91��ɫ

Accolades, Appointments and Acknowledgements

Congratulations to Bronwyn Bragg and Jennifer Hyndman on their SSHRC Insight Development Grant on Slaughterhouse geographies: Comparing the integration experiences of refugee workers in Canadian meatpacking towns. Their research addresses the intentional geographies of the Canadian meatpacking industry and the lives of former refugees, now Canadian permanent residents, who labour in this precarious sector. Expected outcomes of the study include recommendations to benefit provincial policy makers working on issues related to settlement and immigrant 'retention' in small centres, and policies related to diversity and inclusion, as well as other social supports such as health and education under provincial jurisdiction. At the federal level, policy recommendations will benefit policy makers working on refugee resettlement policy, settlement supports for refugees, and labour market integration.

Glen Norcliffe also received a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for his research on Velomobility for disability: The design, production, and distribution of cycles that assist the mobility of persons with a disability. The study aims to discover the source and efficiency of new improved designs for adaptive cycles, and the methods of manufacturing and distributing these bicycles, tricycles and quadricycles. These cycles are adapted to the special needs of their users who contribute directly and indirectly to their design.

In particular, the study will compare the design and production of adaptive cycles in Indonesia and advanced industrial countries (Canada, the United States, and Western Europe). With average incomes approximately one quarter of AICs, Indonesia appears to have developed low-cost solutions using recycled materials, with adaptive cycles mostly customized locally to meet user needs and affordability.

Andil Gosine has been awarded a Beinecke Fellowship by the based in Massachusetts, USA. The Clark is a small global institution that is both an art museum and a center for research, critical discussion, and higher education in the visual arts. Through its Research & Academic Program (RAP), the Clark hosts a residential fellowship program that welcomes top international scholars for periods ranging from two to nine months. The Beinecke Fellowships, endowed by the former chair of the Research and Academic Program Trustee Committee, Frederick W. Beinecke, are awarded to a senior scholar for periods of eight weeks up to an academic year. Gosine will undertake his fellowship while on sabbatical from summer-fall of 2024.

Giuliana Racco, ES PhD candidate, won the first .

Her film HIGH ROADS is a Canadian-Spanish production about social sustainability and portrays the everyday lives of four women who use their bodies, their breath and their minds as tools for daily resistance against the military occupation. It is a journey through overlapping narrations concerning the paradoxical conditions of the search for well-being in Occupied Palestine. Filmed between Palestine and Barcelona, High Roads dialogues with physicist Dr. Wafaa Khater, Olympian swimmer Sabine Hazboun, marathon-runner Diala Isid, and yoga instructor Eilda Zaghmout. These four women generate well-being and wonder in defiance of a relentless oppression. Their diverse yet interconnected practices of SUMUD (steadfastness) across this fragmented non-state, provide a glimpse into the multiple ways in which Palestinians (refugees and non, alike) try to ‘live well’, using their bodies, breath, and minds as tools for everyday resistance to military occupation.

“The four Palestinian women featured in this film embody remarkable qualities – courage, resilience and a deep love for their communities – all essential to building a sustainable society,” said the jury. ​ Part of the prize will be donated to a mutual aid fund in Gaza.

Adeyemi Olusola has been appointed as for the . The FRIEND-Water Program is a cross-cutting initiative that interacts with five core International Hydrological Program (IHP-VI) themes in its objective of easing the problems of water resources assessment and management through applied research targeted at regionally identified problems. FRIEND-Water consists of over 162 participating countries in 7 regional groups to foster and strengthen international scientific cooperation. Theme leaders will coordinate between working groups, help formulate science questions and community papers, and when necessary coach or inspire the program's activities. The role also includes reporting on progress and keeping the dialogue with the HELPING leader and the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) management team.

Sébastien Lambelet is a new EUC postdoctoral fellow who will be working with Roger Keil on his research project titled "," funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Over the next two years, he will investigate the power dynamics and the governance modalities of the cities of Toronto and Ottawa-Gatineau to draw comparisons with an earlier research he conducted in Zurich and Geneva, Switzerland.

