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Please see the for a schedule of the sessions and abstracts for the presentations.  

The post Learning from Liminality: A Graduate Research Forum appeared first on LA&PS Newsroom.

Date: June 4, 2024 
Time: 10 - 11 a.m. 
Format: Hybrid
Venue: Vari Hall 2101 (91��ɫ)

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Date: March 14, 2024 
Time: 3 - 5 p.m. 
Location: CLH (Curtis Lecture Halls) B

Speaker: Professor David Lyon (Queen’s University). Professor is the former Director of the Surveillance Studies Centre, and Professor Emeritus of Sociology and of Law at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. A pioneer in the field of Surveillance Studies, he has authored or edited 31 books – translated into 18 languages – and many articles, including The Electronic Eye (1994), and the latest one, Pandemic Surveillance (2022). He has led several large global collaborative research projects on surveillance. His work has been recognized in Canada, Switzerland, the USA and the UK with a number of fellowships, prizes, awards and an honorary doctorate. 

Abstract: Surveillance is imagined as a “modern” issue, associated today with globalized digital technologies. The word surveillance first appears in 1802. But activities appropriately described as surveillance have existed since ancient times. By exploring surveillance practices and meanings in medieval and early modern Europe, we find a discernible shift described by Foucault as being from the “eye-of-God” to the modern “eye-of-power.” Crudely put, this secularizing of surveillance exchanged God’s omniscience for ‘all-seeing’ innovations such as the Panopticon, where, Bentham believed, surveillance power could be automated. But what exactly was gained and lost in the process? And what light is shed by such an analysis on contemporary debates over AI-assisted surveillance or surveillance capitalism?  

Sponsors: 
Criminology Program 
Resource Centre for Public Sociology (RCPS) at the Department of Sociology 
Department of Social Science 
Graduate Program in Socio-Legal Studies 
Department of Communication and Media Studies 

For more information, please contact crimprog@yorku.ca 

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This workshop will introduce attendees to archival research and provide tools for using archives in research. The workshop is built around two (2) themes:

• archival research about work and
• successes and challenges in doing archival research. Panelists will speak from experiences as archivists with expertise in social history, women's work and ship building as well as an academic research at archives in UK and Canada.

Panelists

Kritee Ahmed, B.PAPM, MA, Full-time Faculty in the Department of Humanities at Social Sciences at Centennial College.

Emma Robinson, BA, MI, Archivist at the Archives of Ontario, specializing in Social History.

Heather Garrett, BA, MA, Part-time Faculty in the Department of Sociology at 91��ɫ.

Michael Moir, BA, MA, University Archivist and Head, Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections at 91��ɫ Libraries

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Virtual Event via Zoom

This is a registered event. See below for link.

Speaker: , Department of Sociology, 91��ɫ 

Visualizing Intersectionality

One way to capture how social categories and their associated identities and experiences intersect to create advantages or disadvantages is to examine interaction effects. In this workshop, I will provide hands-on instructions on using R to visualize how multiple indicators interact to impact social inequalities. Please make sure to download and prior to attending the workshop.

Please by 3 p.m., Wednesday, April 5. Zoom link will be sent out later that same day.

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Virtual Event via Zoom.

Register here:

Statements from panelists:

 Sharon Henry, PhD Candidate, Sociology:

As another year of the international day of the elimination of racial discrimination begins on March 21st, 2023, let us not forget our ancestors that have gone on before us without tasting the fruitfulness of racial equality, racial equity, racial inclusions, and the right for all persons to be seen as human beings. This day for me is another day of reflection on how far we still need to go when we consider the fruits of racial equality, racial equity, and racial inclusion within this system called academia. The elimination of racial discrimination seems so elusive; therefore, when we as black people can enter board rooms and see our brothers and our sisters at the head of the executive tables, or when we can see our brothers and our sisters in pictures and portraits on the walls in kt, then and only then can we say that we have tasted of the fruits of our ancestor’s labour here in academia. There is still much work to be done here, in Canada, and internationally.

