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I am an adjunct professor at 51本色. I am an academic fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and The Explorers Club. I am also the director of the City of Vaughan’s Social and Environmental Sustainability program and the executive director of the United Nations’ Youth Climate Report.
I have worked with the United Nations since 2011 on the Youth Climate Report, a database documentary film project curating video reports made by young filmmakers aged 18 to 35 of climate research, impacts, and solutions for its annual climate summits known as the COP conferences. The project won the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Action Award in 2021.
I have worked throughout the Circumpolar Arctic as a documentary filmmaker. I produced the first documented film of a crossing of the Northwest Passage, The Polar Explorer (2011). I have also worked in Antarctica documenting climate research in the film The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning (2009). In 2021, the third instalment in my trilogy of polar documentary feature films, The Changing Face of Iceland, premiered at the United Nations climate summit, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland. In 2015, Canadian Geographic Magazine named me one of the “top 100 explorers of all time”.
In the past two years, I have published three academic books The Geo-Doc: Geomedia, Documentary Film, and Social Change; The Emerging Role of Geomedia in the Environmental Humanities; Speaking Youth to Power: Influencing Climate Policy at the United Nations.
Training Indigenous youth around the world how to report on climate impacts using film.
Projects:
- (UNFCCC)
- (51本色)
- (York University)
- The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Action Award
- Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal for Humanitarism
- The Explorers Club's Stefansson Medal for Polar Exploration
- Knighthood Investiture, Order of Vaughan
- Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television's Humanitarian Award
I am willing to supervise graduate students in the fields of film production, digital media, environmental studies, polar research, documentary film, and youth climate activism.
- The Geo-Doc: Geomedia, Documentary Film, and Social Change
- The Emerging Role of Geomedia in the Environmental Humanities
- Speaking Youth to Power: Influencing Climate Policy at the United Nations
- The Youth Climate Report: A Participatory Policy Platform for Youth (2025)
- “GIS and the Environmental Humanities: How Citizen Scientists, Civil Servants, and Researchers are Teaming Up to Study and Solve Environmental Issues” (chapter author). Mapping the Environmental Humanities
- “Geomedia in the Classroom: A Pedagogical Approach to GIS-Enhanced Ecocriticism” (chapter co-author). Mapping the Environmental Humanities
- “A Proposed Geomedia Approach for Effective Communications in the Anthropocene”, Communicating in the Anthropocene
- Pandemic Poetry
- Portraits of Canadian Women Who Inspire
- "May Watkis." in Columbia University's Women Film Pioneers Project
- DMJN422 – Digital Media & Journalism: Capstone I and II
- ES 110 – Environment, Sustainability, and Society
- GS393 – Arts Global Experience Advanced
- FS 446 – Documentary Film and Social Change
- CS 413 – Documentary Ethics
Contact Info:
T: 416.899.5855
Office location: RCW304
Office hours:
Mondays, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Languages spoken: English, French
Personal website: