Jennesia is a multi-disciplinary storyteller who researches, teaches, writes, and directs (in no particular order).

She grew up in the chilly Northwestern region of Ontario where she spent her days attending school, figure skating, reading Nancy Drew mystery novels and watching Italian soap operas at her nonna’s house.

After high school, Jennesia went to Carleton University to study journalism but completed a BA in English Literature and Mass Communication instead. Afterwards, she completed an MA in Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario and a PhD in Communication Studies at Simon Fraser University. During her years as a graduate student and now as a lecturer, she has researched, published, and taught about things related to media and popular culture.

Inevitably, Jennesia’s scholarly interest in popular media took her from research and teaching to creating her own media. Jennesia’s first film, The Alderson Murder, is an adaptation of a dark and comedic short story written by Canadian writer, Gonzalo Riedel. Her second short film, Happily Ever After won an audience choice award at the 2023 Run N’ Gun Film Festival. She has written several more original short screenplays, including Next Stop, which placed first in its category at the 2023 NYC Midnight Screenwriting Challenge and placed in the Top 12 semi-finalists of Crazy 8s, the longest-running short filmmaking competition in Vancouver, BC.

Jennesia is currently on the Board of Directors of the Geist Foundation, which publishes the Canadian literary magazine Geist. Jennesia’s non-fiction writing has been published in Geist and in Discorder Magazine, and her YA romance novel, The Kiss, will debut June 25, 2025.

The thing that unifies the multiple facets of Jennesia’s work is storytelling. She brings theory and praxis together through storytelling across her research, teaching, writing and filmmaking to create rich, critically engaging, and memorable experiences for a variety of audiences, using multiple media.

“I’m a filmmaker, a writer, and a scholar—not in parallel, but in dialogue. This site lets you start wherever you like, because there’s no one route through the work. It all speaks to the same questions: What kinds of stories shape us? Whose voices are heard? And how can media—popular or otherwise—create meaning, memory, and change?” -Jennesia