A new study by 91��ɫ researchers puts a name to that feeling and examines what it means for employee well-being and job satisfaction.

Tsorng-Yeh Lee, associate professor in the School of Nursing, and Gordon Flett, professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology, are co-authors of "," published in the Canadian Journal of Nursing Research. The study examines how employees' sense of mattering, or its absence, relates to psychological well-being and satisfaction at work.

"Mattering is that feeling of being significant to others, that others see you as important," says Flett. "When somebody says they feel seen, heard and appreciated, that reflects their sense that they matter."

The flip side is anti-mattering: feeling invisible, unimportant or irrelevant. The study indicates that anti-mattering is negatively associated with well-being, mattering at work and job satisfaction – making it one of the study's most robust findings. Feeling unseen at work, the results suggest, has distinct effects, separate from feeling undervalued.

"If participants feel they don't matter, they are less likely to find their work meaningful," says Lee. "If they feel their voice is heard by their boss, they will work harder and do better."

The study also reveals a link between the fear of not mattering and problematic social media use, and an association between the latter and depression.

"When you are engaged with social media at a problematic level, you are exposing yourself to crafted, perfectionistic images of lives [that appear to be] better than yours," says Flett. "People see perfect vacations or perfect children and realize their life isn't like that, making them feel more isolated."

The research was conducted with 60 adults working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants who reported having COVID-19 indicated lower mattering and higher anti-mattering – suggesting that becoming ill somehow limits employees' feelings of significance.

Flett notes the research is a small-scale pilot study with limited scope. While the findings require further investigation, he notes the results point to meaningful patterns that merit closer examination.

For employers, the study's practical implications are clear. Lee points to the value of recognizing contributions regularly and giving meaningful feedback. As Lee explains, this helps foster a feeling for employees that “I’m not just here – I make a difference.”

When employees feel they matter, they are more likely to be engaged, satisfied and emotionally positive about their work. Flett adds that organizations need to move beyond passive wellness messaging and actively demonstrate that employees matter.

"We shouldn't assume people know they are important," he says. "We need to show them."

That can take many forms, he says, such as involving employees in decision-making, checking in on them as people rather than just as workers, and cultivating what Flett calls the “lost art of sending a personal note.”

The U.S. Surgeon General's framework for workplace mental health identifies mattering at work as one of its five core pillars, and Flett suggests organizations should build wellness approaches that include mattering and frame their messages around that construct.

“Mattering is about feeling important, being noticed and feeling depended on,” he says. “When workers are sent messages such as 'You matter to us' and 'Everybody counts,' they know they are seen, heard and cared about at the organizational level. They won't feel like a number."

Lee’s research on the topic will continue through a follow-up grant focused on mattering among Asian communities, with the aim of expanding the research to more diverse and conclusive samples.

The pilot study was supported by a seed grant from the Faculty of Health.

With files from Mzwandile Poncana

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In a historic first, Canada’s 2026 long-form census asks respondents about their sexual orientation, adding vital demographic evidence to the mandatory survey used to guide public funding and infrastructure planning.

For Nick Mulé, it is a shift that has been decades in the making.

"Many of us feel this is long overdue," says Mulé, professor at 91��ɫ's and Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. "I was one of many people who have been advocating for this, going back to the 1990s."

The question – which asks respondents to identify as heterosexual; lesbian or gay; bisexual or pansexual; or to write their own answers – appears on the long-form questionnaire sent to roughly 25 per cent of Canadian households. While Statistics Canada has collected sexual orientation data through smaller specialized surveys before, adding it to the census gives the findings a broader national reach and a different level of public visibility.

"The census is much larger. It goes right across Canada, and it's also mandatory," says Mulé. "It lends legitimacy to these populations, raising their visibility."

But Mulé says visibility alone is not the point, and the more consequential argument is about evidence – and what its absence has cost.

When community organizations doing frontline work with 2SLGBTQIA+ populations have approached governments and funders to address their clients' needs, they have often been told the same thing: without data, resources cannot flow.

"The government acknowledges they believe you, that it probably is true there is a struggle out there, but asks us to give hard evidence," Mulé explains.

