Meet Melissa Fabrizio

MELISSA HAS WORKED TO CREATE IMPORTANT CHANGES WITHIN THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY THROUGH NUMEROUS INSTITUTIONS AND COLLECTIVES.

One of Melissa’s volunteer positions is with the University of Alberta’s The Landing, a student place for gender and sexual diversity that provides resources to students about gender and sexual diversity, as well as peer-to-peer support. For three summers, Melissa has volunteered as a youth mentor and leader with Camp fYrefly Edmonton. Her work with Camp fYrefly helped Melissa become the first-ever Communications Coordinator at iSMSS. Her role includes facilitating strategic communications, public engagement, and knowledge mobilization within iSMSS, as well as organizing and planning iSMSS fund development and community engagement events, conferences, campus events, and annual speakers’ series. Melissa has also volunteered with IDigYourGirlfriend.com, Edmonton Exposure Queer, Arts, and Culture festival, Adamant Eve feminist radio programming on CJSR 88.5FM, and the University of Alberta’s OUTreach collective.

Beyond her years of LGBTQ involvement, Melissa is also an academic author who published and presented a paper titled "Abundantly Invisible: Fat Oppression as a Framework for Sexual Violence Against Women" in the Spaces Between Undergraduate Women's Studies Journal. Melissa presented this paper as part of the University of Alberta's Inside/OUT Speaker's Series.

Melissa is looking to spend more time volunteering and continuing to research fat studies from an LGBTQ lens - looking for the intersections of LGBTQ identity and fatphobia and addressing these issues in everyday praxis and work. 

(This profile was written in 2016)