Back in the Day…
Welcome to THE NOSTAGAIN NETWORK: the first student-led research collective in North America focused on the generative potentials of nostalgia.
We started as a passionate group of interdisciplinary students at Concordia University, Montreal. In 2022, we formed our collective at the Technoculture, Arts and Games (TAG) Research Centre of the Milieux Institute. As artists, writers, designers, and researchers, we approached one simple question:
How can we use
nostalgia for the future?
In no time, we realized that this question was the keystone to our conceptual, artistic, and methodological foundations. As such, we created a forum where our colleagues at the Milieux Institute could share what they generated out of memory, ‘the past’, history… nostalgia for the future.
After our first symposium in 2023, on the coldest day of year, we found that many others (and abroad) were just as interested, and so…
…the NOSTAGAIN NETWORK began.
Nostalgic through Research and Creation?
Nostalgia does not have to be buried under technical jargon and methodological complexities. It is culturally prevalent, personal, and inherently social: everything can be affected by it. Michael Hviid Jacobsen argued that nostalgia is determined by the eye of the beholder.
NOSTAGAIN events and symposia embraces ‘nostalgia’ as it is felt, tasted, smelt, reimagined, negotiated, sculpted; the chance to redetermine what is ‘nostalgic’ — what is meaningful to people — is done by the hands, ears, nose, objects of the beholder. But we also turn this around: what do the things that are beholden to our social practices and labels of ‘retro’, ‘vintage’, or ‘rose-tinted and trivial’, have to say about us?
It is this interdisciplinary approach to nostalgia that unchains it from a single discipline, or a standardization for how to study, talk about, and feel it.
Founded at Concordia University, the NOSTAGAIN NETWORK takes it inspiration from the idea of research creation which two Concordia professors – Kim Sawchuck and Owen Chapman – made popular many years ago. We are proud to balance scholarly and creative approaches to nostalgia. Research creation artists therefore compose a large part of our network membership of 75+ nostalgics.
What comes out of this is not a nostalgia that is passive, lonesome, or regressive; our nostalgia is active, collaborative, and what we call… generative nostalgia.
Our Partners and Collaborators
Frames of Reference Symposium
Organizing Committee
(2025-2026)
[Find this year’s CfP here]
Richy Srirachanikorn, PhD candidate in Social & Cultural Analysis at Concordia University. He studies how communities express, share, and negotiate their nostalgia for the 2000s.
Rowena Chodkowski is a writer, new media artist, and Humanities PhD student at Concordia University. She explores the social and cultural impact of internet aesthetics.
Derek Pasborg received their MA Sociology at Concordia University, researching how games, narrative, and affect interact. Derek interviewed players of the game Project Zomboid.
Annie Harrisson is a PhD candidate in Communications at Concordia University. She studies the construction of the “gamer” via retrogaming, Let’s Plays, and promotional practices.
TJ is a PhD student in Concordia’s English Department. His primary research interests is “things”, be these ‘obsolete’ technology (typewriters, film cameras, and vinyl records), cutting edge XR projects, or anything in between. In his free time, catch him purchasing vintage music tech he doesn’t know how to use, fountain pens he’ll ink once before getting another, or taking something apart when he is not sure if it’ll get put back together (probably not).
Ruth Webber-Juggoo is an independent artist and researcher, and a Concordia alum. She studies the intersections of Internal Family Systems and quantum theory through performance. Her research considers nostalgia as a quantum phenomenon—an affective entanglement of memory and time that reveals the multiplicity of the self.
Zo Kopyna is a multidisciplinary artist working towards their BFA in Design at Concordia University. Their artistic and academic practice is focused on kitsch as a design language that uses nostalgia to assign personal and collective meaning to mass-produced objects.
Interested in joining our organizing committee?
Write to nostagain@gmail.com
Love & Loss Symposium
Organizing Committee
(2024-2025)
[Go down memory lane?]
Richy Srirachanikorn
(PhD Social and Cultural Analysis)
Rowena Chodkowski
(PhD Humanities)
Derek Pasborg
(MA Sociology)
Annie Harrisson
(PhD Communications)
Shahrom Ali
(MA Education Technology)
JUNIOR ORGANIZERS
Miruna Popovici
(BA Psychology)
Miruna Popovici is a Bachelor’s student specializing in Psychology. She is drawn to nostalgia’s capacity for social bonding, creating a sense of shared history, community, and belonging. She is also interested in examining nostalgia from a scientific and psychological perspective.
Ryu Pinveha
(BComm Marketing)
Akarawin (Ryu) Pinveha is a Bachelor’s student majoring in Marketing at Concordia University. Ryu is interested in learning how promotional messages and campaigns can be constructed to activate people’s nostalgic instincts.
Time in a Bottle Symposium
Organizing Committee
(2023-2024)
[Go down memory lane?]
Annie Harrisson is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies at Concordia University with a background in illustration and graphic design. Her work focuses on the historical construction of the gamer imaginary through retrogaming, Let’s Plays, and promotional practices.
Richy Srirachanikorn is a PhD student in Social and Cultural Analysis with a background in Social Psychology. He is intrigued by the generative potential of nostalgia in providing a sense of relief, belonging, and (symbolic) connections for individuals with social pain, such as those in extreme social withdrawal.
Derek Pasborg is a Concordia University Masters student studying Sociology. Their research interests lie in how individuals’ personal narratives shape the affective discourse of video games, and the implications of this for individual’s social lives in gaming communities.
Rowena Chodkowski is a PhD student in the Humanities (HUMA) program who studies subcultures and media; video games. Research creation is Rowena’s jam — just like jazz loon. Her nostalgic interests span from weirdcore to non-historical nostalgic AI generated images.
Shahrom Ali is computer scientist at heart, software developer by day, and a pragmatic (and nostalgic) philosopher by night. His Masters research in the Education Technology program at Concordia University looks at how games can trouble the way that post-secondary education classes are run and taught. More than just ‘gamifying’ learning, Shahrom dives into the question of “if and how” games can motivate a self-directed engagement with knowledge through games (heutagogy), rather than be implemented to make a passive style of learning artificially engaging simply because it is now “more fun” (pedagogy).
Network Founding Members and the
LOSTAGAIN Symposium Organizing Committee
(2022-2023)
[Go down memory lane?]
Richy Srirachanikorn
(MA Sociology)
Rowena Chodkowski
(PhD HUMA)
Derek Pasborg
(MA Sociology)
Leo Morales
(BA Computation Arts)
Annie Harrisson
(PhD Communication)
Poki Chan
(PhD INDI)
Shahrom Ali
(GrDip. Instructional Technology)
To learn about becoming a member of the NOSTAGAIN NETWORK, click here.
Contact Information
Derek Pasborg, Event Communications
Richy Srirachanikorn, Network Organization
THENOSTAGAINNETWORK
Released March 7th, 2023
Last updated: October 16th, 2025