Passionate about the analysis of power, Sébastien defended his PhD thesis in Social Sciences with a mention in Political Science in December 2019 after obtaining a bachelor's and a master's degree at the University of Geneva in the same discipline. He worked as an assistant professor in Political Science and International relations and as a post-doctoral fellow at the Environmental Governance and Territorial Development Institute, also at the University of Geneva. His research focuses on the governance of Swiss cities and towns, regional planning, and cross-border cooperation.

Wei Jiang is our new visiting scholar at EUC. She will be working with Philip Kelly for six months on her research on “Just Transition for Carbon Neutrality and Climate Resilience in the Tibetan Plateau.” An Alexander von Humboldt fellow on Global Climate Protection, she works at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences . Her research interests include climate change policy (focusing on renewable energy), just transition for carbon neutrality, Tibetan Buddhism psychology and Indigenous behaviour in the building of climate resilience in the Tibetan Plateau.

In Beijing, she is engaged with pushing forward laws and policies for climate justice and eco-environmental protection in China’s ethnic minority regions. She has held back mining in the Tibetan Plateau and other eco-environmentally vulnerable areas. She also plans to further explore feasible policies for a just transition in China’s practice of carbon neutrality.

The EUC community mourns the passing of Professor Emeritus Robert (Bob) Murdie. Bob spent his almost his entire career with the Department of Geography at 91��ɫ, and was a leading figure in Canadian urban and social geography, focusing especially on housing and immigration studies. He was also a dedicated teacher and graduate supervisor, and a thoughtful and conscientious colleague. Mentoring and encouraging his graduate students was something he especially enjoyed.

During his retirement, he spent time travelling and at the family cottage at Point Clark. Making good friends around the world, he was well respected and appreciated by both colleagues and students. Bob's obituary is in the along with some tributes and reflections.

Publications and Reports

Aguiar, R., Keil, R., and Wiktorowicz, M. (2024). Social Science & Medicine, 116689.

Calvert, A.M., S. E. Gutowsky, D. A. Fifield, N. M. Burgess, R. Bryant, G.S. Fraser et al. (2024). . Science of the Total Environment 911: 168549.

Das, R. (2024). . International Journal of Socialist Renewal. March.

Foster, J. (2024). . Dialogues in Urban Research, 2(1), 32-35.

Fraser, G.S. (2024). Post-fledging parental care in tree-nesting double-crested cormorants. Waterbirds 46(3): 1-7.

Gebresselassie, M., Alavi, S. and Hong, A. (2024). . Findings. February.

Ilyniak, S. (2024). . Urban Planning, 9(2).

Kelly, P. F., and Ducusin, R. J. (2024). . Work in the Global Economy (published online ahead of print).

Kipfer, S. and Sotomayor, L. (2024). . Radical Housing Journal, 6, 1, 33-61.

Komljenovic, J., Sam Sellar, S., Birch, K. and Morten Hansen, M. (2024). in edited by Ben Williamson, Janja Komljenovic and Kalervo Gulson. 1st Ed. London, Routledge.

Mensah, J. (2024). African Geographical Review, 43:2, 427-429.

Molot, L. and Dillon, P. (2024). , Editor(s): Ian D. Jones, John P. Smol, (Fourth Edition), Academic Press, .229-235,

Olusola, A., Ogunjo, S., Olusegun, C. (2024). . In: MedGU 2022. Advances in Science, Technology & Innovation. Springer, Cham.

Preston, V., Shields, J. and D’Souza, J. (2024) . International Migration, 00, 1–16.

Rady, F. and Sotomayor, L. (2024), . Antipode.

Reed, G, Fox, S, Littlechild, D, McGregor, D., Lewis, D., Popp, J., Wray, K, Kassi, N, Ruben, R, Morales, S and Lonsdale, S (2024). GEOSCAN.

