.

Reed (AHVS/Medieval Studies) mobilizes his expert knowledge of medieval art, culture, and history with innovative teaching strategies that continually engage students, connecting the past to the present and showing the value of understanding history in the context of challenges facing us today. Grounded in the principles of EDI and intersectionality, his course design and dialogic pedagogy respond to the urgent call to replace colonial approaches to the European past; his desire to actively connect students to the past is enhanced by his embrace of technology, such as his use of an LTI grant to contribute to the Medievalism Mapping Project.

A previous REACH Award winner (2022) who has also received a teaching excellence award from Humanities (2021), to the best of our knowledge that makes Michael Reed the only UVic instructor to win three teaching awards in three different units on campus. A hearty congratulations on earning this remarkable milestone!

Research funding focuses on Indigenous artistic responses to plastic pollution

by | May 15, 2026 | Award, climate, Faculty, indigenous, Visual Arts

While there is a growing awareness of the global impact of plastic pollution, the most ubiquitous visuals we have of the harms of litter and microplastics alike may be of tropical sea turtles, polluted beaches, and damaged coral reefs. Few consider the critical impact it has on Northern regions, where microplastics contaminate oceans and sea ice, the landscape, and even the food chain, posing a threat to community health and biodiversity.

Now, $475,000 in new funding from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) offers Department of Visual Arts professor Heather Igloliorte the opportunity to create a series of new art-science collaborations while also increasing national awareness around the issue of plastic pollution in rural, remote, Subarctic and Arctic regions.

Titled “As It Melts: Northern Indigenous Artistic Perspectives on Plastics Pollution”, this two-year project will be led by Igloliorte — who is also UVic’s Canada Excellence Research Chair in Decolonial & Transformational Indigenous Art Practices — and Kirsty Robertson (Western University’s Canada Research Chair in Museums, Art & Sustainability) in partnership with the Inuit Art Foundation.

Announced on May 11, As It Melts will bring together a diverse group — including Indigenous artists, Indigenous and settler scientists, plastics and arts-based researchers, students, museum professionals, community members, Elders and knowledge keepers — to address the presence of plastic pollution in and around Indigenous communities, through the lens of contemporary art research-creation.

For this ambitious project, Indigenous artists will work with and learn from plastics pollution researchers and scientific labs across Canada, participate in knowledge exchange workshops, and ultimately create major research-based artworks, culminating in a nationally significant public exhibition and symposium aligning with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

“This project is truly a testament to the strength of our collaboration, and the significance and urgency of the work before us,” says Igloliorte. “By harnessing the power of art to investigate plastics pollution — while also informing communities and the broader public of its harms — As It Melts will help people imagine cleaner, safer and more sustainable futures for our lands and waters.”

Fine Arts also recently announced $250,000 in funding from SSHRC’s New Frontiers in Research Fund and the Tri-Agency Institutional Programs Secretariat (TIPS) for Visual Arts professor Carey Newman’s two-year project focused on “Robotic Carving to Augment and Preserve Intergenerational Kwakwaka’wakw Knowledge Transfer.” Both these projects engage innovative new creative technologies to address concerns around the environment and the ongoing climate crisis while also forefronting Indigenous knowledge and practices.

Heather Igloliorte (photo: Julie Grenier)

“These grant successes by Carey and Heather highlight the remarkable trajectory that Fine Arts is on,” says Kirk McNally, Associate Dean Creative Activity, Research & Administration for UVic’s Faculty of Fine Arts. “They build on our reputation for excellence in creative activity and research that explores the potential of creative technologies, and our deep engagement with the environment and the climate crisis. They also highlight UVic’s commitment to Indigenous-led scholarship and creating an environment where Indigenous ways of knowing and being can thrive.”

By engaging with community-monitoring of plastics pollution and on-the-land research in Northern, remote and rural Indigenous communities, As It Melts intends to dramatically shift both awareness of and response to the impacts of plastic pollution on wildlife, the environment and humans in Canada. This project will effectively respond to Phase 2 of the Canada-Wide Action Plan on Zero Plastic Waste, while also establishing decolonial methods for further research.

As It Melts will be guided by an advisory committee made up of Indigenous community leaders and arts professionals. It will also be supported by innovative partnerships with organizations and labs across the country — including UVic’s Taqsiqtuut Indigenous Research-Creation Lab and Western University’s Centre for Sustainable Curating — in parallel to Indigenous knowledge and artistic and cultural approaches, linked with lived and embodied experience of the impacts of plastic pollution.

Music sponsors national choral conference

by | May 13, 2026 | Alumni, Events, Faculty, Research, School of Music

The School of Music is excited to be sponsoring PODIUM 2026, Canada’s national bilingual choral Conference and Festival! Co-chaired by Music professor Adam Con and presented by Choral Canada and the BC Choral Federation, this multi-day celebration runs from May 14-17 at both UVic and downtown Victoria, bringing together 400 delegates from across the country and 3,000 performing singers from dozens of choirs.

