Faculty of Communication & Design

Post Doctoral Fellows

• Dr. Richard Pope
  Richard Pope is Postdoctoral Fellow in the News Lab at Ryerson University, a Network Centre of Excellence (NCE) in Graphics, Animation and New Media (GRAND). He is responsible for developing theories and methodologies appropriate to a multi-year project studying how individuals currently access and interpret the news over the timelines of news events. Pope holds a Ph.D. in Communication and Culture from York University, an MA in Communication Studies from McGill University, as well as a BA (Hons.) from the University of Toronto. He has published widely in areas of communication studies and cinema studies for such journals as Cinema Journal, Camera Obscura, The International Journal of Zizek Studies, The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Space and Culture, Film-Philosophy, and Theory & Event. He has presented at numerous conferences worldwide and has served as both Sessional Instructor and Assistant Professor at Wilfrid Laurier University. Previous to this appointment, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Visible City Project at York University, Toronto.
  
  
• Dr. Jeremy Shtern
  Jeremy Shtern is a communication policy scholar primarily interested in issues related to globalization and digital technologies. He comes to Ryerson after completing graduate degrees at the London School of Economics and the Université de Montréal. With Marc Raboy, he is co-author of Media Divides: Communication Rights and the Right to Communicate in Canada (UBC Press, 2010). At Ryerson, Jeremy is working with Charles Davis on research that examines cultural diversity in the Canadian media and is teaching in the York/Ryerson Graduate Program in Communication and Culture.
  
  
• Dr. Alessandra Renzi
  Alessandra Renzi has joined the Infoscape Lab to contribute to the production of the collaborative/open source documentary film Open Sourcing Secrecy, based on the recently published book "Preempting Dissent" by Greg Elmer and Andy Opel. The SSHRC-funded, research-creation project Alessandra is part of also includes an upcoming series of talks and publications that analyse contemporary issues of security and surveillance. After completing a PhD on Telestreet, an Italian network of pirate community television channels, Alessandra’s personal research at Infoscape explores the social impact of collaborative documentary and other media activist practices developed by Canadian alternative media projects.
  
  
• Dr. Thierry Gervais
  Thierry Gervais is a curator from l'Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences socials in Paris and directs the Société française de photographie (the second oldest collection of photography in the world). Over the past year, he has exhibited and lectured at the Musée d’Orsay. His research focus, the early days of the illustrated press and the influence of the halftone technique, will be a critical asset within Ryerson's new program of publication and exhibition in the School of Image Arts. Dr. Gervais has been working closely with Professor Marta Braun from the School of Image Arts whose own graduate thesis looked at the Etienne-Jules Marey, a 19th-century scientist and inventor whose major interest was in photographing motion. Dr. Gervais continues to work on his own research of the first war photo reporter Jimmy Hare and along with photo historians in the School of Image Arts is working on a PhD proposal in the history of photography.
  
  
• Dr. Geoffrey James
  Geoffrey James is the former Director of Visual Arts at the Canada Council, a widely published writer and Toronto Book Award nominee, and an award-winning photographer. Over the past year, he has been further exploring his research Edge City: Further Definitions which addresses the theme of urban issues from both written and visual perspectives and been working most closely with Robert Burley in the School of Image Arts. His retrospective Utopia/Dystopia:The Photographs of Geoffrey James, which consisted of 905 photographs documenting housing developments north of Toronto, exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada May 30 2008 – October 19, 2008. Both Geoffrey and his work were also featured in the weekend Review section of the Globe and Mail newspaper at the beginning of June.
  
  
• Dr. Janice Kaye
  Janice Kaye's extensive experience in the Canadian and American film and television industries is rivaled only by her scholarly pursuits of the relationships among policy, funding strategies and the content of Canadian films. Over the past year, she has presented papers in both Quebec and Vancouver. Earlier in 2007, Dr. Kaye received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Working in the Rogers Communications Centre with Dr. Charles Davis, the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Chair of Media Management, Dr. Kaye has been specializing in intersections of local, national and global film and television productions and companies and spent the summer interviewing Toronto screenwriters. This fall, she will be presenting papers in Canterbury and Venice.
  
  
• Dr. Janice Fung
  Janice Fung is the recipient of a MITACS Accelerate award for a research project in partnership with Tony Karg at Fujifilm under the supervision of Dr. Abhay Sharma