Board of Directors
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Hilda Fernandez-Alvarez (Co-President) is a Lacanian psychoanalyst based in Vancouver, Canada. She has more than 25 years of clinical experience with diverse populations in public and private settings in Mexico and Canada. Her doctoral dissertation articulates a critique of how discourses of trauma and healing are used in public mental health institutions. She co-founded the Lacan Salon in September 2007, and currently serves as co-president. She is an associate of the SFU Institute for the Humanities and has conducted clinical seminars since October 2015. Dr. Fernandez-Alvarez speaks regularly in various psychoanalytic conferences and colloquies and her research has been published internationally and focuses on the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, trauma, discourse, socio-spatial practices, love and politics. She is co-editor of Lamella, a section of the Journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. Her website is www.hildafernandez.com
Sanem Guvenc (Co-President) Sanem Güvenç is a sociologist working in the field of social-political theory, and currently teaches Critical and Cultural Studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design as a visiting scholar. She holds a BS and a PHD in sociology, and an MS in Science and Technology Studies. She has completed two cycles of research between 2007-2016: history of eugenics and politics of diseases in 1930s Turkey; and neoliberal governmentality in contemporary Turkey. She has published results of these researches in journals such as Social History of Medicine, New Perspectives on Turkey, and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She is the co-editor of the 2019 book, "Natural Sciences in the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Formations, Practices, Intersections." Since 2013, she has been concentrating exclusively on states of emergencies, authoritarianisms, and political struggles under those regimes. She has published essays and book chapters on these in Turkish-language journals and edited collections. Since 2018, she's been attending Lacan Salon meetings, and has become increasingly drawn into Lacanian psychoanalysis. She is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled "Topologies of Void: Art and Politics in a De-forming Age."
Alois Sieben (Vice President) is an English instructor and researcher with interests in the internet, film and fiction. He has recently published an article on cyberstalking in Comparative Literature and Culture, a chapter on Inuit throat singing in Lacan and the Environment, reviews of Clint Burnham and Matt Flisfeder's books in Psychoanalysis, Society, and Culture, and appeared on Vanessa Sinclair's podcast Rendering Unconscious. He is currently producing a short film called Night Ferry.
Mandana Mansouri (Secretary) is an artist, curator, and writer who works with displacement and love. She holds an MFA in visual arts from the University of British Columbia and an MA in Urban Design from the Azad University of Tehran. She is interested in considering the body as a vessel for the movement of the wind: an instrument. Her artistic practice has been informed by her desire for speech. She lives in three languages and has been remembering the language of her dreams. To know more about her, click here.
Christopher Dzierzawa (Treasurer) is a counsellor and consultant working in Vancouver and on Gabriola Island. He has worked primarily with neurodiverse youth, young adults and their support networks for the past 25 years in Vancouver. He studied at the University or British Columbia, The European Graduate School, Heidelberg University and The Vancouver College of Counsellor Training. His interests include Philosophy, Mathematics, Visual Art and Psychoanalysis. He has been a member of the Lacan Salon since 2008 and previsouly served as Secretary. Find information regrading his private practice here.
Ted Byrne (Director) worked for twenty-five years as a labour researcher and advocate at the Trade Union Research Bureau in Vancouver. His was introduced to Lacan in the early 1970s through the agency of Robin Blaser’s “Stadium of the Mirror”. Blaser, who worked in the English department at SFU, sent him to the Communications department to study Lacan with Anthony Wilden, translator of Lacan’s “Rome Discourse”. With regard to Lacan, Wilden’s teaching was both a critique and an appropriation, with an emphasis on the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real. He returned to Lacan in the 1980s as a graduate student in Comparative Literature at UBC, with an emphasis on Seminar XX (Encore) and related feminist film studies. He began participating in the Lacan Salon a couple of years after its formation in 2007. For many years he was a member of the Kootenay School of Writing (KSW). His most recent literary publications are Beautiful Lies (Capilano University Press), Duets: Sonnets: Louise Labé: Guido Cavalcanti (Talon Books), Tracery (Talon Books) and A Flea the Size of Paris : The Old French fatrasies & fatras, translated with Donato Mancini (Black Widow Press).
Alessandra Capperdoni (Director) is a graduate in Foreign Languages and Literatures from the Università degli Studi di Bologna (Bologna, Italy). In 2006, she obtained her Ph.D. in English at Simon Fraser University, B.C., where she is presently teaching courses on literature and critical theory in the Departments of English and Humanities. Her work on feminism and psychoanalysis is conjoined with theories of affect. Her research on modernist and postmodern experimental writings and feminist poetics focuses on female subjectivity, feminine sexuality, love, and desire in relation to larger social practices and formations (national imaginaries, transculturalism, global relations, and social change). She has been a member of the Salon since 2008.
Juan Luis de la Mora (Director) practices psychoanalysis in Vancouver, BC. He maintains a strong connection with Mexico City, where he studied and practiced before moving to Vancouver. He has been a part of Lacan Salon since October 2021. He has a BA in Clinical Psychology from Universidad Iberoamericana and a MA in Critical Theory from 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos. In 2016 he published Pensar la nada (Casa Editorial Abismos), a book about addiction and its relation to anxiety and consumption in the context of hypermodernity and capitalism. He has published texts in journals and magazines such as Diecisiete and litoral, as well as a chapter in Lacan and the Environment (Palgrave, 2021). From 2017 to 2023, he was part of the editorial committee of Litoral Editores, where he collaborated in the publishing process of several books, as well as three numbers of litoral, a journal that explored the crossings between Lacanian psychoanalysis, decolonial praxis, feminisms, and contemporary art. He participated in the foundation of Comunidad Cooperativa litoral, of which he was a part from 2018 to 2023.
Paul Kingsbury (Director) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Simon Fraser University. Specializing in social and cultural geography, his research draws on the theories of Jacques Lacan and Friedrich Nietzsche to examine multiculturalism, consumption, power, and aesthetics. He has been a member of the Salon since 2007.
Alma Krilic (Director) is a teacher and student at Simon Fraser University.
Désirée Jung is a writer and artist from Vancouver, Canada. Originally from Brasil, she has been a member of the Lacan Salon since 2008. She is also a member of EBEP – Espaço Brasileiro de Estudos Psicanaliticos. She has published translations, poetry, and fiction in several magazines around the world, taking part in many artists residencies. Her series of video poems were screened in various film festivals and won several prizes. Her nonfiction story “Dispatches from the Womb” was nominated for a 2023 Pushcart Prize. For more information, please check her website: www.desireejung.com.
