Jennette Boehmer has taught writing at the New College Writing Centre since 2015 and currently also coordinates the Writing Room, our drop-in space. Jennette has worked with the Writing-Integrated Teaching (WIT) program, the English Language Learning (ELL) program, and instructed writing-intensive courses, some that integrated numerical analysis into humanities writing. As an Egyptologist, Jennette studies primary and secondary historical texts. She has a background in IT management and coaches business professionals in clear and articulate writing. A keen conversationalist, Jennette enjoys the synergy of in-person and online connections.
Ralph Callebert researches and teaches on labour, Africa, climate change, and global history. His book, On Durban’s Docks: Zulu workers, rural households, global labor (University of Rochester Press, 2017), is on dock labour, households, and the informal economy in 1950s Durban, South Africa. Ralph’s recent work engages the intersections of labour, citizenship, and climate change. He has a Ph.D. in history from Queen’s and received an M.A. from the Department of Economic History and Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa.
J. Coplen Rose works as an educator and researcher in Toronto, Canada. He teaches in a range of areas, including postcolonial theory and literature, fantasy fiction, and courses on critical reading and writing. Coplen’s primary area of research is post-apartheid South African literature and drama. His other research interests include fantasy and science fiction, geography and digital mapping, and humour studies. He enjoys assisting students with essay writing strategies and digital approaches to research.
Daveeda Goldberg prides herself on knowing how to use semicolons; she is also passionate about supporting student writing, from conception to punctuation. In addition to teaching here at the New College Writing Centre, Daveeda teaches in U of T’s ELL Program, volunteers as a tutor for under-served high school students, freelance-edits for clients in diverse fields like Finance, Physics and Philosophy, writes and rewrites her dissertation on self-constructivist ethics in Late Modern Europe, and enjoys using parallelism to compose long, overstuffed sentences. Daveeda also recently completed an Ontario College of Teachers-certified course in Special Education, and continues to search out ways to better support non-typical learners with their university-level writing.
Jordana Greenblatt has been a writing instructor at U of T since 2014; they also teach literature at York University and perform and coach as a semi-professional aerial acrobat, specializing in static trapeze and aerial rope. Their research focuses on sexuality and gender across a range creative media, including literature, comics, and performance. Recent publications include an edited collection, Querying Consent (Rutgers 2018), articles in Sexualities and The Journal of Medical Humanities, and a chapter in Graphic Embodiments (Leuven/Cornell UP 2021). They are co-editor and -author of Circus Thinks (Cirkus Syd 2020), a non-scholarly publication aimed at a general readership.
Margaret Herrick has taught writing in a number of different contexts and institutions for over twenty years. She completed her PhD through the University of Toronto’s Department of English and Centre for South Asian Studies, and her dissertation concerns the roles played by widows and hijras (or third gender people) in 20th century Indian novels and plays. Her work has been published in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, University of Toronto Quarterly, Literature and Theology and Interventions.
Liz Newbery is the Director of the Writing Centre, where she has taught since 2006. Prior to coming to U of T, she taught outdoor and environmental education at McMaster University, York University, and Outward Bound. She writes in the fields of curriculum theory and cultural studies, and her published work primarily explores how gender, race, class, sexuality, and colonialism complicate learning. When not teaching, writing, or reading, Liz can usually be found mountain biking along the Niagara Escarpment.
Marci Prescott-Brown is Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in Writing Studies at the New College Writing Centre. She has practiced decolonialist and antiracist writing pedagogies since she began tutoring students from low income and minority backgrounds as a teenager. For over fifteen years, she has taught writing in various postsecondary and other academic contexts. She completed her dissertation using the principles of antiracist writing, receiving her PhD in English from the University of Toronto in 2019. Her pedagogical and research focus is on how varieties of speech, language, and technology can be used as part of decolonialist and antiracist writing instruction to empower writers. Marci facilitates the writing group for the Caribbean, African, Equity and Solidarity Studies (CAESS) programs. When relaxing, Marci enjoys baking pies, playing games, making crafts, and travelling with her family.
Shalika Sivathasan
Roz Spafford has taught writing at the New College Writing Centre since 2010; she also works with Social Work students through the Health Sciences Writing Centre. Previously, she taught writing and chaired the Writing Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she still occasionally teaches creative writing. She has published a book of poetry, Requiem (Writers & Books, Rochester), along with short stories, pieces of creative non-fiction, book reviews, and columns. For more information, see www.RozSpafford.com.
Jude Welburn received his PhD in English literature at the University of Toronto. His dissertation examines the social and historical context for the emergence of early modern utopian literature as a genre. He has an article forthcoming on the representation of the New World in Francis Bacon’s major works, and is currently working on a research project examining the concept of the “commons” in early modern English political discourse.