Our Faculty

Dr. Jeff McLaughlin comes from Winnipeg, where he received his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Alberta. He is the author and editor of numerous books. His areas of interest include applied ethics, popular culture, and Holocaust studies. Jeff has taught at TRU since 1993.

As a faculty member, I have continued to work as a freelance journalist for more than 20 years, publishing a book called Letters From Prison about the experiences of federal prisoners across Canada and the United States, and a book about orangutans called The Intimate Ape: Orangutans and The Secret Life of a Vanishing Species. The orangutan book was written over ten years of travel to Borneo, Sumatra and other parts of the world. I wrote an online column for Psychology Today magazine about people and apes, was an expert witness for a court case in Argentina about an orangutan named Sandra, testifying and writing four reports for the court, and published an article on how to design science experiments with great apes in order to support the court action of the Nonhuman Rights Project seeking to win personhood rights for intelligent species in U.S. court.

I am the former chair of the Thompson Rivers University arts faculty Academic Standards Committee; former chair of the university Harassment and Discrimination Prevention Committee; former chair of the Community Advisory Board for the local maximum-security provincial prison in Kamloops.

My main interest is the experiential place between what the mind thinks it sees as reality, the pictures it conjures through various methods – conscious or not – in order to bring sense (or nonsense) to that experience, the effects of embodiment, subjectivity and environment on perception, and the point at which we try to bring perceptual experience to fruition through a concrete proxy (such as drawing or photography). My research background is the phenomenology of imagination and consciousness in its relationship to the process of drawing, the evolution and pathology of drawing, embodiment in relation to perception and the historical development and evolution of pictorial space. Further, my research includes the influence of photographic technologies on perception, contemporary art, and cultural practices. I teach visual culture, drawing, curating, women’s art history, art theory, and the fourth year seminar. I am a TRU Teaching and Learning Scholar investigating the effectiveness of the use of imagery in pedagogy and am principle investigator of the TRU PicWiki for postsecondary educators worldwide to share best practices in the effective use of imagery to facilitate teaching. My interdisciplinary scholarly activities include peer reviewed publications and conference presentations, artistic production and curating of contemporary art.

Darlene Kalynka, an Associate Professor in the Communication and Visual Arts Department at Thompson Rivers University (TRU), was born in Rosthern, Saskatchewan, and is of Ukrainian descent. She received her B.F.A. from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, and her M.F.A. from Concordia University, Montreal. Darlene has lived in Kamloops and taught at TRU since 1988. Her artistic practice is print-based, specifically in the mediums of etching and screen-printing. In recent years Darlene brought to her artistic practice an interest in book-making. Recent bodies of artwork explore narratives of family history and of discovering her ancestral heritage while travelling to the villages of western Ukraine. Imagery of objects that convey her family’s history, such as a remnant of her grandmother’s wedding dress or the family’s scythes, form a thematic basis for Darlene’s artistic practice. Her most recent exhibitions include Monumental Ideas in Miniature Books II and III that has traveled throughout Europe, USA, and Asia. Her work has been exhibited in the “Trilateral Print Exchange: Re-Identification” in Utrecht, Netherlands, Yokohama, Japan and Vancouver, Canada, as well as in solo shows in other Canadian venues as well as in and numerous group exhibitions throughout Canada and Europe.

At TRU Donald Lawrence teaches Visual Arts courses in a wide range of studio disciplines, including drawing, foundation, photography and sculpture. He has complemented such discipline-specific offerings with Special Topics courses, including Art and Wilderness, Parade Float, and Shelters and the Art of Personal Vehicles. Through gallery and landscape-based projects his own artistic and other related research practice explores the meeting place of urban and wilderness culture. Such projects as Kayak/Camera-Obscura and the Underwater Pinhole Photography Project relate his particular interests in sea kayaking and the ocean environment to a long-standing fascination with pre-photographic optical apparatuses. In addition to his studio and teaching practices Lawrence engages in a range of publication and conference activities and has been the recipient of research grants from the BC Arts Council, the Canada Council and SSHRC. He is the lead researcher of the SSHRC-funded Camera Obscura Project.

Amanda is a University Instructor for the Department of Communication and Visual Arts at TRU, teaching 2D Foundations, Drawing and Printmaking courses. She has has been funded by the Canadian Research Council (SSHRC) to do both national and international research and has exhibited across the globe in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia. Through the translation of photographic images into photopolymer gravure, woodcuts, silkscreen and digital prints, her body of research examines cycles in wilderness framed to parallel those of human existence.