That evidence gap is central to Mulé's research. He is project director of 2SLGBTQ+ Poverty in Canada: Improving Livelihood and Social Wellbeing, a 91��ɫ-hosted national study examining poverty among 2SLGBTQIA+ communities. Early findings from this project's national survey reflect what frontline workers have long reported: these populations face significant and compounding hardships.

Census evidence on sexual orientation could deepen that picture considerably. Mulé points to housing, health care, employment, education, income and social services as areas where 2SLGBTQIA+ people face disproportionate challenges due to discrimination, stigma and bias – barriers that differ meaningfully depending on life stage, from youth to seniors.

"Not everyone experiences those things the same way," he says. "It's important that those links are made between one's social location and the kind of challenges they're facing."

The categories included in the census question, Mulé says, are reasonable, and the write-in option is an important safeguard for those whose identity does not fit the options. He acknowledges, however, that open-ended responses create complexity on the research end, as analysts must decide how to group and interpret varied self-descriptions.

More pressing concerns involve privacy, trust and the particular vulnerability of young respondents. Many 2SLGBTQIA+ people have not made their sexual orientation public, and disclosing such information on a government form is considered risky by some.

Those ages 15 and older can fill out the long-form census; however, in most households, an adult who completes the form on behalf of all members. This raises concerns that younger individuals may not be accurately represented if adults are not aware of their sexual orientation.

"Those are some of the conundrums," Mulé says. "It's great on the one hand to include it, but Statistics Canada needs to be aware that there is a sensitivity attached to this when it comes to people's comfort level with disclosing this information."

Mulé frames the census change within a longer arc. Sexual orientation has long been protected under human rights legislation in every province and territory, and federally, for years. Yet, legal recognition has not brought an end to discrimination.

For Mulé, having these communities counted in the census – and having that data inform policy, funding and services – is part of closing that gap.

"It really elevates the recognition and legitimacy of these groups in Canada," he says. “By gathering data specific to the realities of 2SLGBTQIA+ communities, governments can get a clearer picture of what these communities are facing and what resources, supports and services are needed to equitably meet those needs.”

With files from Mzwandile Poncana

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In recent years, accessibility and inclusion have gained growing attention across education, technology, design and policy. That shift has brought renewed focus to inclusive design, an approach that asks how courses are taught, technologies are built, research is conducted and systems are organized to account for a wide range of human needs.

For Desai, an associate professor at the (AMPD), the challenge is that inclusive design is often treated an issue to address later, rather than key factor that guides decisions from the beginning.

“From my perspective, accessibility and inclusivity are often used as aspirational terms but not always treated as obligations that must shape design, teaching, research, policy and implementation from the beginning,” she says.

Desai is working to create that shift through her teaching, research and a newly co-authored book to advance an approach that treats accessibility and inclusion as baseline responsibilities in any work that affects people.

A member of AMPD's Department of Design, she leads courses that examine how people interact with systems, environments and emerging technologies including AI, mixed reality and physical computing.

She asks students to consider who is included, who might be left out and how those decisions inform designs, and applies this approach directly in the classroom.

Rather than treating accessibility as an afterthought, she approaches courses as systems that can either create or reduce barriers. Her classes offer multiple ways for students to complete assignments and demonstrate learning, whether through speaking, making, sketching, prototyping or reflective documentation.

This approach, she says, allows barriers to be anticipated and addressed early, rather than treated only after a student encounters them.

“A student may not have a formal diagnosis, may not disclose a disability, or may be experiencing barriers that are temporary, technological or cultural,” Desai says.

Beyond the classroom, this perspective extends into Desai's research. Her work focuses on developing technologies and systems that support a range of needs, particularly among older adults, people living with dementia, people with disabilities and communities that are underserved by conventional approaches.

Using participatory and co-design methods with those communities, she aims to understand how everyday practices, relationships and environments can enhance designing interventions. Those insights shape technologies that respond to people’s needs, rather than forcing users to fit to systems not designed around their needs.

“It means not simply recruiting people with disabilities or older adults as participants, but considering how they shape the research itself,” she says.

