2025-2026 Speakers' Series

The annual, interdisciplinary SASAH Speakers' Series invites nationally and internationally renowned leaders across the arts and humanities to discuss leading topics of concern. 

The Robert and Patricia Duncanson Lecture Series supports an annual lecture in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities offered through the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities. While the lecture is open to the entire University community, it is a key component of the SASAH Speakers’ Series and a vital part of our program’s curriculum.

Check this page regularly for updates as we organize an exciting calendar for the coming year, or follow our feed on the Western Events Calendar! 

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

The 2026 Duncanson Lecture presents Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Theory of Water

Save the date! Thursday, March 12, 2026

5PM, Conron Hall

 

Thinking alongside lakes, snow and ice, this lecture uses story to create a decolonial space for us to come together and imagine futures beyond our present moment. Theory of water draws on the natural world as a map, a theorist and a teacher and draws the audience into a communal space of dreaming and remembering to refuse our colonial present and collaborate to reworld with systems of care.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg musician, writer and academic. She is the author of eight books, including A Short History of the Blockade and the novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies which was short listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and the Dublin Literary Prize. Her collaboration with Robyn Maynard, Rehearsals for Living, is a National Best Seller and was short listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction. Leanne’s new work, Theory of Water is a national best seller and was shortlisted for the Writers Trust prize for non-fiction. Leanne has lectured and taught extensively at universities across Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Europe and has over twenty years experience with Indigenous land based education. Leanne is also a musician. Her latest release Live Like the Sky is out now from You’ve Changed Records. Leanne holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba and is a member of Alderville First Nation.

Please stay tuned for more details and forthcoming registration information! 

Brendon Samuels

Brendon Samuels, "Tending the Understory: Environmental Advocacy in a Time of Competing Urgencies"

Monday, February 9, 4PM, UCC 66

Municipalities face severe challenges from the rising cost of living, unprecedented homelessness, extreme weather fuelled by climate change and rampant misinformation (to name just a few). In spite of these challenges, municipalities are expected to stay afloat and even continue to grow using limited resources. Scientific and traditional knowledge teach us that conventional economic imperatives for a city to thrive pose conflicts with larger environmental imperatives, such as the need to urgently transition away from technologies and practices associated with catastrophic planetary warming and declining biodiversity. Local environmental advocacy thus involves navigating a complex web of competing and urgent priorities. How can we push for a better planetary future at a municipal scale, while balancing the demands of our present moment? 

 
This presentation focuses on examples of local environmental advocacy work I collaboratively undertook that attempted to reshape narratives and public understanding of our relationships with the non-human world. By creating opportunities for interactive learning through experience, holding space for progressive ideas, and celebrating the work, environmental advocates can represent the interests of future generations and other species. We speak up expecting that our efforts to drive change generally will not succeed overnight, and that the path to progress will be tenuous, meandering and hard. Nonetheless, we contribute to sustaining a shared vision for making our communities more liveable in the present, and therefore better prepared to withstand and heal from systemic collapse.

 
Dr. Brendon Samuels is a resident of London, an activist and educator dedicated to sustaining relationships between people and nature in cities. Brendon is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University. He holds a PhD in Biology and a Masters in Neuroscience from Western University, where his doctoral research focussed on strategies for reducing bird collisions with glass on buildings. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses about urban ecology, civic engagement and sustainability. Brendon has worked extensively within the environmental nonprofit sector and with the City of London as a member of community advisory committees on ecological planning, environmental stewardship and climate action. In recognition of his contributions to community and conservation practice, Brendon has received awards from Western University, the Urban League of London, Nature Canada, Nature London and the London Environmental Network. In his free time, Brendon enjoys gardening for wildlife, exploring green spaces and baking. His work has been discussed and his voice featured in outlets such as the The Globe and Mail, CBC News, CTV News, The Guardian, and The Conversation.

 
Brendon Samuels is a guest of Ruth Skinner's "Cultures of Advocacy" course.

Makram Ayache

Makram Ayache, "WHY ARE WE STILL DOING SHAKESPEARE? Reflections on writing about Gaza through Shakespeare’s The Tempest" 

Thursday, January 22, 3:30 PM, FNB 2220
SASAH Salon Reception to follow in the Creative Commons (second floor, FNB TA.202)
RSVP to join us!

