Organized by the CERLAC student caucus and hosted by 91ŃÇÉ« doctoral students Natasha Sofia Martinez and Alex Moldovan. 

is a Jamaican human rights lawyer and founder of Freedom Imaginaries, an organization that uses human rights law to tackle legacies of slavery and colonialism. She holds a Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School and a Master of Advanced Studies degree from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva. She is qualified to practice law in Guyana and Jamaica. 

, PhD is a Jamaican independent film maker, writer, educator and linguist with over thirty-five years of media productions including television programming, documentaries, educational videos, multimedia and feature film. Her activist film making gives voice to those outside of mainstream media and focuses on the perpetuation of local and indigenous knowledge and cultures, the environment, social injustice, and community empowerment. Figueroa’s films include Jamaica for Sale(2009), Fly Me To The Moon (2019). In 2013, Figueroa was Distinguished Writer in Residence at University of Hawai’i English Department. Her environmental novel Limbo (2014) was a finalist in the 2015 National Indie Excellence Awards for Multi-cultural Fiction.

“When you think of the Caribbean, it is likely that you think of the region as a victim of climate injustice” Dr. Figueroa observes. “Certainly, in their calls for reparations, Caribbean governments stress the innocence of the region. But Caribbean governments promote extractivist models of development, whereby tourism, plantation agriculture and forestry, industrial fisheries, the extraction of hydrocarbons, metals and minerals, car-centric development and urbanized built environments are the engines of their growth economies.” This is in keeping with the role of Caribbean peoples as the early industrial modernizers in and through sugar plantations, leaders within a world system of colonialism and capitalism. In their scale and complexity, the sugar plantations anticipated later industrial developments in Britain and Europe, Dr. Figueroa argues, creating enormous profits for British colonial owners and funding the expansion of British empire, which at one time included a quarter of humanity. In short, through the plantation system, the Caribbean was central to world processes of industrial modernity, empire and global capitalism. 

This matters for the contemporary climate crisis here and now, Dr. Figueroa insists, because the age of European imperialist expansion accelerated what some call the Anthropocene, an era in which human presence has irrevocably transformed the natural world. European imperialisms were marked by the genocide of tens millions of Indigenous peoples, the theft of their lands and waters, and the repurposing of them as natural resources. “A more accurate conceptualization of the Anthropocene is therefore the Plantationocene”, Dr. Figueroa observes, “a patriarchal, colonial, racist capitalist world political economy that began in the late 15^th in the Americas and in the Caribbean, rooted in the genocide of Indigenous peoples, the enslavement of Africans and the profitable destruction of the natural world.” The Caribbean’s history of extractivism continues today in Guyana, as Dr. Figueroa describes:

“Guyana is now positioned to become the largest oil producer in the world transforming from a carbon sink, whereby its immense intact forests hold carbon and supply oxygen, to a carbon bomb, with 10 billion barrels of oil slated to be extracted. It is estimated that burning that oil could release over 4 billion tons of greenhouse gases…And in keeping with the Caribbean’s extractivist tradition, the agreement between the government of Guyana, Exxon and other multinational oil corporations, saddles Guyana with debt and liability while enriching the oil companies. Yet the Guyana government portrays their new role as the largest oil producer as one that will catapult Guyanese society into great wealth and prosperity…”.

Caribbean leaders beholden to billion-dollar corporations and wealthy oligarchs adjust to a violent, racist capitalist world by selling off the last of the Caribbean’s so-called natural resources. “The Caribbean is not innocent,” Dr. Figueroa concludes, “despite its calls for reparations given climate injustice.” What is required is a fundamental transformation beyond the global plantation economy that carries so much violence against human beings, especially Indigenous peoples and the natural world.

