Steering Committee
Robert Anderson (on sabbatical)
professor, School of Communications, SFU
Dr. Robert S. Anderson is a Professor of the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, and teaches a course on "Negotiation and Dialogue as Communication." Since receiving his PhD in anthropology at the University of Chicago, he has been involved in development and communication projects in conflict situations in India, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Thailand, China and the eastern Caribbean. Dr. Anderson is the author of several books and is currently writing a book on the Rashomon-effect, which is important in negotiation.
Robert Daum
director and associate professor, rabbinic literature and jewish thought, iona pacific inter-religious centre
Robert Daum has been Associate Professor of Rabbinic Literature & Jewish Thought, as well as founding Director of Iona Pacific Inter-religious Centre, at the Vancouver School of Theology, since 2009. Iona Pacific is an inter-religious Centre that seeks to discover, model, and disseminate best practices in inter-religious cooperation in addressing critical local and global issues www.ionapacific.ca. He also is a Faculty Associate of the Centre for Women's and Gender Studies, a member of the Law and Society Advisory Board and held the Diamond Chair in Jewish Law & Ethics at the University of British Columbia from 2002-2009, until leaving to head up the newly established Iona Pacific Inter-religious Centre.
Robert completed his B.A. magna cum laude in Political Science at Tufts University and was ordained as a rabbi at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in New York, where he also completed his M.A. in Hebrew Literature. Subsequently he earned a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and served in the congregational rabbinate in California for nine years, where he was active in inter-religious initiatives and educational administration. He has been a visiting scholar at Roman Catholic, Lutheran, United Church, Anglican, and Jewish institutions. His publications include critical studies of Jewish culture, philosophy, rhetoric, and religious literature. www.vst.edu/main/people/faculty/daum.
Martin Gotfrit
Director, School for the contemporary arts, SFU
Martin Gotfrit is the Director of the School for the Contemporary Arts and a Professor in its Music Area. His areas of research are computational systems for music composition and performance, film music and sound and music improvisation. Co-director of the Computational Poetics Research Group, his research/performance work has taken him around the world with a special focus on India. For more details, please visit www.sfu.ca/~gotfrit.
Am Johal
Community Engagement Coordinator, woodwards cultural unit, sfu
Am Johal works in the Vancity Office of Community Engagement in the SFU Woodwards Cultural Unit. He has previously chaired the Impact on Communities Coalition and has been involved on the boards of the Or Gallery, Reach Health Clinic, the policing committee of the BC Civil Liberties Association and is co-founder of UBC's Humanities 101 program. He has worked in politics, human rights, journalism and with civil society organizations. He has an MA in International Economic Relations and is a part-time PhD student in Communication at European Graduate School.
Genevieve Fuji Johnson
Associate Professor, department of political science, sfu
Genevieve Fuji Johnson, Associate Professor, is interested in contemporary Anglo-American political theory, feminist social and political thought, ancient Greek political thought, and a range of current public policy issues. She has published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Comparative Policy Analysis, Contemporary Political Theory, Governance, Policy Sciences, and Les Ateliers de l'Éthique. She is author of Deliberative Democracy for the Future: The Case of Nuclear Waste Management in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2008), which has been translated into Japanese (Shinsen Sha, 2011). She is co-editor (with Randy Enomoto) of Race, Racialization and Anti-Racism in Canada and Beyond (University of Toronto Press, 2007) and co-editor (with Darrin Durant) of Nuclear Waste Management in Canada: Critical Issues, Critical Perspectives (UBC Press, 2009). She holds a three-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant to study deliberative democratic practices in areas of Canadian public policy, including social housing, energy generation, and nuclear waste management. This research will culminate in a monograph, tentatively entitled Deliberative Democracy in Canada: Case Studies, to be submitted to the University of Toronto Press.
Dr. Johnson is an Associate Faculty Member of the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. She has served as a member of the Board of Directors (2009-2011) and Executive (2010-2011) of the Canadian Political Science Association.
Janet Moore
Assistant Professor, Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue, sfu
Janet Moore is an Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue where she teaches in the Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue Program. She has imagined, designed and facilitated courses that focus on community engagement, resilience, lifestyle activism, food systems, group process and urban sustainability at UBC, SFU and the Great Northern Way Campus (a collaboration of UBC, SFU, BCIT and Emily Carr). Janet is currently the University Teaching Fellow for the new SFU Faculty of Environment and a research associate with the SFU Centre for Sustainable Community Development.