Makram Ayache is a Governor General Literary Award Finalist, Lambda Literary Award winning, and Dora award-winning playwright, performer, director, and producer based in Toronto. His playwriting explores representations of queer Arab voices and aims to bridge political struggles to the intimate experiences of the people impacted by them. Ayache's work was named as a Canadian culture maker who defined 2025 by the CBC and he also won New York City's Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Drama in the same year. His play, "The Hooves Belonged to the Deer" was selected as one of 10 best productions in Ontario in 2023 by the Globe and Mail and won an Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award for “Outstanding Independent Production” in Edmonton in 2023. Previously, His Governor General nominated play "The Green Line" (Downstage and Chromatic Theatre) garnered four Betty Mitchell Award Nominations, winning two including "Outstanding New Play."  Most recently, Ayache has written an adaption of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" titled "A Witch in Algiers" (Shakespeare in the Ruff) which garnered the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play in 2025. Alongside writing, Ayache directs, acts, teaches and producers theatre. 


This event is organized in partnership with The Department of English and Writing Studies' Theatre Studies Program, the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, and the Faculty of Information and Media Studies. Makram Ayache is a guest of Kim Solga's "“Making Decolonial Shakespeares” course.
Photograph: Shane D'Costa 

Kristen Case, "Thoreau's Temporal Imagination"

Tuesday, November 18, 3-4PM, UC 2110.

Kristen Case will discuss her recently published transcriptions of Henry David Thoreau's late-life natural history charts in her book Thoreau's Kalendar. The talk will foreground the ways that Thoreau's temporal creativity can help us reimagine our increasingly time-famished lives.

Kristen Case is a poet and scholar. In addition to Thoreau's Kalendar, she is the author of American Pragmatism and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe and three books of poetry, most recently, Daphne. She lives in Maine, where she is executive director of The Monson Seminar, a residential program for Pell-eligible and first-generation college students.

Kristen is a guest of Professor Kate Stanley's first-year class, "Climate Conversations: Finding Common Ground for the 21st Century."

Heather George, "Sharing Difficult Truths and Supporting Cultural Vibrancy at the Site of the Longest Running Residential School in Canada"

Tuesday, October 28, 12-1:30 PM, UC 1405.

Museology is a fundamentally colonial discipline, however since 1972 Woodland Cultural Centre has been engaging in story-telling, caring for belongings and asserting Indigenous sovereignty. Behind every exhibition, program and policy we seek to undo the harms of Residential School and demonstrate the continuity and vibrancy of our nations.

Heather George, (Kanienʼkehá:ka, Akwesasne and Euro-Canadian) is the Executive Director and Chief Curator at Woodland Cultural Centre. As a UWO alumni from the Public History M.A. Program she brings two decades of community based, Indigenous practices to her work. As a mother, beader, gardener and curator Heather's PhD research through University of Waterloo is examining the historical and philosophical underpinnings of contemporary museum practice specifically grounded in Haudenosaunee (Six Nations / Iroquois) philosophies. She seeks to challenge the colonial basis of cultural preservation methods and museology and better understand how we engage with material culture to heal trauma and engage in cross-cultural dialogues. In 2022 Heather served as the President of the Candain Museums Association supporting the release of the Moved to Action Report responding to TRC #67 and as a current board member of the Indigenous Heritage Circle she advocates for better legal and funding mechanisms to support the implementation of UNDRIP in the museum sector.

Heather George is a guest of Professor Sarah Bassnett's second-year SASAH course, "Photography and Social Justice."

Sam Maggs, "Writing for novels, comics and video games"

Monday, September 15th at 2:30 in FNB 2220.

SASAH is thrilled to kick off the year with our first SASAH Speakers' Series guest! Author Sam Maggs will discuss different approaches when writing for novels, comics, and video games on a very practical level, followed by a Q&A.
Email sasah@uwo.ca for a live zoom link if you're unable to join us in person.

Sam Maggs is a New York Times Bestselling and Eisner-nominated author of books, comics, and video games. Her novels include Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars and The Unstoppable Wasp: Built on Hope; she’s written for games like Call of Duty: Vanguard, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, and Marvel’s Spider-Man; and her comics and graphic novels include Marvel Action: Captain Marvel, Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins, and Tell No Tales: Pirates of the Southern Seas. She is also on-air talent for networks like Dropout and the Nerdist. A Canadian in Los Angeles, she misses Coffee Crisp and bagged milk.

Sam Maggs is a guest of Ruth Skinner's second-year SASAH course, "Digital Tools, Digital Literacies."

 

 

Click here for past Speakers' Series.