About me.
I work at the intersections of art, scholarship, and relational practice — exploring how story, curiosity, and creativity shape how we live and connect.
My name is Eric James Van Giessen (he/they), and everyday work involves flowing between my studio, the classroom, and my communities. I’m completing a PhD in Sociology at York University, where my dissertation explores the lived experiences of queer clergy in Canada through phenomenology, narrative and arts-based storytelling. I’m also training in Gestalt psychotherapy, a modality rooted in awareness, embodiment, and creativity. Together, these threads shape and emerge from how I think about meaning-making - as something we do through relationship, dialogue, curiosity, play, and the stories we tell about our lives.
Beyond my studies, I’m the program coordinator for the Investigaytors Program at UofT’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, a community-based research-capacity training initiative for 2SLGBTQ+ youth and early-career researchers. And through Queero Gear, my art and apparel brand, I explore queer connection, joy, and pleasure through printmaking.
Doctoral Research
My research is animated by curiosity about how people make sense of themselves and their worlds. Drawing on phenomenology, queer theory, and arts-based methods, I study the lived religion of queer clergy in Mainline Protestant & Anabaptist denominations in Canada — exploring embodiment, (dis)orientation, and queer(er) religious futures.
Queero Gear
Queero Gear is an art and apparel small-business I started in 2019. I create linocut prints, digital illustrations, and screen-printed apparel inspired by 2SLGBTQ+ leaders & heroes, vintage SMUT, and queer sex/sensuality/desire. What began as a side-project has become a place for my creativity and playful-side to thrive — celebrating history, humour, and the erotic as sources of connection and unruly joy.
Gestalt Psychotherapy Training
Gestalt psychotherapy is a relational, experiential approach that invites awareness of what’s happening in the present moment—between us, in our bodies, and in the situation we find ourselves in. I was drawn to it because it mirrors what I value in art and research: curiosity, creativity, and embodied- relational presence. In my training at the Gestalt Institute of Toronto, I’m learning to support people toward greater flexibility, autonomy, and spontaneity. For me, Gestalt feels like another kind of coming-home—bringing together my work in storytelling, phenomenology, and community-practice through a shared commitment to contact, awareness, and the creative process of becoming.