“The climate crisis is the logical consequence of a racial capitalist system, which normalizes resource plundering, Indigenous dispossession, and the relegation of former colonies to sacrificial zones of extraction,” Malene Alleyne observes. Communities are becoming uninhabitable due to extreme weather events linked with climate change. In Bahamas, people are still recovering from Hurricane Dorian, which in 2019 caused loss of life and massive displacement, with many living today in what were originally conceived as temporary, emergency housing. In Trinidad and Tobago, wildlife and fishing are threatened by oil spills, while in Jamaica, bauxite mining is contaminating water sources and destroying agricultural lands in Cockpit Country. “What I am describing is a system of global racial inequality,” Alleyne continues, “in which Caribbean nations remain trapped in a cycle of dependency on extraction and climate vulnerability.” Migrants, Indigenous people, and Afro-descendent rural people are marginalized within the Caribbean and, when faced with natural disasters created and exacerbated by climate change, they are most likely to suffer from death and displacement. 

A rights-based decolonial approach to justice demands a transformative approach that shifts power to these communities, Alleyne emphasizes, so that they can defend their way of life and environment against unsustainable development. This human rights-based approach to climate justice includes the following three pillars:

• environmental rights, including the right to clean air and water, as well as procedural environmental rights, such as the right to access climate information, participate in climate decision-making processes, and access remedies in cases of harm; 
• a racial equality framework based on international treaties that prohibit racial discrimination, including with respect to climate change;
• climate reparations, including just economic and social systems enabling a postcolonial future; 

This is much more than a matter of financial reparations. Since a racist world capitalist system engenders climate change, Alleyne argues, challenging climate change requires that we dismantle that system and join together to build a more socially, economically and racially just world.

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In the exhibition , Czegledy explains, science, technology and art are brought together by artists who share a deep, contemporary sensitivity to nature. 

The exhibition, featured in Kitchener, Ontario, included Aotearoa/New Zealand artists Caro McCaw and Vicki Smith’s collaborative work “Sounding”, which is concerned with the noise pollution that is increasingly disrupting the sonic environment of marine mammals. McCaw and Smith seek to draw attention to spaces of communication for whales and dolphins that we cannot see, in a blue, underwatery light where viewers listen to echolocation by whales and dolphins recorded in the Tasmanian Sea.

In her work “Spontaneous Generation”, Toronto-based artist Elaine Miller makes links between the melting of the polar ice caps and the emergence of viruses, including Ebola, but with obvious resonance for the current covid-19 pandemic. For her part, Kristine Diekman, creating from California, presents “Behold the Tilapia”, in a stop-motion image of the fish, which is known for its resiliency but that is now facing extinction in polluted waters, exacerbated by the stresses of increasing temperatures due to climate change. Both use mixed media, as Tingley describes, while Maayke Schurer, an artist from Victoria, British Columbia, plays with the idea of the sublime in “Spirits of Wasteland” which creates beautiful yet horrific imagery with plastic and other waste that pollutes our environment. 

Along with other featured women artists from across Canada and around the world, Agents for Change: Facing the Anthropocene, seeks to “critically and poetically investigate our present, unpack the social and cultural impacts of environmental change, speculate about future realities, and suggest solutions for how we might approach life in the Anthropocene.” This demands that we acknowledge the ways that environmental change, including rising oceans and heat waves, affects all of us, both human and other animals and insects. 

In her work, Liz Miller’s project begins with the Lake Ontario shoreline, its histories and ecologies. Half of the world’s population lives by the coasts, which are densely populated and continue to develop, as Miller explains. Climate change means rising seas and storms that are increasingly affecting coastal areas. Miller’s work brings together engineers, educators, biologists, artists, and youth activists working across disciplines and across species. Through shared data sets, soundscapes, and more than forty short portraits of coastal communities from nine countries, this collaborative project considers the challenge of our collective survival. 

In their different ways, each of these women artists invites us to consider the realities of living in the Anthropocene, an era in which human beings have irrevocably shaped the natural world, with devastating consequences for many species including our own. But these artists ask us to do more than witness. They invite us to engage with urgent ecological questions and to develop new relationships  -- and deep love -- for the ecoystems that sustain all of us. 

