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Visit McMaster's Labour Updates website for information on the current work action by CUPE Local 3906, Unit 1

Vosters Helene, Postdoctoral Fellow and Project Manager

Transforming Stories, Driving Change is a SSHRC funded project that brings together researchers from the Social Sciences and Humanities, local theatre artists, and representatives from Good Shepherd Centres of Hamilton, the Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton and the Hamilton Community Foundation. The core of the project is built around working with community members whose voices are not often heard in public debate in order to create and perform short plays that suggest how they think Hamilton should change.

Biography

Helene Vosters is an artist-scholar-activist whose work focuses on issues of state violence, social memory, and the role of performance and aesthetic practices in mobilizing community engagement. She earned her Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University where she used performance as a method of embodied inquiry in her investigation into the role of Canadian military commemoration in the production of gendered and raced hierarchies of grievability. A self-taught multi-disciplinary artist—performance, craft, and relational arts—Helene’s practice utilizes a task-based labour aesthetic. Helene’s durational counter memorial meditations include Impact Afghanistan War; Unravel: A Meditation on the Warp and Weft of Militarism; Flag of Tears: Lament for the Stains of a Nation; and Stitch-by-Stitch: A TRC Calls to Action Sewing Circle. Helene has published articles in Canadian and international journals (Performance Research, Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Journal of Practice-based Research in Theatre, and Canadian Theatre Review), and book sections in Performance Studies in Canada, Performing Objects and Theatrical Things and Theatre of Affect. Helene’s SSHRC postdoctoral book project—Unbecoming Performances of Canadian Nationalism—is due to be published (University of Manitoba Press) in fall 2019. Helene is delighted to be joining the Transforming Stories, Driving Change team!