She has been involved with a number of innovative sustainability education projects in Vancouver including university engagement on sustainability curriculum at UBC where she completed her doctoral dissertation Recreating the University from within: Sustainability and Transformation in Higher Education in the Department of Curriculum Studies, Faculty of Education. Janet also worked closely with The Learning City Project – an inter-institutional project working towards integrating real world issues in to the university classroom. Janet spent 4 years as the Provincial Leader of the BC Working Group and Network on Sustainability Education a group that is now the UN Regional Centre for Expertise in Education for Sustainable Development – British Columbia.
Her research interests include long-term research and evaluation of transdisciplinary higher education, transformative learning, participatory action research, sustainability education and organizational change in higher education.
Janet is passionate about teaching and learning, facilitating dialogue and participatory processes. She keeps busy raising two kids and dreaming of life as a social entrepreneur/urban farmer.
Blog: http://janetmoore.wordpress.com
Judy Smith
DIRECTOR, COMMUNITY EDUCATION PROGRAM, LIFELONG LEARNING, SFU
Judy Smith is the Program Director of the SFU Community Education Program, a program that leverages university and community knowledge, expertise and resources to enhance community capacities and support positive social change. A Masters in Arts degree (UBC) studying historical ideas about race, gender, sexuality and class provides the theoretical ground for Judy’s 20 years of activism and community-based program development work in the social profit sector. As part of a dynamic team at SFU, she now oversees and participates in the design and implementation of inclusive, community engaged educational projects and programs that address critical community needs, such as the Certificate in Dialogue and Civic Engagement, the Aboriginal Bridge Programs and a Certificate in Community Capacity Building where participants help to realize community goals and visions in inner city and First Nations communities.
Shauna Sylvester
DIRECTOR AND FOUNDER, Carbon talks, FELLOW
Shauna Sylvester is a Fellow at the Simon Fraser University Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue and the Executive Director of Carbon Talks a national initiative focused on increasing Canada's global competitiveness by shifting to a low carbon economy. Shauna is a skilled facilitator, a social entrepreneur and a commentator on international issues. Prior to leading Carbon Talks, Shauna served as the Founding Director of Canada's World – a national citizen engagement initiative on foreign policy.
Shauna has written and edited several publications related to foreign policy, social and environmental issues and has provided policy advice to governments and foundations on subjects as varied as climate change, human security, media and democratic development. In 1997 to 2006, Shauna co-founded and served as the first Executive Director of IMPACS – the Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society, a media and democracy organization that operated in Canada and in conflict and post-conflict zones around the world.
In addition to her international work, Shauna is involved in her community. She has served as Treasurer to Mountain Equipment Cooperative and on the boards of Vancity Credit Union, Vancity Capital, the Voluntary Sector Initiative and the BC Assessment Authority.
In 2010 Shauna was recognized by The Simons Foundation as a Peace Leader. In 2003, she was named one of Canada's Top 40 Under 40 in the Globe and Mail after receiving a similar award from Business in Vancouver Magazine in 2000.
Sarah Thompson
Student Representative
Sarah Thompson is in her final year of a degree in Geography with an environmnetal specialty at Simon Fraser University. She was a student of the Semester in dialogue fall 2011 term and a is pursuing a minor in Dialogue. She has been involved with volunteer work with many environmental, development and communication projects in Vancouver including the Vancouver Foundation, Canadian Cancer Society and Sustainable SFU and is also a Scout leader for 40th Marpole Cubs. Sarah is also an active sportswoman, with a keen interest in soccer, rugby, swimming, running and has taken part in many triathlon competitions over the last two years.
Mark Winston
(Chair) Academic Director, Centre for Dialogue, SFU
Mark L. Winston has had a distinguished career researching, teaching, writing and commenting on bees and agriculture, environmental issues, and science policy. More recently, he has utilized dialogue in classrooms, corporations, non-profit organizations, government, and community settings to develop leadership and communication skills, conduct strategic planning, inspire organizational change, and thoughtfully engage public audiences with controversial issues. Winston's work has appeared in numerous books, commentary columns for the Vancouver Sun, The New York Times, The Sciences, Orion magazine, and frequently on CBC radio and television and National Public Radio. His research, communication, and dialogue achievements have been recognized by many awards, including the Manning Award for Innovation, Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy, British Columbia Gold Medal in Science and Engineering, Academic of the Year, Eve Savory Award for Science Communication, Michael Smith Award for Science Promotion, a prestigious Killam Fellowship from the Canada Council, and election as a Fellow in the Royal Society of Canada. He currently is Academic Director of Simon Fraser University's Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, and a Professor of Biological Sciences.