Desai extends these ideas in a new co-authored book, , with colleagues whose research extends across accessibility, Deaf studies, education and technology. The book examines how inclusive design can be applied across teaching, research, business, policy and implementation.

The book responds to a common gap, she says: many people agree inclusion matters but lack guidance on how to apply it in practice, from running inclusive meetings to designing accessible research. In response, it presents examples for embedding equitability in different contexts, as compliance or usability requirements, but also as part of how systems are shaped.

“Phrases such as ‘designing for accessibility’ can sometimes make accessibility sound like a specialized domain or a project-specific choice,” Desai says. “They should be understood as baseline responsibilities in any work that affects people.”

This perspective also reshapes how inclusive design is often evaluated. Accessibility is frequently framed in terms of compliance, usability testing or accommodation. These are important steps, she notes, but limited ones.

“Accessibility and inclusion should not depend on whether a particular designer, instructor, researcher or organization chooses to prioritize them,” she says.

Compliance can show whether something meets a standard, and usability testing can show whether people can complete a task. But inclusive design, she argues, requires deeper consideration of who is included, who may be excluded and how systems enable participation.

This challenge is increasingly visible in the technologies Desai studies. Systems powered by AI, extended reality and other data-driven tools can reproduce exclusion when built on narrow assumptions or datasets. At the same time, they can support communication, memory, engagement and participation when designed with accessibility and lived experience from the start.

The issue, she says, is not whether these technologies are inclusive or harmful, but how they are designed, with whom, for what purpose and under what forms of accountability.

For Desai, the question of accountability extends beyond individual projects. “One unresolved issue is how inclusive design can be made mandatory without becoming reduced to minimum compliance. How do we create systems where accessibility is not optional, but also not treated as a checklist?”

Across her teaching, research and collaborations, Desai is working to put that shift into practice, shaping how designers think, how technologies are built and how institutions approach accessibility and inclusion.

“For me, the most important shift is from thinking about inclusion as adaptation to thinking about it as responsibility,” Desai says. “Inclusive design is not only about making things usable for more people. It's about recognizing diverse bodies, minds, experiences, cultures and ways of participating as central from the start.”

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In a new video series titled Renaissance, two Black Canadians – one from the world of academia, the other from the arts, culture or community leadership sectors – sit down for an unscripted conversation about Black life in Canada.

The participants have no idea who they are about to meet.

The four-part video project is produced through a partnership between 91��ɫ’s Glendon College and SHIFTER, a Canadian media platform focused on Black culture, entertainment and community storytelling.

For Glendon, the project brings together alumni engagement, public storytelling and the campus's broader community engagement work. It marks the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance – the early 20th-century movement where Black intellectualism and Black culture converged – and uses the anniversary to explore Black cultural visibility in Canada today.

The partnership grew from an alumni connection: Kevin Bourne, SHIFTER's director and producer, is a Glendon graduate. After Glendon's communications team took notice of his work in journalism and entertainment, Bourne reconnected with the campus and collaborated on a 2023 written profile series spotlighting Black members of the Glendon community – students, professors, staff and alumni.

Renaissance grew from there.

"We always kind of had the idea that this will be the beginning of not just one collaboration but multiple collaborations," says Bourne.

For Glendon, Pascal Arseneau, executive director of strategic communications and community engagement, says the project reflects a word students often use to describe the campus: community.

"Glendon is special because of its capacity to create spaces for dialogue," he says. "People come from a variety of perspectives and places and manage to quickly form alliances, work on what brings them together, get involved in different causes, tackle challenges and seek out solutions together."

Arseneau says Glendon approached the project to connect several of its communities at once: current students, faculty, staff, alumni and wider audiences. By pairing Glendon-connected participants with community figures from outside the University, the series extends critical conversations into a broader public setting.

That emphasis on bringing together different perspectives also shaped the format of Renaissance. Glendon provided funding, studio space at the Glendon Theatre and a list of community members to participate. SHIFTER handled production and brought its own network of artists, creatives and community leaders. The pairings were intentional, but participants were not told in advance who they would meet – even on set. The two were kept apart until the cameras were rolling.

"It's in the place of spontaneity that potential collaboration can happen," says Bourne, adding several participants exchanged numbers after filming and spoke about staying in contact.

