How can working with images and sounds change the questions we ask as researchers and teachers? Drs. Colleen Laird (University of British Columbia), Lucy Fife Donaldson (University of St Andrews), and Dayna McLeod (Concordia University) introduce videographic criticism—the use of audiovisual making as a form of scholarship—and explore its possibilities as a collaborative methodology for research and teaching.
Drawing on examples of video essays and their three-year project Ways of Undoing: Craft, Collaboration and Videographic Practice, they will show how working with images, sounds, materials, and creative constraints can become a way of asking questions and testing ideas. They’ll share practical examples, introduce exercises designed to help students and scholars think through making, and consider how videographic methods can reach different audiences to create new possibilities for teaching and assessment.
The presentation will be followed by a Q&A and an introduction to the three-day hands-on Ways of Undoing workshop, Undoing Your Archive at UBC.
Date & Time:
Friday, September 18, 2026 | 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM (PT)
Location:
Auditorium, Asian Centre, 1871 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
For more information on Ways of Undoing, see our website: https://waysofdoing.com/ways-of-undoing/
This event is sponsored by the Department of Asian Studies, University of St Andrews, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
Speakers
Dr. Colleen Laird is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Cinema in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada). She has published videographic works in 16:9, [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture, Open Screens, Screenworks, Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays, and Tekonokultura. Her video essays have been included in the Sight and Sound Best Video Essays annually since in 2022. She was the PI for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Connection (SSHRC) Grant for the “Embodying the Video Essay” (2023) and “Reframing the Argument” videographic workshops (2025). She is Co-PI on the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded Ways of Undoing project (2026-2028) as well as co-organizer of the Videographic Venice summer programs at Venice International University. Her piece “See Under: Orient” won Honorable Mention at the 2025 Adelio Ferrero Award festival.
Dr. Dayna McLeod is a queer performance-based media artist-scholar who actively engages queer and feminist approaches to research-creation through art and media. She has been part of the Scholarship in Sound & Image Workshop on Videographic Criticism team as an Instructor at Middlebury College since 2024. In 2023, she led attendees of the SSHRC-funded Embodying the Video Essay workshop in five exercises, which she developed. Her video essays have been featured in White Frame, FilmExplorer, Recycled Screenings, and in the Sight & Sound Best of Video Essays for 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. She edited Queer/ing Horror: Video Essays at the Intersection of Horror and Queerness, a special issue of MONSTRUM, and her video essays have been published in ASAP Review, [in] Transition, Teknokultura: Journal of Digital Culture and Social Movements, and Intermédialités: History and Theory of the Arts, Literature and Technologies. In 2025-26, she presented a 3-screen video installation Queer. Widow. Cancer. at the Galerie de l’Université de Montréal as part of Devenirs partagés. Pratiques de l’IA, curated by Christelle Proulx that uses three DaynAI doppelgängers to reflect on loss, illness, and survival following the death of Dayna’s wife MJ and Dayna’s own experience with cancer.
Dr. Lucy Fife Donaldson is a Professor of Film Studies at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of Texture in film (Palgrave, 2014), the co-editor of Television performance (Red Globe Press, 2019) and is currently working on a videographic monograph for Lever Press relating to the work of film designers. She was one of the co-organisers of Embodying the Video Essay workshop, hosted at Bowdoin College in 2022, and leads the team on ‘Ways of Undoing: Craft, Collaboration and Videographic Practice’. She has published audiovisual essays in Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic and Moving Image Studies and Monstrum. Her work won first prize in the video essay strands of the Adelio Ferrero Award in 2024 and the Marienbad Film Festival in 2025, has been featured in the Sight & Sound Best of Video Essays of 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, received honorable mention (2023) and runner up (2024) in the BAFTSS practice research awards.
