Our Research Team

Principal Investigators

Rosemary Coombe
Rosemary J. Coombe is a Tier One Canada Research Chair in Law, Communication and Cultural Studies at York University in Toronto, where she teaches in the Communication and Culture Joint PhD/MA Programme, and is cross-appointed to the Osgoode Hall Faculty of Law Graduate Programme, and the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought. Prior to being awarded one of the country's first Canada Research Chairs she was Full Professor of Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. She holds a J.S.D. from Stanford University with a Minor in Anthropology and publishes widely in anthropology and political and legal theory.

Christopher Innes
Christopher Innes, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Distinguished Research Professor, is the author of, among others, Designing Modern America: Broadway to Main Street (2005), Modern British Drama - The Twentieth Century (2002), A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre (2000), Avant Garde Theatre (1993), and Politics and the Playwright: George Ryga (1986). He has published widely on modern drama and theatre history, in particular the development of political and avant-garde theatrical movements in Germany and France, including Brecht and Artaud; and on the work of stage directors. He is general editor of the Cambridge Directors in Perspective series, co-editor of the Lives of the Theatre series, and an editor of Modern Drama. His website is www.moderndrama.ca.

Darren Wershler-Henry
The former senior editor at Coach House Books, Darren Wershler-Henry is the author or co-author of five books about technology and culture, including the bestselling Internet Directory 2000 (with Scott Mitchell), FREE as in speech and beer, and Commonspace: Beyond Virtual Community (with Mark Surman). He is also the author of two books of poetry, NICHOLODEON: a book of lowerglyphs, and the tapeworm foundry, which was shortlisted for the Trillium Prize. His most recent books are The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting, and a new book of poetry, apostrophe (with Bill Kennedy), both published in 2006. Wershler-Henry's current areas of research interest include social software, the relationship of conceptual art and procedural poetics to the development of new media technologies, new media poetics, and the role of theft and plagiarism in digital creativity.

Design and Development

Bill Kennedy, Project Director
Bill runs Stop14 Media, a web development company and consultancy that specializes in the arts, publishing and not-for-profit sectors. He is also the Artistic Director of the Scream Literary Festival in Toronto, a sometimes editor of poetry at Coach House Books and a co-conspirator in apostrophe (with Darren Wershler-Henry), a book of poems created by a trusty team of web robots and everyone on the internet.

Research Assistants

David Meurer, Senior Research Assistant
David is a PhD candidate in the Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at York and Ryerson Universities. His research explores the intersections of literary narrative and new media technologies, and the application of emerging technologies and social practices to literary production.

Ren Bucholz is interested in the intersection of copyright policy, new technology, and competition law. At Artmob, he's part of team researching how an archive can encourage fair dealing. He is the former Assistant Director of International Policy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the imminent recipient of an MA from York/Ryerson's program in Communication and Culture, and a current law student at Osgoode Hall.

Eliot Che is a web developer, graphic designer and Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate Programme in Social & Political Thought. He studies the political implications of technological transformation and the social effects of virtual space. When not working, he enjoys untraining his dog, Max.

Taha Taha

Ariana Andrei

Mandy Forbes