Our Teaching Faculty

	Stuart Parker, Course Director Upcoming courses: Unscheduled TBD: The Commissar Class Stuart Parker is a researcher, writer and broadcaster based in Vancouver, BC. In the past he has been a lecturer at Simon Fraser University, an instructor at the University of Toronto, University of BC, University of the Fraser Valley and Thompson Rivers University. A former postdoctoral fellow of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, his academic work has been published by the Journal of Mormon of Mormon History, University of New Mexico Press and Sport and Society. As an opinion leader in BC, his work has appeared in the The Hub, Quillette, Georgia Straight, Ricochet, Rabble.ca. He currently hosts a weekly podcast called Cocktail Hour; in the past he hosted public affairs shows on CFIS and CFUR in Prince George. He is the former leader of the BC Ecosocialist Party; in the 1990s, he served as the leader of the BC Green Party. You can view his web site here.
	Flora Ward, Instructor (2022) Upcoming courses: Flora is a medievalist and art historian, currently working in arts administration in Philadelphia. She has a BA from JohnsHopkins, an MA from the University of Leeds, and a PhD from the University of Toronto. A specialist in the art andarchitecture of medieval Iberia, Flora spent several years in Spain wrangling clergy for access to art and archives. Shehas taught medieval art history at the University of Toronto and Temple University.
	Corey Hardeman (Matthews), Instructor (2021) Upcoming courses: None Corey is an experienced instructor, having taught dozens of classes and workshops on painting and loss, for both individuals and large groups, online and in person. Canada’s premier landscape painter and an accredited birth and death doula, Corey works full-time as a visual artist out of her studio in downtown Prince George, BC, which also hosts the Institute’s office and archives. Corey has received many awards and residencies throughout her career, her most recent show was at Prince George’s Two Rivers Galley. You can view her web site here.
	Liesl K Westfall, Instructor (2021) Upcoming courses: None Liesl is a writer and records and information management consultant based in Vancouver BC. She has co-authored several articles and a book chapter on ethnobotany and archaeobotany. In her professional capacity, she has worked with both government and private organizations and on a SSHRC funded collaborative research project. Science fiction literature has been a life-long passion of hers, and she looks forward to sharing her musings and uber-geeky knowledge of her favourite fictional universe, Frank Herbert’s Dune.
	Jacob Baker, Instructor (2021) Upcoming courses: None Jacob’s graduate education consists of studies in philosophy, religion, and theology, and has both an experiential and academic education in Mormon thought and culture. He has taught courses in Ethics for several years at Utah Valley University, and is currently an instructor in social ethics through Salt Lake Community College at Utah State Prison. He also works as a travel trainer and instructor in public transit, helping primarily folks who are members of disabled, low-income, immigrant, and refugee communities to become more independently mobile.
	Yuri Cowan, Instructor (2021) Upcoming courses: None Yuri Cowan grew up in a log cabin on the south side of the Shuswap River below Mabel Lake. Paul Alexander refers to him as “a guy who finally learned how to screw in a light bulb in first-year university.” Yuri has a BA from UBC, an MA from Memorial University of Newfoundland, and a PhD from the University of Toronto. His postdoctoral experience was at Ghent University, Belgium, and he is now happily settled in Trondheim, Norway, at NTNU, where he is professor of nineteenth-century literature. In addition to his work on William Morris and Victorian medievalisms more generally, he also writes about speculative fiction (especially in the context of Cascadia and California), ballads, authorship studies, periodicals, collecting practices, and the history of texts.
	Gary Liu, Instructor (2019) Upcoming courses: None Gary is an instructor in accounting at Simon Fraser University and a technology entrepreneur, working on battery storage of renewable energy. Fluently bilingual, he co-taught our summer Rent and Empire intensive in 2019, bringing a depth of knowledge and analysis of modern Chinese imperial history and its intersections with the US, Japanese and British Empires.