Theatre artists Ted Witzel and Ker Wells are going about it somewhat differently. They’re the inaugural participants in the 91��ɫ MFA in Theatre – Stage Direction in Collaboration with Canadian Stage, a landmark initiative that’s breaking new ground in Canadian theatre training.

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Launched last fall as a partnership between one of Canada’s preeminent theatre schools and one of the country’s leading not-for-profit contemporary theatre companies, this innovative graduate program offers highly specialized, advanced training in large-scale theatre directing.  Its mission is to support the development of directorial talent for the national and international stage.

“When directors make their mainstage debut, they often feel they’re getting one kick at the can, and if they fail they’ll never get to do a large production again,” said Professor Eric Armstrong, director of 91��ɫ’s MFA theatre programs. “Here, you get to work with large casts on big shows in a mentored setting – something that just doesn't happen in the professional world.”

The collaborative MFA program allows students to develop their creative and technical skills to the highest level, integrating their academic and studio work in 91��ɫ’s Department of Theatre with involvement in artistic projects at . The opportunity to direct a Canadian Stage production and an internship with a major national or international theatre are key elements of the two-year program.

Canadian Stage Artistic and General Director Matthew Jocelyn and Resident Artist Kim Collier serve as personal mentors for the MFA candidates.  Collier, co-founder and artistic director of Vancouver’s Electric Company Theatre and winner of the 2010 Siminovitch Prize for directing, works closely with the students to support their professional development.

The program is customized for each student based on their background, artistic orientation and goals, so Wells and Witzel’s experience over the past year and their plans for the next are highly individual.

Wells assisted Collier in her direction of the Canadian Stage production of Red last fall, and served as assistant director to Richard Rose for , Canadian Stage’s 30th anniversary Shakespeare in the Park presentation, running in Toronto’s High Park until September 2.  This coming season, Witzel will assist Kim Collier on a production for Vancouver's .

On the international front, Wells heads to the Netherlands this fall for an internship with acclaimed director Ivo van Hove at , working on a play by Ingmar Bergman. Witzel has an internship lined up with the renowned Canadian-born, Europe-based opera director Robert Carsen (LLD Hons. '05) for a production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the in Baden-Baden, Germany in March 2013.

Both MFA candidates bring a wealth of experience to their work at 91��ɫ, at Canadian Stage and abroad.

Active in Toronto’s independent theatre scene for the past five years, Witzel is artistic director of , a company he co-founded in 2006. His directing credits include a number of bold, site-specific adaptations of classics in non-traditional venues such the Gladstone Hotel, Drake Underground, Whippersnapper Gallery and Trinity Bellwoods Park. His most recent productions for Red Light District have been La Ronde, an adaptation of the Arthur Schnitzler play, at the downtown club Wicked, and Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly, Last Summer with the Tennessee Project at the Gibson House Museum in North 91��ɫ. Witzel divides his time between Toronto and Germany, where he has worked as assistant to leading directors such as Johanna Schall and Sebastian Baumgarten.

Wells is an actor, director and teacher who has toured across Canada and in the US, England, Denmark, France, Italy and Serbia. He was a founding member of Primus Theatre in Winnipeg, where he worked for nearly a decade before moving to Toronto and co-founding Number Eleven Theatre in 1998. His productions with Number Eleven include Icaria, The Prague Visitor and The Curious History of Peter Schlemihl. Other credits include The Confessions of Punch and Judy for New 91��ɫ State-based NACL Theatre and solo shows Living Tall for Public Energy, Peterborough and Swimmer (68) for Toronto’s Hopscotch Collective.

91��ɫ’s Graduate Program in Theatre is now accepting applications for the next cycle of the MFA program in Theatre - Stage Direction in Collaboration with Canadian Stage. Two new students will be admitted into the program in September 2013. The  application deadline is Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2012. Directors with extremely strong individual and interpretive voices and substantial professional experience are invited to apply. Candidates should be committed to developing their artistic and technical skills and have a clear interest in working on a large scale.

For more information, visit the Theatre - Stage Direction in Collaboration with Canadian Stage website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Luin Goldring

CERIS is the Joint Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement, which explores issues specific to Ontario. Housed at 91��ɫ, it is tri-university partnership that also includes the University of Toronto and Ryerson University. CERIS also brings together both community organizations and different levels of government in all of its activities and direction through its governance board.

“Dr. Goldring brings a wealth of experience and understanding of the work CERIS does and the way it functions as an organization," says 91��ɫ health professor and CERIS board chair Lillie Lum. “I know she will guide CERIS into the future and will continue to build on the work it has accomplished through past and current leadership.”

