Who are we?
Lab Directors
Dr. Sabrina Perić, Co-Director
Sabrina Perić (she/her) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Calgary. She grew up in Rijeka, Croatia, a deep water tanker port city that is home to a pipeline terminus, an oil refinery and a floating LNG terminal. She has always therefore been interested in the way that societies and their politics are shaped by resource industries. Her current research focuses on understanding the role that individuals and communities play in determining energy transition possibilities, particularly through the Alberta Energy Stories Project. As the co-director of the CFI-funded Energy Stories Lab at UCalgary, she favours a community-based and collaborative approach to energy research that brings together both anthropological as well as visual participatory methods. She is also the author of the Prairie Energies Substack.
Dr. Jean-René Leblanc, Co-Director
Jean-René Leblanc (he/him) is Associate Professor of digital arts in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Calgary (since 2006). He was born in Montréal in 1967, and attended Concordia University, which he left in 1993 with a Bachelor in Studio Arts. In 1996, he graduated from the University of Windsor Ontario with a Master of Fine Art in Multimedia and Photography and in 2006, completed a PhD in study and practice of art from the Université du Québec à Montréal. For over a decade his funded research (SSHRC) has focused on the affordance of Augmented Reality as a tool for digital storytelling. He is co-director of the Energy Stories Lab at UCalgary. His artworks have been presented in exhibitions in Canada, the United States of America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.
Dr. Rebecca Dolgoy, Co-Director
As the Curator of Natural Resources and Industrial Technologies at Ingenium – Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation, Rebecca Dolgoy (she/her) is fascinated by human-environmental relations. Her commitment to ethically gathering and generating nuanced energy stories stems from her background in Memory Studies and experience working on collaborative and community-based research/research creation projects. In addition to her work with the Energy Stories Lab, Rebecca’s current projects include: exploring slow memory and climate change, investigating multiperspectival experiences of deindustrialization, and developing an exhibition on diasporic and transcultural memories of food, dining, and cooking. She is also an Adjunct Research Professor in the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies at Carleton University.
Lab Associates
Gerry Straathof, PhD Candidate
Gerry Straathof (he/him) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Calgary. An artist working with mixed media to examine his relationship with abandoned spaces, Gerry shares an experience or insight from his exploration of homesteads, town-sites and industrial spaces. His artwork includes representations of exploration through moving lights, models and unique interactive objects designed to trigger personal responses in the viewer. He brings his background of programming, electronics and 3D creation to this project to help others tell their own unique stories.
Zahra Jafarzadeh, MFA Candidate
Zahra Jafarzadeh (she/her) is an MFA student in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Calgary. After graduating from Tehran University of Art with a Master of Arts in Animation, she started her career as an animation filmmaker, 2D animator, and VFX artist in collaboration with professional animation studios and independent filmmakers. Pursuing her interest in digital storytelling, Zahra has joined as the Lead 2D Animator to the research-creation project centring on collaborative digital storytelling regarding energy narratives, specifically women’s role in developing the energy section in Canada.
Dr. Görkem Aydemir-Kundakcı, Postdoctoral Associate
Görkem Aydemir-Kundakcı (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Calgary. Her research focuses on the spatial and infrastructural experiences of a displaced community in the disputed Georgia-Abkhazia borderland— experiences involving a colossal Soviet-era hydroelectric dam that connects the two sides of a decades-long conflict. She is interested in multimodal and sensory methodologies to better understand the experiential complexity of contested lands. At the Energy Stories Lab, she looks forward to collaborations to develop community-based ways of seeing and knowing energy spaces.
Kiersten Gillis, Undergraduate Associate
Kiersten Gillis (she/her) is a 2nd year undergraduate student in the Bachelor of Arts program at Keyano College. She will be transferring to the University of Calgary for the final two years of her degree, and plans on majoring in psychology. Born and raised in Fort McMurray, AB, her participation in the "Storying the Oil Sands" project has been an invaluable opportunity. She hopes that a project focusing on the oral histories of RMWB residents will reduce the stigma surrounding oil producing regions. In the coming years, she looks forward to studying and researching different areas of psychology, but she has a special interest in mental health therapy and counselling with the aspiration of becoming a therapist herself.
Dr. Anna Bettini, Postdoctoral Associate
Anna Bettini (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, University of Calgary. Originally from Italy, she is an environmental socio-cultural anthropologist. Her research interests include human-environment relationships in energy landscapes, deindustrialization processes in oil and gas communities, and ecological and energy justice. Her previous research investigated the socio-cultural and environmental changes brought on by resource extraction in the mixed petroleum-producing and agricultural regions of Taranaki, New Zealand. Her current project is a multi-sited comparative study between Canada and New Zealand, focusing on oil and gas sector changes in both geographic regions as energy transition processes occur. She is interested in combining storytelling and visual methodologies – from photography to videography – through a collaborative approach to help document the changes within energy landscapes.
Dr. Petra Dolata, Faculty Associate
Petra Dolata (she/her) is Associate Professor of History and former Canada Research Chair in the History of Energy at the University of Calgary. She is the Scholar in Residence at the Calgary Institute for the Humanities (2018-2023), where she co-convenes the Energy In Society working group. Her SSHRC-funded research focuses on the lived experience and histories of energy in North America and Western Europe, mostly in the 20th century. A granddaughter of coal miners, she grew up in the Ruhr valley, West Germany’s former coal and steel region. She specifically examines how individuals, communities and nations have experienced energy transitions in the past and created stories and memories about these experiences and their respective roles in those transitions.
Cynthia Tahhan, Undergraduate Associate
Cynthia Tahhan (she/her) is an undergraduate student majoring in Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Calgary. She grew up in the oil and gas rich city of Dubai to a loving, caring and supportive Syrian family and migrated to Canada in 2013. Her research interests include Canadian social, economic and political affairs, Asia, Latin America, Africa, Indigenous and settler relations. She has contributed to the development of Energy Stories Lab by completing an annotated bibliography of selected texts pertaining to the histories of Foothills County, and will be conducting archival work in the Glenbow Western Research Center.
Yekta Tarki, MFA Candidate
Yekta Tarki (she/her) is a first-year MFA student at the University of Calgary. She grew up in Tehran, Iran. She has always been interested in exploring the concepts related to the relationship between humans and nature in her art and research practices. She developed her interest through her master's thesis in Iran with the subject: Art in The Anthropocene: Reflection of a Ruined Environment in Western Contemporary Art. After completing her master's degree, she continued to delve deeper into subjects related to art, the human-nature relationship, and other sciences such as geology science and environmental studies. Currently, she is doing a research-creation on the subject matter of the Pyrocene. Her research involves the study of wildfires in Alberta, Canada, and Zagros, Iran.