Taking her research to a mainstream audience

Faculty of Arts and Science PhD student Jessica Turner has been selected to present her research as part of TEDxOttawa 2026 taking place on Saturday. The theme this year is Continuum.

The PhD student in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies was selected as one of 12 speakers out of more than 360 applicants. TEDxOttawa is dedicated to showcasing extraordinary individuals and ideas worth spreading. The event is committed to amplifying diverse voices, sparking dialogue, and creating space for reflection, curiosity, and action.

Her presentation focuses on how curatorial practice can alter the conditions of encounter and, in doing so, reshape the narratives that guide interpretation.

Jessica Turner with Jan Kabatoff.

"The event is divided into three sections: Systems, Emergence, and Belonging. I am speaking in the Systems category,” Turner (Film and Media) explains. "Other speakers include a principal architect at Google Cloud, the director of parliamentary affairs to Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, and a Ukrainian writer and television showrunner.”

Turner is an oil painter and about 10 years ago she saw that the Ontario College of Art and Design University had a program for an undergraduate degree in curatorial practices. "That was a very new field of study, so I decided to apply for it. During my undergraduate degree, I curated an A Reflection of Art in Isolation during the pandemic in Belleville for 32 local artists. Then, for my master's degree, I curated Contemplating Glaciers- A Dialogue, a solo exhibit of works by British Columbia-based artist Jan Kabatoff."

The exhibit, hosted at Kingston’s Tett Gallery, invites the viewer to deepen awareness of the impacts of a warming — and increasingly polluted — world on nature through the lens of the impacts on the Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park.

This will form the basis of her talk in Ottawa.

She notes this work runs adjacent to her overarching research, which is the ethics of curating difficult subjects, histories, and pressing social issues, including climate change, and examines how these subjects have been represented and how those representations have changed over time.

When asked about the opportunity presenting at TEDxOttawa provides, Turner says there are a number of opportunities for her. "I see this as an opportunity for personal growth and being able to translate my research to wider audiences. My hope too is that artists, curators, and scientists curating similar topics will see my talk and be interested in collaborating in the future. And I also hope people understand how important and effective it is to communicate these complex issues through art exhibitions."