SPEAKERS
OBLIQUITY would be nothing without our incredible speakers and collaborators.
Hover over each image to find out more!
Nisha Patel is an Indo-Canadian poet, artist, and public speaker in Edmonton, Alberta. She is the current Poet Laureate for the City of Edmonton. She is also the 2019 Canadian Individual Slam Champion, the 2019 Edmonton Slam Champion, and the Executive Director of the Edmonton Poetry Festival.
Shirley Serviss. MTS, BA, has worked as the Staff Literary Artist on the Wards for the Friends of University Hospitals for the past 20 years. She has published three collections of poetry; her most recent collection, “Hitchhiking in the Hospital” was based on that experience. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies in Canada, the United States, Ireland and England. She facilitates writing workshops at the City Arts Centre and serves on the Boards of the Stroll of Poets and Arts Habitat.
Manisha Bharadia is an East Indian-Canadian woman born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. She is currently pursuing her Doctor of Medicine at the University of Alberta. Manisha created OBLIQUITY with a vision to create a corpus callosum between the humanities and medicine and highlight the essential interconnectedness of the arts and sciences.
Dr. Dorothy Woodman’s doctoral dissertation focused on breast cancer narratives; this began ongoing research and teaching on medical topics. Publications include entries for The Cultural Encyclopedia of the Breast (2014), co-editing “Reimaging Breasts,” for Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies (2020), and a monograph collaboration on Marvel superheroes with cancer, in-progress for University of Alberta Press.
Dr. Samina Ali is a pediatric emergency physician who has often found herself drawn to poetry and writing as a means to reflect on and makes sense of her work and life experiences. She is a Montrealer who has lived in Alberta for the last two decades, with her husband and three wonderful children. She believes that sharing stories, through art and word, is what ultimately brings love and understanding to our personal and professional lives.
Mark Migotti is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calgary. He works chiefly on the philosophy of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Charles Sanders Peirce, and on the concepts of promising, penalties, and prices. In 2007-8 he taught the inaugural first year seminar in the U of C’s Arts and Sciences honours Program (ASHA), and has taught regularly in it since then, From 2016 to 2019 he was the inaugural Coordinator of ASHA.
Stephanie Dalmer (nee Perrin) was born in Edmonton, Alberta. She has a degree in Art and Design and Creative Writing from the University of Alberta, and is currently in the Doctor of Medicine program there. She is the Arts & Humanities in Health & Medicine (AHHM) representative for her class and the chair of the AHHM Student Committee. She is passionate about bringing together the worlds of art and medicine for the purpose of creative research and in order to help us all better love one another.
Joel Ong is a media artist whose works explore emergent ways of interfacing with the environment through hybrid discourses of art and science. His works involve a triangulation of field work, wet lab, and computational arts and are often presented as on-site lab experiments. Ong is an alumnus of SymbioticA, the Centre of Excellence in BioArts and DXARTS at UW(Seattle), and is an affiliate artist at UCLA ArtSci Collective. He is currently Assistant Professor in Computational Arts at York University in Toronto, and Director of Sensorium: the Centre for Digital Arts and Technology.
Dr. Michiko Maruyama is a GP in training, a former cardiac surgery resident, a cancer patient, a toy designer, an artist and a mother of two toddlers. She is one of Edmonton’s Top 40 Under 40 and Global’s Women of Vision. She co-created Doctors Against Tragedies – a terribly educational game.
Dr. Cheryl Nekolaichuk is a registered psychologist with special training in psychosocial oncology and palliative care, and an academic researcher at the University of Alberta. She has a special interest in exploring the links between the illness experience, creative arts and healing, integrating writing, photography and music within her professional and personal life
Mick Lorusso is an interdisciplinary artist examining the mystery of life through musings on molecules, cells, societies, and environments. With early training in microbiology and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, he is a member of the UCLA Art|Sci Collective, an instructor for the UCLA Sci|Art Nanolab, and a STEAM educator at Westridge School in Pasadena, CA.
Timber Gillis was raised on a berry farm in the Foothills of Alberta. Timber holds a degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and he graduated from the Arts and Sciences Honours Academy stream at the University of Calgary. He is currently pursuing his medical degree at the University of Alberta. Timber is interested in the intersection between experimental art, writing and medicine in hopes of making patient care a more inclusive, beautiful space.