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EUC Research Update - September 2022

Welcome to the September 2022 edition of the EUC Research Update聽 - bringing you highlights from research activities at 91亚色's Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change. We invite you to view our past updates on our Research News page.

Research Spotlights

This month鈥檚 Research Spotlights feature EUC undergraduate students who were awarded NSERC & EUC awards to conduct summer research projects with EUC faculty. Congratulations to Trevor, Madison, Ashraf, Claire, and Randelle!

Trevor Doe on understanding the historical, cultural, and political relevance of Indigenous Treaty Rights

Read the Research Spotlight

Madison Downer-Bartholomew on quantifying boreal forest fire boundary gradients

Read the Research Spotlight

Randelle Adano on assessing the Holocene paleoenvironmental history of Lake Scugog

Read the Research Spotlight

Ashraf Hutchcraft on cormorant sourcing of anthropogenic nest material in Tommy Thompson Park

Read the Research Spotlight

Claire O'Hagan on testing a rapid laboratory method for tracking permafrost thaw slump activity

Read the Research Spotlight

Accolades and Awards

Congratulations to Linda Peake who has been elected a . Fellows of the RSC are nominated and elected by peers 鈥渇or their outstanding scholarly, scientific and artistic achievement. Recognition by the RSC for career achievement is the highest honour an individual can achieve in the Arts, Social Sciences and Sciences.鈥  Just 102 leading scholars from Canada and around the world were elected to be FRSCs across all fields this year, so it is truly a great honour, and a recognition of Linda鈥檚 outstanding contributions to feminist and anti-racist thinking in human geography and urban studies. Her citation reads as follows: 鈥淟inda Peake鈥檚 award-winning research integrates feminism and anti-racism into theorizations of urban everyday life, inspiring scholarship in human geography and urban studies, as well as promoting equity and diversity in the academy. Her original body of work on women as gendered urban subjects has invigorated critiques of canonical knowledge production, utilizing methodologies that engage with subaltern knowledge production and marginalized communities, and creating the field of comparative feminist urban research.鈥

Rachel Lobo

Rachel Lobo has been awarded a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at the Women & Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto under the supervision of Dr. D. Alissa Trotz. Rachel completed her PhD in Environmental Studies in August 2022 under the supervision of Honor Ford-Smith. Her research examines how photographic archives can sustain histories of political struggle and foster the exchange of intergenerational knowledge. Rachel received a master鈥檚 degree in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson, now Toronto Metropolitan University, and has held curatorial and archival internships at the Royal Ontario Museum and the Ryerson Image Centre, respectively. She was a recipient of CERLAC's Graduate Level Michael Baptista Essay Prize in 2021 for her research titled "A Willingness to Dig: Autonomous Feminist Struggles and Care Work".

Thomas C. McCarthy (MA, Geography) has won the for his thesis titled 'Littoral Trouble: Places, Prose, and Possibilities in the Lake Ontario Watershed', supervised by Patricia Wood. The citation reads: "This is a well-written and fascinating study of the ways in which, over time, ordinary people have related to Lake Ontario and imposed a variety of meanings upon it. The thesis involves an extensive examination of writing鈥攐f many sorts鈥攁bout the lake and its people as well as field work. It is a personal geography. Littoral Trouble promises to contribute to the scholarly literature in the human geography of Ontario and Canada, as well as to the field of Canadian Studies and the rich scholarship within it that addresses space, place, and identity construction. It is a pleasure to read McCarthy鈥檚 clear and accessible prose. In the spirit of our multi- and interdisciplinary field, it draws extensively from a variety of scholarly 鈥渨ays of knowing.鈥 Congratulations, Thomas!

Publications and Reports

Adelabu, S., Ramoelo, A., Olusola, A. and Adagbasa, E., Eds. (2022). . Springer.

Avery, L., Maddox, R., Abtan, R., Wong, O., Rotondi, N.K., McConkey, S., Bourgeois, C., McKnight, C., Wolfe, S., Flicker, S. Macpherson, A., Smylie, J. and Rotondi, M. (2022). , Canadian Journal of Pubic Health, https://doi.org/10.17269/s41997-022-00669-x

Birch, K. (2022). , Social Studies of Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312722111837

Das R. (2022). . London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351168007

Das, R. (2022). , in Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Vol 215.

Das, R. (2022). 鈥樷. Critical Sociology. March. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920522108

Das, R. (2022). . LINKS: International Journal of Social Renewal. September.

Das, R. and Mishra, D., Eds. (2022). . Leiden: Brill.

