Dr. Layla Cameron (they/she) is an academic, filmmaker and journalist living on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm), Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw), and Tsleil-Waututh (səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ) Nations.

Most recently, Layla was a Lecturer in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, and a Postdoctoral Researcher on the project Reclaiming Nature Spaces: Structures of resistance to historical marginalization in outdoor culture. Layla has also served as a Lecturer in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of British Columbia – Okanagan.

Their research interests are grounded in queer feminist cultural studies, and they have published and presented work in the disciplines of communication and media studies, women and gender studies, fat studies, disability studies and the sociology of sport. Such work includes contributions in Intersectional Media (2021, Eds. J. Campbell & T. Carilli), Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society, BIG: Stories About Life in Plus-Sized Bodies (2020, Ed. Christina Myers), and Xtra.

Layla’s teaching history includes undergraduate courses on topics such as popular culture, perspectives on gendered bodies, gender and humour, reality television, new information technologies, introduction to communications, technologies of gender and sexuality, documentary media, and video and sound production. In addition to their PhD, they hold a Master of Arts from the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa, and a Bachelors of Journalism and Human Rights (High Honours) from Carleton University.

In October 2018, Layla’s body of work was awarded the Nora & Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy. Layla’s first short documentary film, Fat Hiking Club, has screened at festivals, conferences, and in classrooms around the world. Layla is working on a second documentary film, Fat Camp, with the Western Documentary Unit of the National Film Board of Canada, and is currently developing another film project, My Girl Gail. Layla also directs and produces the fatten podcast, supported by Telus STORYHIVE’s Voices Program.

Outside of academia and filmmaking, Layla runs a fat-positive letterpress print shop called Stay Fat Design Co.