Biographies

Isabelle Gapp is an Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. She holds a PhD in History of Art from the University of York (2020). Her research considers the intersections between landscape painting, gender, environmental history, and climate change around the Circumpolar North, from 1800 to the present day.Isabelle is the co-lead, alongside Professor Mark A. Cheetham, of the JHI Working Group Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North (2021-2023) and serves as an editor for the Network in Canadian History & Environment (NiCHE). Her first book, A Circumpolar Landscape: Art and Environment in Scandinavia and North America, 1890-1930,will be published by Lund Humphries as part of their Northern Lights series in Autumn 2023.

Beth Ginondidoy Leonard is Deg Xit’an, member of the Shageluk Tribe of interior Alaska and second language learner of her heritage language, Deg Xinag. Her parents are the late James and Jean Dementi. In 2014, Beth was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Core Scholarship and spent five months at the School of Māori Studies at Victoria University of Wellington researching and teaching with Dr. Ocean Mercier, associate professor of Māori Studies. Beth is a member of the Alaska Native Studies Council, the Doyon Foundation Language Revitalization Committee/Doyon Languages Online Project and is a 2019 Arctic Indigenous Scholar. After serving as Alaska Native Studies faculty at the University of Alaska Anchorage from 2016-2020, she accepted a research professorship with Alaska Pacific University, an institution moving towards tribal university status. Beth’s research investigates the confluences of Indigenous methodologies, knowledges and pedagogies in higher education.

Bart Pushaw teaches art history at the University of Copenhagen, where he is Novo Nordisk Mads Øvlisen Postdoctoral Fellow in the international research project “The Art of Nordic Colonialism: Writing Transcultural Art Histories.” He received his PhD from the University of Maryland. His research focuses on issues of race, environment, and materiality in order to center global narratives in the Indigenous Arctic, with particular emphasis on the art and material culture of colonial Kalaallit Nunaat. As a scholar and curator, he collaborates with museums and collections in and out of the Arctic to propel the accessibility of Inuit cultural heritage and advance repatriation campaigns. In addition to his first book manuscript, Indulgent Images, he is also the co-editor of two forthcoming volumes, Unfinished Histories: Art, Memory, and the Visual Politics of Coloniality (with Mathias Danbolt and Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer) and The Material Legacies of Nordic Empire (with Thor Mednick).

Sondra Shaginoff-Stuart Kaggos tsak’ae ’uze’ dilaen Naydini’aa Na’ kayax ts’inyaaden Taltsiine Kooyooe Tukadu ełaen Karen Nugent baan Kooyooe Tukadu ’uze’ nlaen eł uta’ snełyaaden Udizyu nlaen Assistant Professor eł Chair of Alaska Native Studies gha University of Alaska, Anchorage eł Ahtna Keneage’ c’edahwdiłdiixen gha ghitnaa. Sondra Shaginoff-Stuart is from the Water clan and fish-Eaters people of Chickaloon Ahtna Dene Village and Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. Her mother is Karen Nugent of the Fish Eaters and her father who raised her from the Caribou Clan. She works as the Assistant Professor and Chair of Alaska Native Studies at UAA and teach the Ahtna Dene Language, one of the dual Dene languages of the Matanuska-Susitna area. Sondra was awarded the Floris Licht Rhode Scholarship Fund in 2010-2011 and the Alaska Native Education (ANE) 2013-2015. She received her MA in Applied Linguistics/Second Language Teaching Education with an emphasis on Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) in 2013-2015.  Sondra focused was on the Ahtna Dene Language and she has continued to develop teaching methods for second language learner through computer assisted language learning and examine the indigenous teachings of Ahtna Dene language. Sondra is continuously working towards creating relationships with language communities through the universities system to bridge the learn gap of indigenous and western teachings.