Left: Nyia Sutherland, Right: Sky Canham-Fishleigh
In early January 2026, GRSJ interviewed Sky Canham-Fishleigh and Nyia Sutherland—the student co-editors of the Ignite Undergraduate Journal. We wanted to know more about the journal’s revival and about the upcoming Spring 2026 volume. Excerpts of our conversation are included below and have been edited for clarity.
The Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice (GRSJ): Please introduce yourselves
Sky Canham-Fishman: My name is Sky, and I’m a Dominican Canadian from the island of Dominica in the Caribbean. I’m also Canadian, but I grew up in the Caribbean. I’m a third-year student at UBC. I’m studying political ecologies, within the Interdisciplinary Studies program. Political ecologies incorporates themes of human geography, gender, race, sexuality and social justice, and First Nations and Indigenous studies.
Outside of school, I do work in community. Back home in Dominica, I create youth-catered programs for conservation, climate change awareness, and outdoor education.
That helped birth the idea of this year’s theme, which incorporates world building. A big focus right now in my work and in my generation is how we turn our learning into action and how we collaborate through world building.
Nyia Sutherland: I’m Nyia, and I’m also in my third year at UBC. I’m studying gender, race, sexuality, and social justice. I’m originally from Vancouver Island, and I’m a third-generation immigrant here. My grandparents came to Vancouver Island by boat from a small walled town, Cittadella, Italy. I’m very much a Vancouver Islander at heart, but I came to social justice through literature and specifically through bell hooks and Audre Lorde.
I spent a lot of time reading their works and I felt this affinity for what they were talking about and how they were taking their observations from the lived world and then writing it in this really beautiful, eloquent prose. And so, I wanted to find my home in GRSJ and in that writing. I’ve been really excited to take on this big project.
GRSJ: Please tell us a little bit about your experience in GRSJ.
Sky: Like many GRSJ students, I stumbled upon the program. When I first came to UBC I thought I wanted to go into international relations, but then slowly my plan shifted. In my first year, I took a GRSJ class and a First Nations and Indigenous Studies (FNIS). That GRSJ class was actually a fourth year seminar taught by Dr. Jemima Pierre, and I was very intimidated. I ended up loving it—the literature we engaged with, the freedom of our discussion, and how intimate and personal it was.
“Basically, I stumbled upon GRSJ and then couldn’t leave.”
It changed my whole outlook on how a university classroom could be structured and how the relationships between professor and students could co-create the classroom experience. I have noticed this in a lot of GRSJ classes, especially the upper year seminars. The themes and topics are presented by the professor but then shaped by the students in significant ways.
Basically, I stumbled upon GRSJ and then couldn’t leave.
Nyia: I had a similar experience to Sky; it was very serendipitous. I took a class in first year with Dr. Minelle Mahtani. Dr. Mahtani is a CBC radio host and has just released a memoir. She shared her interest in the interview process and flipping the power dynamics in those spaces. She brought in authors to talk about their memoirs, and we were actually able to ask these Vancouver-based authors questions and discuss themes of race, gender, sexuality, and social justice. I thought that was such a cool way to engage with literature.
Adding to what Sky was saying, GRSJ classes are very immersive, and professors encourage students to be active participants in their learning. It’s a very active process, and it feels very embodied and exciting. It awakens your senses because it’s not like you’re sitting in this stale environment; you’re having real conversations with people, and you are recognized as the living, breathing, organic being that you are.
GRSJ: Can you tell us what Ignite is all about and how it came to be revived this year?
Nyia: Ignite is the Undergraduate Journal for GRSJ. It was founded in 2009, right after the 2008 financial crisis. It had a relatively long and successful first run for a student-led publication. Then it plateaued for a little bit, it was revived again in 2020 during COVID, and then more recently it had plateaued again. Ignite has really been a cyclical publication that comes in times of need.