Bourne also says the team was conscious of Glendon's bilingual identity throughout. One of the four episodes is in French, a deliberate reflection of Glendon’s francophone community.

The first episode, now available , pairs Excellencia Bambi, a fourth-year psychology student at Glendon, with 4KORNERS, an international DJ and music producer. Their conversation ranges from the influence of Black artistry at the Juno Awards to whether visibility, gathering and institution-building are needed before Canada can be described as being in a Black cultural renaissance.

Anna Mossakowska, a digital strategist in Glendon’s strategic communications and community engagement unit, says the series also gives viewers a chance to see representatives of Glendon in conversation with people whose experiences may differ from their own.

“I’m excited to see our community members connect with people from different backgrounds and perspectives, and to discover not only what makes us different, but also the many things we share,” she says.

The overall goal, says Bourne, is to foster greater understanding of the Black experience in Canada.

"I hope that people who don’t identify as Black can look at it and say, 'Oh, wow, I've learned something,'" says Bourne. "By partnering with an academic institution, we are hoping this is a way of educating people that's outside of the norm of what they would typically think of as education."

The remaining three episodes are expected to be released over the next few months, with specific dates still being finalized. The series will continue to bring together participants from different fields, backgrounds and parts of the Glendon and broader Black Canadian communities.

"I definitely felt a very strong sense of pride to bring my crew into my former school," says Bourne.

For him, the project also represented a chance to bring culture into an educational space. "I think we need to do more of that," he says.

With files from Mzwandile Poncana

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The awards highlight work from across the graduate unit within SHPM that specializes in health policy and equity, as well as health system management and data analytics. This year’s recipients presented their work as part of Health Graduate Research Day, an annual event that brings together students and faculty to share and discuss new research.

“What stands out is how these students are taking on complex, real-world health challenges with both rigour and care,” says Farah Ahmad, program director of the graduate unit in SHPM. “Their work reflects a growing commitment to equity and meaningful impact through research that not only advances knowledge, but also has the potential to shape practice and policy.”

Best Oral Presentation Award
Cecilia Amoakohene, a PhD student, was recognized for her research on race-based data collection in Ontario and its implications for mental health outcomes among Black women and communities.

Examining how policies describe the use of race-based data compared to how it is actually used in practice, her findings showed a persistent gap between how data is collected and framed at the provincial level – as a tool to advance equity – and how it is implemented in practice. Her work highlights how efforts remain uneven and are often limited to planning stages, with little reporting on access to care or outcomes for Black women. The findings point to the need for stronger implementation and accountability to ensure race-based data meaningfully informs more equitable mental health care.

Best Poster Presentation Award
Omar Hassan, a PhD student, received the award for his research on first responders’ perceptions of mental health and whether they feel able to seek support.

Examining the role of workplace culture, institutional policies and broader governance structures, his research explores how these factors shape whether individuals recognized mental health challenges and felt able to seek help. His findings suggest that barriers to care are not only cultural, but structurally embedded within organizational environments, underscoring the need for reform alongside efforts to reduce stigma.

Audience Choice Award
Tarek Abdullah Al-Munim, a master’s student, was honoured for his research on how private hospitals in Bangladesh are responding to ongoing nursing shortages.

To understand how hospitals are navigating these challenges, he conducted semi-structured interviews with directors of medical services and heads of nursing across five large, multi-specialty hospitals in Dhaka. He then analyzed the interviews to identify common patterns in how institutions are managing staffing gaps.

The findings suggest many hospitals are relying on short-term fixes rather than long-term workforce planning, pointing to broader challenges in how resources are managed across the system. The research highlights the need for stronger policies and oversight, from staffing and compensation to training, to help ensure care quality and support more sustainable solutions.

Together, the projects highlight the range of research taking place across the Faculty of Health, with a shared focus on addressing challenges in mental health, health systems and policy. The work underscores how emerging scholars are contributing to more responsive, equitable and sustainable approaches to care.

With files from Mbalu Lumor

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When Rick Powless learned that Health Sciences North in Sudbury launched its first Indigenous hospital menu, he felt a shift happen.

