Dr. Lisa Sandlos has been a faculty member at York University since 1998, teaching in the Department of Dance, the School of Kinesiology and Health Sciences, the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, and the Faculty of Education.

A keen interdisciplinary collaborator, Dr. Sandlos has worked on dozens of community projects with actors, musicians, puppeteers, and visual artists and she is co-founder with landscape architect Rennie Tang of a research/teaching group called Soma-City. Working through organizations such as the Ontario Arts Council’s Artists in Education program, the National Ballet of Canada’s Creating Dances, Global Water Dances, and the Toronto District School Board’s Drama/Dance Project, she has taught contemporary dance, somatics, and improvisation to all ages and levels for over three decades.

Sandlos holds a PhD in Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies at York. Her research focuses on the sexualization of young female dancers and the impacts of this trend on dance education, on public perceptions of dance, and on girls’ psychological and social development. An enthusiastic presenter of her academic research and the various embodied movement/dance modalities that she practices, Sandlos has been invited to share her research and expertise at various conferences, educational and training programs and festivals in locations including at The University of El Paso, Texas (UTEP), The University of California Polytechnic in Pomona, California, The University of the West Indies in Bridgetown, Barbados, Etobicoke School of the Arts (ESA) in Toronto, Ontario, Theatrum Mundi in Paris, France and the European Conference on Art, Design and Education (ECADE) in Porto, Portugal.

Sandlos is qualified as a Certified Movement Analyst (CMA) through the Laban Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS) and as an Expressive Movement Analyst (EMA) at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). These certifications equip her to work with a diverse range of students in group or in individual coaching contexts. Drawing on her extensive experience in facilitating inclusive, community-based dance, she co-directed a dance-environmental activism project in Erin, Ontario which was part of the international Global Water Dances initiative in 2021.

Together with her husband, Dave, children, Maya and Zachary, and dog, Elsa, Dr. Sandlos enjoys dancing, playing music, and living close to nature in a rural area of southern Ontario, Canada.