Student Directory 2025-2026

Updated October 14, 25

Student Directory 2025-2026

Iman Al Kaisy, PhD
iman.alkaisy[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: Arab Spring, Arab intellectual history, autobiography and testimonial writing, Arab women’s writings, Middle Eastern politics
—Languages: English, Arabic, French

Lila Banach, PhD
lila.banach[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Connaught Award, Amilcare Iannucci Admissions Award
Book History and Print Culture Collaborative Specialization
—Research interests: Northeast Asian borderlands, autochthonous narrative, poetic, and record-keeping cultures, indigenous and ancestral epistemologies, post-structuralism and neostructuralism, literary objects and print culture
—Languages: English, Chinese, Korean, Russian (reading), Manchu (reading)

Beauchemin, Benjamin, PhD
b.beauchemin[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: Aesthetics; Critical Indigenous Theory; Political Economy; Queer Theory; Environmental Humanities; Psychoanalysis; Christianity and Literature; 19th and 20th century French and North American literatures
—Languages: French, Anishinaabemowin (learning)

Gianmarco Bocchi, PhD
gianmarco.bocchi[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: text-image relationship; theories of photography; pictorial/photographic ekphrasis; photo-texts and issues of spatiality; narratology; visual rhetoric; 20th- and 21st-century Italian and Latin-American literature; memory studies; W.G. Sebald
—Languages: Italian, English, Spanish, Portuguese (reading), Latin

Colby Chubbs, PhD
colby.chubbs[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: Hegel and post-Hegelian thought, especially the transmission of his philosophy amongst his schools as well as Heine and Marx and Engels; Marxist thought; psychoanalysis; German literature, especially Kleist, Heine, Kafka, and Brecht.
—Languages: English, German, French

Rayyan Dabbous, PhD
rayyan.dubbous[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: 19th c. French literature (Sand), psychoanalysis (Andreas-Salomé, Freud), political theory (Arendt), queer theory (Butler), history and philosophy of science (Hacking, Keller, Popper), Arab, Islamic and Middle Eastern culture & politics (Djait, Kassir, Ziadeh), media and communication (Shannon, Bateson).
—Languages: English, French, Arabic

Ran Deng, PhD
ran.deng[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Chancellor Jackman Graduate Fellow
Women and Gender Studies & Sexual Diversity Studies
—Research interests: reproductive consent, transpacific critique, political philosophy, queer aesthetic theory
—Languages: Mandarin, German, Japanese (reading), Classical Chinese (reading)

Kellie Elrick, MA
kellie.elrick[at]mail.utoronto.ca
SSHRC-CGSM Award
—Research interests: novel (English, Italian, Russian), Canadian literature, the short story, multilingual literature, gender and sexuality, Classical reception, archaeology, ruin and unfinished works, oral tradition, ArcGIS and spatial humanities, posthumanism, Natalia Ginzburg
—Languages: English, Italian, French, Latin (reading)

Sophie Feng, PhD
sophie.feng[at]mail.utoronto.ca
SSHRC Doctoral Scholar
—Research interests: Francophone literatures, Canadian literature, diasporic literature and theory, transnational feminisms, anticolonial theory and literature, vulnerability studies, cultural and literary theory, early modern women’s poetry, gender and sexuality studies, affect theory, 20th-century anarcho-feminism in China
—Languages: English, French, Chinese (Mandarin), Italian (reading), German (reading)

Anna Foran, PhD
anna.foran[at]mail.utoronto.ca
SSHRC Doctoral Fellow
—Research interests: 20th century art and architecture, abstraction, literary theory, media and information studies
—Languages: French, Creative Research, German (reading)

Zichuan Gan, PhD
z.gan[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Collaborative program in Women & Gender Studies
—Research interests: speculative fiction, critical theory, Chinese/Sinophone literatures, gender studies, digital media, epistemology, environmental humanities
—Languages: Chinese/Mandarin, English, French

Enzo Gavazzi-Renaud, PhD
enzo.gavazzirenaud[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Jackman Junior Fellow
—Research interests: [German Idealism, Politics & Aesthetics, Continental Philosophy, Nature-Writing, Japanese literature]
—Languages: [French, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, German (reading), Spanish (reading) ]

Ben Hjorth, PhD
ben.hjorth[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Connaught International Doctoral Scholar
—Research interests: Theatre history & performance studies, early modern English poetry and performance (Shakespeare, Milton), 19th- and 20th-century Continental philosophy, particularly German and French (Hegel, Marx, Benjamin, Adorno, Derrida), psychoanalysis (Freud, Lacan), Caribbean anti-/decolonial literature, history and theory (Fanon, Césaire, Glissant, C.L.R. James, Wynter, Brathwaite)
—Languages: English, French, German, Spanish (in progress)
—Non-literary specialization: Philosophy

Tanya Humeniuk, PhD
tanya.humeniuk[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: Brecht, Benjamin, Bersani, Berlant, Bataille, Barthes, Blanchot, Beckett, Baudelaire, Baudrillard, Blocker, photography, text-image relations, theatre and performance, sexuality and gender studies, ethics and aesthetics, psychoanalysis, 20th- and 21st-century continental philosophy
—Languages: English, German, French, Spanish (in progress)
—Non-literary specialization: Philosophy

William Hunt, PhD
william.hunt[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: philosophies of immanence (esp. Baruch Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze); 20th Century Black American Music (bebop through hiphop); Black American Literature (feminisms, prison abolition movements, Fred Moten, Nathaniel Mackey, etc.); methods and theories of improvisation and transcription.
—Languages: English, Creative Research (piano), French (in progress)