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Written by Elaine Coburn, Director of the Centre for Feminist Research, 91ŃÇÉ«

Biography

is an Assistant Professor at the School of Environment at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on religion and environment, faith-based environmentalism, faith-based environmental ethics, and religious legal approaches to environmental protection. He is particularly interested in the themes of wastefulness, consumption, and simplicity. Dr. Yoreh is currently researching environmental engagement in faith communities in Canada, the United States, and Israel. He is the author of Waste Not: A Jewish Environmental Ethic (2019). You can find his talk .

At the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies, Dr. Tanhum Yoreh (PhD Humanities, 91ŃÇÉ«) spoke about “Faith Based Environmental Action: The Jewish Experience”. In his talk, he considered possibilities and tensions around religiously rooted environmentalism, turning first to the words of the philosopher Roger S. Gottleib: “For as long as human beings have practiced them, the complex and multifaceted beliefs, rituals and moral teaching known as religion have told us how to think about and relate to everything on earth that we did not make ourselves.”

This observation is helpful, Dr. Yoreh argues, in part because it does not presume the usefulness of religion for understanding environmental questions. Rather, Gottlieb leaves open the possibilities that theology may be helpful or harmful to our interactions with the natural world.

Certainly, many religious people who are active in the environmental movement understand themselves as having a responsibility, even a moral imperative, to respond to the environmental crisis. If religion is life-giving and the ecological crisis is life-destroying, being a responsible part of the Created World demands action to protect life.

Practically, being able to mobilize religious communities around environmental causes, including their ability to organize and their financial and their political clout, makes them at least potentially powerful actors. The United Church, for instance, is actively divesting from fossil fuels. Diverse faith communities are present at events like COP-26 at Glasgow in 2021, asking that we make difficult decisions to reduce ecologically destructive practices and support life in the natural world.

At the same time, Dr. Yoreh observes, religious communities may have entrenched habits that make new engagement with environmental questions difficult or environmental questions may seem irrelevant to the central spiritual mission. In some cases, religious communities may hold ideas antithetical to ecological activism, for instance, theologically rooted fatalisms make action meaningless, since the Book of Life is already written. Some monotheistic communities may understand environmentalists as spiritually wrong-headed, even dangerous, associating “tree hugging” with idol worship.

Prevailing Orthodox understandings of Jewish law, the halakhah, view environmental commitment as morally good but as extra-legal, praiseworthy but not legally necessary. Yet, other aspects of Jewish law may support environmental activism. For instance, if environmental damage is viewed as a form of self-harm, the live-privileging halakhah would be activated in full force to protect human life.

Ecclesiastes Rabbah, a commentary on the book of Ecclesiastes, includes a passage in which God reviews “each and every tree” in the Garden of Eden and warns Adam:

 â€śBehold my creations how pleasant and praiseworthy they are. All that I created, I created for you. Pay heed that you do not ruin and destroy My world. For if you ruin it, there is no one after you who will fix it.” (7:13)

Such passages speak powerfully to many contemporary Jewish environmental activists, enjoining all of humanity to take care of the natural world, understood as God’s Creation.

In contrast to those who understand Judaism as demanding stewardship for God’s Creation, Reform and Orthodox communities may rely on very different vocabularies, for instance, evoking the need for cleanliness to urge an end to littering and pollution. Varying approaches and vocabularies within a diverse Jewish faith community speaks to the need, within the environmental movement, to mobilize a range of language that resonates with different religious actors.

In short, these are matters of different worldviews, different motivations that bring people of faith to the environmental struggle.

What is clear is that faith-based actors are important to environmental struggles. Scientists can measure risks, but they cannot answer the moral and spiritual questions that the contemporary ecological crisis poses. For the faithful, theological imperatives and religious responsibility provide an impetus to act that they find nowhere else.

