Rebecca Heyl, MFA, BA

PhD Student, Faculty of Education, SFU

Rebecca is a community-engaged artist, author and educator. She received a MFA from the Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts program in Boston, Massachusetts. She has taught photography and photojournalism courses at several universities. After completing an undergraduate degree in Psychology, Rebecca studied documentary photography at the International Center of Photography in New York. She began working as a newspaper photographer and continues to do freelance work. However, in recent years Rebecca has become involved in the use of photography for pedagogical documentation in early childhood and primary school settings.

Rebecca is currently a PhD student in the Art Education program within SFU’s Faculty of Education. Her research explores ways in which we, as educators and students, can attend to the languages of the natural world and find ways to locate ourselves within it and thus deepen our relationships with the human and the more than human with whom we share this planet. Rebecca has been working as an Artist in Residence with elementary students and teachers since 2017, bringing experiences with nature and wonder into Vancouver public schools. In both her own art practice as well as her studio work with children, she seeks to create spaces in which dialogue and artistic modes of expression can flourish.

Rebecca enjoys long walks in the forest, following the nose of her Dalmatian Comet, who is fluent in the languages of the natural world, and leaves the rest of us students in her star dust!