"The Global AMR Youth Summit will unite students and young professionals from health, agricultural, and life sciences to advance a unified One Health response to AMR.
Under the theme 'Innovate. Integrate. Implement: Youth Driving One Health Action on AMR,' the Summit shifts focus from awareness to accountability—empowering youth to engage in national AMR action plans, influence policy, and lead community initiatives.
Aligned with World Antimicrobial Awareness Week 2025, the event calls on young leaders worldwide to drive innovation, collaboration, and action to protect our shared future from AMR."
The interactive workshop "Microbes Making Misinformation: Flipping the Script on Science Communication for AMR" engaged medical, dental, veterinary and pharmacy students from around the world.
250+ participants was by far the largest group I've ever led on a "citizen science fiction" adventure, and it was an inspiration to hear their intensely creative ideas on how microbes could conduct "Bio PsyOps" against humans, making memes and misinformation to accelerate antimicrobial resistance.
"Awareness alone isn’t enough. We need connection. This session showcases how artists, designers, and storytellers are inspiring action through creative approaches that bring AMR to life.
Through the Art x AMR initiative at the Global Strategy Lab and Immersive Storytelling Lab, comics, games, and immersive storytelling are transforming complex science into shared understanding and collective motivation. These creative voices remind us that art can move hearts as powerfully as data moves minds, helping people everywhere see that their choices and actions matter."
For its 25th anniversary, the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) held an international in-person conference and media arts festival themed “Love Letters to the Past and Future.”
ELO25 @ 25 was a joint hosting between the University of Waterloo and York University, and I had a blast helping our fearless leaders Caitlin Fisher and Lai-Tze Fan coordinate it.
Huge thanks to Sean Sollé and Rhys Mendes for thinking through the tinkering with me, even if at the last moment I decided to go with off-the-shelf components from Ikea on this initial outing, to keep the number of variables in check.
Creative types of every stripe came together to explore how to turn drug-resistant infections into irresistible stories that amplify the impact of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) 🦠 on lives and livelihoods:
📚 Novelists brainstorming with 👩🏾⚖️ policy boffins!
✍️ Illustrators swapping sticky notes with 🔬 scientists!
🏛️ Curators collaborating with 👩🏽🎤 comic writers!
🎭 Dramatists vibing with 🕶️ AR artists!
We explored transforming invisible threats into indelible narratives that could literally save lives, and learned about the inspiring work participants are already doing – from uplifting performances in marketplaces and clinic waiting rooms in Uganda (Mercy Kukundakwe), to cutting-edge VR visualizing disease from the patient’s POV in the UK (Sarah Ticho), to super-cute cartoons illustrating the cultural context of AMR in Thailand (Kanpong Boonthaworn), to radio dramas and graphic novels imagining an antibiotic apocalypse in a not-too-distant future (Val McDermid and Sara Kenney).
A few brave social scientists joined us, engaging with and enriching the creative process: thanks to Director of the Global Strategy Lab Mathieu JP Poirier, strategic comms master-chief Demetria Tsoutouras, policy wizard Isaac Weldon, and stalwart research assistant Uswa Shafaque for taking the time to participate.
But most of all, huge thanks to our fearless leader Caitlin Fisher, Director of the Immersive Storytelling Lab at York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design, for nursing the germ of this idea into full-blown, mind-expanding reality.
See below for the event's culminating webinar, "The Power of Art & Storytelling in Tackling AMR: Raising Awareness & Sparking Action."
Update Oct 10: Here's the event recording! My Shadowpox talk starts at the 10:25 mark, followed by Dave Evans speaking about The Vale: Shadow of the Crown (no shortage of shadows here!), then we both sit down with host Victoria Evans for a panel discussion and Q&A from 43:30.
(Love that YouTube's flagged the video with a Health Canada COVID-19 vaccine link: "When you search or watch videos related to topics prone to misinformation, such as the moon landing, you may see an information panel...." Fact-checkers are go!)
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I'm excited to be speaking about Shadowpox this Thursday, October 10th, on a panel titled "Fusing Gameplay & Healthcare," led byUHN's KITE Creates as part of their mission to "build bridges between innovators in healthcare and creative industries."
The event is presented by Future Makers, "an ever-evolving initiative dedicated to fostering curiosity, dialogue, experimentation, and innovation at the intersection of creativity and technology." Co-created and led by The Creative School at TMU and the City of Toronto's Creative Technology office, Future Makers "empowers the creative community through education, collaboration, mentorship, and thought-provoking conversations to shape the future of the entertainment industry."
