SIM Centre People

The SIM Centre supports the work of a community of faculty and student researchers at Emily Carr University, and their industry partners.

The SIM Centre team includes:

Alexandra Samuel
Director, Social + Interactive Media Centre

Alexandra Samuel is an expert on social media and online participation. Her writing and research focus on how social media is transforming work, politics, and personal relationships. As a principal with Social Signal, one of the world’s first social media agencies, she has shaped the online strategy for a wide range of online community projects, including Tyze, Change Everything and NetSquared. She blogs about social media on her personal website and for Harvard Business Review. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University and a B.A. from Oberlin College.

Maria Lantin
Director, Intersections Digital Studios

Dr. Maria Lantin is the Director of the Intersections Digital Studios (IDS) research centre at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design. For many years she has been joining her love of Computing Science with her belief in the innovative potential of the arts. A circuitous route led her from obtaining her PhD in Computing Science at Simon Fraser University to leading the Visualization Research Lab at the Banff Centre’s Banff New Media Institute (BNMI). Working primarily in teams, she has had the joy of bringing to life many artist projects involving digital technology, and continues this practice at Emily Carr where the IDS provides an ample playground for experimentation.

Rob Inkster
Chief Research + Industry Officer, Industry Liaison

Dr. Rob Inkster was appointed Director of Research and Industry Liaison in January 2008. He received his BSc. in Physics from the University of Victoria, and his MSc and PhD's from McGill University in the area of Cloud Physics. Dr. Inkster is a serial entrepreneur, who has founded or acted in senior management positions in three Canadian advanced technology companies, both private and public. His companies have operated in diverse business areas, including remote sensing, marine acoustics, and fibre optics.

Jim Budd
Associate Professor, Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media, Faculty of Graduate Studies

Jim Budd is an Associate Professor in the Industrial Design Program at Emily Carr University of Art & Design. He is head of the Wearables and Interactive Products Lab (WIP) in the Intersections Digital Studios (IDS) at Emily Carr. His research and teaching interests focus on a human-centered approach to the combined areas of industrial design, interaction design, interactive products and rapid prototyping.

Glen Lowry
Associate Professor, Faculty of Culture + Community, Faculty of Graduate Studies

Lowry received his PhD in English from Simon Fraser University and has published on Canadian Literature, 20th century culture & poetics (photography, film, and television). His recent work looks at new forms of cultural expression and social contexts by engaging collaborations among artist and academics, particularly around questions of globalization and urbanization. A senior research in Emily Carr's NSERC-funded Social and Interactive Media Research Centre, Lowry focuses on new media platforms linking scholars, artists, and audiences across cultural and geographical distances. Current projects include the Maraya project, a public artwork linking urban waterfronts in Vancouver and Dubai, UAE a qualitative study of the Outcomes and Impacts of SSHRC's Research/Creations grants and an applied-research project on the utility of Deqq, social software developed for the entertainment industry by Work@Play, in education. Since 2002, he has edited West Coast Line. In 2009, he published Pacific Avenue, a book of poems.

Morgan Brayton
Partner Liaison, Social + Interactive Media Centre

As the SIM Centre's partner liaison, Morgan Brayton works with ECUAD faculty staff to organize events and support collaborations with industry partners. Morgan has a unique hybrid background in arts and administration. She is a familiar face on stage (30 Helens, Girls Like Me) and screen (The L-Word, Scooby Doo Two). She served as the Artistic Director of the Vancouver International Comedy Festival before founding Pink Vixen Comedy Arts, a not-for-profit production company that created socially provocative and entertaining productions, including SketchFest Vancouver, Canada's first festival of sketch comedy. Morgan is well known in Vancouver as an active volunteer and fundraiser with not-for-profit organizations including Haro Park Seniors Centre, Out on Screen Film and Video Society and DOXA Film Festival. She's a regular speaker, panelist and guest instructor at festivals and conferences and an in-demand emcee for celebrations and awards ceremonies.

