Tanya Behrisch, PhD

Tanya Behrisch’s arts-based research draws on 35 years practicing oil painting, sea kayaking, back country skiing, alpine, glacier and snow camping, and long distance ocean swimming in BC. She’s currently writing about healing as scholarship and the appeal of veganism to a lifelong meat eater. She won the Dean’s medal for her doctoral thesis, completed in 2022, at SFU's Faculty of Education, titled “Making Friends with Strangeness.” Her work reminds modern humans that we live beside mystery despite our expanding, and contracting, knowledge about the universe. Influenced by feminism, post-humanism and queer theory, her genre-defying cultural studies writing is published in peer reviewed journals and free platforms such as The Medium. Tanya leads SFU's Work Integrated Learning unit at SFU. Her paintings are held in collections worldwide.