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Professor Nielsen’s program of scholarly research and creative activity engages interdisciplinary, arts-based, and research-creation interventions in understanding health, medicine, and society. Currently, Professor Nielsen hosts and executive produces the podcast “On Being Ill”: Conversations on Creativity, Disability and Identity. In 2023, Professor Nielsen completed a two-year Professional Certificate in Leadership through Royal Roads University. Professor Nielsen is looking forward to the robust interdisciplinary environment and collaborative exchange fostered by Massey College. She mentioned that “as a 91��ɫ Massey Fellow there are many opportunities for intergenerational learning with a keen attention to the ways in which ethical, embodied, compassionate leadership can positively transform the public domain.”  

During his time at Massey, Professor Hirji will be working on two research projects: Histories and legacies of material culture production on the Swahili Coast focusing on a corpus of 18th-19th century decorated Qur’an manuscripts, and Histories of temporal infrastructures in the Indian Ocean world, focusing on belltowers and clocktowers built by the Portuguese and British Empires. As a social historian and anthropologist, Professor Zulfikar mentioned he “is interested in issues of knowledge production through visual, material, and sensory cultures, particularly amongst Muslim societies in coastal East Africa and around the Indian Ocean.”