Tanya Behrisch

BIOGRAPHY

As Director of Co-operative Education at SFU, I lead 55 educators to facilitate 3,000 Co-op work terms/year in industry, public and not-for-profit sectors, connecting students’ academic learning to paid work experience in their field.

My PhD in the Philosophy of Education won the Dean’s Medal for Academic Excellence. I was thrilled to win the People’s Choice Award for my Three Minute Thesis Competition, the President’s PhD Scholarship ($7000) and a full two-year scholarship to the United World College of the Adriatic where I completed my International Baccalaureate in Duino, Italy (1986-1988).

RESEARCH

I’m a writer, researcher and artist interested in human involvement with on our more-than-human relatives and with the unknown. I view disruption and strangeness as sites of creativity and discovery of self in relation to others.

My arts-based transdisciplinary work involves oil painting, creative non-fiction writing, working with found materials, and collaborating with fellow scholars and more-than-human beings.

The Tao, queer studies, posthumanism, and hermeneutics are a few coordinates that guide my work which hovers around the cultural studies genre.

I believe in the wisdom of holding things lightly, and not taking myself too seriously. These practices make way for the unexpected and absurd to arise in life and scholarship, which can be wickedly fun and profoundly satisfying.

I have two forthcoming books: Habits to Finish Your PhD Before Your PhD Finishes You, an irreverent practical guide for grad students wanting to finish what they started, and Mastery’s Paradox, a sweeping paean to modernity’s relationship to divergent concepts of mastery.

I serve on doctoral committees, advise students on arts- and land-based research, and welcome further opportunities to work with doctoral and master’s students.  Using humor and personal story telling, I help students punch through writer’s block, imposter syndrome and paralysis in order to flourish.

PUBLICATIONS

Books

(In press). Mastery’s Paradox: Making Friends with Strangeness in a More Than Human World. Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers.

(2025). Habits to Finish Your PhD Before Your PhD Finishes You. [Manuscript under consideration]. Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University.

Refereed journal articles

Behrisch, T., & Jardine, D.W. (2026) Origin Stories in Writing and Painting. [Manuscript submitted for publication]. Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University.

Behrisch, T., Fernandes, K., Tucker, M. (2026). Sharing food as gentle activism: A transcultural journey towards veganism and animal kinship [Manuscript submitted for publication]. Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University.

Rumjahn, A., & Behrisch, T. (2025). Contemplating post-graduate grief: Re-evaluating our relationship to the future. Holistic Education Review, 5(2), 1-11. https://her.journals.publicknowledgeproject.org/index.php/her/article/view/3338

Behrisch, T., Rumjahn, A., & Yakamov, C. (2025). Healing in relation: Honoring post-graduate grief as an opportunity for relational scholarship. Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education, 3(1), 3–27.

Behrisch, T., & Jardine, D. (2024). The art of coming upon something. Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 9(1), 69–94. https://doi.org/10.18432/ari29790

Behrisch, T. (2024). Storywood: Collaborating with opaque unknowable others through oil painting. Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.25035/jche.02.01.10

Behrisch, T., & Bussard, N. (2024). Troubling transformative learning theory in the context of liquid modernity. XV Biennial International Transformative Learning Conference, Siena, Italy, 64–71. https://www.intertla.org/past-conferences-proceedings/

Behrisch, T. (2023). Integrating artistic knowing with ancient STEM: Painting my encounter with a wild doe. SFU Educational Review, 15(1), 216–228. https://doi.org/10.21810/sfuer.v15i1.6131

Behrisch, T. (2023). Learning through turkey vultures: Encountering death and more-than human opacity through smell. Pathways: The Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education., 35(2), 32–35.

Behrisch, T. J. (2021). Painting deep time: Encountering landforms’ alterity and phusis through phenomenology and oil painting. Phenomenology & Practice, 16(1), 90-107.

Behrisch, T. J. (2021). Shapeless listening to the more-than-human world: Coherence, complexity, mattering, indifference. Cultural Studies↔ Critical Methodologies, 21(6), 491-508.

Scott, C., Behrisch, T., Bhattacharjee, M., Grass, S., & Bai, H. (2021). Re/turning to soil: becoming one-bodied with the Earth. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 16(3), 707-726.

Behrisch, T. J. (2021). Cooking a pot of beef stew: Navigating through difficult times through slow philosophy. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(6), 667-676. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800420941057, first published online 2020.

Behrisch, T., & Gemino, A. (2020). Sensation seekers who learn abroad: exploring the role of risk perception in co-op students' international plans. International Journal of Work-Integrated Learning, 21(1), 117–129.

Behrisch, T. (2016). Cost and the craving for novelty: Exploring motivations and barriers for cooperative education and exchange students to go abroad. Asia-Pacific Journal of Co-operative Education, 17(3), 279-294.

