Dominique Arel
Dominique Arel, based in Montreal, is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at University of Ottawa, where he teaches and conducts research on issues of identity, language, and politics in Eastern Europe. He earned a BA from Université de Montréal, an MA from McGill University, and a PhD from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses primarily on the formation of national identities in Ukraine and Russia, as well as the political dynamics surrounding post-Soviet transformations. He co-edited the landmark volume Rebounding Identities: The Politics of Identity in Russia and Ukraine (2006), which examines evolving identity formations in these contexts.
Nikolay Karabinovych
Nikolay Karabinovych, originally from Odessa and currently based in Amsterdam, approaches circulation through the lens of diasporic movements across time and space. He will reflect on how cultural forms travel within diasporas—historically and today—and how what is considered “traditional” is often the result of overlapping migrations, reinterpretations, and disruptions. Drawing on his recent work, Karabinovych explores how cultural memory can be reactivated through contemporary means. What does it mean to return to a form that has already traveled, fractured, and been reshaped through displacement? How can artistic practice reopen tradition as a living process?
Mélanie Leavitt
Mélanie Leavitt, Montréal, active with the Société d’histoire Mémoire du Mile End, offers a localized reading of colonial frameworks as they materialize in urban space. The Mile End neighborhood—shaped by railway corridors, factories, zoning regimes, and waves of migration—embodies how transport infrastructures and immigration policies reshape both territory and community.
Galyna Lykhoshva
Galyna Lykhoshva, Montréal, is a cultural guide who works with migrant and diasporic communities. She brings grounded knowledge of how a sense of belonging is built through everyday practices: storytelling, walking, mapping, and informal support networks. Her perspective connects theory to lived experience, illustrating how diasporic resilience takes on material and spatial form within cities shaped by layered migration histories.
Anoush Moazzeni
Anoush Moazzeni, Montréal and Chertsey, born in Iran, is an interdisciplinary artist, thinker, writer, and educator whose practice lies at the intersection of philosophy, sound, performance, politics, and ethico-aesthetics. Working across experimental art, research-creation, and critical theory, she explores embodiment, affect, migration, memory, and speculative forms of world-building through artistic and relational processes.
Lidia Zhigunova
Lidia Zhigunova, New Orleans, is a professor at Tulane University, a writer, and an Indigenous Circassian thinker. She works on the notion of transnational Indigeneity—a way of understanding belonging beyond the borders drawn by empires and modern states. For Circassian communities dispersed by imperial violence, Indigeneity is not limited to territorial continuity; it is sustained through language, memory, kinship, and cultural practices. Here, resilience becomes a political and epistemic practice: keeping the homeland alive in exile without essentializing or fixing it.
James Oscar
James Oscar is a writer, art critic, and curator whose work merges experimental art criticism, innovative curation, and cultural anthropology. A graduate researcher at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, he specializes in the sociology and anthropology of art and in cultural policy. His approach was profoundly shaped by mentorship under Martinican philosopher Édouard Glissant. With 25 years in contemporary art writing, he is the recipient of the Joan Yvonne Lowndes Award from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Jen Budney
Jen Budney, Saskatoon, is the Executive Director and CEO of the Ukrainian Museum of Canada, as well as a curator, author, cultural leader, and thinker whose work bridges museum practice, public history, and diasporic memory. She advances critical reflections on heritage, migration, identity, and Ukrainian cultural resilience within contemporary civic and international contexts.
David Garneau
David Garneau, Edmonton, of Métis origin, writes and curates exhibitions on contemporary Indigenous art, settler colonialism, and what he describes as “Indigenous refusal.” His work emphasizes sovereignty beyond frameworks of reconciliation that leave colonial structures intact. In this roundtable, Garneau’s voice recenters Indigenous epistemologies and challenges both migrants and settlers to engage with treaties, land, and responsibility beyond symbolic inclusion.
Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn
Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, Montréal-Ho Chi Minh, has a research-based practice investigates archives, state spectacle, photography, feminist theory, and utopian politics. Her project revisiting Canada’s 1967 Centennial critically examines how multiculturalism was staged as a progressive national mythology, masking colonial continuities and exclusions. Her work resonates strongly with the round table’s aim to interrogate how visual regimes and archival narratives construct collective memory while managing difference.
Alex Reznik
Alex Reznik is a multidisciplinary artist born in Ukraine and based in Toronto, whose practice operates at the intersection of visual art and music. His work explores human relationships and lived experiences in contexts of conflict, examining dynamics of displacement, fragmentation, and division in both historical and contemporary settings. An oud player, he regularly performs with his band Maayan Band, blending musical traditions with contemporary influences. He is also engaged in international and interdisciplinary collaborations that foster sensitive connections between sound, memory, and place.
Eugénia Reznik
Eugénia Reznik is a Ukrainian-French-Canadian artist. Working within a research-creation approach, she brings together sociological perspectives with performative and documentary practices, digital arts, and botanical research. Her work explores issues of uprooting, the transmission of memory, as well as the connections between the migration of plants and humans. A recipient of several grants, she has presented her work in numerous exhibitions and events across Canada, Europe, and the United States.
