Christine D'Onofrio

Christine D’Onofrio


Director, Digital Scholarship in Arts (DiSA)
Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory
Email: christine.donofrio@ubc.ca

Prof. Christine D’Onofrio is a visual artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She attended York University in Toronto for her BFA, and completed her MFA at the University of British Columbia. D’Onofrio has held positions at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, University of Toledo, and the University of Windsor. She has exhibited her work extensively across Canada, at galleries such as: Eyelevel Gallery, Modern Fuel Gallery, Charles H Scott Gallery, Republic Gallery, Helen Pitt Gallery, Gallery 44, La Centrale, and WARC Gallery. Prof. D’Onofrio has also given artist talks and served on panels in various institutions, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the prestigious “Art Now” lectures at the University of Lethbridge. Prof. D’Onofrio works in photography, video, digital media, interactive media, printmaking, sculpture, book works, and installation.

Research Area: Lens based imaging, digital media and interactivity, interested in feminism, social justice, humour, magic and practice based research pedagogies

Christina Laffin

Christina Laffin smiling, wearing a black collared shirt and necklace with drop pendant


Associate Professor of Classical Japanese, Department of Asian Studies
Email: christina.laffin@ubc.ca

Christina Laffin is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies and a former Canada Research Chair in Premodern Japanese Literature and Culture at the University of British Columbia. She also serves as Social Sciences and Humanities Research Advisor in the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation.

Dr. Laffin researches women’s writing, travel literature, and the processes of education and socialization in premodern Japan. She has worked on equity and knowledge sharing for an eight-year project on East Asian religions, collaborated with graduate students to produce a video series on premodern Japan, and led a research cluster representing travel culture in early modern Japan through digital approaches to a seventeenth-century manuscript.

Research Area:

Medieval travel diaries; women’s education and socialization before 1600; poetic practices and waka culture; theories of travel, gender, and autobiography; noh theatre; and comparative approaches to medieval literature.

Shannon Leddy

Associate Professor, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy
Email: sleddy@mail.ubc.ca 

Dr. Shannon Leddy (Métis) is a Vancouver based teacher and writer whose practice focuses on decolonizing education and Indigenous education within teacher education. She holds degrees in Art History and Anthropology from the University of Saskatchewan (1994), an MA in Art History (1997), and a BEd (2005) from the University of British Columbia. Her PhD research at Simon Fraser University focused on inviting pre-service teachers into dialogue with contemporary Indigenous art as a mechanism of decolonizing education and in order to help them become adept at delivering Indigenous education without reproducing colonial stereotypes. During her time as a public school teacher with the Vancouver School Board, Dr. Leddy worked at several high schools as a teacher of Art, Social Studies and English. After a two-year secondment to work as a Faculty Associate in SFU’s Professional Development Program in teacher education, she returned to the VSB to undertake the coordination of an arts-based mini-school. She has also worked as an Instructor in SFU’s Faculty of Education teaching courses in pedagogical foundations and Aboriginal education. In 2013 she was awarded SFU’s Aboriginal Graduate Entrance Scholarship and a SSHRC Bombardier Scholarship in 2015.

Research Area: Art Education Research, Arts Education, Cultural Studies, Environmental Education, Indigenous Education Research, Media, Semiotics, Text Studies, Museum Education Research, Non-Formal Learning, Pedagogy, Philosophy, Teacher Education Research, Ways of Knowing

The Situation of Education

Dr. Leddy developed a podcast on education that gives an opportunity for researchers, parents, teachers and students to discuss their experiences in education. As the facilitator/moderator, she brings a two-eyed seeing perspective to the production, looking at interviewee’s responses with both Western and Indigenous eyes. This podcast launched formally in January 2019, with the long-delayed second season anticipated in July of 2021.

Decolonizing Teaching Indigenizing Learning

In 2020 Dr. Leddy completed work on the Faculty of Education’s new website, Decolonizing Teaching Indigenizing Learning, which features Indigenous curriculum bundles developed by students in their third year of the NITEP program.