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(91ŃÇÉ« PhD 2005) is Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Global Women’s Issues. She is also a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. Professor Baruah specializes in interdisciplinary research at the intersections of gender, economy, environment, and development; gender and work; and social, political, and economic inequality. Her current research aims to understand how to ensure that a global low-carbon economy will be more gender-equitable and socially just than its fossil-fuel-based predecessor. She has published one book, Women and Property in Urban India, (University of British Columbia Press 2010) and more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, working papers, policy briefs and professional reports, in journals like World Development, Feminist Economics, Development in Practice, Water Policy, and Labor Studies. Her work can be found .

In her presentation at the Centre for Feminist Research at 91ŃÇÉ«, “Gender Equality In Low Carbon Economies: Continuities, Contradiction, Disruptions”, 91ŃÇÉ« alumni and Canada Research Chair Bipasha Baruah observes that, “Globally, women represent only 22 per cent of the oil and gas industry and 32 per cent of the renewable energy workforce. Women are particularly underrepresented in the energy sector in jobs that require science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) training (28 per cent) compared to non-STEM technical jobs (35 per cent) and administrative positions (45 per cent).” For Baruah, this underrepresentation is not only a problem but an opportunity, as nations around the world are confronted with the urgent need to re-orient the energy sector for environmental sustainability. In developed, emerging and developing economies, the energy sector can be transformed to support more sustainable energy -- and better jobs and more equity for women.

This is true in the developed nations, like Canada, where skill shortages in the renewable energy sector are a challenge but, Professor Baruah emphasizes, also an opportunity, “to train, recruit and promote women, Indigenous peoples, new immigrants, workers with disabilities, and other groups that have historically been marginalized in the energy sector.” This requires support for women to obtain degrees and diplomas in the better-paid science and technology fields, for instance, but also more flexibility for women who take maternity and parental leave to return to work and mandatory quotas for women in upper management and administrative positions. 

Developing nations face their own challenges in the energy transition, but some offer useful models for ways forward for the rest of the world. In a chapter with Rabia Ferroukhi and Celia García-Baños López published in 2021, “Global Trends in Women’s Employment in Renewable Energy,” Professor Baruah and her colleagues point to Zambia’s gender-transformative approach as one helpful example. “Zambia’s National Energy Policy identifies measures to mainstream gender considerations in all energy access programs” they observe, “and highlights the role of women not only as beneficiaries but as also active energy providers and entrepreneurs within the sector.” They conclude that “This is a good example of a[n]…approach that views women not simply as primary end users and beneficiaries, but as actors in the design and delivery of energy solutions.” 

If the energy transition to sustainable industries is necessary and urgent, Professor Baruah’s work is a reminder that there is hope in this transition for creating a more gender-just world. This will require women’s active role as decision-makers, not just in the energy sector but in the social, political and economic structures that now reproduce inequities. They can and must be transformed to bring about both environmental sustainability and gender equity in the critical years ahead.

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Dr. is Assistant Professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at 91ŃÇÉ«. A member of Bigstone Cree Nation in Treaty 8 territory, her research focuses on the political economy of oil and gas in Alberta. She is a co-investigator on the SSHRC-funded (Partnership Grant) Corporate Mapping Project, where she completed research with the Parkland Institute on Indigenous experiences in Alberta’s oil industry and its gendered impact on working families. Angele is also a member of the Just Powers research team, a SSHRC-funded Insight Grant, enabling her to produce a documentary called Pikopaywin: It is Broken. Featuring stories on the land, Indigenous traditional land users, environmental officers, and elders bear witness to the impact that the fossil fuel industry, forestry and climate change has on traditional Treaty 8 territory. With Dr. Deborah McGregor, Osgoode Hall Law School and Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC), Angele is co-investigator on the project, funded by 91ŃÇÉ«. 

“The ways that bureaucracy deals with Indigenous peoples is to assign a group of experts to talk to us and the rest simply continue as they always have,” observes Professor Alook. Government, often working hand in hand with corporations, together speak to Indigenous peoples. “But they do not consult us,” continues Professor Alook, “Nor do they respect their treaties with us.” In the words of community Elders, the consequence is that the land that makes up Treaty 8 territory is now broken, devastated by oil and gas wells and the infrastructure that supports them.

