Dr. Jamie Michaels
Doctoral candidate and instructor at the University of Calgary
Dr. Jamie Michaels, a collaborator at the Observatory on Human Rights at the UN, is a doctoral candidate and instructor at the University of Calgary. His research utilizes popular mediums such as comics, animations, and films to expand important conversations about politics and human rights in new and surprising ways. His dissertation presents the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in comic book form, showcasing both the Jewish and Arab perspectives of these events.
His creative practice has received the Norma Epstein Foundation Biennial Award in Creative Writing (National), the Harold Greenberg Fund Shorts-to-Features Award, and the Joe Shuster Award for Excellence in Comics Creation. Jamie has a longstanding belief in the power of culture to foster generative social change. He is a contributor to the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, the Symposium on Canadian Comics, the International Comics Arts Forum, and the Earth System Governance Project.
Jamie is a Killam Laureate (2021-2023), Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Scholar (2022-2025), Fellow of the Calgary Institute for the Humanities (2024-2025), and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow (2026-2028). His contributions to human rights have been recognized by Historica Canada, The President for the Academy of the Arts and the Humanities for the Royal Society of Canada, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