Valerie Preston

Preston completes her leadership on a high note, following the third phase of this Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)-funded initiative that has effectively contributed to creating new knowledge in the field of immigration and settlement through annual research grants, graduate student awards and countless events. Together with Lillie Lum, Ryerson and University of Toronto directors, and other CERIS partners, she led the successful 14th Annual Metropolis Conference in Toronto earlier this year. The conference brought together more than 1,200 academics, policy-makers and community members to face challenges and explore opportunities of future immigration policy in Canada.

“We welcome Dr. Goldring as the 91��ɫ director,” says Preston. “I know her commitment and involvement in CERIS, both past and present, will be key to ensuring the future of immigration and settlement research in Ontario.”

“CERIS is an entity like no other,” says Goldring. “It is a research centre, a network and a community of people who all strive to improve the lives of newcomers to Ontario. I have had the pleasure of participating in its activities over many years and I look forward to working with everyone involved as we move ahead.”

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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91��ɫ psychology Professor Debra Pepler, together with Shelley Cardinal of the Canadian Red Cross, has received over $2.4 million in funding over five years from SSHRC to lead a major national project: "Walking the Prevention Circle: Researching Community Capacity Building for Violence Prevention".  They are joined by Susan Dion, a 91��ɫ education professor, and other researchers and partners. The project will examine how communities mobilize and build capacity through the Canadian and Australian Red Cross Societies' Walking the Prevention Circle (WTPC) – a model for violence prevention in Aboriginal communities. The project will receive more than $1.2 million in matching funding from partnering organizations.

Debra Pepler

Pepler, a Distinguished Research Professor in the Faculty of Psychology and core member in 91��ɫ’s LaMarsh Centre for Child and Youth Research, will lead a 10-member research team as they study the process of community capacity building.

“This grant provides an extraordinary opportunity to collaborate with communities in learning how they engage with the Red Cross community capacity-building process to share knowledge, promote stronger relationships, and move from the cycle of violence resulting from colonization to the circle of healing based in Aboriginal traditions,” said Pepler.

Project partners include the Canadian Red Cross, Australian Red Cross, CAMH Centre for Prevention Science, Chiefs of Ontario, Prince Albert Grand Council, Promoting Relationships and Eliminating Violence Network (PREVNet), Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Victoria Native Friendship Centre.

Susan Dion

Six 91��ɫ researchers were also awarded more than $1.1 million in SSHRC funding through the Partnership Development Grants program, with more than an additional $1 million in total funding from matching partner contributions. The Partnership Development Program encourages applicants to work collaboratively with partners to develop research in the social sciences and humanities. This funding will support partnerships between 91��ɫ researchers and Canadian and international universities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government departments, domestic and international associations, among others.

“The results of these recent SSHRC competitions are a testament to the exceptional track record 91��ɫ has in leading interdisciplinary and collaborative research projects,” said Robert Haché, 91��ɫ’s vice-president research and innovation. “The project led by 91��ɫ Professor Debra Pepler and Shelley Cardinal of the Canadian Red Cross, in collaboration with local and global partners, is designed to address and prevent the cycle of violence and improve the quality of people’s lives.”

Robert Haché

The announcement was made on Friday, May 25 by Gary Goodyear, federal minister of state for science and technology, while speaking at the launch of the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.  In total, more than $70 million is being awarded over a period of seven years to support 92 research teams across the country through SSHRC’s Partnership Grants and Partnership Development Grants.

“Our government’s top priority is jobs, growth and long-term prosperity. To remain at the forefront of the global economy, our government is investing in the people and ideas that will produce tomorrow’s breakthroughs,” said Goodyear. “Through these investments, we are creating the best educated and most skilled workforce in the world and strengthening Canada’s research advantage.”

“These multi-sectoral research partnerships are key to innovation and to building knowledge for Canada’s future,” said Chad Gaffield, SSHRC president. “With this funding support, we are gaining insight about, and developing innovative solutions to today’s social, economic and cultural issues, while training the next generation of researchers and leaders.”

For a complete list of Partnership Grant and Partnership Development Grant awards, visit the ���ɱ�������ٱ�.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Vice-presidents of research from across Canada converged in Ottawa on April 13 to meet with the presidents of the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Natural Sciences & Engineering Council (NSERC), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), regarding the impact of the 2012 budget on their funding programs.

