Author: Meera Govindasamy and Jonathan Petrychyn / Ryerson University

Meera Govindasamy is an educator, podcast creator, and activist-researcher living in Toronto. In addition to her role as co-director at The Studio for Media Activism and Critical Thought, Meera works at Student Life and Learning Support at Ryerson, where she facilitates a number of programs, including the Social Justice Writing Group. She is presently the Principal Investigator on an RBC Immigrant, Diversity, and Inclusion Project grant, which will use podcasts as a medium for investigating the writing and mental health related experiences of international students at Canadian universities. In 2019 Meera graduated from Ryerson University with a Master’s degree in Communication and Culture; she received the Gold Medal in Interdisciplinary Studies. Additionally Meera holds a BAH from Queen’s University in sociology. Jonathan Petrychyn is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender, Sexuality, and Digitality in the Department of Recreation & Leisure Studies at the University of Waterloo, and a contract faculty member at Ryerson University. His research focuses on the intersections of activism and media industries and seeks to explore the affective economies that bring these sometimes disparate communities together. He received his PhD in Communication & Culture from York University and Ryerson University in 2019. His dissertation, Networks of Feeling: Affective Economies of Queer & Feminist Film Festivals on the Canadian Prairies was awarded the Susan Mann Dissertation Scholarship. His research has been published in Senses of Cinema, Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, the Canadian Journal of Film Studies, and Journal for Media History.