Ryan Cummins was born September 8, 1997 in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada to a family of five. At age four his family moved to Riverside, California, United States where he would attend Benjamin Franklin Elementary School (2003 - 2010), Amelia Earhart Middle School (2010 - 2012), and Martin Luther King Jr. High School (2011 - 2015). After completing high school, during which he worked as a life guard for the City of Riverside on a seasonal basis, he moved back to Ontario to attend the University of Waterloo for his undergraduate degree. Beginning in 2015 and graduating in 2020, he received a Political Science degree with a specialization in International Relations, as well as an Honours Arts and Business degree. Cummins also graduated from the co-op program at the University of Waterloo, and worked at a variety of public and private organizations, including a gun-holster and car parts factory (2016 and 2017), the University of Waterloo's Special Collections and Archives (2018), and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (2019). After graduation, Cummins would be briefly employed at a Zehrs grocery store in Waterloo (2020) before moving to Ottawa to work for Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada as a Web Analyst (2021). After completing his work contract, Cummins briefly attended the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs as part of their Intelligence Program before leaving due to moral conflict with the program (2021 - 2022). While working again for the federal government at Women and Gender Equality Canada (2022 - current), Cummins applied for and was accepted by the University of Toronto's iSchool in the Archives and Records Management program, where he still attends (2024 - current).
Clara Lynas was born in Scarborough, Ontario in 1997 to a family of Irish and Italian descent. Lynas is an only child and frequently spent summer months alone with her fathers family in rural central Ontario, this solitude influenced her development of strong interests in both visual arts and the outdoors at a young age. Lynas attended OCAD University from 2015-2020 where she co-created the OCAD University Queer Print Club, a group for LGBTQ students, staff, and faculty to learn printmaking techniques, founded in the spirit of printmaking as a political tool for queer activism, resistance and cultural production. Lynas ultimately received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus on printmaking form OCAD University. Her arts practice focuses heavily on expressive zines rooted in her personal queer feminized experience. Her work uses involved production methods such as silkscreen, relief printing, papermaking and letterpress. She has worked with arts education and outreach for several community arts organizations within the Greater Toronto Area, such as Open Studio, Scarborough Arts and Paper House Collective. She has frequently mobilized her skills for activist efforts as a poster designer, zine maker, and banner maker. Lynas is deeply involved in local habitat restoration, and is a volunteer lead steward with Toronto Nature Stewards where she leads community restoration work in Cedar Brook Park. Much of her personal time has been spent collecting detailed biodiversity data about these local urban ravine systems to support this work. Lynas currently resides in Scarborough, Ontario and has been pursuing a Masters of Information at The University of Toronto since 2024.
Brittany Taylor Jeans (b. 1998-) is a studying archivist and cultural heritage enthusiast from Lewisporte, Newfoundland. She studied at Memorial University of Newfoundland from 2016 to 2022, obtaining a Bachelor and Master of Arts in English. Her research areas centre around book history and print culture, with special focus on Protestant literature and women’s educational history. Through her academic career, she connected with heritage institutions and adjacent communities in the St. John’s area in the early 2020s. In 2024, she began working towards a Master of Information at the University of Toronto. Brittany has amassed a variety of Newfoundland heritage items and documentation from her studies, work in the heritage sector, and job as a custom framing designer.
Brittany moved from her hometown of Lewisporte to St. John’s to attend Memorial University in 2016. For her Bachelor’s degree, she declared an English major and history minor, deciding to narrow her scholarly focus on book history and print culture. She joined the English honours program in 2018, and convocated in 2020 after submitting her honours essay, titled “The Role of Sixteenth-Century Print Culture and Paratext in Canonizing Chaucer.”
Following completion of her Bachelor’s degree, Brittany joined the Pharmacy Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador as a collections assistant for the 2020 fall season. She was involved in reorganizing artifact storage and developing online and in-person exhibits.
She returned to Memorial University to begin her Master of Arts in January 2021, during which she produced a major research essay titled “The ‘vaine studye’ of ‘vertuous ladies’: Negotiating Female Authorship in the Paratext of Margaret More Roper’s and Lady Anne Cooke Bacon’s Translations.”