“It’s a celebration of the best of the best of what we do in Canada,” says Con in this Times Colonist interview. “We like to think that Victoria has more choirs, disproportionate to the population, than any other city . . . there’s a choir for every taste or flavour. That’s a good thing.”

But our involvement goes beyond organizing and hosting, as we’ve got Music students in the mix too: Sadie Karlsson is Podium’s volunteer coordinator, Dominic and Bree Ann Bartle-Clar are performing with the National Youth Choir of Canada, our Vocal Jazz Ensemble is doing a pop-up concert in the MacLaurin building’s A-wing (12:30pm Sunday, May 17), and we have two music education students assisting with the event’s technology. Also, 2024 Distinguished Alumna Carrie Tennant is directing a performance of the Vancouver Youth Choir, and a number of alumni are performing in the various featured ensembles.

Adam Con

Held every two years since 1982, PODIUM 2026 aims to ignite meaningful dialogue within the global choral community. Through offerings both on-site and online, we will showcase new music, bold ideas and exciting opportunities for collective singing, through participatory workshops and massed singing events. Key themes will look at the role of the choral arts in topics such as social justice, climate change action, health and wellness, diversity and inclusion.

“PODIUM 2026 is more than a national gathering — it is a moment of reflection, connection and renewal for Canada’s collective singing community,” says Con in this Victoria News article. At a time when connection and collective expression matter more than ever, PODIUM 2026 invites us all to raise our voices, not only in harmony, but in hope. In song, we find strength. In community, we find courage. And together, we shape what’s next.

Find out more

Research funding focuses on developing innovative Indigenous robotic technologies

by | May 13, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, climate, Faculty, indigenous, Visual Arts

Carey Newman working on his Totem 2.0 system developed with Camosun Innovates  (photo: Camosun College)

Department of Visual Arts and Art History & Visual Studies professor Carey Newman was announced on May 13 as the recipient of new funding from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to develop a new robotic carving system to better preserve traditional Indigenous carving techniques. By exploring the interconnection between Indigenous knowledge, technology and art, this innovative technology will ethically embed robotics into education and creative practice while offering new ways to access, interpret, preserve and teach traditional knowledge.

Newman, also UVic’s inaugural Impact Chair in Indigenous Art Practices, will be receiving $250,000 over two years from SSHRC’s New Frontiers in Research Fund and the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat (TIPS) for his project “Robotic Carving to Augment and Preserve Intergenerational Kwakwaka’wakw Knowledge Transfer.”

Carving is core to Pacific Northwest Indigenous Peoples’ social, legal, and cultural orders.  From the ornamental to the utilitarian, miniscule to monumental, carvings — be they drums, masks and rattles or canoes, poles and structural support for big houses — integrate into every aspect of life.

Now, this interdisciplinary project will see Newman join with UVic researchers from Mechanical Engineering & Computer Science (including professor Keivan Ahmadi) with off-campus partners including Camosun College’s Camosun Innovates and the Royal BC Museum to design and build an adaptive robotic system which will operate in collaboration with a master carver to augment and preserve the intergenerational knowledge transfer of carving practices in Northwest Coast Indigenous art.

“Traditionally, carving is passed down through close, hands-on mentorship, often within families or communities, but current efforts face increasing disruption due to climate change, cultural shifts, land/language loss, legacies of colonialism and urbanization,” says Newman. “This project offers new ways to enhance generational continuity and help young people engage and learn using novel digital collaboration technologies designed to protect and strengthen carving knowledge.”

The final version of the pole Carey Newman is carving above, now placed outside Pacific Opera Victoria’s Baumann Centre in Victoria  

Rather than automate artistic methods, Newman’s project will instead complement a carver’s tools by communicating culturally rooted practices over time. This work will provide a careful, respectful approach that upholds the integrity and sovereignty of Indigenous knowledge systems while utilizing advanced computational models and processes. Creating a robotic carving system will allow new technologies to promote, respect and strengthen cultural resilience, as well as explore the reciprocal benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration in areas like robotic surgery and advanced manufacturing.

 “This award is especially meaningful for us to celebrate as it marks Fine Arts’ first successful NFRF and charts an exciting new path for collaboration and partnership across campus, and in our community,” says Kirk McNally, the Associate Dean Creative Activity, Research & Administration for Fine Arts.

The impact of this project is enhanced by alignment with Newman’s other federally funded cultural, environmental and political art project, The Seedling, which involves planting a Western Red Cedar then designing a digital 3D totem which will be carved in 600 years when the tree is mature. The Seedlingrethinks colonial concepts of economy, law and politics, while radically expanding planning and decision-making timescales.

Newman’s robotic system will be capable of real-time adaptation to carving variables like unpredictable cedar microstructures while combining experiential knowledge and technical innovation. Integrating deeply embodied, culturally grounded artistic knowledge with emerging robotic technologies involves high risks (both technical and conceptual) but offers high rewards (including generational knowledge transfer and commercial application and development).