It’s very fittingly named Ignite because it bubbles up and resurges during moments of very hot political tension. When the world seems polarized or hopeless, students can find strength in action. The act of creating can be very powerful.
Sky: Building on what previous editors have done, this year, we hope that Ignite looks different than a traditional journal. We opened up the types of submissions we accepted to include creative work like poetry, visual art, or anything that people feel inspired to create.
We really don’t fully know what the final product will look like; this is and has been an open and free flowing. That’s our intention, to maintain that co-creation ethos that we have experienced in our classes in GRSJ.
“It's very fittingly named Ignite because it bubbles up and resurges during moments of very hot political tension. When the world seems polarized or hopeless, students can find strength in action.”
GRSJ: What is this year’s Volume about?
Sky: The theme for Ignite Volume XI (Spring 2026) is: World Building and Beyond: A Toolkit for Bridging the Divide Between Academia and Action. I’ve talked to so many students, not just in GRSJ but all over UBC. We all feel a sense of urgency in our lives and in this generation. And I think it’s important that I state that “action” doesn’t necessarily mean community actions like protest, advocacy, or other forms. It’s also about acting in your own personal awakening and about your own journey through bridging that divide.
There are a lot of different ways that people can and have interpreted the theme within their submissions, and we’re open to all of them. We want to focus on that urgency and also help break those colonial norms of how we incorporate education into our lives, into our communities.
Nyia: Yes, Sky came up with the theme, and she drew from the work of adrienne maree brown. brown’s work really resonated with me too. I noticed this year I was getting fatigued reading a lot of post-structuralist theory that felt very detached from my everyday life. It felt like I was drowning in the abstract.
“We are trying to catalyze those ideas and produce something that students can look at and feel inspired and empowered to use as a toolkit.”
I also felt like the work that I was reading wasn’t benefiting the communities that were being researched. I didn’t like how extractive and backwards that was. I wanted to create a space for students that felt similarly. I think a lot of us have this discomfort, this cognitive dissonance between our values and between how the university is structured and how it favours a certain type of knowledge production.
We also drew from other great thinkers, especially indigenous scholars like Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Glen Coulthard, who’s a political science professor here. We built on the idea of resurgency and how we can find deep ways of knowing from our everyday lives and that those are especially salient within times of political need.
Sky: Exactly. We are trying to catalyze those ideas and produce something that students can look at and feel inspired and empowered to use as a toolkit. It can be daunting to know where to start. I think a lot of our peers are feeling similar things that Nyia and I are, and having those feelings validated through this work could be really valuable.
I would also love to see more courses include community action in their grading systems. And I know that students are working almost double trying to do the work in community while also trying to maintain their academic standing. It feels like this is a prime moment to try and to bridge those two worlds.
GRSJ: Is there anything else you would like people to know about this project?
Sky: I would just say we’re really excited. This is not the first version of Ignite, but it’s definitely a transformative version. I think that a lot more will come out of this than we can predict right now; that’s my hope. I’m excited.
Nyia: I also just want to say thank you to our peers. We have a group of volunteers who are bringing their diverse perspectives to the process, and it really feels like we’re co-creating with them. Also, the outpouring of love and support we’ve seen in the submissions that we have received has been incredible. They’re all beautiful and composed with such intention and vulnerability. I want to thank the students for that because I do know that putting yourself out there, especially with creative work, is a vulnerable process. We don’t take the responsibility of receiving those submissions lightly.
“We have a group of volunteers who are bringing their diverse perspectives to the process, and it really feels like we’re co-creating with them.”
Sky: We also have to thank Dr. Snowden and Dr. Bandali for supporting this and getting this year’s edition going. They are the backbone of this project.
GRSJ: When can we expect to see the volume?
Sky: We’re still finalizing the details, but we’re hoping to have something to share in the spring. We plan to do multiple releases, so it’s best to follow us on Instagram if you want to stay in the know (@igniteundergraduatejournal).