While the complete details of the consequences of budget 2012 remain to be fully worked out, the overall tone of the message emphasized the efforts being made by Tri-Council to protect and promote fundamental research, to describe where the new investments in the budget will be rolled out, and to give a first look at where the mandated cuts in programming and operations will occur.

Initial discussion emphasized new investments being made and the expression of support for basic research in the budget language (if not directly in the dollars being distributed). Not only was the overall budget to Tri-Council preserved in a budget cycle where five to ten per cent cuts in overall budgets were the norm, but new investments were committed to support a number of new and existing programs. Thus CANARIE, Genome Canada and the CFI all received major infusions of funding that were accompanied by focused investments (in mental health etc.). While there is no explicit new funding for basic research in this budget, the lack of an overall funding reduction place Tri-Council in rare company around the federal budget table this year.

Over the last number of years, Tri-Council agencies were asked to undertake a strategic review of their expenditures, a process which required a review of all program spending and assessment of savings. The review process identified areas where savings could be achieved in order to redirect funding within the organization for new initiatives or to other government priorities.

While these are clearly no longer the heady times of the early 2000s, when Tri-Council budgets grew rapidly in a largely unrestricted manner, overall support for university-led research by the federal government remains comparatively strong and researchers should be encouraged by this. However, it is clear that at all levels, the funders of university research continue to move towards an emphasis on how the results of university-led research translates into tangible benefits for Canadian society and the Canadian economy. Here it is important for researchers to continue their efforts to explain and educate government and other funders on the need to support fundamental research as the bedrock on which university-led research is built.

It is also crucial to emphasize the need for programing that provides funding for making connections amongst researchers and sustaining the basic infrastructure needed for individual research programs. We can all, in following up on the steps presently been taken by Tri-Council, encourage the continued protection and development of core people and basic research programing within Tri-Council, and emphasize at every opportunity that the development of Canada’s Innovation Agenda can only be successful if done in partnership with development of our discovery agenda.

For the full commentary, which includes specific details of anticipated programming changes, please click here.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Art-making and contemporary art theory at the nexus of culture and politics are the focus of this year’s event, produced by the Graduate Programs in Visual Arts, Art History and Visual Culture in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Fine Arts.

The Summer Institute culminates in a free public lecture by Israeli cultural theorist, curator and writer Ariella Azoulay. Her talk, titled “Potential History”, is presented in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and takes place at MOCCA on May 3.

The Institute also features public presentations on campus by Canadian conceptual artist Ken Lum, independent Vienna-based curator Ruth Noack, and Amelia Jones, Grierson Chair in Visual Culture at McGill University.

In “Potential History”,  will address the possibilities that motivate and direct civic actions that critique or supplant without being exhausted by state order. She will discuss these issues in relation to two photographic archives she has assembled that deal with Israel’s representation of the state and its history.

Azoulay is director of the Photo-Lexic International Research Group at the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University, Israel. Her research focuses on the theory and history of photography, cinema, museum studies, visual culture and history of political regimes. Her work in visual culture is informed by her research in contemporary philosophy and political theory, and by questions of gender, citizenship and disaster. Among her groundbreaking studies of photography and politics are Death’s Showcase (MIT Press, 2001), The Civil Contract of Photography (Zone Books, 2008) and the forthcoming Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography (Verso, 2012).

As a Vancouver-based multidisciplinary artist, Lum is best known internationally for his large-scale public commissions that speak to issues of personal and cultural identity in a globalized world. He gives an illustrated talk on his work, titled “Art in the Public Sphere”, at 91��ɫ on April 24.

Noack, a curator whose exhibitions on the theme of “Die Regierung/The Government” have been shown in the United States and across Europe for the past decade, speaks on “Making Exhibitions in a Global Context” April 26.

As a professor at McGill University, Jones has written widely on contemporary art and on feminist, queer and anti-racist approaches to visual culture. She discusses her research findings in her April 30 talk, “Queer Feminist Durationality: The Trace of the Subject in Contemporary Art”.

As part of their residency in the Goldfarb Summer Institute, all four presenters will meet with graduate students in visual arts and art history at 91��ɫ’s Keele campus for informal discussions, seminars, critiques and studio visits.

The  Joan and Martin Goldfarb Summer Institute in Visual Arts offers 91��ɫ graduate students and the wider community the opportunity to engage with prominent international artists, curators, cultural theorists and critics through seminars, workshops, courses and public lectures.

The Summer Institute is named in recognition of Joan and Martin Goldfarb, longstanding supporters of 91��ɫ's Faculty of Fine Arts, whose generous gift has made this annual residency program possible.

