Contact Us
SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement
SFU VOCE is based at the SFU Vancouver campus, primarily working and programming out of the SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (GCA) in the Woodward’s complex.
Our team also works out of a satellite office at 312 Main, alongside other SFU departments. We record the Below the Radar podcast at 312 Main as part of our Knowledge Democracy Project.
Phone: 778-782-9817
Please note: Office phone may not always be monitored. We will do our best to get back to you as soon as we can.
Our Staff
Am Johal
Director, SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement
Co-Director, SFU's Community-Engaged Research Initiative
Email: am_johal@sfu.ca
Am Johal is Director of SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement and Co-director of SFU’s Community-Engaged Research Initiative. He is the author of 'Ecological Metapolitics: Badiou and the Anthropocene' (Atropos Press, 2015) and is co-author with Matt Hern (with contributions from Joe Sacco), of "Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life: A Tar Sands Tale" (MIT, 2018).
He is the co-founder of UBC's Humanities 101 program and has been a Visiting Professor with SFU's Centre for Dialogue and an associate with SFU's Institute for the Humanities. He previously served as chair of the Impact on Communities Coalition, as a board member with the Vancity Community Foundation, the Or Gallery, 221A Gallery, the Vancouver City Planning Commission, the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House and many other organizations. He has graduate degrees in international economic relations and media philosophy.
Julia Aoki
Program Manager
Email: julia_aoki@sfu.ca
Julia Aoki is an administrator, writer, researcher, and advocate. She has served as the Executive Director of Megaphone magazine, General Manager of VIVO Media Arts Centre, and General Manager and Programming Director of the Powell Street Festival, where she prioritized developing community centred programs.
Julia currently sits on the board of 221A Artist Run Centre Society, and has volunteered with advocacy organizations such as the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres and DTES SRO Collaborative. Her writing on cultural expressions and community formations that are overlooked and underserved by commercial and political mechanisms and practices can be found in TOPIA, Space and Culture and a collection by Lexington Books.
JOEY MALBON
COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR
Email: ce_communications@sfu.ca
Joey Malbon is a visual storyteller backed by an MA in Comparative Media Arts from the SFU School for the Contemporary Arts. He is a lens-based media artist, educator, pirate-broadcaster, and musician. For the past decade he has immersed himself in Vancouver’s thriving arts, culture and music scenes while involving himself in social and environmental justice movements on the unceded lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
He has worked alongside many groups including the Skoden Indigenous Film Festival, the Small File Media Festival, the Verboden Music Festival and Pride in Chinatown. His work has appeared in CBC, The Vancouver Sun, Exclaim and Adbusters.
Samantha Walters
Program Assistant
Email: ce_assistant@sfu.ca
Samantha Walters is an emerging interdisciplinary performer, writer, and arts administrator based on xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) lands. As an artist, she mostly works between experimental theatre, installation, and directing. Their most recent works examine ecological relationships and post-human spiritualities, with a heavy favour towards the weird, the dark, and the camp.
She grew up in England and Hong Kong and holds a BFA honours in Theatre Performance with a minor in English and a certificate in Performance Studies from SFU's School for the Contemporary Arts.
Kathy Feng
Research Assistant
Kathy Feng (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, born in Guangzhou, China, and is a guest living and working on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. As an immigrant and child of immigrants, she grew up between cultures in a constant process of learning, unlearning, and relearning. This framework informs the central themes to her work: in which memory and nostalgia are expressed through images, text, and the aesthetics of the temporal.
Kathy holds a BFA in Visual Art with a minor in Art and Performance Studies from SFU's School for the Contemporary Arts. She began working at SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement January 2020 as a Research Assistant for the Below the Radar podcast.
Steve Tornes
Program Coordinator — ON leave
Steve Tornes has an inexhaustible passion for all things related to urban planning, data, politics, and literature. With a Master of Urban Studies degree from Simon Fraser University and a thesis on the Vancouver Bike Share Program, they look at the region through an environmental and equitable transportation perspective. Besides being a founding member of LightWork, a workers co-op focused on fostering justice and belonging through safer, inclusive, and more diverse work environments, Steve also worked as a data specialist at a tech company focused on augmented reality. He is currently working to publish a collection of short stories.
A North Vancouverite on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, Steve currently sits on the City’s Advisory Planning Commission after having served as Chair of the Social Planning Advisory Committee. He can usually be found at their local library reading or getting immersed in some new subject, such as R Programming or wildlife photography.