Research and Creative Initiatives
Fine Arts Research & Creative Initiatives
Our faculty, staff and students are continuously engaged in a vast number of research and creative initiatives on a local, national and global scale.
Teaching Profiles
Dr. Aaron Taylor | 2025 Board of Governors Teaching Chair
Drama professor Dr. Aaron Taylor is advancing student success by developing resilience, executive functioning and essential skills like time management and communication in new and first-year students. His efforts have led to him being named the University of Lethbridge’s 2025 Board of Governors Teaching Chair.
Dr. Devon Smither | 2023 Excellence in Teaching Award
Known for being a risk-taker in the classroom, Dr. Devon Smither encourages her students to do the same. It has garnered her a reputation as an innovative and empowering educator as well as the University of Lethbridge’s 2023 Excellence in Teaching Award.
Research Profile
Mary Kavanagh | Board of Governors Research Chair, Tier I
Aligning with the 75th Anniversary of the birth of the atomic age, University of Lethbridge Professor Mary Kavanagh explores the Bomb and its legacies in a series of art exhibitions presented across Canada and the US: the multi-faceted Daughters of Uranium and Trinity3, a two-channel video work extracted from the larger project. The exhibitions reach across the nuclear Anthropocene to build connections between nuclear technologies and their lived effects, the nuclear site and irradiated bodies, nuclear fallout, waste, and material evidence.
Research Chairs
Research Chairs are prestigious academic distinctions bestowed upon faculty members recognized by their peers as having distinguished and renowned records of research or other scholarly or creative activity. Meet the Research Chairs who are in the Faculty of Fine Arts.
Dr. Monique Giroux
Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Music, Culture, and Politics
Mary Kavanagh
Tier I Board of Governors Research Chair in Fine Arts
Unique research collaboration sees fine arts summer class support neuroscience project
Instead of preparing for the stage, students in drama instructor Dave Smith’s summer class are practicing for brain health research in an innovative research collaboration between the fine arts and the sciences at the University of Lethbridge.
ULethbridge PhD student Michelle Sylvestre named Trudeau Foundation Scholar for groundbreaking AI and equity research
Michelle Sylvestre (BFA – Art ’17, MFA – New Media ’21), a PhD student in the cultural, social and political thought program, has been selected as a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar — the first doctoral student from the University of Lethbridge to receive this prestigious recognition.
Exploring our attachment to sentimental songs the focus of PUBlic Professor Series presentation
We all have them, those emotional connections to pop songs from the soundtrack of our past. They invoke real feelings when you catch them on the radio or are featured in TV and movie productions. You might even feel a little guilty admitting they still tug at your emotions — why?