Hoicka, C., Zhao, Y. McMaster, M.L. and Das, R. (2022). . Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transition. Volume 2, August, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rset.2022.100034

Hovorka, A. (2022). in . 1st Edition, October. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003055907

Keil, R. and Wu, F., Eds. (2022). . University of Toronto Press.

Mensah, J., Teye, J. K., & Setrana, M. B. (2022).  Migration in West Africa, IMISCOE Research Series, 237鈥259. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97322-3_12

Quintero, R.J. and A. Hari (2022) Queering Protracted Displacement: Lessons from Internally Displaced Persons in the Philippines. Anti-Trafficking Review, 19, 125-129.

Eckhouse, G. and A. Zalik (2022) editors Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 2022 54:8, 1641-1668. (Open Access)

Eckhouse, G. and A. Zalik (2022) Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 54:8, 1641-1647. (Open Access)

Zalik, A. (2022) . Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 54:8, 1661-1664. (Open Access)

EUC Research in the Media

Ranu Basu with school children in Kumirmari - Sunderbans, West Bengal, 2017.

Ranu Basu has launched her SSHRC project's new website on Geopolitics of Education for Peace (GEP) featuring case studies of spaces of struggle and resistance in select cities of the world. GEP is a collective project conducted by a group of international scholars and activists with roots in the Global South and is part of Basu's multi-year Insight Grant on Subalterity, public education, and welfare cities: Comparing the experience of displaced migrants in three cities of Havana, Toronto, Kolkata. The project brings together multiple accounts, stories, and critical spatial insights to highlight some of the ways in which educators and urban communities extending from Cuba, Brazil, Colombia to India, Toronto and beyond, have historically resisted structures of oppression,and continue to politically redefine geographical imaginaries and questions of sustainability, through unique practices of education for peace. The website also features exploring the micro-geographies of schools during COVID-19 as part of the Critical Geographies of Education (EU/GEOG 4700) 2022 course, exemplifying teaching-research linkages and enriching experiential learning for students. GEP conceives of urbanization and education (formal to the informal) as critical pedagogical spaces for social transformation and intervention, historically rooted in anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial collective struggles. These frameworks form the critical foundational basis for GEP.

Lauren Corman in conversation with Andil Gosine

Bruce Campbell, EUC adjunct professor, penned an article on in The Conversation. In this article, he noted that railways' own police forces place them in a conflict of interest when they investigate their employers. This was exemplified in the Canadian Pacific freight train crash near Field, B.C. in February 2019. The U.S. railway policing powers, also dating back to the 19th century, are accordingly comparable to that of its Canadian counterpart. He advocates that the federal government must replace this antiquated relic with a railway policing law that helps restore confidence in law enforcement and provides justice to victims鈥 families.

Lauren Corman, MES/PhD alumna and now sociology professor at Brock University was in conversation on September 15 with Andil Gosine on his which is now showing at The Niagara Artists Centre. Nature鈥檚 Wild takes as its central concern anxieties about the line between human and non-human animals, and their management through the disciplining of sex. In this exhibit, Gosine engages with questions of humanism, queer theory, and animality to examine and revise understandings of queer desire in the Caribbean.

Lina Brand Correa and Laura Taylor participated in a recent symposium on new developments in energy modelling, urban transitions & energy poverty hosted by , and that showcased female and nonbinary academics who spoke about their work on energy poverty and equitable decarbonization. Laura Taylor participated in the panel discussion on urban energy transitions while Lina Brand Correa was in the panel on energy poverty: concepts and practice.

Honor Ford-Smith on oral history, food justice and music making

Honor Ford-Smith's (OHJAM) project has released its project video! This community-based arts informed research project was originally inspired by EUC 91亚色 MES graduate Jacqueline Dwyer. With Noel Livingstone, Dwyer founded the Toronto Black Farmers Collective whose work adapts and extends Black and Caribbean cultural practices of food production and distribution into the urban landscape around 91亚色. The project contributes to ongoing work on food justice and community education in Jane and Finch in experiential ways. It records local contributor鈥檚 oral histories of Black and Caribbean food production and consumption and draws on these to create music and curriculum resources that valorize and advance community-based organization and intergenerational learning on urban food justice. 91亚色 students, namely: Lord-Emmanuel Archidago, Nasra Mohammed, Krystle Skeete, Marvin Veloso and Ruben Esguerra (latter two are 91亚色 alumni) are involved in the oral history and music making initiatives. The project is funded by the Helen Carswell Chair in Community Engaged Research in the Arts.