The third-year doctoral student at 91��ɫ's Faculty of Education is a Red Seal-certified Indigenous chef, an Ontario College of Teachers-certified educator and a member of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Oneida Nation of the Thames, Bear Clan.

He was also the primary consultant on an initiative led by Compass Group Canada to bring Indigenous meals into Ontario hospitals – a project that recognizes the role of traditional and cultural food in healing.

His contributions also serve as a testament to his work to advance meaningful cross-cultural engagement.

"It was emotional for me," he says of the menu’s launch in Sudbury. At 91��ɫ, his PhD research draws on Indigenous food sovereignty, food insecurity in urban centres and strategies to integrate traditional foods and land-based knowledge into Kindergarten to Grade 12 education.

Much of Powless's work focuses on how traditional foods and land-based knowledge support well-being, identity and learning for Indigenous people living in urban communities. His research explores the impact of food and cultural disconnection on mental health while also examining how Indigenous knowledge is taught – or overlooked – in Ontario’s Kindergarten to Grade 12 classrooms. For Powless, that means pushing beyond superficial, checkbox-driven approaches and creating space for stories, reciprocity and food-based learning rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing.

“If you give somebody a recipe to cook Indigenous food but don't have the stories or the history behind those recipes then the students aren't getting anything out of it,” he says. “Beyond mere sustenance, our food is also a form of cultural transmission.”

Part of what makes his work distinct is its attention to access. Indigenous ingredients – such as sun chokes, wild rice, butternut squash – have been more commercialized, driving up prices and making them less accessible.

"We're being priced out of our own ingredients," he says.

That tension shapes his approach to teaching. During cooking demonstrations and teaching kitchens across Ontario – including at 91��ɫ, Hart House and the University of Toronto – Powless shows students how to prepare traditional dishes using affordable, accessible ingredients. For example, Three Sisters Soup – made from corn, beans and squash – becomes a lesson in both food sovereignty and practical food literacy.

The collaboration with Compass Group Canada is a clear example of how his teaching has translated into real-world institutional change. In January 2025, Powless was approached to develop traditional Indigenous recipes for hospital menus across Ontario – including Brantford, Cornwall, Brockville, Newmarket, Niagara Regional Health and Health Sciences North.

He curated and vetted the recipes, wrote the cultural stories to accompany each dish and worked within Health Canada guidelines and hospital food requirements to preserve the recipes' Indigenous identity while adapting them for institutional settings.

For Powless, the menus are about more than nutrition; they reflect what happens to an Indigenous patient when they see their culture represented on a hospital food tray.

"If I can offer a piece of bannock and Three Sisters Soup and our people get that, they're going to instantly recognize the food," he says. "It's going to warm them up inside. It's going to take them back to the territory, back to community, back to family again. When that happens, mental health begins to heal."

Early responses to the menu have confirmed what he hoped for. In September 2025, a man from Akwesasne territory had an extended hospital stay in Cornwall. When the menu appeared, he recognized the dishes immediately.

"He had this smile on his face," Powless recalls. "He said, 'I get to have my food.'"

Looking ahead, Powless hopes to expand the Compass One menus into seniors' homes, correctional facilities and offshore operations focusing on areas with Indigenous populations.

He is also offering teaching kitchens to outpatients at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s Shkaabe Makwa, Canada's first Indigenous-led hospital-based centre. A second recipe menu featuring traditional Indigenous food tied to ceremony and seasonal changes is also in development.

91��ɫ, he says, has been central to his path as an advocate and educator. When Powless introduced Indigenous dishes to 91��ɫ's student dining halls, he recalls being stopped by nursing students who shared that their entire class had been coming down for the soup.

Those conversations reinforce what he already believed: that food is the most direct route to cross-cultural understanding.

"If it wasn't for 91��ɫ, I don't think I would be where I am today," he says. "91��ɫ gave me a voice. It gave me a purpose. It gave me real value to what I think the world should look like through an Indigenous lens."