Ify Okadigbo, PhD Researcher, School of Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies:

Racial discrimination remains pervasive in all sectors of Canadian society and strategies to meaningfully dismantle it remain elusive. The effects of racial discrimination are dehumanizing, and the long-term effects on people of color is connected to the broader challenges we face in our daily lives, particularly in the ways we value and see our position in the world. The multi-cultural and diverse environment that exist in higher education, creates a unique location for issues of racial discrimination to be tangibly confronted and tackled. The task of centering anti racist efforts that ultimately contribute to bringing about an end to racial discrimination in universities, requires a multi-pronged approach. This approach must be one that engages students, faculty/administrators, and the broader educational institution simultaneously. For faculty/instructors/teachers, acknowledge your bias, foster a learning environment that prioritizes the cultural difference that exist in the classroom and validate multiple perspectives. Listen to learn and not to judge or provide a counter when students of color share their experience of racial discrimination. For institutions, concerted efforts must be made to robustly build an anti-racist university by truly decolonizing the curriculum in addition to hiring and promoting racially diverse faculty. Steps must be taken to eradicate the culture of silence and establish an environment where students and faculty are encouraged to speak out when they experience racism without fear of repercussion. Ultimately, accountability must be prioritized to ensure that anti-racist efforts are produced and sustained. As Jane Elliot (diversity educator) points out, the goal is not to create a melting pot, but a salad bowl were black people in their uniqueness, can exist as their full selves without fear of censorship.

Sofia Ahmed, PhD Student, School of Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies:

The society valued and favoured some communities, and some are devalued and oppressed. Women, racialized minorities, indigenous populations, and people with disabilities are a few examples of groups that may face injustice, discrimination, racism, and oppression of all sorts. Especially women from racial background can be in ‘triple to quadruple jeopardy’ of experiencing discrimination in important structures of society. To address the direct and indirect racial discrimination, first it needs to define on micro, mezzo, and macro levels. Universities must devote resources to defining and comprehending the depth and scope of the unfavourable experiences that Black, Asian, and minority ethnic students encounter in order to successfully combat racism. Universities also need to focus on transnational feminism because global south and north feminists need feminism and each other both so that they can share their experiences, difficulties, and/or as Ahmed (2017) argues that to survive, killjoy moments, even though they can be killjoys to each other (p, 244). Arguably, all transnational feminists should be “killjoys” because they are critical of happiness derived from domination. Universities also needs a lot of representation from various racial background in their faculty and staff who are trained properly on cultural competence.

Kayne Rivers, PhD Student, School of Socio-Political Thought:

Without addressing the bitter rot at the root of many academic centers there is little that can be done of substance. However, the first step I firmly believe is to create a realm where BIPOC feel seen as academics. This means creating space where BIPOC academics feel supported in all manner of the word. Specifically, this should look like external forces like creating more student focused journals that uplift the thoughts of BIPOC but also creating more pathways for BIPOC academics to delve into their intellectual journeys without the burden of financial upkeep. Finally, we must also ensure that universities hire faculty that at the very least understand our lives and our stories. To often have BIPOC shared the experience of being hushed by professors whether it was in the classrooms or on our papers for sharing ideas that challenged their world view. Empathy backed with action is the only way we can emerge out of this predicament.

Dhouha Triki, PhD Student, School of Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies:

The academy is a complex institution that is built upon years of race and class inequities - and as racialized students, faculty, and staff, it becomes a place that many of us do not fit into. If we couple these phenomena with the ways in which racialized folks in higher learning spaces experience white supremacy, addressing racial discrimination in universities and colleges reveals itself as complex and nuanced. From this standpoint, I think universities can begin to address racial discrimination by recognizing and addressing racial tensions when they arise - whether in a classroom, during office hours, or during administrative meetings. While many of us are privileged to be in these spaces, we are faced with ever-increasing tuition fees, and cost of living, such as food inflation, transportation costs, childcare, and medical care, among others. To me, this means that racialized students from working-class backgrounds are not always afforded the luxury of being full-time students; they are often a student, a worker, caretakers, and community workers. In order to think about creating racial equities in university spaces, decision-makers in higher learning must first grapple with the realities of their racialized students’ lives.

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Virtual Event via Zoom (Zoom link will be sent out Monday, March 20). 

This is a registered event. See below for link.

Recently, blatant infractions on women’s rights in Afghanistan have garnered outrage, interest and despondency from the global community. With increasing restrictions on education, movement and work, human rights activists are concerned about the impact of these policies on women’s future in Afghanistan. Stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place, rights activists navigate domestic oppressions and international imperialism in defending women’s rights in untenable circumstances. 

How does the history of Nation-building, occupation, international relations and power dynamics in Afghanistan impact the current situation? Who bears responsibility for women’s rights in Afghanistan? Beyond the collective outrage, how can the international community work in solidarity with activists to protect hard-won rights?

Join us in our Global Public Sociology Conversation series as panellists share experiences, challenges, and dreams as women’s rights activists in Afghanistan.