Andil Gosine's Nature's Wild Duets at the Niagara Arts Centre

Gail Fraser is part of that brings spoken word, song, music & soundscape to the lower Cobechenonk / Humber River. It is inspired by water and desire to nurture sustainable, life-giving connection to the planet. Feel free to download the at home and explore the park as you listen 鈥 from plant medicine, ecology and architecture, to soundscape and song.

Andil Gosine has a new show titled with several collaborators at The Niagara Arts Centre. Fresh from his acclaimed curatorial project "" recently held at The Ford Foundation in New 91亚色, Gosine shares the works by an international group of artists engaged with the central themes of his book, (Duke University Press, 2021). The exhibition opened on September 9 and will run until 5 November 2022. Gosine also has another exhibit at the Medulla Art Gallery in Port of Spain this October.

Roger Keil has written an article on Shape-shifting Toronto: The Planning Region in the Age of Financialization in the ACSP News & Press. In this article, Keil notes the changing shape of urban Toronto into a polycentric postmetropolis, a gentrifying North American city ringed by expansive suburban municipalities with immigrant populations living and working in mixed densities ranging from sprawling 20th century bungalow subdivisions to 21st century high rise condominiums. This is a "result of strict urban planning rules set by the Province of Ontario and the dynamics of a burgeoning global city economy where manufacturing is continuously edged by booming real estate, logistics and services sectors". The shapeshifting has further been accelerated and fuelled by the "financialization of the real estate sector" which is now the driving force of the regional economy and which has created a new growth model aptly named 鈥渢he suburban-financial nexus鈥 by EUC postdoc Murat 脺莽o臒lu. The COVID-19 pandemic has also "sharpened the development patterns across the region and deepened the social and housing crises," he added.

Calvin Lakhan on recycling and waste solutions.

Calvin Lakhan (lead investigator in EUC's Waste Wiki project) spreads awareness on recycling and limiting or even possibly stopping the use of plastics in a podcast. In this podcast, Lakhan noted that in his research, he found that only 60% of what Canadians put in the blue bin gets recycled and only 9% of plastic waste in the country gets recycled. He posed a challenge on what we can do such that we do not continue to pollute our planet. Read his earlier article in . Read also his article on

Deborah McGregor addresses the question, What does it mean to 鈥渓ive well鈥 with the Earth in the face of climate/ecological crisis? Source: Manitoulin Expositor.

Deborah McGregor gave a presentation on integrating Anishinaabe environmental stewardship into Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) and environmental science in a STEM and environmental sustainability conference held in Manitoulin Island in August. In news coverage by the , McGregor addresses the question: What does it mean to 鈥渓ive well鈥 with the Earth in the face of climate/ecological crisis? The article covers McGregor's ideas on integration of Anishinaabe stewardship which carries an environmental focus into STEM and environmental science.

McGregor is also part of SSHRC's digital marketing campaign on featuring social sciences and humanities researchers investigating and shedding light on topics of concern to Canadians -- including economic vulnerability, climate change and environment, pandemic and wellness, reconciliation and cybersecurity, and how their research is leading to solutions and contributing to shaping a positive future for Canadians and the world.

Justin J. Podur's has released a new podcast episode focused on the events of World War I and the tensions between European countries. Podur also explores the failings of democracy as a governmental structure in the first episode released this September. The episode features Vik Sohonie, a former journalist who runs the Grammy-award nominated Ostinato Records.

Sarah Rotz spoke to on how the use of agricultural technology can really be a useful tool if it allows farmers to make ecologically responsible decisions. "There are technological solutions that are being developed that do support regenerative agricultural methods and farmers that I have spoken to that use those methods do see a role for technology", she says. Recently, her featured Stephanie Morningstar who shared her knowledge about land rematriation, reclaiming relationships, responsibilities and reparations.

Joshua Thienpont in Episode 39 of Podcast or Perish

Luisa Sotomayor was interviewed by CBC's Metro Morning where she discussed the struggles students face in finding affordable housing. She noted that a lot of students have to be employed while pursuing their studies to be able to afford rent in the areas around Toronto and the GTA. This in turn affects their ability to commute to their place of study. Toronto's challenging housing market largely impacts underprivileged communities.