With files from Mzwandile Poncana

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The study, co-authored by Faculty of Education's Robert Brown, adjunct professor, and Gillian Parekh, associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Inclusion, Disability and Education, along with collaborators from the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and Wilfrid Laurier University, uses the 2011-12 academic year as a baseline to track absenteeism trends in TDSB schools through 2023-24.

One of the study's key findings complicates the common assumption that rising absenteeism is mainly a post-COVID issue. While student absence rates surged dramatically during and after the pandemic, the researchers found that roughly one-third of this increase was already underway before the pandemic.

"COVID took existing trends and put them on steroids," says Brown. "This isn't something just caused by COVID."

The study finds that absenteeism roughly doubled over the 12-year period, with increases evident across grades. Brown says attendance tends to be relatively high in kindergarten, stable through much of elementary school, then rises in senior elementary grades before accelerating in high school. More recent 2023-24 data show some decline in absence rates among early and mid-elementary students, but rates continued to climb across all secondary grades.

The pattern of who is most affected points to a deeper concern. Students with lower academic achievement tend to have higher absenteeism and experience the most severe effects from missing school.

"Absenteeism is yet another way that the more vulnerable students become even more vulnerable," says Brown.

Since COVID-19, the strength of the relationship between school absences and graduation has shifted. Before the pandemic, high absenteeism was more strongly associated with not graduating; in the post-COVID data, that association remains but is less pronounced. Brown says the finding points to unanswered questions about student engagement, learning and whether graduation rates capture the long-term effects of these attendance patterns.

"Absenteeism is often a proxy for academic engagement," says Brown. "It's a truism that schooling can't benefit students who aren't there."

The long-term stakes become clearer when looking beyond high school. A 2021 linking TDSB Grade 9 cohort data to post-secondary outcomes found that students who eventually graduated from university had an average Grade 9 absenteeism rate of about three per cent, compared with nearly 10 per cent among those who did not enter Canadian post-secondary education.

With roughly 70 to 80 per cent of students now continuing to post-secondary, according to Brown, the long-term effects of elevated post-COVID absence rates on this generation remain an open question on the implications beyond high school completion.

"For those students who managed to be more absent and still graduate, how will they do in post-secondary?" says Brown. "We simply don't know yet."

This trend also raises broader questions about how school attendance has been understood historically.

Brown's doctoral research traced absenteeism policy in Toronto schools back to the 1850s, a period when getting students into school was a central educational priority.

By the 1970s, attendance had largely disappeared as a policy concern. The current surge, however, reflects a broader international pattern across developed countries.

"No one has been much interested in absenteeism at the Ontario level for at least 50 years," says Brown. "This is the first time I'm aware of that it has become an important part of things at the provincial level."

That provincial attention comes in the form of the Putting Student Achievement First Act, which would require attendance and participation to count toward final marks – worth 15 per cent for Grades 9 and 10 and 10 per cent for Grades 11 and 12. Brown was careful about the extent to which the research directly shaped that decision.

"I know folks in [the ministry] were aware of the research, but whether those folks had any connection to the decision-makers, I have no idea,” he says.

On the policy itself, Brown sees two sides.

He says there is little evidence that attaching marks to attendance, on its own, changes the behaviour of students who are already frequently absent. But he views the government's attention as a meaningful first step and sees potential value if the policy becomes part of a broader response.

With files from Mzwandile Poncana

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Alison Halsall, associate professor at the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, is tracing back to the books’ original pages to map out how they helped shape the field of children’s literature.

This research will be the focus of her work as the inaugural at the University of Oxford, Christ Church in the U.K. for the month of August.

Awarded by Christ Church and Bodleian Libraries, the prestigious research fellowship provides access to unique archival materials.

During her fellowship, Halsall will study newly catalogued manuscripts, illustrated editions and adaptation materials to show how Alice pioneered visual, collaborative and cross-media storytelling. Her interest lies specifically at the intersection of archival study, visual narrative and childhood readership.

“Lewis Carroll’s Alice did more than tell a story,” says Halsall, who is also coordinator of 91��ɫ’s Children, Childhood & Youth program. “From the playful typography to the illustrations, Carroll helped invent visual, interactive storytelling and taught children (and adults) to read across words and images.”