Speaker Bios

Zahra Nader is an Afghan Canadian journalist and editor-in-chief of Zan Times, a media that covers human rights violation in Afghanistan with a focus on women, LGBTQI community and environmental issues. She started her career in 2011 in Kabul, writing and editing for Afghan local media outlets. In 2016, she joined the New 91��ɫ Times bureau in Kabul, becoming the first Afghan woman journalist to work with a mainstream English language media since 2001. She is currently based in Toronto, Canada, pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Gender, Feminist & Women’s Studies at 91��ɫ. 

Mina Sharif is a communications advisor and grassroots mobilizer with a focus on Afghanistan. Raised in Canada, she returned to her birth country Afghanistan in 2005 to support women led radio stations throughout the country. Over the next fifteen years, she worked for various Afghan led private media organizations including Moby Group where she directed Baghche SimSim the Afghan version of Sesame Street. Mina also wrote and directed Voice of Afghan Youth, a TV and radio series filmed in 11 provinces and is the founder of Sisters 4 Sisters mentorship program. She currently leads Compassion First Consultancy and various volunteer initiatives supporting at risk families and communities in Afghanistan. 

Sahar Fetrat is an Assistant Researcher with the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. Sahar is a feminist activist born in Afghanistan, lived in Iran and Pakistan as a young refugee during the first Taliban regime. She grew up in Kabul as her family returned to Afghanistan in late 2006 when she was 10. Sahar encountered feminist activism in her teenage years in Kabul and decided to incorporate her feminist views into storytelling through documentary filmmaking and writing. In 2013, Sahar’s documentary on street harassment, “Do Not Trust My Silence,” won the first prize in Universo-Corto Elba Film Festival. Sahar has previously worked with the education unit of UNESCO in Afghanistan, advocating for literacy education for women around the country. She has gained first-hand experience working with children who have been victims and survivors of war through volunteering with the Solace for the Children initiative. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the American University of Afghanistan (2018) and a Master’s degree in Critical Gender Studies from Central European University (2020). She is currently completing her second Master’s degree in Conflict, Security, and Development at the War Studies department of King’s College London. Sahar’s research interests include feminist decolonial theory and praxis, affect theory, gender and conflict, women and/in war, and masculinities.

Register at by 3 p.m., Monday, March 20. Zoom link will be sent out later that day.

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Virtual Event via Zoom (Zoom link will be sent out Wednesday, March 8). 

This is a registered event. See below for link.

How do we use research to transform our communities and contribute towards social change? How do we connect researchers and multiple publics for critical and transformative dialogue? What does DOING social justice work, beyond the academy, look like?

In our upcoming Global Community Conversation, Beyond the Ivory Tower: Practising Public Sociology, our speakers share insights and strategies for public sociology praxis: i.e., through community engagement and building successful community partnerships. Join us as we discuss accountability, trust and ethical research relationship, engagement and partnership building with diverse and underserved communities through research, advocacy, and engagement.

Speakers:
Lorna Erwin: Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director, Sociology, 91��ɫ
Mohamed Ahmed: Co-Executive Director, Success Beyond Limits, 91��ɫ
Melissa McLetchie: Ph.D. Student, 91��ɫ Sociology

() BY 3 PM. Wednesday, March 8.
Zoom link will be sent out later in the day.

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Thursday, January 19 – Saturday, January 21, 2023

Note: all times are in Toronto’s EST (Eastern Standard Time) zone

by January 17, 2023. ZOOM LINK will be sent out January 18, 2023.

Thursday, January 19

10:00 – 11:00 a.m.                     Making Interview Research on Violence More Sustainable for Interviewers

Moderator: Santbir Singh, Ph.D. Candidate, Graduate Program in Sociology, 91��ɫ

1:00 – 4:00 p.m.                               Practising Qualitative Interviewing Hands-On

                                                                (Workshop limited to 3 participants)

Facilitator: Carolyn Podruchny, Professor, Department of History, 91��ɫ

Friday, January 20

10:00 – 11:00 a.m.                           Teaching Qualitative Interviewing Differently: Reflections on the Hands-On Workshops 

Presenter: Katherine Bischoping, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, 91��ɫ

Moderator: Selom Chapman-Nyaho, Professor, General Arts and Liberal Arts Program, Centennial College

12:00 – 1:00 p.m.                             Conducting Culturally-Responsive and Racially-Appropriate Research in Black Communities

