Ciann Wilson, Assistant Professor in Community Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University. Ciann is of Afro-, Indo- and Euro- Jamaican ancestry. She has over a decade of experience working within African, Caribbean, and Black communities across the greater Toronto area first as a youth programmer and now as a health researcher.  Her research interests build off her community-engaged work to include critical race theory, anti-/de-colonial theory, African diasporic and Indigenous community health, HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive wellbeing, and community-based research. Her body of work aims to utilize research as an avenue for sharing the stories and realities of African diasporic, Indigenous, and racialized peoples and improving the health and wellbeing of these communities. Ciann has been instrumental in establishing a community-based research hub in Waterloo Region, which will feature a media lab equipped with media technology to conduct, analyze, and share arts and digital media-based research. Ciann’s work is funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Canadian Innovation Fund, and the Ontario Research Fund, to name a few funding sources.

Katie MacEntee is a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Her research explores the use of participatory visual methodologies to address HIV and AIDS and gender-based violence. Between 2017-2018, Katie was a Social Science Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Post Doctoral Fellow at York University. In 2016, she defended her Doctoral Research at McGill University. Her current research includes a study funded by the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research, Celling Sex, investigating young women in Toronto’s experiences of transactional sex through cellphilms (participant produced videos using cellphones). As part of the SSHRC Insight Development Grant, Enacting Sex Education, she is interviewing Ontario teachers on sexual health education before and after curricular reforms. Katie has experience facilitating digital storytelling, photovoice, collage, documentary, and cellphilm method with Indigenous, rural, and urban communities in Canada, South Africa, Ethiopia, and Austria, as well as various diverse groups attending workshops, symposiums, and international conferences. Katie is a leader in the development of cellphilm method. In 2016, she published the edited book, What’s a Cellphilm? Integrating mobile technology into research and activism (Sense Publishers).

Sarah Flicker is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean Students, Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Environmental Studies 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 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 a number of prestigious awards for youth engagement in health research. Sarah is a straight, white, middle class, 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.

Nakia Lee-Foon Nakia is a Ph.D. candidate in the Social and Behavioural Health Sciences division of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Her award-winning research focuses on exploring the sexual health literacy of young, self-identified Black-African, Caribbean and Canadian gay, bisexual, queer, non-hetero+ youth in Toronto, Ontario. Nakia completed her Master of Health Sciences with specialization in Community Health from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Her master’s thesis explored the state of Black-Canadian parent-youth sexual health communication in Toronto. Nakia has experience teaching in the community as well as at the undergraduate and graduate levels at several Ontario universities.

Tumaini Lyaruu is living, loving, and creating as an uninvited guest in Tkaronto on the territories of the dish with one spoon wampum. Tumaini has supported GAAP initiatives through the Empower Project, as the Community Engaged Learning placement GAAP Coordinator, as a presenter and exhibiter at the GAAP youth sexual health symposium and supported GAAP research and publications. Through Tuly Maimouna, a multidisciplinary community arts practice, Tumaini uses crafting as storytelling to make meaning of personal and shared experiences while learning the technical skills of artistic practice. For the past seven years as a community artist, Tumaini has facilitated arts-based sexual health/HIV workshops, digital storytelling, developed arts education curriculum, and supported arts programing in community and school-based settings. Additionally, Tumaini is a student midwife hoping to support compassionate, skilled and quality care with rural families and people living with HIV.

June Larkin received her PhD from the University of Toronto in 1993, and she joined New College as a Lecturer in Equity Studies and Women Studies in 2001. Her research is in the area of youth, sexual health and HIV/AIDS. She has published in, among others, The Canadian Journal of Public Health, The International Journal of Indigenous Health, Gender and Education, and The Journal of Sex Education. Her contributions to teaching and research have been acknowledged by numerous awards over the past decade, including a 3M National Teaching Fellowship in 2013, a President’s Teaching Award in 2011, and the City of Toronto Constance E. Hamilton Award on the Status of Women in 2007. Dr. Larkin was included in the list of Popular Profs at UofT in the annual MacLean’s Guide to Canadian Universities & Colleges from 2001 to 2005.

Sarah Switzer is a community educator, and community-based participatory researcher living in Tkaronto (Toronto). She began her work with GAAP as an undergraduate student in equity studies. Since then, she has devoted the past 15 years of her career to  working in HIV, harm reduction, and sexual health with a specific focus on arts and health equity.  Her lived experiences as a white, cis, queer settler, with an invisible disability, has motivated her desires to co-design and co-imagine participatory spaces driven by the principles of equity, collaboration, and accessibility. From 2010-2014, Sarah founded and coordinated Empower, a youth-led HIV program at Queen West Community Health Centre that uses the arts to train diverse youth to become peer educators in their own communities.  As community-based researcher, her larger program of research focuses on exploring creative ways to meaningfully engage communities in program and policy change. Sarah’s areas of focus include: community-based participatory research; critical youth studies; engagement; HIV; harm reduction; cultural production and participatory visual methods.  She  completed her doctorate at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies where she critically explored processes of engagement and participation in the HIV sector, including, but not limited to a youth HIV prevention project. She is a post-doctoral fellow at OISE, University of Toronto where she is exploring how community-engaged practitioners are adapting their participatory work to online or remote settings in the context of covid-19.