Postdoctoral Fellows
Ellen Forget
ell-en for-zhay | she/they
Supervisor: Danielle Fuller
Ellen Forget completed their doctorate at University of Toronto in the Faculty of Information and the Book History and Print Culture specialization. Their mixed-methods dissertation analyzes accessibility in contemporary independent publishing in Canada, how disabled readers access books, and how access can be improved. Ellen is a graduate of the Master of Publishing and Editing Certificate programs from Simon Fraser University. Ellen is also certified in transcription for unified English braille through the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.
As a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at 伊人直播, Ellen is working on a project titled “A History of Tactile Writing and Reading” that explores the history of braille, raised type, moon, and other tactile codes. Their work focuses on the intersection of disability studies and book history in addition to contributions from publishing studies, bibliography, and digital humanities. Ellen’s primary research interests are braille, reading, accessibility, print disabilities, indie publishing, digital publishing/reading, and digital research tools.
Kristen Smith
Supervisor: Michael O'Driscoll
Dr. Kristen Smith (she/her) completed her doctoral research in English Literature at York University. Her intermedial dissertation examines the multifaceted presence/absence of sound in varieties of visually-oriented poetry from the 1950s to the 2010s. For the selected transnational poets, she interrogates the intersections of aesthetics, cognition, and ethics. As a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the 伊人直播, Kristen will be undertaking a two-year project, “Investigating Insound: Diverse Sonic Experiences in Composing and Processing Poetry,” which has the overarching goal of exploring the sonic production and reception of poetry and reflecting on the implications of diverse readers in their processing of sound.
Kristen’s academic work has been published by the International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, Interdisciplinary Discourses, Inter-disciplinary Press, Somatechnics, and [transcript]. Her work on processing non-linguistic poetry appears in the special issue of “New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies” published by English Studies in Canada (ESC). Additionally, two chapters in separate anthologies will be published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in Spring 2025.
As a Narrative Poetry Prize winner (2019), a Fineline Competition finalist (2020), and Pushcart Prize nominee (2021), Kristen’s creative writing is an artistic outlet. Her poetry has appeared in Canthius, Mid-American Review, Naugatuck River Review, The New Quarterly, and SewerLid Magazine. After winning the Graham Atlantic Writing Prize (MTA) and participating in the Writing with Style program (Banff Centre), Kristen founded the Toronto-based writers collective The Musings.
In both her academic and creative work, Kristen is interested in the creation of art in community, connection, and collaboration.
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