Presenter: Giselle Thompson, Assistant Professor, Black Studies in Education, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta

Moderator: Carl E. James, Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community, and Diaspora, Faculty of Education, 91��ɫ

1:30 – 2:30 p.m.                               Conducting Interview Research on Sensitive Topics

Presenter: Pamela Sugiman, Dean, Faculty of Arts, Toronto Metropolitan University

Moderator: Chris Sanders, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Lakehead University

Saturday, January 21

9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.                   Practising Qualitative Interviewing Hands-On

                                                                (Workshop limited to 3 participants)

Facilitator: Zhipeng Gao, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Health and Gender, The American University Paris

12:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.                   Practising Qualitative Interviewing Hands-On

                                                                (Workshop limited to 3 participants)

Facilitator: Deborah Davidson, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, 91��ɫ

Biographies

Katherine Bischoping’s trajectory from statistics to applied survey research, and then to

qualitative approaches in sociology and beyond, including playwriting, derives from her abiding fascination with research methods. In her research collaborations, she examines the behind-the-scenes work and awkward moments of methodologists, applies narrative and discourse analysis methods to oral history data, and examines gendered discourses about emotional labour. With Amber Gazso (91��ɫ) she coauthored Analyzing Talk in the Social Sciences: Narrative, Conversation, and Discourse Strategies, and with Yumi Isshi (University of Tokyo) she coedited a special issue of Oral History Forum d’histoire orale entitled “Generations and memory: Continuity and change”. A University-Wide Teaching Award recipient, she planned this symposium after giving nearly 50 workshops on hands-on qualitative interviewing practice during 2021-2022, the first of them at her Honours thesis students’ behest.

Selom Chapman-Nyaho is a professor in the General and Liberal Arts Program at Centennial College where he teaches courses in sociology, popular culture, and history. His various research projects have involved conducting interviews and focus groups on issues surrounding racism, culture, academic achievement and success, and youth engagement and intervention strategies with police officers, teachers, and teenagers. Prior to returning to academia, Selom was a youth restorative justice counsellor in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has published in Canadian Ethnic Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research, as well as in the collections Revisiting Multiculturalism in Canada, and The Equity Myth: Racialization and Indigeneity at Canadian Universities.

Deborah Davidson, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Undergraduate Program Director at 91��ɫ and a tattooed feminist sociologist with research and writing interests in the areas of health and well-being, loss and bereavement, disability, family and mothering, and pedagogy. Her current research is on tattooing to memorialize and commemorate: if she had a tagline, it would be ‘speak their names’. Check out her book, The Tattoo Project: Commemorative Tattoos, Visual Culture, and the Digital Archive (Canadian Scholars Press, 2017) and her website (thetattooproject.info), which includes information about her community presentations and media interviews. Methodologically, she has expertise in qualitative methods and creative methodologies, and is particularly experienced in participatory methods, visual methods, auto/biographical approaches, and researching sensitive topics with at-risk populations. In her down time, she enjoys spending time with her family, friends, and pets. 

Zed Zhipeng Gao holds a PhD in Historical, Theoretical and Critical Studies of Psychology, with a dissertation on psychology in China’s communist movement; his postdoctoral work was in sociology and anthropology. He now studies Chinese immigrants’ identity, belonging, and mental health, applying interdisciplinary methods, including qualitative interviewing, and discourse and narrative analysis, to situate these topics in racial relations, which are in turn embedded in (trans)nationalism and (de)globalization. While at the empirical level studying psychology in the China-globe dynamics, he has a theoretical interest in exploring how a “cultural politics” framework can bridge psychology and critical theory. He has published over 20 journal articles/book chapters, guest-edited two special issues of journals, and received awards in the fields of international psychology, history of psychology, and theoretical psychology. Recently, the Society of Quantitative and Qualitative Methods, Division 5 of the American Psychological Association, selected him for its Distinguished Early Career Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Award.   

Carl E. James holds the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora in the Faculty of Education at 91��ɫ and is the 2022 Killam Laureate for Social Sciences awarded by Canada Council for the Arts. His research interests include examination of the educational experiences, opportunities and achievements of Black and other racialized youth. He seeks to move us beyond the essentialist, generalized and homogenizing discourses that account for the representation and achievements of racialized people–particularly Black Canadians–in educational institutions, workplaces, and society generally. His most recent publications include: “Colour Matters”: Essays on the Experiences, Education and Pursuits of Black Youth (2021); and, co-authored with Leanne Taylor (forthcoming in 2022/3), First Generation Student Experiences in Higher Education: Counterstories. 