It feels like I'm still catching my breath, but on Thursday afternoon around 5:00pm, I finally crossed the finish line. I'm officially a doc!
Below is the pre-ceremony group portrait of all the PhD graduands from the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design, hoods draped over arms, and already sweltering in our robes. Respect to my lovely and talented cohort-mate Caroline Klimek (front and centre) – I'm not sure I could have made it to the other side of the stage in those heels.
My inspiring doctoral supervisor Caitlin Fisher generously shared the hooding ritual with my aunt Patricia Stamp, a retired professor of African and Development Studies at York, and a lifelong guiding light for me:
Managed to keep that extremely wide-brimmed puffy hat on my head throughout. Harder than it looks!
It was an honour to receive the Governor General’s Gold Medal from Chancellor Kathleen Taylor – one I share with all the colleagues and participants across the world who joined a strange, wonderful adventure in research-creation and artful intelligence.
Wiikwemkoong (formerly Wikwemikong) High School flies with the eagles
A dramatic entrance
Teacher Natalie Parrington's brilliant grade 12 English class welcomed Debajehmujig Storytellers directors Joahnna Berti and Bruce Naokwegijig, along with arts animators Daniel Recollet-Mejaki, Quinten Kaboni and Tyler Pangowish, all of whom have collaborated on previous Shadowpox workshops in 2018 and 2022.
With Joahnna Berti and Natalie Parrington in front of a Shadowpox vocabulary list (a good lesson for me in readability levels!)
We were piloting a new branching narrative, Shadowcasting • Mazinaateshin. "Mazinaateshin" is an Anishinaabemowin word that means both “s/he casts a shadow” and “s/he is on television or in a movie,” and echoes the traditional teachings shared by Debajehmujig Knowledge Keeper David "Sunny" Osawabine that we should have compassion for everything and everyone our shadow falls upon.
The four-scene cycle of Shadowcasting • Mazinaateshin
This new version of the participatory story framework Shadowpox: The Cytokine Storm takes the form of a choose your own adventure branching narrative, in order to foreground the theme of choice and the effects our choices can have on our own lives and the lives of those around us.
The new Shadowcasting • Mazinaateshin branching narrative
Students role-played as volunteers in a Phase 1 vaccine trial in the middle of a shadowpox pandemic (a scenario that required a lot more imaginative heavy lifting in Debaj's first workshop back in 2018!). The school's wonderful IT wizard Rudy Mandamin helped set the students up to use Microsoft Stream to record their in-character video journal entries, which would then be embedded in branching narratives using the open-source software Twine.
On screen: Natalie Parrington using Microsoft Stream
We also got to try out a new augmented reality effect I'm half-seriously thinking of calling a "projectro-glyph" (a petroglyph projected on the body). This attenuated vaccine shadowpox glyph was coded in 8th Wall by Shadowpox technical director Lalaine Ulit-Destajo, with the support of the Immersive Storytelling Lab and a Canada Council Digital Greenhouse Grant. Check it out yourself on 8th Wall!
Modeling the new augmented reality Shadowpox effect
Debaj animators Tyler Pangowish and an augmented Quinten Kaboni
Gchi miigwech, huge thanks, to our hosts at Wiky High and the directors and animators at Debajehmujig, but especially to our multi-talented student workshop participants. I can't wait to see what they do next with all their creativity, intelligence and insight!
I'm also thrilled that Joahnna Berti and I ended the week in discussions with Natalie Parrington and science and technology teacher Chris Mara around a new project for next year, using "citizen science fiction" to explore the energy transition. Stay tuned...
Baa-maa-pii to the electrifying Wikwemikong Warriors!
Once when I was in elementary school and my dad came home from parent-teacher interviews, I asked what they had discussed. "They said you're a good egg," was all he would tell me.
He passed away a few years ago, but his lesson in humility about academic accomplishments bubbled back up in my memory this week.
York University’s Faculty of Graduate Studies has awarded six graduates with 2024 Thesis and Dissertation Prizes "for outstanding contributions to the local and global community."
I'm deeply honoured to be one of them, and thrilled that a fellow member of the Cinema and Media Arts (CMA) department, Pooya Badkoobeh, also won a Thesis Prize for his MFA film “Based on a True Story.”
Congrats to all the grads, and thanks to the Faculty of Graduate Studies awards committee, my doctoral supervisor Caitlin Fisher, graduate program director Mike Zryd, and the whole department for being such a brilliant place to do research-creation.
It's more fun to be a good egg when you're in such good company. CMA FTW!
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Update, June 12
I absolutely did not expect this, given that two of the three GG’s last year went to Cinema and Media Arts grads Lawrence Garcia and Aaron Tucker, but here we are!
