Our instructors

Claudia Irace

Claudia Irace received her Laurea in Modern Foreign Language and Literature from the Istituto Universitario di Napoli, Italy where she studied Chinese, English and Korean as well as Far East Asian history, philosophy, arts, and linguistics. She studied and worked in China for two years where she met her Canadian husband and moved to Vancouver in 1999. She spent four years as School Coordinator for the Italian Cultural Centre before joining UBC. Her interests are languages and world cultures as well as kayaking, music, films and animals.

Emmy Issartial

Andrew Iverson

Sumeet Jaswal

Sumeet M. Jaswal is a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology at UBC. She researches human visual attention, focusing on how people negatively respond to another person’s small, repetitive movements, a phenomenon known as misokinesia. Sumeet is communications coordinator for Brain Buzz, a podcast that makes research fun, accessible and engaging for everyone. She's also a past graduate student volunteer for Let’s Talk Science at UBC, a charity that strives to improve the understanding and appreciation of physical and life sciences, mathematics, engineering and technology.

Marie-Gerald Jean

Jessica Johnson

Parker Johnson

Parker Johnson is an organizational effectiveness consultant focused on equity, inclusion, diversity work. He has more than 25 years of experience as a facilitator, trainer, mediator, coach and researcher in organizational change, diversity in the workplace, and intercultural communication. His interest in intercultural work began in 1992 at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communications, where he later served as an associate faculty member. Parker has worked with government, higher education institutions, profit and non-profit organizations focusing on facilitating inclusive leadership development, organizational change, and creating inclusive and just organizations. He earned an M.Ed. at Harvard University and has taught communication and social science courses at several universities in Canada and the United States.

Dong Kyong Jung

Somayeh Kamranian

Anya Keefe