In the Making Culture Lab. Photo by Kate Hennessy, 2015.
Please Note: Kate Hennessy anticipates being on Study Leave from Sept 2024- August 2025. She currently does not plan to admit new students in the Fall 2024 cycle to the Making Culture Lab.
I (Kate) welcome inquiries from potential MA and PhD students who are interested in the SIAT graduate program and would like to participate in the work of the Making Culture Lab. Students with media production and media arts experience or programming expertise who are interested in applying their skills to broader cultural, anthropological, and museological, and exhibition oriented research questions are encouraged to do the following before submitting an application:
1. Familiarize yourself with the SIAT and SFU Admission requirements. You must satisfy all institutional requirements for admission, which you can review at http://www.siat.sfu.ca/grad/admissions/. Our admissions cycle at SIAT regularly begins in September and ends in February of the same year. Please note that SFU’s minimum GPA for admission is 3.0; I generally look for students who are closer to a 4.0 to ensure greatest possible opportunities for scholarships and fellowships.
2. Familiarize yourself with the School of Interactive Arts and Technology. We have an innovative, interdisciplinary, research focused graduate program. Review our course requirements and course offerings and decide if this looks like the right program for you.
3. Most importantly, familiarize yourself with my research and the work going on in the Making Culture Lab. Look at our projects and our publications in the last several years and think about how your interests, expertise, and background will enable you to generate new research questions and projects. We emphasize collaborative research and expect students to work as Research Assistants (RAs) on our ongoing projects, and/or Teaching Assistants (TAs) in the SIAT program. Along those lines, I generally only admit students to whom I can offer RA and/or TA support or who demonstrate strong potential to be successful in scholarship competitions. For example, for international students, see the SSHRC Vanier Doctoral Scholarship, the SFU Multi-year Funding, and the Trudeau Foundation. For Canadian students, see SSHRC, as well as SSHRC Vanier Doctoral Scholarship,SFU Multi-year Funding, and the Trudeau Foundation.
4. If you have done all of the above and still think that the Making Culture Lab is the right research group for you at SIAT, then send a letter of intent and your CV to me by email (hennessy_kate (at) sfu dot ca). The letter of intent should adhere to the standards set in the SIAT graduate program application and should include a description of your research interests, potential thesis topics, and how your background has prepared you to successfully begin graduate study.
Please note that I generally will not respond to emails unless a letter of intent and CV are included (or we have had a previous introduction).
