I am Professor and head of the blended BA in Professional Communication program in the School of Communication and Culture, and also teach in the School of Environment and Sustainability, at Royal Roads University. RRU is located on the traditional lands of the Lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking Peoples, the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations, near the southern tip of what some call Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The name Takach means weaver in my ancestral language, Hungarian, practitioners of which history shows are no strangers to colonization, either.

My extensive work as a professional communicator, writer and documentary filmmaker spans hundreds of publications in speeches, print (books, magazines, newspapers, corporate fare), art galleries, film (commercial and festival), radio, television and video. I am also a professional conference and after-dinner speaker, although I question the elegance of eating before speaking to audiences.

My scholarly oeuvre features four books, Tar Wars (University of Alberta Press, 2017), Scripting the Environment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), Will the Real Alberta Please Stand Up? (University of Alberta Press, 2010) and Patents (Juriliber, 1993); sixteen scholarly articles and book chapters; three short films; and some forty conference presentations in Canada and abroad. My current research and teaching focus on intersections of environmental communication, arts-based research and Indigenist approaches in service of decolonization, both environmental and human.

I have developed and taught diverse courses in communication (e.g., environmental communication, sustainability communication, communication theory, research methods, human communication, screenwriting, speechwriting, speech presentation, public relations, online-community design, organizational communication and strategic framing). I’m particularly pleased with a course that I co-developed and co-taught three times with Russell Johnston, Director of Indigenous Education at RRU, on communication in Indigenous contexts. I teach and supervise both undergraduate and graduate students, and lead workshops on varied aspects of communication for the public, private and volunteer sectors. My scholarly research has been profiled in local and national media.

My scholarly, professional and community service includes a battery of activities ranging from chairing the biennial Conference on Communication and the Environment hosted by the International Environmental Communication Association; board membership in that org and in the Environmental Studies Association of Canada; a lead role in writing the revised Learning, Teaching and Research Model for RRU (the fabulous original of which drew me to the school in the first place); jury duty for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC); and chairing efforts such as an expert review panel for the BC government’s Degree Quality Assessment Board, a provincial arts service org (the Writers’ Guild of Alberta) and a provincially mandated school council.

I have a PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Calgary, along with a Master of Arts in Communications and Technology, a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Alberta, and a certificate for producers of film, TV and new media at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.

My curio cabinet includes numerous research grants (including three funded by SSHRC), the Illinois Distinguished Qualitative Dissertation Award (Experimental Category) from the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, sundry prizes for screenwriting and corporate writing, and a gold medal from the International Book Publishers Association for my book, Will the Real Alberta Please Stand Up? Many years ago, I was recognized at the National Magazine Awards in the humour category, which surprised me as I was sure that my article was serious.