In the film produced by Professor Alook, Pikopaywin: It is Broken, she speaks to Elders from her community who bear witness to the devastation that the oil industry has wrought. “We care for the water. We care for the land. Because it is our diet, it is our livelihood,” emphasizes Elder Albert Yellowkneee. Since the oil industry has destroyed much of the land that gives life and livelihood, Yellowknee fears that he is the last generation to experience the land in this way: “What about my children, my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren? Will they have a place to go out into the woods and meditate? Like we do?” For Professor Alook, such conversations were difficult: “Elder Albert brought me and the film crew close to tears. Because he has a trapline, which has been in his family for many generations, and it has been literally cut down, destroyed, by the oil and forestry industry. He is no longer able to offer traditional, land-based teachings in the same way. We are no longer able to practice our treaty rights.”

To create a future for the children of Bigstone Cree Nation in Treaty 8 territory means challenging the government, for its failure to respect treaty rights. This demands confrontation with corporations, who fail to consult with the Bigstone Cree Nation in Treaty 8 territory, much less respect Indigenous self-determination. If this is a very unequal struggle, it is a vitally necessary one. As Elder Verna Orr observes, “If we have no trees, there is no life out there.” And she continues, “My hope is for people to stand together, pray together and be strong. And hopefully, the government and the oil companies will stop taking our trees.” 

Pikopaywin: It is Broken is available through the website.

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Francophone Canadian immigrants who come from Sub-Saharan Africa rarely benefit from the symbolic capital of speaking French. Instead, they encounter triple marginalization due to living in a minoritized francophone community â€“ because of their race, and by virtue of their French language accent. In partnership with Glendon Campus, this talk will explore the discrimination these immigrants face in the labour market in the Greater Toronto Area as well as their experience working in the francophone health-care and education systems.

Brought to you by 91ŃÇɫ’s Office of Alumni Engagement, the Scholars’ Hub @ Home speaker series features discussions on a broad range of topics, with engaging lectures from some of 91ŃÇɫ’s best and brightest minds. Students, alumni and all members of the community are invited to attend. All sessions take place at noon via Zoom.

Events are held in partnership with Vaughan Public Libraries, Markham Public Library and Aurora Public Library.

To register for the event, visit .

ł˘â€™Ă©vĂ©˛Ô±đłľ±đ˛ÔłŮ&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;Next Scholars’ Hub explore la discrimination Ă  laquelle sont confrontĂ©s les immigrants francophones afro-canadiens

Pour l’édition du 20 octobre de la sĂ©rie de confĂ©rences Scholars’ Hub @ Home, Gertrude Mianda, professeure Ă  Glendon et directrice du Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on Africa and its Diasporas Ă  l’UniversitĂ© 91ŃÇÉ«, animera une discussion sur les immigrants francophones afro-canadiens au sein de la communautĂ© francophone minoritaire.

Les immigrants canadiens francophones originaires d’Afrique subsaharienne bĂ©nĂ©ficient rarement du capital symbolique que reprĂ©sente le fait de parler français. Ils se heurtent plutĂ´t Ă  une triple marginalisation : en plus de celle liĂ©e Ă  leur race et Ă  leur accent français, ils vivent dans une communautĂ© francophone minoritaire. En partenariat avec Glendon, cette confĂ©rence explorera la discrimination Ă  laquelle ces immigrants sont confrontĂ©s sur le marchĂ© du travail dans la rĂ©gion du Grand Toronto ainsi que leur expĂ©rience de travail dans les systèmes de santĂ© et d’éducation francophones.

