Proud to Be Team

Sahra Ali

Education Contributor

Sahra Ali is a nomadic writer, education consultant, and tech developer working at the intersection of humanities, technology, and social justice. With experience in academia, publishing, and public interest technology, she develops innovative learning resources and equity-driven solutions. Ali splits her time between Alaska and abroad, bringing a global perspective to her work in education and storytelling.

Renee Allen

Education Contributor

Renee Allen is a multi-hyphenate Jamaican-born, Toronto-based, writer-educator, with a passion for working with children and youth. She is deeply committed to work that interrogates and addresses interlocking systems of oppression. Her writing appears in Zora, THIS magazine and PREE. Renee is also a recent graduate of the Masters of Teaching program at the University of Toronto, with a book collection that keeps outgrowing her bookcase.

Elise Eisenkraft Klein

Education Collaborator

Elise Eisenkraft Klein is an OCT-certified teacher with a history specialization who has taught kindergarten through middle school, including music and outdoor education. She helped create and deliver children’s educational programming at several Jewish institutions and was a support worker at a leadership retreat for 2SLGBTQ+ youth from across Canada. She has a B.A. from McGill and a Master of Teaching from OISE, where her research project focused on using Afrofuturism and Indigenous speculative fiction as tools for deepening literacy engagement, and exploring history and other STEAM subjects. Elise is invested in compassionate approaches to helping neurodivergent students who need extra support with foundational literacy skills and those with executive functioning challenges, things that come up frequently in her current position as a Learning Specialist at Ruth Rumack’s Learning Space.

She is particularly interested in finding innovative ways to explore histories that have been understudied, and figuring out new angles through which to view histories that we might think we already understand. These are just some of the reasons why she is super excited to be working with Defining Moments!

When not teaching, Elise spends time playing fiddle and klezmer violin music, watching and reading sci-fi, cooking, biking, and connecting with nature and the land. She lives in Toronto with her partner and their polydactyl ginger cat.

Erin Imrie

Education Collaborator

Erin Imrie (she/they) is a bisexual, bipolar, and bilingual educator based in Toronto. She has taught French at the middle school level for the past decade, and has also worked as facilitator for education connected to queer issues, mental health, and consent. Her lived experiences and years of working with youth inform her passion for social justice and DEI work. Outside of teaching, Erin can be found performing with her community musical theatre troupe, or – in the off-season – singing in the car.

Gillian Robinson

Education Collaborator

Gillian Robinson has been a classroom social studies and language teacher for sixteen years and is a PhD candidate in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Alberta, where she is an instructor and an instructional coach. Her passion lies in the work of anti-oppressive education, with a specific focus on queer and trans theory and sexual violence. She aims to improve queer-inclusive policy frameworks for better student outcomes, while mobilizing the work of Black, Indigenous, and feminist of colour theorists to understand how institutional whiteness blocks transformative change in schools. Her research interests include queer studies, anti-oppressive education, institutional whiteness, sexuality in schools, and sexual health education.

Howard Akler

Historical Contributor

Howard Akler a writer and the author of two novels, The City Man and Splitsville, and Men of Action, a memoir.

Jamie Bradburn

Contributing Historian

Jamie Bradburn is a Toronto-based writer/researcher/historian who specializes in the stories that have shaped his city and province. His work has been published by TVO, the Toronto Star, Spacing, Historica Canada, and Torontoist.

Benjamin Harris

Historical Contributor

Benjamin Harris is currently studying for a master’s degree in Public History at Queen’s University Belfast. His upcoming dissertation is an oral history which focuses on the influx of immigration that Belfast, Northern Ireland received after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. This work, as well as his studies of Black history while pursuing an undergraduate degree at Huron University College, aligns with his goal of using history to amplify marginalized voices.

Klein Corne Klein

Historical Contributor

Klein Corne Klein is an independent researcher working at the intersections of visual culture, gender and sexuality studies, and coalitional social justice movements. They are interested in work that engages creatively with history and archives in order to challenge and/or complicate dominant historical narratives and assumptions, with a particular focus on histories of gentrification and urban displacement, activist movements and their reactionary fallouts, affect theory, HIV/AIDS, and arts and cultural production. Klein holds a Master’s in Film and Moving Image Studies from Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema.

Dr. Valerie J. Korinek

Contributing Historian

Dr. Valerie J. Korinek has a doctorate in Canadian cultural and gender history from the University of Toronto. She is currently the A.S. Morton Professor of History in the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan. An award-winning teacher and scholar, Dr. Korinek is the recipient of the Provost’s Award for Outstanding Teacher at USask. Her scholarly contributions have been recognized with a fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada.

Dr. Korinek has published widely in contemporary prairie gendered histories. Her most recent book, Prairie Fairies: A History of Queer Communities and People in Western Canada 1930-1985 (U of T Press, 2018) has won numerous national awards.

Rhea Rollmann

Historical Contributor

Rhea Rollmann (she/her) is an award-winning journalist, writer, and audio producer based in St. John’s, NL, and is the author of A Queer History of Newfoundland (Engen Books, 2023). She’s a founding editor of The Independent NL and her journalism has appeared in Briarpatch Magazine, CBC, Xtra Magazine, Chatelaine, PopMatters, Riddle Fence, Macleans and more. Her academic work has been published in the Journal of Gender Studies, Labor Studies Journal, Canadian Woman Studies, Journal of Work and Society, Canadian Theatre Review, Canadian Review of Sociology, Screen Bodies and elsewhere.

Her work has garnered three Atlantic Journalism Awards, the Andrea Walker Memorial Prize for Feminist Health Journalism and multiple CAJ award nominations. Her 2023 book A Queer History of Newfoundland was longlisted for the Winterset Award, and in 2024 she was a short-listed nominee for the NL Provincial Human Rights Award. She’s President of CUPE Local 4554 at Memorial University, a member of CUPE’s National Pink Triangle Committee, and also serves on the Board of Directors of Trans Support NL, the National Community Radio Association, and the Global Association Against Traffic in Women. She also has an extensive background in labour organizing and queer/trans activism, and is Station Manager at CHMR-FM, a community radio station in St. John’s, NL.