Joshua Thienpont was featured in Episode 39 of where he talks about paleolimnology, that is, the science (and art) of reconstructing the past environments of fresh water systems.  He explained that we need to be able to infer how ecosystems have changed over time, and paleolimnology, using sediments, helps to reconstruct and infer changes in lakes, rivers or streams over a long period of time Thienpont also has a podcast on Apple called (with Adam Jeziorski) where he discusses a wide variety of environmental topics such as acid rain, eutrophication, and climate change.

Anna Zalik with ES PhD alumna Tania Hernandez Cervantes in a discussion on global energy

Steven Tufts provided insights for a feature on unionized workplaces. He notes that in larger companies like Apple and Starbucks, workers are still figuring out ways to create a successful unionized environment. This process will require large numbers of workers to come together to reproduce the union density levels that were seen historically in periods such as the Great Depression.

Mark Winfield commented in Canada's National Observer on the political conversations around climate policy as they are impacted by cost-of-living concerns. He notes that current circumstances could reduce the funding that governments will allocate to fighting climate change. He also points out that the federal Liberal leadership will pay attention to the effects carbon prices have on low-income households. In Winfield's view, demonstrating continued engagement and commitment on the climate file is key for the Liberals because it 鈥渋s an important component of retaining its base.鈥 Winfield was also part of a recent webinar on sponsored by the Canadian Environmental Law Association and Nature Canada.

Anna Zalik recently participated in the Mexican legislature's monthly public affairs program. Zalik was interviewed by Environmental Studies PhD alumna Dr Tania Hernandez Cervantes, who is now Senior Advisor to the General Secretary of the Mexican Parliament.  The interview concerned current crises in global energy production and markets arising from the war in Ukraine and COVID-19.

- September 29, 12:30-2pm, Osgoode Hall 1002

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation at 91亚色U with Guest Lecture by Dr. Paulette Steeves - September 29, 4-6pm

- September 30, 11:00 am 鈥 12:30 pm | Virtual Event

Cities of Migration and the Spatial Politics of Non-Integration, talk by Brenda Yeoh - September 30, 11:30am, Ross N120

World in Other Words: Celebrating Toronto's Tamil Stories - October 1, 4:30-5:30pm

- October 12-13, 2022

BeeCon 2022 - October 13-14, 2022. Deadline for registration - September 30, 2022.

World Research and Innovation Festival (WRIF) - October 17-19, 2022

- McMaster University, Canada, October 24 鈥 25, 2022

Peripheral Centralities: Present and Future - November 1-2, 91亚色

Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Annual Conference - November 3-6, 2022, Toronto, Canada

- January 27-29, 2023

 - October 1, 2022

- October 1, 2022

- October 1, 2022

- October 1, 2022

- October 1, 2022

- October 6, 2022

- October 25, 2022

- October 29, 2022

- Application: November 1, 2022

- November 1, 2022

Ontario Genomics-CANSSI Ontario Postdoctoral Fellowship in Genome Data Science - November 1, 2022

- November 1, 2022

- November 15, 2022

- November 15, 2022

- November 15, 2022

- November 15, 2022

- November 22, 2022

- November 29, 2022

- December 1, 2022

- December 1, 2022

- December 15, 2022

- Shepherd Phase - December 20, 2022

- Rolling deadline

- No deadline

- No deadline

- No deadline

- Strengthening Canada's quantum research and innovation capacity - applications accepted until October 2023.

For more info, do check the  from all three federal research funding agencies and the , including agency-specific and jointly administered programs.

Important note: Please check eligibility criteria and requirements before you apply. Also note that these are agency deadlines which vary from your respective institutional deadlines for internal review, endorsement, and approval.

 - National Women鈥檚 Health Research Initiative

  - Introducing Alliance Missions: Anthropogenic greenhouse gas research

-  Government of Canada launches pilot initiative to further support Indigenous master鈥檚 students

- Statement on the 15th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

鈥 What's happening with Canada's superclusters?

- We need an open dialogue on global research engagement

- National Day for Truth and Reconciliation events planned for University community

Contact Us

The EUC Research Update is compiled by the Research Office at EUC: Research Officer Rhoda Reyes, Associate Dean Research, Graduate & Global Affairs Philip Kelly, and Research Assistant Igor Lutay. Thanks to Paul Tran for the web design and development.

We welcome the opportunity to pass along research-related information and achievements from our whole community - faculty, postdocs, visiting scholars, students, and retirees.

News for future updates can be submitted using the EUC Kudos and News form, circulated monthly. Or, send your news directly to: eucresea@yorku.ca

If you are not on the EUC community listserves, but would like to receive this Research Update each month, send an email to eucresea@yorku.ca

Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC)

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