ProposĂ©e par le Bureau d’engagement des diplĂ´mĂ©s de l’UniversitĂ© 91ŃÇÉ«, la sĂ©rie de confĂ©rences Scholars’ Hub @ Home propose des discussions sur un large Ă©ventail de sujets avec des confĂ©rences intĂ©ressantes livrĂ©es par certains des esprits les plus brillants de 91ŃÇÉ«. Les Ă©tudiants et Ă©tudiantes, diplĂ´mĂ©es et diplĂ´mĂ©s et tous les membres de la communautĂ© sont invitĂ©s Ă  y assister. Toutes les sessions ont lieu Ă  midi sur Zoom.

Les événements sont organisés en partenariat avec les bibliothèques publiques de Vaughan, Markham et Aurora.

Pour vous inscrire à l’événement, visitez le site .

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Running from 3 to 5:30 p.m., the event aims to explore the impact of collaboration and mentorship and will also feature presentations from research teams at 91ŃÇÉ«.

Keynote speakers will present on “The Power of Knowledge Translation for Community Change” and speak on their knowledge mobilization expertise and efforts. The keynote speakers are:

• Keiko Shikako, Canada Research Chair in Childhood Disability: Participation and Knowledge Translation; co-lead, Knowledge Translation Program, CHILD-BRIGHT; and
• Connie Putterman, family engagement in research co-ordinator at CAMH; co-lead, Knowledge and Translation Program, CHILD-BRIGHT.

The Dr. Eric Jackman Health Scholars Award is designed to support student research teams that will be funded to carry out community-engaged research alongside a LaMarsh faculty member and community partner. Teams are meant to foster a situation where both scholars receive mentorship from the faculty member, and the undergraduate scholar receives mentorship from the graduate scholar.

Teams will present an update of their project at this event, where the scholars, faculty member and community partner will speak to the impact of collaboration and mentorship.

Jackman is the founding Chair of the Psychology Foundation of Canada and heads the Jackman Foundation with an interest in child development.

To register for this virtual event, visit . To learn more about the research teams and their presentations, visit the event page.

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The Barbara Godard Prize for the Best 91ŃÇÉ« Dissertation in Canadian Studies recipient is Andrew Zealley, Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change (EUC), for “.” The recipient of the Odessa Prize for the best undergraduate paper in a fourth-year course is Emily Belmonte for “Understanding Treaty One: Subsistence and Survival 1871-1888.”

The Barbara Godard Prize

Zealley’s work maps the artistic response to the complex and contradictory experience of living with HIV-AIDS within the Toronto gay community. He uses audio, video and writing to argue for experiential and situated knowledges as forms of HIV management and prevention.

“I want people to understand that pleasure is possible; pleasure is within grasp if we can learn to let go of – or refuse – institutionalized mandates around sex and intimate relationships,” he says. “I want people to find ways to talk about their personal health goals during sexual moments, to integrate sexual health talk into sexual play. I hope that people will better understand, through my work, the insidious role that gentrification plays in our pleasure lives. Homogeneity poisons imaginations and desires.”

The prize adjudication committee praised his research for exposing the underlying tensions between art and scholarly practice as processes for understanding this experience, by sourcing material often inaccessible or undervalued by institutional research. Overall, the committee noted the thesis provides a timely reminder of the numerous social discourses that continue to pathologize HIV-AIDS.

Zealley is currently working on multiple projects, both in an artistic and academic capacity. He is part of the Wetrospective exhibition at the AGO this month and has a new vinyl LP record, The Magic of the Think Machine Gods, releasing in October. He is also working on research projects with EUC graduate Peter Hobbs and Nick MulĂ©, a professor in 91ŃÇɫ’s School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS); and participating as a video maker in “Viral Interventions,” a project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and overseen by EUC Professor Sarah Flicker and Associate Professor John Greyson of 91ŃÇɫ’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD).

The Odessa Prize

Belmonte’s essay was completed under the supervision of Professor Sean Kheraj (Department of History, LA&PS) as part of the fourth-year Honours Thesis Seminar (HIST 4000). Her honours thesis focused on interpreting Treaty One (with the Chippewa and Cree Indians of Manitoba) and examining the events leading up to the signing, as well as the immediate aftermath in the 1870s.