Ivana Maček is Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University. Shehas worked with mass political violence during the siege of Sarajevo during the early 1990s (Sarajevo Under Siege 2009, PENN), and methods beyond words (Engaging Violence 2014, Routledge). She has also worked and published on Swedes’ engagements in global war-zones, and intergenerational transmission of experiences of war among Bosnians in Sweden, contributing to volumes such as A Companion to the Anthropology of Death, Researching Perpetrators of Genocide, Civilians Under Siege from Sarajevo to Troy, and the forthcoming The Entanglements of Ethnographic Fieldwork in a Violent World. Her present research is on human relationships to the non-human world, connecting her interests in methodology, political ecology and more-than-human research. Her current project concerns the appearance of the Pacific Oyster on the Swedish West Coast.

Carolyn Podruchny’s research focuses on the relationships forged between Indigenous peoples and French colonists in northern North America. Descended from Ukrainian settlers, her personal and professional goal is to make sense of Canada’s colonial past and find a way forward in reconciliation by exploring the history of encounters, with a particular emphasis on land and cultural environments. Her Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade (2006) examines French Canadian voyageurs who worked in the North American fur trade based out of Montreal. Her three edited collections are Decentring the Renaissance: Canada and Europe in Multidisciplinary Perspectives (2001), Gathering Places: Aboriginal and Fur Trade Histories (2010), and Contours of a People: Metis Family, Mobility and History (2012). She is working on two collections about Indigeneity in the Philippines. 

Chris Sanders is a medical sociologist who specializes in the fields of rural sociology, public health, mental health and qualitative methods. Since coming to Lakehead University, he has partnered on several studies examining health care access in Ontario. His current projects examine beliefs about immunization and vaccine hesitancy in northern First Nation communities (CIRN-funded); access to personal identification as a social determinant of health in rural Ontario (SSHRC-funded); sex education curricula in Ontario (SSHRC-funded); the social meanings and identities of people diagnosed on the autism spectrum (SSHRC-funded); and Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) use among men who have sex with men in northern Ontario. Recently he has published in: AIDS and Behavior; Canadian Journal of Sociology; Culture, Health & Sexuality; Health & Place; International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health; Journal of Health & Social Sciences; Qualitative Health Research; and Thinking Differently about HIV/AIDS: Contributions from Critical Social Science.

Santbir Singh has almost two decades of experience as a community organizer and activist, currently writing for and creating educational material for the Sikh Research Institute. His graduate research is focused on Sikh activism and how the links between the Sikh tradition and anarchism can be explored in historical and contemporary Sikh movements, such as the Farmer’s Protests of 2020-2021. His Master's thesis was chosen by the 91��ɫ Graduate Program in Sociology as the best thesis of 2021. He has co-authored an article on feminism and Sikh scripture in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion and has an article based on his thesis research forthcoming in Sikh Formations, the preeminent academic journal of Sikh studies. He is planning a dissertation on decolonizing Sikh education in the Peel District School Board.

Pamela Sugiman is a Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto, Canada. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Toronto. She has written extensively on oral history, personal memory and racism in Canada. Dr. Sugiman is a recipient of the Errol Aspevig Award for Outstanding Academic Leadership (Toronto Metropolitan University), Outstanding Contribution Award (Canadian Sociological Association), and Marion Dewar Prize in Canadian Women’s History and has been named the Lansdowne Lecturer and Distinguished Women Scholar, University of Victoria, the W.L. Morton Lecturer, Trent University, and the 2022 Senior Women Academic Administrators of Canada Recognition Award in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Atkinson Foundation and Pathways to Education Canada.

Giselle Thompson is the Assistant Professor of Black Studies in Education at the University of Alberta and a Research Associate at the Toronto District School Board’s (TDSB) Centre of Excellence for Black Student Achievement. She obtained her PhD in Sociology from 91��ɫ in 2020 and is a 2021 recipient of the Comparative and International Education Society’s Ernest D. Morrell African Diaspora Emerging Scholar Award. Dr. Thompson describes herself as a Black Caribbean feminist scholar of the ‘glocal’ educational experiences of people of African descent, paying keen attention to African diasporans in the Americas. Her work contributes to the ongoing project to understand how coloniality, racial capitalism, and modernity operate globally and are implicated in the ongoing (mis)education of Black people. To that end, her research is a combined articulation of the Sociologies of Race, Education, Diaspora, and International Development that is situated in anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and decolonization.

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