Governor General Mary Simon said of her coat of arms, which is emblazoned on the current medals and is pure visual poetry: "This coat of arms is my story, my true history, and it speaks of my lifelong commitment to bridge-building and family, and of my hopes for a future where we respect and share each other's stories to help foster better relationships between peoples."
What a joy it was to visit Debajehmujig Storytellers with Asiphe Ntshongontshi for a North-South Shadowpox Summit on Manitoulin Island last week!
This “citizen science fiction” knowledge-exchange enabled Asiphe, a member of the 2019 South African lab, to meet and collaborate with young artists from northern Ontario who participated in Shadowpox labs in 2018 and 2022. We had a blast sharing experiences and discussing future applications of sci-fi world-building and role-playing to improve health in communities on opposite sides of the globe.
Our colleagues at Debaj, led by Joahnna Berti and Bruce Naokwegijig, also arranged for Asiphe to visit Wikwemikong High School with Principal Harold Fox, who took the time to give us a wide-ranging tour of his inspiring institution.
Following our wonderful whirlwind visit to Manitoulin, we drove seven hours south to Toronto where Asiphe gave a talk titled "Youth, Health & Life in Masiphumelele," hosted by the Global Strategy Lab and the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research.
Dr. Godfred Boateng’s Global Health and Humanitarianism class was fascinated to hear about her experience working as a young professional in global health, including her work with the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation in the township of Masiphumelele, Cape Town, South Africa.
It was a privilege to host Asiphe during her week in Canada, and we are hugely grateful for the EC3R Small Grant Award that made her visit possible.
It's less than two weeks till my PhD oral examination! I'm looking forward to the conversation and feel incredibly lucky to have Patrick Jagoda as external examiner, Ian Garrett as internal/external, and Sharon Hayashi as exam committee chair, along with my amazing dissertation committee, Caitlin Fisher (supervisor), Jennifer Jenson, and Graham Wakefield.
In the process of preparing for the big day, I figured I'd post the abstract for anyone who might be curious.
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The Shadowpox Storyworld as Citizen Science Fiction: Building Co-Immunity through Participatory Mixed-Reality Storytelling
Alison Humphrey
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Program in Cinema and Media Studies
York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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Abstract
Scientific evidence can influence us in decisions like whether to get immunized, but so can storytelling, the artful show-and-tell of cause-and-effect which can convey misinformation as readily as it does fact. Building on inoculation theory and active learning, I argue in “The Shadowpox Storyworld as Citizen Science Fiction: Building Co-Immunity through Participatory Mixed-Reality Storytelling” that a new form of participatory storytelling called “citizen science fiction” can intervene in vaccine hesitancy by helping people explore what makes a story compelling, what makes science convincing, and how fear and distrust can be engineered to sway us away from action we might otherwise take. This research-creation dissertation recounts the design and testing of three multimodal experiments in a single science fiction storyworld, titled Shadowpox. The first experiment is a full-body videogame, the second is a networked narrative, and the third is a new form, a pedagogical-dramatic art hybrid I am calling a “courseplay”.
The design of the gallery-installation videogame Shadowpox: The Antibody Politic began with generative visual effects motion-tracked to the player’s body and avatar, but its procedural rhetoric came together only with the addition of 99 other avatars embodying the concept of community immunity. The vaccine-trial role-play of Shadowpox: The Cytokine Storm re-imagines immunity as an acquired superpower whose bearers are framed as villains as often as they’re hailed as heroes, inviting participants to think more deeply about the story design and real-life toll of misinformation. With the advent of Covid-19, these pre-pandemic workshops in London, Cape Town, and Manitoulin Island were joined by the online courseplay Digital Culture: Science & Fiction, where York University students in lockdown blended reading, writing and role-playing to explore the scientific and social-media dynamics around a historic rollout of new vaccines. I propose a new research-creation pedagogy, “action refraction,” to help learners reflect on the interplay between evidence, affect, fiction, and alternative-fact confection. Citizen science fiction as a broader methodology, meanwhile, has the potential to promote participants and researchers alike from storytellers into story-listeners, moving from the one-way explanation of many scientific-literacy efforts to the reciprocal empathy essential for truly healthy citizenship.
Our conversation on "the current and future uses of AI and immersive technology in theatre and performance," chaired by TORCH Director Wes Williams, will also feature the Royal Shakespeare Company's Director of Digital Development Sarah Ellis, multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Ruthie Doyle, immersive producer & curator Dan Tucker, and David Taylor, Associate Professor of English.
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