Ben Koonar, PhD
ben.koonar[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: Contemporary literature, portraiture, translation, HIV/AIDS, queer theory
—Languages: English, French, Spanish (reading)

Hong Liu, PhD
ishong.liu[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: Early modern theatre, history plays, tragedy, and comedy in philosophy, aesthetics, material culture, text-image relationship, iconoclasm and iconography
—Languages: Chinese, English, Spanish, German, Latin (in progress)

Gaia Malnati, PhD
gaia.malnati[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Collaborative program in Jewish Studies
—Research interests: orality, Holocaust testimonies, migrants’ performance, Paul Celan’s poetry, public theory
—Languages: Italian, English, German, French (reading), Yiddish (in progress)

Ben Meyerson, PhD
ben.meyerson[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: flamenco, medieval troubadour lyric, peninsular Spanish poetry, contemporary poetry and poetics, materialism and process philosophy (Spinoza, Simondon, Serres, Deleuze, etc.), medieval and early modern Jewish philosophy, diasporic ontologies, critiques of speculative realism, Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy, ineffability in sonic cultures
—Languages: English, Spanish, Medieval Occitan (reading), Hebrew (reading), French (reading)

Ido Moses, PhD
ido.moses[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Collaborative program in Jewish Studies
– Research Interests: 20th-century war novels, soldier-authors, Hebrew literature, history and literature, adaptation of experience, new media, post-ideological conflict, diary writing, POW experiences.
– Languages: Hebrew, English, German, French (reading)

Matthew Mucha, PhD
matthew.mucha[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Ontario Graduate Scholar
Collaborative programs in Diaspora & Transnational Studies and Women & Gender Studies
—Research Interests: contemporary Philippine literature, postwar Taiwan literature, 20th Century Polish literature, diasporic literatures, postcolonial theory, queer theory, trauma & memory studies
—Languages: English, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Taiwanese Hokkien, Tagalog, Polish, Italian (reading)

Graeme Myers, PhD
graeme.myers[at]mail.utoronto.ca
SSHRC Doctoral Fellow
Collaborative Program in Jewish Studies
—Research interests: Latin American Literature, Contemporary Argentine poetry, Yiddish in Latin America, Mapuche poetics.
—Languages: Spanish, Yiddish, Portuguese (reading), French (reading)

Labiba Naeem, PhD
labiba.naeem[at]mail.utoronto.ca
SSHRC            
—Research Interests: Translation Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Interventionist Deconstruction, the Urdu Novel, South Asian Studies, Orality, Print History, Phenomenology, Cultural Production, Media Anthropology, Gender Studies, Assemblage Theory
—Languages: Urdu, English , Punjabi (Shahmukhi), Hindi (speaking), Persian (in progress)

Dominic Pizzolitto, PhD
dominic.pizzolitto[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research Interests: Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Continental Philosophy, Aesthetics, Modernism, Walter Benjamin, Baudelaire, Trauma Studies, Dramaturgy
—Languages: French, German

Suntisuk Prabunya, PhD
suntisuk.prabunya[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Connaught International Doctoral Scholarship Recipient
—Research interests: comparative literary and pictorial modernisms; the historical and neo- avant-gardes (esp. surrealism, fluxus, nouveau réalisme, conceptualism); aesthetic theory; poetry and poetics (esp. French Symbolists and concretists); comparative media aesthetics, theory, and history; visual culture and image studies (Bildwissenschaft); film and cinema studies; modern European intellectual history and continental philosophy (esp. post-1945)
—Languages: Thai, English, French, German

Felix Roessler, PhD
felix.roessler[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research Interests: Disability, materiality, contemporary poetry
—Languages: German, English, French, Russian (reading), Spanish (reading)

Caleb Sher, PhD
caleb.sher[at]mail.utoronto.ca
SSHRC CGS-D
Collaborative Programs: Jewish Studies, Book History and Print Culture
—Research Interests: interwar secular Yiddish education, especially nature and science pedagogy, history of the Jewish book, history of Yiddish typesetting/typesetters and printing/printers, South African Jewish literature
—Languages: English, Yiddish, French (reading), Spanish (in progress), Hebrew (in progress)

Sophie Ivanka Shields, PhD
sophie.shields[at]mail.utoronto.ca
SSHRC Doctoral Fellow
Diaspora and Transnational Studies Collaborative Program
—Research Interests: Migration and Refugee Studies, Ukrainian Displaced Writers, Contemporary Ukrainian Literature, Postcolonial Theory, Haitian Literature, Caribbean Diasporic Literature and Theory (Stuart Hall, Édouard Glissant, Patrick Chamoiseau)
—Languages: Ukrainian, French, German, English

Julian Stuart, PhD
julian.stuart[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Collaborative program in Jewish Studies
—Research interests: W.G. Sebald; Patrick Modiano; Walter Benjamin; Psychoanalysis (esp. Freud); Trauma and History; Temporality and Memory (esp. Postmemory); Continental Philosophy (esp. Heidegger and Kierkegaard); Modernism (esp. British and German)
—Languages: English, French, German (in progress)

Lily Tarba, PhD
lily.tarba[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: literary representations of shame and honour; Northwest Caucasus; Russo-Circassian, Caucasian war; 18th- and 19th-century Russian poetry and prose; 19th-century Georgian poetry and prose.
—Languages: Russian, Georgian, French (reading)

Ami Xherro, PhD
ami.xherro[at]mail.utoronto.ca / www.amixherro.com
Ontario Graduate Scholar, Victoria College Junior Fellow
Research/creation
—Interests: experimental poetry & poetics, women’s life-writing, private space, horizontality, embodied translation practices
—Languages: Albanian, French, English