“Canadians should not only be interested, but they should feel a sense of urgency to learn about the history of the land they are privileged to live on and how its first people were treated so shamefully at the hands of the government,” says Belmonte. “Canadians need to understand the treaty-making period, how we are all treaty people, and how there were very specific promises and rights granted to Indigenous people during the treaty process that were never upheld in a very deliberate process in order to secure land acquisition and pave the way for agrarian settlement.”

The prize committee recognized her work as a thoughtful and well-considered synthesis of scholarship on the history of Canada’s colonial expansion into the northwest. The committee noted the thesis is exceptionally well-organized and well-written, and demonstrates great care and sophistication in sorting out the layers of events and meanings surrounding this critical moment in Canadian history.

Belmonte is entering her final year at 91ŃÇÉ« and aims to graduate in June 2022 with a degree in both history and education. She plans to become a teacher with her certification to teach at the primary and junior levels, “but one day I may also consider teaching history at the senior and intermediate levels as well,” she says.

The work of both prize recipients was nominated by the Robarts Centre for the . Belmonte’s essay earned the Best Canadian Studies Undergraduate Essay/Thesis Prize and was noted for being well-written and carefully documented, and was highlighted as an example of undergraduate scholarship of very high quality, according to the Canadian Studies Network in their congratulatory email.

Zealley and Belmonte were both interviewed about their work by the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies. Read those reflections .

About the prizes

The Barbara Godard Prize for the Best 91ŃÇÉ« Dissertation in Canadian Studies, which has been awarded annually since 2012, is named in memory of Professor Barbara Godard, former Avie Bennett Historica Chair of Canadian Literature and former professor of English, French, social and political thought, and women’s studies at 91ŃÇÉ«. The Odessa Prize for the Study of Canada, first awarded in 2011, was established through the generosity of 91ŃÇÉ« alumnus Irvin Studin (BBA Schulich, PhD Osgoode Hall Law School), who dedicated the award to his parents who hailed from the famous port city of Odessa, Ukraine. Learn more about these prizes at .

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According to Douglas, there is something wrong with the way the pharmaceutical industry researches and develops drugs. Of the roughly 7,000 currently identified rare diseases, he says, only about 570 treatments have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat about 11 per cent of those rare diseases. As a result, millions of patients around the world go untreated. Some of the challenges facing research and development in this space are scientific and technical; however, there are also a number of critical issues that are thwarting more rapid development of drugs that are more associated with social, economic and political factors that have come to characterize the current innovation paradigm within the pharmaceutical industry.

This presentation will argue that the current model of pharmaceutical innovation alone will not deliver the quantity of products needed to address the unmet needs faced by rare disease patients, nor at a price point that is sustainable for health-care systems. As a consequence, radical transformations are needed across the pharmaceutical research, development and deployment life cycle that stand to offer alternative, supplementary and hopefully transformative pathways to a greater number of increasingly accessible treatments. Douglas will explain how principles of social innovation have been developed and deployed in other sectors and how those principles can be applied in the pharmaceutical sector. He will briefly introduce social innovation and its key features before demonstrating what he calls “social pharmaceutical innovation,” why it is important and how he hopes to foster it. 

Douglas’s presentation is part of a larger international collaborative project called “Social Pharmaceutical Innovation for Unmet Medical Needs,” with partners from the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), Mines ParisTech at the UniversitĂ© PSL (France) and Utrecht University (Netherlands). The Canadian component of the study is funded through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and more information about the project can be found at .

Now in its 28th year, the STS Research Seminar Series features seminars on a wide range of STS-related topics. Sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology Studies and co-ordinated by its members, the series has hosted over 500 speakers from Canada and around the world.

All events in the series will run on Tuesdays from 12:30 to 2 p.m. They are all free and open to the public, with no registration required. They will be delivered via Zoom in the fall term, with the winter term to be determined. To receive a Zoom link for this event and others in the series, contact Conor Douglas, seminar series co-ordinator, at cd512@yorku.ca.

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