Co-Presidents: 

Laura Bisaillon is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto. She studies the social organization of medical, legal and bureaucratic knowledge. Her book Screening Out (2022) is an institutional ethnography of HIV-related practices in the Canadian immigration medical program. She was awarded Best Book in Canadian Studies from the Canadian Studies Network and Best Book Honourable Mention from the Canadian Sociological Association. Her documentary The Unmaking of Medical Inadmissibility debuted at the 2022 Canadian Labour International Film Festival. She is currently working on two books. The first is an ethnography of fishers’ responses to infrastructure projects beginning in 1950s in Rustico, Prince Edward Island. The second is a biography of the late feminist sociologist Dorothy E. Smith within the story of Canadian sociology during the 1970s and 1980s. These three books are conceptual companions that document, analyze and produce new understandings of Canadian society.

Raymond B. Blake is Professor of history at the University of Regina and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is formerly the Director of the Centre for Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University and has held several appointments in Canadian Studies, including the Craig Dobbin Chair in Canadian Studies at University College Dublin. He is also the author, co-author and editor of more than 20 books. His most recent book is Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Shaping of a National Identity.  

Vice-President and Secretary/Treasurer:

Lindsay Thistle is a Sessional Faculty Member at Wilfrid Laurier University and Trent University where she teaches courses in English Literature, Communication Studies, Cultural Studies, and Canadian Studies. Her research focuses on plays about war in Canadian theatre from 1960 until present date and includes publications on radio drama about war, theatre as a site of reimagining history, representations of the “War on Terror” in the media and theatre, dramatic interventions in war legacies, and the use of fairy tale tropes in plays about war. In 2025, she’ll hold a Craig Dobbin Legacy Scholarship at University College Dublin for her current research project, “Staging World War II and the Holocaust: Violence and Victims in the Age of Heroism, 1945-1975.” Additionally, she is a passionate theatre artist who uses drama to interact with historical narratives and events.

Member at large:

Professor Eve Haque is the York Research Chair in Linguistic Diversity and Community Vitality at York University (Canada). She is also co-editor for the TOPIA: A Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. Her research and teaching interests include multiculturalism, white settler colonialism and language policy, with a focus on the regulation and representation of racialized im/migrants in white settler societies. She has published widely on these topics and is also the author of Multiculturalism within a Bilingual Framework: Language, Race and Belonging in Canada published with University of Toronto Press.

John W. Bessai, PhD, is an independent scholar and media practitioner based in Toronto, Ontario. His research examines how public institutions and cultural infrastructures shape democratic life through policy, media, and public-facing storytelling, with sustained attention to the National Film Board of Canada. He developed the Canadian aporetic condition, an analytic framework that names recurring tensions in identity, legitimacy, governance, and cultural memory as structuring conditions in Canadian public life. He also develops public code and counter-policy to analyze institutional accountability and participation design. He has taught for many years in Canadian postsecondary settings, including Okanagan College, University College of the North, and Trent University. His media work includes Green Heroes TV and From Field to Studio: The Art of Paul Kane. Recent publications include “The aporetic condition in Canadian public policy” (Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies, 2025) and “Populist style, nationalist affect” (Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2025). Website: https://johnbessai.com

Graduate Student Representative:

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