Dawn Whitworth
Manager of Research + Industry, Industry Liaison
Louise St. Pierre
Associate Professor, Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media, Faculty of Graduate Studies

Louise St. Pierre is Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of Industrial Design at Emily Carr University. She previously taught industrial design at the University of Washington for 10 years (7 years as Chair of the program). She is co-author of Okala Ecological Design, a curriculum that helped to establish ecological teaching methods in design schools across North America. She has received numerous awards for her Industrial Design, Exhibit Design and Sustainable Design work, such as from the Industrial Designer's Society of America, The American Center for Design. Her work has been published in ID Magazine, Print Magazine, Innnovation, and Communication Arts. St. Pierre has received funding for a broad range of collaborative research projects including funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for exploratory curriculum on sustainable product design. She writes on sustainable design and product longevity, and is a regular contributor to Sustainable Minds.com.

Julie Andreyev
Associate Professor, Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media, Faculty of Graduate Studies

Julie Andreyev is an artist whose practice explores the social and spatial character of the city using mobility and performance, and animal consciousness through interactive installation and video. www.animallover.ca Her work has been shown across Canada, in the US, Europe and Japan at venues such as: Viper Festival Basel; SIGGRAPH; ISEA; Media Arts Festival, Tokyo; Elektra Festival, Montreal. Andreyev's work is supported by The Canada Council for the Arts, The British Columbia Arts Council, Foreign Affairs Canada, and The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is Associate Professor in Digital and Interactive Arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, Canada. Andreyev is Artistic Director of Interactive Futures 09: Stereo.

Suzi Webster
Sessional Faculty, Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media

As a new media installation artist, Suzi Webster's practice is concerned with exploring and critiquing the ways in which technologies, specifically but not solely digital technologies, impact and shape our experiences of being human. In particular, Webster is excited by the possibilities offered by digital media to create work that is collaborative, responsive and dynamic, rather than fixed and static, and that undermines traditional fine art distinctions based on medium specificity. Her current research interests center around wearables that explore intersections between sculpture and performance, fashion and computing, the body and its context, public and private, in a critical way. Recent exhibitions have included Node London; Artefact, at FACT in Liverpool, UK; and Cyborgs: man or machine at the Science Museum in Newcastle UK. Webster completed a BFA at Emily Carr University and an MFA Media at the Slade in London, UK and will be participating in electromode codelive in 2010.

Haig Armen
Sessional Faculty, Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media

For over 15 years Haig Armen has been producing award-winning design. Haig was a key figure behind the concept, strategic and design development for CBC Radio 3, a project that earned over 20 international awards. Furthermore, his interactive design boutique, LiFT studios has become a prominent design force in the Vancouver industry over the past two years. As a designer, Haig has designed corporate identities, book covers, ads, promotional items and cd covers for prestigious clients like bmw, Chanel & Nokia. Haig has taught Design and Web Strategy courses at Emily Carr and Simon Fraser Universities & Langara College. Armen's background is as a professional musician and he continues to create music for film and art projects.

Joy James
Associate Professor, Faculty of Culture + Community, Faculty of Graduate Studies

Dr. James, Assistant Dean in the Faculty of Graduate Studies, is a writer and educator working in the areas of critical and cultural theory and aesthetics. Her research focuses on visual culture and art situated in the interstices of science, art, and technology, and the impact of cultural production on an individual’s, a group’s, or a population’s sense of possibility and potentiality. Current research and writing projects focus on the aesthetics of affect, new media art, the implications and applications of biotechnological imaging systems and changing definitions of what it means to be human in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Deborah Shackleton
Associate Professor, Faculty of Design + Dynamic media, Faculty of Graduate Studies

Deborah Shackleton is an Associate Professor who teaches design and critical studies courses. She holds a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree from Ryerson and is an MA candidate in the Leadership Program at Royal Roads University. Deborah’s research interests include creativity, participatory design processes, learning theory and instructional design. In addition to her teaching practice Deborah is a published designer, writer and photographer. As a co-recipient of curriculum and social science research grants she has developed projects for the BC Ministry of Advanced Education and the BC Ministry of Education. In 2002, two of these projects received Certificates of Recognition in the BC Innovation Awards. Spring 2008 marks the release of a new University of Toronto publication on Northrop Frye that features her written and photographic work. She is a professional member of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada and the Canadian Association of Photographers and Illustrators in Communications.

Ruben Moller
Sessional Faculty

Rubén Möller works as an independent animator in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He pursues film and digital production to evolve his theory and practice of new media structures. Through his own production company along with television and theatrical organizations he branches out these ideas into industry and education.

Helene Day Fraser
Sessional Faculty, Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media