Originally from Vancouver, B.C., Sheena Jary completed her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) at Simon Fraser University. In 2014, Sheena relocated to London, Ontario, to complete her Master’s Degree in Comparative Literatures and Cultures at the University of Western Ontario. Sheena’s Master’s thesis, entitled “The Entelechial Thinker in Space,” was supported financially by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In 2016, Sheena moved to Hamilton to begin her doctoral research in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. Her dissertation, “Returning to Cognitive Consonance: The Revolution of Self in Seventeenth-Century England,” examines how, during the Spatial Reformation, varying concepts of space impacted individual identity, self-determination, and free will.

Using her professional background in training and development, Sheena is currently working on a teaching and learning project with the MacPherson Institute for Leadership, Innovation, and Excellence in Teaching at McMaster. This project is aimed at better equipping graduate student teaching assistants with the interpersonal skills required for teaching undergraduate students. Though her academic training has focused largely on metaphysics in sixteenth-and-seventeenth-century French, Italian, and English literature, Sheena is most passionate about facilitating student success in the classroom and through larger teaching and learning projects. Sheena continues to publish, while also remaining committed to sharing her ideas at academic conferences; her most recent presentation was in Boston for the Northeastern Modern Languages Association, where she co-presented her findings on a collaborative teaching and learning project.