Throughout her time at Memorial University, Brittany held several research positions and student assistantships, including at the Queen Elizabeth II Library’s Digital Archives Initiative in 2019.
After convocating from her Master’s degree in 2022, she became a custom framing designer at Newfoundland Canvas, a locally-owned and operated printing and framing shop. Here, she adopted an active role in the local art community, supporting some of St. John’s most recognizable artists in producing their framing orders and art prints. In her capacity as framing designer, she helped plan and implement art installations, and preserved local heritage items and artwork in a variety of mediums for both public and private display.
In 2024, she moved to Toronto, Ontario to pursue a Master of Information from the University of Toronto, with a concentration in Archives and Records Management. She obtained an archival internship at the University of Toronto Archives and Records Management Services (UTARMS) through the Toronto Academic Libraries Internship (TALint) program.
Emily Bridgland was born and raised in the GTA, attends Hope Bible Church in Oakville, and attended Robert Bateman High School (now defunct) from 2015-2019, the University of Toronto, Mississauga from 2019-2023, and the University of Toronto's iSchool from 2023-2025.
Bangyue Qi (5 November 2000 – ) is a Master of Information student at the University of Toronto, with a concentration in Archives and Records Management. He is a former Chinese second-grade athlete in swimming and was a member of the Dalian Maritime University Junior Swimming Team from 2011 to 2016. Academically, he focused on research related to Canadian Indigenous history and Canadian colonial history during his undergraduate studies, and now focuses on archival studies in his master's program.
Born and raised in Dalian, China, Bangyue Qi attended the Middle School of the Attached School of Dalian University of Technology from 2014 to 2016. He became interested in swimming at the age of 10 and was selected for the Maritime University Junior Swimming Team due to his outstanding performance. In 2016, he participated in the 4 × 100 medley relay at the Liaoning Junior Swimming Championship, where his team placed eighth. After the competition, he received certification as a Chinese second-grade athlete. After not achieving the desired result in the High School Entrance Examination in 2016, he left the swimming team and chose to focus on his studies. He attended high school at Dalian Maple Leaf International School, where he joined both the golf club and the model club. In his second year of high school, he became vice-president of the Golf Club and was responsible for negotiating cooperation with the Youyi Jinshi Valley Golf Club in Jinshitan, Dalian. In his third year of high school, he developed an interest in ship model making and participated in a model exhibition in Guangzhou, where he presented his model of HMS Rodney.
In 2019, Bangyue Qi enrolled in the History program at York University and moved to Toronto. He focused on ancient Roman and Greek history during his first two years. After attending a class on Indigenous residential schools in his third year, he shifted his interest and research toward Indigenous and colonial history in Canada. Bangyue Qi completing his Honours Bachelor of History degree in 2023. In the summer of 2023, he moved to Shijiazhuang, China, and began an internship at Dongtie Electromechanical Technology Co., Ltd. During this time, he participated in the China International Medical Equipment Fair as a translator and was also responsible for organizing customer information. During this period, he developed an interest in historical documents at the First Historical Archives of China and decided to pursue a career in the archival field. In July 2024, he enrolled in the Archives and Records Management concentration of the Master of Information program at the University of Toronto.
Robyn Bachmeier is an archaeologist, Classicist, and currently an archival student at the University of Toronto in the MI program. She was born in Calgary, Alberta in 1996, and moved to Burlington, Ontario in 2000 with her family. She went to McMaster University in Hamilton for her undergraduate degree in Classics and master’s degree in Classics and archaeology (2014-2021). While a graduate student at McMaster, she worked as a Teaching Assistant for the Classics department for two years (2019-2021). For the completion of her MA degree, she conducted original research on Roman numismatics and on findings from the excavation of the archaeology site “The Villa of Titus”, in Italy. She spent four field seasons in Italy working on archaeology sites as a supervisor with McMaster University (2017- 2022), and she worked as an archaeologist in Ontario, Canada for two years (2022-2024).
She presently volunteers at an archive in a Canadian military museum in Toronto, Ontario. Her current and future interests are in working with and preserving historical archival materials, archaeological materials, rare and ancient books and in the study of Classical Latin linguistics and literature.