Ariella Azoulay: “Potential History”
Presented in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA)
When: Thurs. May 3, 7 to 9pm
Where: MOCCA, 952 Queen Street West, Toronto
Admission: Free

Ken Lum: “Art in the Public Sphere”
When: Tues. April 24, 2:30 to 4pm
Where: Room 334, Joan & Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts, 91��ɫ, 4700 Keele St.
Admission: Free

Ruth Noack: “Making Exhibitions in a Global Context”
When: Thurs. April 26, 2:30 to 4pm
Where: Room 334, Joan & Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts
Admission: Free

Amelia Jones: “Queer Feminist Durationality: The Trace of the Subject in Contemporary Art”
When: Mon. April 30, 2:30 to 4pm
Where: Room 338, Joan & Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts, 91��ɫ, 4700 Keele St.
Admission: Free

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Robert Haché, vice-president research & innovation, and Lorne Sossin, dean of Osgoode Hall Law School, are co-hosting the event, which takes place from 12 to 2pm in Room 1014, Ignat Kaneff Building, Osgoode Hall Law School, Keele campus. Everyone is welcome to attend the free celebration, but an RSVP is requested. You can RSVP or call Lia Cavaliere at ext. 33782. Light refreshments will be provided.

The panel features Osgoode Hall Law Professors Trevor Farrow, Giuseppina D’Agostino, Dayna Scott and Stepan Wood. Each professor will deliver a short presentation on the panel theme “Celebrating Community Engagement”.

Farrow will discuss the dilemma faced by low income Canadians who find themselves unable to access the justice system. His presentation will discuss the various research initiatives that are designed to look at the complex problems associated with accessing justice and access to legal services, as well as the related problem of not providing meaningful access to legal services in today's complex and pluralistic societies.

Trevor Farrow

 Many low income Canadians find themselves unable to access the justice system, says Farrow. Courtrooms are filled with litigants who struggle to navigate the complex demands of law and procedure – often without representation by counsel. Early and effective resolution is central to avoiding the clustering and escalation of legal problems.  However, Farrow posits, a lack of knowledge about how to seek help, coupled with a pervasive sense of powerlessness, limits meaningful action for those who need it most. The most advanced justice system in the world is a failure if it does not ultimately assist in providing justice to the people it is meant to serve, he says. A number of stakeholders have a direct or indirect connection to the issue of access to legal services, including the bench, the bar, the academy, governments, NGOs, the private sector and the public. 

Speaking in her capacity as founder and director of IP Osgoode, Osgoode Hall Law School’s flagship Intellectual Property (IP) and Technology Program, D’Agostino will outline three initiatives she spearheaded through IP Osgoode, along with their promises and challenges, to assist the University in playing a more active role in the complex IP and technology research communities in Canada and around the world.  

Giuseppina D’Agostino

She will discuss the IP & Technology Intensive Program piloted in the Fall of 2011, which provides students with on-site research opportunities in government, industry and expert organizations in IP and technology; the Ontario Centres of Excellence and IP Osgoode Innovation Clinic, a needs-based innovation-to-market legal clinic staffed by volunteer law students piloted in 2011-2012; and the first blog of its kind, the IPilogue, promoting evidence-based research and showcasing new and unexplored viewpoints to public policy discussions.

Engaged scholarship implies a different set of relationships and expectations as between a community and a university researcher. For legal scholars, these can be even more complicated dynamics. In this short presentation, Scott will share some of the tensions encountered in a four-year research partnership with the Health and Environment Community of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation. The project explored questions of environmental justice stemming from the Band's experience of chronic pollution emanating from Sarnia's nearby Chemical Valley. Scott and the research team employed participatory action research techniques and arts-based methods such as PhotoVoice, to learn from and with community members, including youth.

Dayna Scott

Wood will focus on the challenges and opportunities surrounding community-engaged research in relation to various research projects affiliated with 91��ɫ's Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS). His presentation will look at research on local community empowerment in water governance in developing world megacities, community members' perceptions of international corporate social responsibility standards in Colombia and Canada, and University-community collaboration on sustainable furniture design for the new Centre for Green Change in the Jane-Finch community.

Stepan Wood

Following the presentations, visitors will have an opportunity to engage with the panelists. Osgoode Hall’s research celebration is part of an ongoing series of events that highlight interesting and innovative research underway at 91��ɫ. For more information on each of the presenters and other research underway at the law school, visit the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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