Rotz, S. (2024). , Institutional Landscapes. March.

Winfield, M. (2024). in , edited by Debora L. VanNijnatten. Fifth Edition. Oxford University Press.

EUC Events and Media Coverage

Kean Birch penned an op-ed article in The Globe and Mail titled .

In his opinion: "We need to start treating our personal data as a collective and not a private asset: it's aggregated from Canadian citizens and only has a value as a result of its social and relational nature...We should therefore manage and govern our personal data as a collective asset, like we do with natural resources such as oil. We should have a say in how our data are used and we should derive a share of the ever-growing revenues generated from it."

Sheila Colla was quoted in the Carolinian Canada Coalition report on .

"When we fill landscapes with introduced, non-native plants, we are severing crucial, dependent relationships between native plants and wildlife that have evolved over millennia. These partnerships and interdependencies support all life on earth, including us." -- Lorraine Johnson and Sheila Colla in .

Andil Gosine's new exhibit , exploring the life and works of a Trinidadian American poet and social justice advocate, Colin Robinson (1961-2021), was featured in . The exhibit launched on March 15 and will run until July 21 at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New 91��ɫ City, the world’s only dedicated 2SLGBTQIA+ art museum. It features five newly commissioned works in which artists – Llanor Alleyne, Leasho Johnson, Ada M. Patterson, Devan Shimoyama and EUC doctoral student Natalie Wood – drew inspiration from materials encountered in Robinson’s archives.

Ilan Kapoor and Gavin Fridell were guest speakers in by Dalhousie University professor Robert Huish. The podcast covers a wide range of issues in International Development, while featuring the work of researchers and practitioners from around the world. Kapoor and Fridell have written a provocative book, (2024), where they confront an often invisible, but active unconscious fetish for perfection and simple solutions in Global Development. Whereas mainstream development politics is organized around stability and rationality, psychoanalysis points to disharmony and irrationality, helping to explain the development subject’s often self-defeating behaviour — for example being seduced by growth and shopping, despite being aware of the inherent perils of inequality and climate crisis.

Joseph Mensah was interviewed in about his insights about the historic victory of the as a beacon of hope and inspiration for the freedom of African colonized nations and beyond. In this talk, Mensah mentioned that pan-Africanism or the bond of solidarity among Africans to resist and defend themselves against foreign invasion contributed to the success of the freedom movement. Accordingly this goes true for the and the fulcrum of the pan-African Congress meetings that aim to end oppression and racism and fight against neocolonialism.

On the Ecological Footprint Initiative (EFI) team, Eric Miller and Peri Dworatzek presented to the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome on . 

Kiona Lo presented at on the current and best practices for higher education institutions to quantify and reduce Scope 3 procurement emissions, a category of GHG emissions that has been neglected despite its significance. 

This research is being integrated into an updated and enhanced assessment of 91��ɫ’s emissions and Ecological Footprint, underway for 91��ɫ’s Office of Sustainability.

Steven Tufts was cited in a Toronto Star article titled '.' The “anti-scab” bill, known as Bill C-58 in the House of Commons bans replacement workers from being used during strikes at federally regulated workplaces. Business groups have come out against the legislation saying it would reduce productivity amid an already sluggish Canadian economy.

Labour experts say that’s the whole point — strikes create necessary disruptions to push both employers and workers to find a solution at the bargaining table. “When replacement workers can't be used, it levels the playing field,” said 91��ɫ associate professor of labour geography Steven Tufts. “It takes away a tool that employers have to try to reduce the power of workers in a labour stoppage.”

Mark Winfield was cited in a CBC News article about

Winfield noted that technologies like high-temperature pyrolysis are still relatively unproven, and tend to be very energy intensive. He remarked that while governments tend to be hungry for technologies that can create energy out of renewable resources like biomass, the math does not always add up.

"One needs to look very, very carefully at how much energy is going into those types of processes and where that's coming from versus what are you getting back out," he warns.