Vanessa Lamb (right), a second-year doctoral candidate in geography, is the 2010 Vivienne Poy Asian Research Award recipient. Her research interests include the politics of the environment and development, feminist political ecology and critical science studies.

Lamb received her master's degree from the University of Wisconsin, where she researched and studied the interdisciplinary understandings of conservation. Prior to attending 91亚色, she worked for the Bangkok-based organization TERRA, a regional non-governmental organization (NGO) that works on environmental issues within the Mekong Region. As a doctoral student she has worked as part of the Challenges of Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia project team.

The award funds will assist Lamb in her dissertation fieldwork during the 2010-2011 academic year. Her research looks at knowledge-making and claim-making practices around resources of the Nu-Salween River, which supports an estimated six million people in China, Burma and Thailand as a source of livelihood and food. She will conduct interviews with local residents, activists, engineers and others connected to a large hydroelectric development project along the river at the Thai-Burma border. Specifically, her research will consider how different knowledges produced about the river interact and influence decision-making processes around development.

The award is named for Canadian Senator Vivienne Poy. It assists a graduate student in fulfilling the fieldwork requirement for the Graduate Diploma in Asian Studies.

Ei Phyu Han (left) and Rae Mitchell are the 2010 YCAR Language Award recipients. Han, a doctoral candidate in geography, will study Thai, while Mitchell, a master's candidate in social聽& political thought, will use the funding to study Hindi in anticipation of her 2010 fieldwork in India.

Han is examining gender identity formation of Karen refugees from Burma along the Thai-Burma border to learn how it is influenced by different actors and power groups at multiple sites of displacement.聽Her research aims to demonstrate how identity is influenced by place and therefore shifts during the process of being displaced because it is continually being renegotiated. This research has the potential to help improve resettlement programs, and she hopes it can play a role in future Canadian refugee policy changes.

"Although I am now a Canadian citizen, I migrated to Canada at the age of six from Burma with my family in the aftermath of the brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations in 1988," says Han. "I believe that this project is important not only for the ways that it can influence policy and resettlement program changes, and its engagement and contribution to academic knowledge, but also because it is integral to learning more about the growing humanitarian crisis in Burma."

She completed her coursework and set the foundations for her fieldwork in the summer of 2009 in Chiang Mai, Thailand, by making contacts with NGOs and by taking Thai language courses. The YCAR Language Award will assist in the continuation of these studies. She will begin her fieldwork this month working with the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, Women's Education for Advancement & Employment and the Karen Youth Organization.

Right: Rae Mitchell

Mitchell's research interests include resistance, social movement theory, engaged Buddhism and social anarchism. Her current research focuses on Gandhian perspectives of the body, including the methods utilized by Gandhi to transform his body (and self) from British subject into revolutionary satyagrahi. She's also interested in the ways that Gandhian approaches to social and political transformation are being adapted and utilized by female members of the Mahila Shanti Sena (Women's Peace Force) in Northern India.

She will complete a four-week intensive Hindi language-training course at the Jaipur School of Hindi in Jaipur, Rajasthan. The school is run in affiliation with Shashvat Sansthan, a local NGO working for the welfare of Rajasthan鈥檚 tribal-indigenous communities. Mitchell will also be travelling with University of Toronto Professor Reva Joshee and Jill Carr-Harris, a development worker in India, throughout central India for three weeks in October to explore possible research collaboration on Ekta Parishad's struggle for land and forest rights for marginalized and indigenous peoples in India.

Mitchell holds a combined聽bachelor of arts (BA)聽in peace studies and anthropology with a minor in religious studies from McMaster University.

The YCAR Language Award was created to support graduate students in fulfilling the language requirement for the Graduate Diploma in Asian Studies and to facilitate awardees master's or doctoral-level research.

Ferdinand Dionisio Caballero (left), a master's candidate in social anthropology, is this year's recipient of the David Wurfel Award. The award will aid him in his fall archival fieldwork in the Philippines where he will focus on the entangled relations between the Catholic Church and the Filipino people.

The David Wurfel Award provides financial support to an honours undergraduate or master's graduate student who intends to conduct thesis research on the topic of Filipino history, culture or society.

Caballero's major research paper will be an anthropological inquiry on religion, colonial subjects, post-colonialism and history. More specifically, he is interested in exploring and understanding the dynamics of power relations between religious institutions and the people.

