Description
Recently completing a SSHRC funded research-creation PhD in Culture Studies at Queen’s University, Dr. Jill Price is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator grateful to be living on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabe Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi Nations in Barrie, Ontario. Sensitive to global systems of extraction, production, dissemination, and discard that contribute to racial and economic hierarchies of ecocide as well as the interacting material entanglements of human and more-than-human bodies, Price’s thesis From Unsettling to UN/making outlines how ‘all art is Land art,’ as it is from, across, and into the earth all matter travels. Now working at the intersections of art, ecology, ethics, aesthetics, and activism to examine at what point everyday activities such as walking, writing, planting, and cleaning become art and art becomes service, Price employs methods of deconstruction, de-alienation, decentring, degrowth to help decolonize her perspective and resist colonial, industrial capitalist and patriarchal ways of knowing and being that have and continue to create physical and psychological harm.
Tegan Moore works in sculpture and installation to question the built environment and its relationship with the body through granular, intuitive, and research-based investigations. Her practice embraces the perpetual use of discarded material, complicating their time and value flows and the dominant systems they circulate within. Recent exhibitions were presented at Centre CLARK, Montréal, Galerie Nicolas Robert, Montréal, Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, YYZ Artists’ Outlet, Toronto. Holding a BFA from Emily Carr University and an MFA from Western University, she is now based in Tio’tià:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal. Moore also works collaboratively with plastic pollution research group The Synthetic Collective and co-organizes the project space SUPPORT.
Melissa De Young is Chief Executive Officer at Pollution Probe. She brings nearly twenty years of experience tackling environmental issues, fifteen of them dedicated to advancing Pollution Probe’s mission through programming, policy, and advocacy. Before stepping into the CEO role, Melissa steadily progressed through key leadership positions with the organization, including Vice President, Director of Policy and Programs (leading the Circular Economy and Water Programs), and Project Manager. In these roles, she addressed a broad range of issues—from environmental health and chemicals management to Great Lakes and freshwater management, circular economy and transportation.
A certified Project Management Professional (PMP), Melissa has extensive experience in designing, implementing and overseeing policy and environmental protection initiatives and public engagement campaigns and in developing clear, actionable strategies to address a range of complex environmental challenges. Notable initiatives under her leadership have included the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup, Plastics Pathway, Electric Mobility Adoption and Prediction, and the development of an innovative machine learning tool in support of adaptive watershed management.
Melissa holds a Master of Environmental Studies from York University and an Honours bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Toronto.
