Other Academics

Dr. Zahro Hassan
Assistant Lecturer (she/her)

Zahro holds a PhD in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Alberta. Her research draws on critical pedagogy as well as feminist and intersectional approaches, along with anti-racist and decolonial frameworks. Her work examines equity, migration, and belonging, with a focus on the institutional and structural barriers shaping refugee students’ access to higher education in Canada. Zahro is committed to advancing socially just and inclusive learning environments through teaching, research, and community engagement.

zahro@ualberta.ca
Dr. Patricia Jagger
Assistant Lecturer (she/her)

Patricia (Trish) Jagger is an educator, film professional, and media researcher whose career bridges more than two decades of film industry experience with critical academic inquiry. With a PhD in Secondary Education from the University of Alberta, her research explores feminist media pedagogies, critical media literacy, popular culture, social justice education, and participatory media practices. Her doctoral work, “Let’s Destabilize this with a Feminist Narrative”: Mediating Feminisms in Educational Spaces Through Digital Storytelling, examines how digital storytelling can create space for feminist voices, critical reflection, and new ways of understanding power.

Her scholarship draws deeply on her experience as both a classroom teacher and teacher consultant with Edmonton Public Schools. She taught film studies, media studies, and visual communication before becoming a teacher consultant, where she led professional learning initiatives across the Division. This movement between classroom practice, media production, and academic research continues to shape her approach to teaching and inquiry. Cross-appointed in Media Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies, Dr. Jagger teaches courses that bring media theory, contemporary media culture, feminism, and critical approaches to representation into conversation. Her teaching invites students to examine feminist perspectives on culture, representation, research, and film. Across her courses, she draws on her experience in education and the film industry to help students think critically about how media is produced, how stories and identities are represented, and how culture both reflects and shapes the world around us.

pjagger@ualberta.ca

Dr. Randi Nixon
Assistant Lecturer

Randi Nixon is a queer-feminist scholar whose work lies at the intersections of affect, queer theory, and equity. She teaches at the University of Alberta and NorQuest College. She likes cooking, swimming, reading, and spending quality time with her kin. In her spare time she also moonlights as Beatrix, a ruthless justice-seeking half-demon.

rlnixon@ualberta.ca
3-69 Assiniboia Hall

Dr. Dorothy Woodman
Adjunct Associate Lecturer (she/her)
After working in various sectors throughout her adult life, Dr. Dorothy Woodman began graduate work in academics, first to complete research in postcolonial topics and then, following treatments for Stage 3 Breast Cancer, to focus on how the breast has material and symbolic significances and how cancer is explored in memoirs and fiction. She convocated in 2012 and began full-time work as a sessional lecturer. While her teaching occurs primarily in English departments, the interdisciplinary nature of her work brought opportunities to focus on feminist topics in gender within the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies. Dr. Woodman is currently a member of an international committee exploring research collaboration and gender. She sees classrooms as communities of inquiry by incorporating participants’ knowledges and experiences and by engaging intersectional analyses while actively indigenizing/decolonizing academic work. 

Recent publications include:

  • The Cancer Plot: Terminal Immortality in Marvel’s Moral Universe. With Reginald Wiebe. Forthcoming with the University of Alberta Press.
  • “Getting Hammered by Cancer: ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ Re-examines the Hero’s Journey” The Conversation (Canada). 21 July 2022. With Reginald Wiebe.
  • “When the Phallus is a ‘Dick’: The Cultural/Material Turn to Breasts.” The Routledge Companion to Gender, Sexuality and Culture. 2022. With Reisa Klein.
  • Reimaging Breasts. Special Edition for Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, vol. 11, no. 1 (2020). Co-editor with Reisa Klein and Gabrielle Siegers.
  • “Erotic. Maternal. Cultural. Symbolic. Medical. What are Breasts? How are They Imagined? And Who Gets to Decide?” Introduction to Special Edition for Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, vol. 11, no. 1 (2020). With Reisa Klein and Gabrielle Siegers.
  • Photograph-Essay on Breast Prosthetics. For Imaginations: Journal of Cross- Cultural Image Studies, vol. 11, no. 1 (2020). With Aloys Fleishmann.

dwoodman@ualberta.ca

Mohadeseh Mousazadeh Miandehi
Postdoctoral Fellow (she/her)
Mohadeseh Mousazadeh Miandehi is an SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Alberta, supervised by Professor Chloe Taylor. She earned her PhD in English Literature with a focus on Environmental Humanities from Arizona State University in 2026, where she also completed a Graduate Certificate in Women and Gender Studies.
Her research centers on twentieth- and twenty-first-century North American ecological fiction, focusing on how these works address gender, "peace and security," place, and environmental justice. She examines literary and cultural narratives that propose alternative social and ecological futures, employing frameworks like visionary fiction and Futures Literacy to highlight their roles in shaping responses to current environmental and social issues. By integrating feminist and intersectional theory, environmental humanities, environmental justice, and literary studies, her work explores the connections between climate change, inequality, and literal and cultural narratives. In addition, her interests span transnational feminisms, speculative and visionary fiction, and the potential of literature to imagine more just and sustainable futures.