He holds a BA in anthropology with a specialization in ethnographic studies from Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta.

The award was established in 2006 by Senior YCAR Research Associate David Wurfel. He wanted to contribute to the emergence of a new generation of Filipino leadership that is grounded in the country鈥檚 history, culture and public affairs. Wurfel is a Philippine specialist who received his PhD from Cornell University's Southeast Asia Program.

Heather Barnick (right) is the 2010 recipient of the Albert C.W. Chan Foundation Fellowship. A doctoral candidate in the Department of Social Anthropology at 91亚色, her current research interests are related to the anthropology of media, digital anthropology, and techno-science with a specific focus on the visual and material cultures of video games and massive multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs).

Last month, Barnick began ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, China, following the ways in which online role-playing games have become significant sites for the formations of new national and cultural imaginaries in mainland China. Her fieldwork is supported by the Albert C.W. Chan Fellowship and a Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral scholarship.

This research follows on the heels of a project initiated by China鈥檚 General Administration of Press & Publication (GAPP) to encourage the production of 100 domestically produced MMORPGs. The narratives and imagery integrated into games developed under GAPP鈥檚 initiative frequently make use of famous fictional stories, such as the Journey to the West, and historical battles, such as Genghis Khan鈥檚 exploits and the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Focusing on the perspectives of youth from Shanghai, Barnick鈥檚 research will examine how these adapted histories come to have new meanings for life in the present. The primary goal is to understand how notions of national and cultural belongings and identities are continuously formed, expressed and re-imagined by Shanghai youth through their participation in MMORPGs produced in China.

Barnick earned a BA in sociology and anthropology from the University of Prince Edward Island and a MA in social and cultural anthropology from Concordia University.

The Albert C.W. Chan Foundation Fellowship was established by the Albert C.W. Chan Foundation to encourage and assist 91亚色 graduate students to conduct field research in East and/or Southeast Asia and was made possible through the聽support of the Albert C. W. Chan family.

Adnan Amin (left) was selected from a strong group of graduate and undergraduate applicants to represent 91亚色 at the Global Initiatives Symposium in Taipei next month. This opportunity is provided by the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Amin's winning essay, 鈥淲hen East Meets West: A Personal Essay on Intersections of North American and East Asian Education鈥�, reflected on his experiences as an English as a second language (ESL) teacher in Taiwan.

Last year, Amin graduated from 91亚色 with an honours double major degree in English and history, completed his concurrent bachelor of education degree, and held a position as student senator for the Faculty of Education Students' Association. Amin has also held an international internship in the English Department of the Hong Kong Institute of Education and taught ESL in Taiwan. He is currently pursing his master of education degree at 91亚色.

Amin's research interests are in teaching and learning strategies, immigrant experiences, English language learning and digital media technology. He currently works as a school settlement worker in Toronto high schools where he helps newcomer students and families with settlement needs.

The Global Initiatives Symposium will be held at the National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan, from July 12 to 16.聽It will bring together emergent leaders from around the world to discuss critical global issues. The topic for 2010 is The Emergence of New Giants: Evolution or Revolution. Participants will also take part in several days of cultural tours in Taiwan following the symposium.

Amin鈥檚 opportunity to represent 91亚色 at the symposium was made possible by the Taipei Economic聽& Cultural Office and the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

For more information on any of the awards, visit the YCAR Web site.

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

The post 91亚色 Centre for Asian Research awards six graduate scholarships to fuel innovative research projects appeared first on Research & Innovation.

91亚色's Faculty of Education will host its annual research forum on technology in education today, from 2 to 4pm in 280N 91亚色 Lanes.

Professor Jennifer Jenson (right) will present "Baroque Baroque Revolution: High Culture Gets Game".聽In聽today鈥檚 鈥渟uper-saturated, socially networked, Second Life, massively multiplayer, online, keyed-in, content generating, 2.0, 鈥榞local鈥欌�� culture, the world of Baroque music, to many people, not only feels like a relic from an inaccessible past, but it often looks that way as well. In this talk, Jenson will聽attempt to show how play, its practices, contexts and discourses are mobilized, and how some of this might be theorized and reapplied through a design-based research project that created a Baroque music game.

