Celia Vara

Background

About Celia Vara

Celia Vara holds a Ph.D. in Communication (2019) at Concordia University (QC, Canada) and has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Moving Image Research Lab at McGill University (2024). She is a psychologist since 1997, and her master thesis (“Feminist Video Art in the 70’s in Spain”) won in 2013 the 1st Prize-Award in Gender and Research by Jaume I University in Spain. She is also a visual artist and curator. Her writings and media work have appeared in Journal feral feminisms, Institute for Research on Women (Rutgers University), McGraw Hill Editorial, Art and Politics, humanities and entropy (MPDI Switzerland), Journal of Embodied Research (University of Huddersfield, UK) and Asparkia Investigació feminista. Her PhD Thesis “Kinesthetic Knowledge and Corporal Agency” was ranked excellent in her oral defense (2019). Her pedagogical approach has been recognized with the 2024 Teaching Excellence Award at McGill University. She explores kinesthesia, movement, kinesthetic empathy and the use of sensorial body in 1970s feminist performance art and its relations with corporeal agency and feminist resistance in the current cultural and political context. Her research interests include corporeal processes of consciousness, perception, corporeal agency, feminist pedagogies and embodied research-creation methodologies. Awards, honours, and fellowships: FRQSC Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2022-2025 IVLA Deborah Curtis Artist Fellowship, 2024 RéQEF Appui Projets Scientifics, 2023-2024 ThinkSwiss Research Scholarship, Fonds National Suisse (FNS), Université de Lausanne (UNIL) 2017 Hexagram Research Creation Fellowship, 2016 Rona and Robert Davis Fellowship, 2016 Concordia University Merit Scholarship, 2014 UJI Prize Award Gender and Research - Universitat Jaume I, 2014