Dr. Shannon Walsh is a filmmaker and writer whose award-winning films cover topics ranging from labour rights, to grief and climate change. Indiewire called her latest film Adrianne & the Castle (2024), an “exquisite” and “intoxicating story”, while The Gig is Up (2021) was hailed by Variety for being “galvanizing and moving,” and “a devastating reality check” according to The Hollywood Reporter. Her films have been theatrically released and broadcast globally, screening in festivals around the world such as SXSW, IDFA, Hot Docs, CPH:DOX, Doc NYC and many others, as well as playing art spaces, such as the Venice Biennale and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. In 2023, she executive produced the feature documentary about Dr. Gabor Maté, Physician Heal Thyself directed by Alden Penner. Adrianne & the Castle had its world premiere at SXSW 2024.

As a writer and researcher, she has published in a range of research areas looking at inequality, social justice and visual methods, largely focused on South Africa, where she has lived and worked. She has authored more than 40 journal articles and book chapters, & co-edited two books, and released The Documentary Filmmaker’s Intuition in 2024. She is a co-director on the multiyear SSHRC Partnership Grant “TRANSFORM: Engaging with Youth for Social Change.”

Currently, Dr. Walsh teaches film as an Associate Professor at UBC, and is a Research Associate at the South African Research Chair in Social Change at the University of Johannesburg. She was a Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies from 2017 and a Guggenheim Fellow in 2020.  In 2023, she was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.