Professor Ron Owston (left) will look at computer game development as a literacy activity in his presentation. According to Owston, serious gaming has become a burgeoning research field over the last several years. Most research to date has looked at students as players of computer games. But what happens when students are given the opportunity to be developers of their own games? In聽his presentation, Owston will give an overview of a large multisite study he, together with faculty colleagues and graduate students, conducted that examined the impact on literacy skills of Grade 4 students who created their own computer games. He will then review the findings of two other pilot studies he led that grew out of this work, as well as talk briefly about a research tool he is developing for remotely recording users鈥� interactions with computer screens.

Professor Chlo毛 Brushwood Rose (right) will speak about community-based media pedagogy and production in a globalized world. She will outline the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded聽study she is undertaking with researchers from Montreal's McGill University and the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH, which aims to pay critical attention to the proliferation of community video production programs in urban centres across North America, their pedagogies, and the videos produced through them. The researchers are conducting a comparative study of three projects in New 91亚色 City, Toronto and Montreal that聽explore a number of聽central research themes relating to media pedagogies.

This event is free and open to the community. Following the presentations, there will be a wine and cheese reception. For more information, contact , communications coordinator, Office of the Dean, Faculty of Education, at ext. 58024.

The post Faculty of Education forum this afternoon looks at technology in education appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Playing video games for hours on end may prepare young Billy to become a laparoscopic surgeon one day, a study from 91亚色 has shown.

The findings, published online in the journal , demonstrate that playing video games reorganizes the brain鈥檚 activity and can lead to better control of skilled movements. Alterations to the brain鈥檚 cortical network in young men who have significant experience playing video games gives them an advantage not only in playing the games, the study concludes, but in performing other dissociated visuomotor tasks.

The most common example of a dissociated visuomotor task聽鈥� in which visual information received by the brain is dissociated from the required motor action聽鈥� is using a mouse while focusing on a computer screen. A much more challenging dissociated visuomotor task would be performing laparoscopic surgery.

The study鈥檚 conclusion that using gaming skills can reorganize how the brain works also offers hope for future research into the problems experienced by patients with early Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, who struggle to complete the simplest visuomotor tasks.

Above: The study compared a group of avid video gamers with those who did not have the experience of playing. Using high-resolution brain imaging, researchers were able to test how skills learned from gaming can transfer to new tasks. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The study compared a group of 13 young men in their 20s, who had played video games at least four hours a week for the previous three years and were very proficient, to a group of 13 young men who did not have that experience. After some training, the subjects were placed in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine and asked to do a series of increasingly difficult tasks, such as using a joystick or looking one way while reaching another way. The fMRI machine imaged cortical activity as their brains planned to do the tasks, so the results were not affected by any physical movement.

鈥淏y using high-resolution brain imaging (fMRI), we were able to actually measure which brain areas were activated at a given time during the experiment,鈥� says Lauren Sergio (right),聽a professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science in 91亚色鈥檚 Faculty of Health.聽 鈥淲e tested how the skills learned from video game experience can transfer over to new tasks, rather than just looking at brain activity while the subject plays a video game.鈥�

Sergio supervised the study by graduate student and lead author Joshua Granek (BSc. Spec. Hons. 鈥�06, MSc. 鈥�08), now a PhD student at 91亚色, and Diana Gorbet (MSc. 鈥�02, PhD 鈥�06), a PhD student at the time. All work in 91亚色鈥檚 .

The parietal cortex is the part of the brain that a person typically relies on most in complex eye-hand tasks to translate what he or she sees into an action, with less reliance on the prefrontal cortex. The study found that in experienced video gamers鈥� brains, there is increased activity in the prefrontal cortex.

鈥淲e had noticed differences in brain activity between two gamers and other subjects in an earlier pilot study. We decided to do a study with an fMRI because we were curious about the differences in brain activity between skilled gamers and people with much less experience,鈥� says Granek. 鈥淭he video gamers exhibited increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is at the very front of the brain. While performing the same task, the less-experienced players聽鈥� the people in the control group聽鈥� used predominantly the parietal cortex, farther back.鈥�

In the聽future, it would be interesting to study if the brain pattern changes are affected by the type of video games a player has used and the actual total number of hours he has played, Granek says, and to study female video gamers, whose brain patterns in earlier studies were different than those of males.

Republished courtesy of YFile 鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

The post 91亚色 study finds video gamers are in training for bigger tasks appeared first on Research & Innovation.