Researchers
International Indigenous Studies
Judy Anderson
Judy Anderson is Nêhiyaw (Cree) from Gordon First Nation, SK, Treaty 4 territory and an Assistant Professor of Canadian Indigenous Studio Art in the Department of Art.
Her practice includes beadwork, installation, hand-made paper, painting, three-dimensional pieces, and, collaborative projects all of which are deeply personal with a focus on issues of spirituality, family, colonialism and Indigenous epistemological and ontological traditions. Her current work is created with the purpose honouring the people in her life and Indigenous intellectualizations of the world. In addition, she has also been researching traditional European methods and materials of painting, methods she’s been adapting and assimilating into traditional Indigenous arts.
She is the proud recipient of The Salt Spring Prize (Joan McConnell Award + Residency for Outstanding Work) and a REVEAL: Indigenous Art Awards. Anderson has had residencies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, the International Studio and Curatorial Program in Brooklyn, New York, and the Prince’s School of Traditional Art, London, England where she spent two months teaching and learning.
Adela Tesarek Kincaid
Dr. Adela Tesarek Kincaid’s research interests include community-based research, philanthropy and volunteerism as well as animal-human relations. She earned a Ph.D. in human geography at the University of Calgary which was based on studying various communities and their relationships to free-roaming or wild horses. Dr. Kincaid’s postdoctoral work at the University of Regina focused on the importance of animal-human relations in Indigenous communities and in individual healing journeys. In her previous role as a Faculty Researcher at the Applied Research and Innovation Centre at Selkirk College, Adela secured funding and supervised 18 research internships in partnership with local NGOs on rural environmental sustainability, social equity, food security, and community responses to COVID -19. Adela’s publications include a focus on situational analysis methods, animal-human relationships and Indigenous wellness, using blended Indigenous-qualitative approaches to understand animal-human relations and participatory applied research models working with and for communities. Adela teaches in the International Indigenous Studies program and is developing experiential learning courses by partnering with Indigenous communities and organizations. She is also developing an undergraduate course centered on animal-human relationships that will focus on the complex and nuanced interrelationships of Indigenous peoples, animals and the more-than-human.
Jennifer Leason
Boozhoo, Aniin Keesis Sagay Egette Kwe nindiznikaaz (greetings, my name is First Shining Rays of Sunlight Woman). Dr. Jennifer Leason is Anishinaabek and a member of Pine Creek Indian Band, Manitoba and the proud mother of Lucas and Lucy. Dr. Leason is a Canadian Institute of Health Research, Canada Research Chair, Tier II, Indigenous Maternal Child Wellness and an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary. Dr. Leason is the recipient of a CIHR New Investigator Award (2017-2020); New Frontiers in Research Fund Award (2019-2021); and CIHR Operating Grant (2020-2023). Her research aims to address perinatal health disparities and inequities by examining maternity experiences, healthcare utilization, and social-cultural contexts of Indigenous maternal child wellness.
Adam T. Murry
Adam T. Murry (Apache, Ph.D. in applied psychology) is an assistant professor at the University of Calgary where he runs the Indigenous Organizations and Communities Development Research lab. He is co-principal investigator for the Alberta Indigenous Mentorship in Health Innovation (AIM-HI) network and Network Environment for Indigenous Health Research (NEIHR) in Canada, and conducts research on Indigenous mentorship, allyship, employment, education, Indigenous studies, substance use, mental health, sustainability, and ministry. Dr. Murry has multiple peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, serves on several diversity and Indigenous-specific committees, and consults with both the non-profit and Tribal sector.
Rain Prud’homme-Cranford (Goméz)
Rain Prud’homme-Cranford (Goméz) (Dr. PC), PhD: is a FATtastically queer Louisiana Creole IndigeNerd who reads too much and drinks too much black tea. A singer-songwriter, poetess, artist, an editor, she is an Assistant Professor English and Affiliated Faculty, International Indigenous Studies, and Indigenous Student Access Program at the University of Calgary. Dr. PC's research is within Gulf Creole Indigeneity/Méstizaje, Indigenous/Afro-Indigenous, and BIPOC Studies/Rhetorics as connected with gender, 2SQ, & Sexuality; Landbase & Ecocriticism; STEM; and Fat studies. Her books include Smoked Mullet Cornbread Crawdad Memory (MEP 2012, as Rain C. Goméz); Miscegenation Roundance: Poèmes Historiques (winter 2020 Mongrel Empire Press); and the co-edited collections Louisiana Creole Peoplehood: Tracing Post-Contact Afro-Indigeneity and Community (University of Washington, Spring 2021) and Indians, Oil, & Water: Indigenous Ecologies and Literary Resistance (TPHP Spring 2021). Her monograph Gumbo Stories: Rhetorics and Quantum Relation-Making in the Trans-Indigenous South is under contract and she has begun her next monograph project: Gather at the River: Spiritual Ecologies in Red/Black Literatures. Research in progress includes the academic work “Keep on Singing for the Good Times:“ Tracing Transcontinental Literary Tributaries & Indigenous Persistence; the creative/theory work “I oughta know about lonely girls:” Essays on Body, Fat, Love, & Place; and a third poetry collection entitled Epidermal Journal: The Fat Poems. Rain is the Executive Editor and Publisher of That Painted Horse Press, a borderless Indigenous/BIPOC non-profit publishing house.
Roberta Rice
Roberta Rice is a settler scholar and ally who teaches in the International Indigenous Studies Program and in Political Science at the University of Calgary. She is the author of The New Politics of Protest: Indigenous Mobilization in Latin America’s Neoliberal Era (University of Arizona Press, 2012) and the co-editor of Protest and Democracy (University of Calgary Press, 2019) and Re-Imagining Community and Civil Society in Latin America and the Caribbean (Routledge, 2016). Her work has appeared in the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, International Indigenous Policy Journal, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, Latin American Research Review, Comparative Political Studies, and Party Politics. She is currently completing a book project on Indigenous rights and representation in Canada and Latin America. She is also working on a new project on Indigenous activism and extractive industry in Bolivia, Ecuador and the Philippines that is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is blessed to be working on Treaty 7 territory.
Joshua Whitehead
Joshua Whitehead is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary. He is a Two-Spirit, Oji-nêhiyaw member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). Whitehead earned his BA Honours and MA in Cultural Studies from the University of Winnipeg in 2014 and 2015 respectfully, and his PhD from UCalgary in 2021. He is the author of full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks 2017), Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp Press 2018), and the editor of Love after the End: an Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction (Arsenal 2020) as well as a forthcoming book, Making Love with the Land, slated to release in 2022 with Knopf Canada. His arenas of study include: storytelling and creative writing, Indigenous genders and sexualities, Two-Spirit studies, and prairie nêhiyaw epistemologies.
Daniel Voth
Daniel Voth is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary. He is Métis from the Métis Nation of the Red River Valley. Raised in Winnipeg’s inner city, Daniel earned his BA Honours from the University of Winnipeg in 2007, and his PhD from UBC in 2015. His research agenda focuses on the political relationships between Indigenous peoples, particularly in southern Manitoba. His work also examines the way settler imposed power structures and land dispossession undermine important gender orientations to Indigenous governance. His research has been published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, the University of Toronto Law Journal, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Canadian Journal of Urban Research, and several book chapters.