*POSTPONED* DTS Alumni Panel

We welcome you to join us for the DTS Alumni Panel on May 4th at 3:00pm in JHB 235 (170 St. George St.). Learn what DTS graduates are doing now, how the DTS program helped them achieve their goals and inspired their post graduate studies and careers.

This year, we are joined by four DTS alumni who will share their stories and answer your questions: 

Christina de la Cruz
Christina de la Cruz (she/her), is a dancer working in both the commercial entertainment industry, as well as the street dance community. Her interests revolve around Black diasporic cultural production, archiving street dance, caring for/curating dancing bodies, and Black identity in Canadian art. 

After graduating from the University of Toronto, she spent 6 years working internationally as a dancer, during which she was based in Los Angeles. Since moving back, she is pursuing her Masters in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory at McMaster University. She is early in her journey as an arts administrator, and is guided by the belief that dance operates as a rich well of knowledge that can inform the larger landscape of cultural programming. 

Sarah Lima
Sarah Lima received a Master of Global Affairs (MGA) at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy in 2021. She also received her Honours Bachelor of Arts with Distinction in 2018 from the University of Toronto, majoring in Diaspora and Transnational Studies. While in her graduate program, she wrote a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funded research paper on queer refugees with disabilities in Canada. Later she successfully competed for a placement with the Ontario Internship Program (OIP) and collaborated with Ontario’s Provincial Anti-Human Trafficking Coordination Office (PATCO) to design the first Human Trafficking and Disability e-Learning Course in the Ontario Public Service with the goals of educating frontline staff on the impacts of human, sex and labour trafficking and offering best practices for victim support. Additionally, she has worked for the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) headquarters in Geneva, various charitable non-profit organizations, and academic think tanks like the Centre for Global Social Policy in their Gender, Migration and the Work of Care (GMC) project. Sarah continues her academic focus on exploring intersections, especially as they relate to disability, feminized labour, queer sexuality and refugees, and trafficking.

Marium Vahed
Marium is an entrepreneurial leader with a background in building social impact-driven organizations. Through her advocacy and non-profit work, she has driven the conversation forward on diverse issues including the environment, equity, diversity and inclusion, mental health, and civic engagement. Marium works at Cookin, an app where customers can order from a diverse variety of food made by local chefs out of their home kitchens. Marium has an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Diaspora and Transnational Studies from the University of Toronto & an MSc in Digital Management from Ivey Business School. In her spare time, she’s writing a novel!

Serena Viola
Serena Viola graduated from the University of Toronto in 2020, double majoring in Political Science and Diaspora and Transnational Studies. She recently earned her Master of Science at the University of Guelph in Capacity Development and Extension, defending her thesis, "Access to Culturally Significant Foods in Rural Ontario," in December 2022.  Serena works for the Ontario Public Service as an Economic and Business Advisor at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, where she works in Economic Development. Serena is passionate about knowledge mobilization, accessible foodways, community engagement, and sustainable economies. 

To register for this event, please email Dr. Antonela Arhin at cdts@utoronto.ca. We look forward to seeing you there!