Her project will use materials held at Christ Church Library and the Bodleian Libraries to explore how Carroll and illustrator John Tenniel developed foundational visual storytelling techniques together.

Halsall is excited to dive into the Jon A. Lindseth Lewis Carroll collection, including the first edition 1865 Michelson Alice, which was Carroll’s personal edition, to analyze how typography and illustration might guide readers.

“This collection offers a rare opportunity to examine how Carroll orchestrated meaning at the level of the page,” says Halsall. “These materials make it possible to trace how Alice developed from manuscript to printed page, showing how Carroll and Tenniel worked together to create visual pacing strategies.

"I hope to prove what I have long suspected: that this Carroll-Tenniel collaboration demonstrates visual storytelling in formation – one that anticipates modern graphic narrative logics.”

By also studying translations for stage, film, photographs and other visual materials, the study aims to show that Alice spread across stage, screen and other media, challenging the idea that adaptation is a modern practice.

“Materials from early stage and film adaptations, along with objects like the Wonderland postage stamp case, show that Alice was adapted almost immediately,” says Halsall. “Together, these archives and collections demonstrate that Victorian children’s literature was highly adaptive in shaping how readers experienced Alice over time.”

Focusing on the text, Halsall will look variations across manuscripts to examine children’s literature as process rather than product. Carroll’s revisions reveal experimentation with tone, humour and forms of address to child readers, she notes.

“From the first British edition to The Nursery Alice and beyond, the manuscripts and editions suggest a model of participatory reading grounded in play and readerly interaction,” says Halsall. “I will consider the manuscripts as artifacts designed for a child demographic and analyze how they construct Victorian-era child readership and visual literacy.”

The opportunity to study these newly available Carroll manuscripts, editions and ephemera in Oxford, she says, allows her to “trace a clear line from Victorian page design to multimodal storytelling practices that shape contemporary media culture.”

This research will result in several academic and public-facing outcomes, including a peer-reviewed chapter on Carroll’s page design and graphic narrative logics in The Routledge Handbook to Children’s Literature and Graphic Narrative and a larger monograph project titled “Lewis Carroll: Early Transmedial Storyteller."

Findings may also be shared through a public or academic lecture at Oxford and will be included in Halsall’s archive-based teaching, extending its impact to students.

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The awards from the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association (APA), supports scholarship exploring theories and philosophies, including the conceptual foundations, history, ethics and methodology of the field.

This year, the division honoured three 91��ɫ-affiliated academics for their scholarly contributions to theoretical and philosophical psychology as well as service and emerging leadership in the field.

Professor Thomas Teo was recognized with the Award for Distinguished Theoretical and Philosophical Contributions to Psychology for lifetime scholarly achievement. “I am honoured to be awarded the division’s highest award,” says Teo, whose work has drawn on theory and philosophy to examine the history and foundations of how psychologists have understood concepts such as intelligence, mental illness and human identity over time.

Through widely published research, he is an internationally recognized leader who has helped shape discussions about how ideas and methods in psychology are influenced by scientific, social and cultural forces. “I need to thank 91��ɫ as well as the Department of Psychology for supporting these areas of scholarship,” Teo says. “Hopefully, I have had some role in making the case for a theory-informed and reflexive psychology.”

Assistant Professor Donald Brown also received recognition, earning the Sigmund Koch Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology. The award is presented annually to a psychologist within 10 years of their PhD who has made promising contributions to theoretical or philosophical psychology. "This award means a lot to me as an early career professor," Brown says. "It encourages me to keep pursuing the intellectual paths I am on because they have value to other scholars in my field."

Brown’s work explores how psychologists study and understand social identities, such as race and gender, and how cultural influences shape knowledge in this area of study. His scholarship uses a critical social lens to examine how research is conducted and how ideas about identity are developed, interpreted and applied in society.

Through articles, book chapters and an award-winning National Science Foundation-supported dissertation, his research encourages psychologists to think more critically about how social categories are defined, studied and communicated, helping to advance more nuanced approaches to identity in psychological science. "This award is a confirmation that the work I am doing has potential to be meaningful in the field," Brown says.