Behrisch, T., Hayter, R., & Barnes, T. (2003) "I don’t really like the mill; In fact, I hate the mill: Changing youth vocationalism under Fordism and post-Fordism in Powell River, British Columbia." BC Studies, 135, 73-101.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS, SEMINARS, ART EXHIBITS, PODCASTS, INTERVIEWS

Rumjahn, A., & Behrisch, T. (2025). Contemplating post-graduate grief: Temporality and ambivalence in education [Conference panel presentation], International Network of Philosophers of Education (INPE), online, SFU, Vancouver.

Behrisch, T. (2025) How artistic practice can deepen your scholarship and liberate you from perfection [seminar and art tour], Education Hub, Faculty of Education, SFU, Burnaby.

Behrisch, T. (2025) The Sublime Freedom of Not Knowing [oil painting exhibition], Education Hub, Faculty of Education, SFU, Burnaby.

Behrisch, T., Fernandes, K., & Tucker, M. (2025). The pedagogy of sharing food: Engaging learners’ assumptions about food, eating and veganism as a way towards more respectful relations with animals [Conference presentation], WestCAST Conference 2025, Faculty of Education, SFU, Burnaby.

Behrisch, T. (2024). Life Works [oil painting exhibition], Langara College, Vancouver.

Behrisch, T., & Bussard, N. (2024). Troubling transformative learning theory in the context of liquid modernity, [Conference presentation], XV Biennial International Transformative Learning Conference, Siena, Italy.

Behrisch, T. (2024). Reimagining mastery through scarcity and abundance: Oil painting with the more-than-human [Conference presentation], International Conference of Qualitative Inquiry, University of Illinois, Urbana.

Bai, H., Banack, H., Behrisch, T., Scott, C., Beavington, L., Rumjahn, A., Haber, J., & Wang, R.-H. (2024). Practical wisdom as a way of knowing, worldview-consciousness shift, strange kinship, wild pedagogies, contemplative practice in deep time: A Canadian westcoast dialogue circle of concern addresses philosophy as lived experience, [Conference panel presentation], Canadian Philosophy of Education Society, Canadian Society for the Study of Education, Montreal.

Bussard, N., & Behrisch, T. (2024). Willing to be transformed: Toward empathic authentic leadership, [Conference presentation], British Columbia Career Development Association, Vancouver.

Forte, M., Barreiro, J., & Behrisch, T. (2024). Practicing relational feminism and posthumanism: What it means and how it shapes us (S. Shams, Interviewer) [IDEAS Podcast], Faculty of Education, SFU.

Forte, M., Barreiro, J., & Behrisch, T. (2023). The journey of the Reading Thinking Doing Club (RTD), a forum for emerging scholars to think with post-humanist, new materialist, Indigenous and Black thinkers. (S. Shams, Interviewer) [IDEAS Podcast], Faculty of Education, SFU.

Behrisch, T. (2022). Mastery as letting go of control: Oil painting with the more than human world, [Conference presentation], Geopoetics Symposium, Hollyhock Leadership Learning Centre, Cortes Island.

Behrisch, T. (2022). Mastery as surrendering to more-than-human subjectivities, [oil painting exhibition], Geopoetics Symposium, Hollyhock Leadership Learning Centre, Cortes Island.

Behrisch, T. (2022). Opening while failing: Oil painting as anti-masterful practice of research and unlearning, [Conference presentation], Learning Together unConference (LTuC), Faculty of Education, SFU, Burnaby.

Behrisch, T., & Gustavson, K. (2022). Walking together as collaborative research, thinking, playing, [Conference presentation] Learning Together unConference 2022 (LTuC), Faculty of Education, SFU, Burnaby.

Behrisch, T. (2021). Mentorship of the more-than-human world (K. Gustavson, Interviewer) [IDEAS Podcast], Faculty of Education, SFU.

Behrisch, T. (2020). Sensation seekers who learn abroad: exploring how risk perception influences co-op students to go international and keeps most home [poster presentation postponed due to COVID], World Assoc of Co-operative Education (WACE) International Research Symposium, Limerick, Ireland.

Behrisch, T. (2019). Sensation Seekers: Why risk pushes some students to learn abroad and keeps most home [Conference presentation], BC Association for Co-operative Education (ACE) Conference, Victoria.

Behrisch, T., & Chicoine, H. (2019). Managing distributed teams well: Building trust & connectivity between colleagues working remotely from each other [Conference presentation], BC Association for Co-operative Education (ACE) Conference, Victoria.

Behrisch, T. (2018). Cost and the craving for novelty: Exploring motivations and barriers for cooperative education and exchange students to go abroad [Poster presentation], World Association for Co-operative Education (WACE) International Research Symposium, Stuttgart.

Behrisch, T. (2015). Cost and the craving for novelty: Exploring motivations and barriers for cooperative education and exchange students to go abroad [Keynote presentation], Canadian Association for Co-operative Education (CAFCE) AGM, Lethbridge.

Behrisch, T. (2015). Why go international?  What motivates Beedie Business students to complete international co-op and exchange? [Invited presentation], SFU Student Services, Burnaby.