The third 91��ɫ-affiliated recipient is Benjamin Stevenson, a master’s student in the Department of Psychology. He received the Outstanding Student Service Award, which recognizes significant contributions by a student affiliate who has furthered the goals of theoretical and philosophical psychology. Stevenson has served as a student representative on the department's executive board and assisted in liaising with local community organizations for a conference.

His work draws on his background in songwriting and seeks to incorporate the arts into psychology. “This award affirms that my experience in music and academic interests have found a place,” says Stevenson. “It gives me hope that psychology is expanding its horizons to include art and scholarship in new ways.”

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The funding, awarded through SSHRC’s Indigenous Capacity and Leadership in Research Connection Grants program, supports Indigenous-led research and partnerships that strengthen community-based research capacity and advance projects aligned with priorities identified by First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities.

The grant was awarded to Jakubchik-Paloheimo as a co-applicant with the Mushkegowuk Council, which represents and serves Omushkego Cree communities in Northern Ontario. It supported a first-of-its-kind workshop held earlier this year, bringing together James Bay Cree Nations from Ontario and Quebec alongside researchers, scientists, management bodies and government representatives to share expertise, ideas and concerns about the southern Hudson Bay polar bear subpopulation.

As polar bears face mounting pressures from climate change, contributing to more frequent interactions with humans, efforts are underway to respond. However, Jakubchik-Paloheimo points to a long-standing gap in how those efforts are shaped. “Polar bears are recognized as having significant cultural and economic importance for Northern Indigenous Peoples in Canada, but the inclusion of Cree knowledge systems has been overlooked in polar bear management,” she says.

The workshop, supported retroactively by the SSHRC grant, feeds into a larger ongoing effort to address that gap through research tied to her postdoctoral work at 91��ɫ, supervised by Associate Professor Gregory Thiemann in the , and Joseph Northrup, an adjunct professor at Trent University and research scientist with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.

The project is guided by the Cree principle of Wahkohtowin, often understood as the interconnected relationships between people, animals and the environment, which brings Indigenous and scientific perspectives together in support of protection grounded in lived experience and long-standing relationships with the land. In addition to the Mushkegowuk Council, the larger consortium that contributes to the project includes: Eeyou Marine Region Wildlife Board, Cree Trappers Association, Cree Nation Government, McGill University, University of Alberta, University of Manitoba, Polar Bears International, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.

“Through this partnership, the research seeks to integrate Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge to advance human-wildlife coexistence and, ultimately, to develop conservation strategies for polar bears that are both locally relevant and ethically sound,” she says.

The SSHRC-supported workshop created space for participants to exchange insights across jurisdictions and systems. Six Omushkego Cree communities – Fort Severn, Peawanuck, Attawapiskat, Moose Factory, Kashechewan and Fort Albany – took part, sharing local perspectives on polar bear behaviour and the changing conditions in the region. Organized in collaboration with Angela Coxon, director of the Eeyou Marin Region Wildlife Board and a wildlife biologist specializing in species at risk management, the discussions also helped researchers and decision-makers better understand how Cree knowledge can inform land and wildlife management, climate change adaptation strategies and approaches to reducing conflict with polar bears.

For Jakubchik-Paloheimo, the workshop built on nearly a decade of collaboration with Indigenous leaders and organizations in Canada and Latin America, but also her ongoing postdoctoral research at 91��ɫ. In part also because the Mushkegowuk Council Knowledge and Reserach Manager is Vicki Sahanatien, an adjunct professor at 91��ɫ who works closely with Jakubchik-Paloheimo and lending her years of experience leading marine and terrestrial conservation programs.

“It was an amazing opportunity to get to know people from both sides of the bay and to get a broader picture of how climate change is affecting polar bear behaviour, as well as the history of Wabusk [polar bears] in the region,” she says.

At the same time, the workshop advanced the broader goals of the project by bringing together scientists and community members to share expertise and better understand how Cree knowledge can inform decisions around land and wildlife management, climate change adaptation and approaches to reducing conflict with polar bears.

Jakubchik-Paloheimo says she sees this as an important step in ongoing, community-led efforts to ensure Indigenous knowledge is more fully included in shaping conservation decisions and supporting coexistence in the region.

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