Cynthia Macdonald

PhD researcher draws on refugee experience to study plight of asylum-seekers in Canada

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 16:08:31 +0000

PhD researcher draws on refugee experience to study plight of asylum-seekers in Canada

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 08/14/2024 - 12:08

Cutline

Jona Zyfi, a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, is using a human rights lens to explore the links between technology and migration (supplied image)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Our Community

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Graduate Students

Subheadline

"We’re using criminal justice mechanisms to deal with what should be an administrative process"

Jona Zyfi’s life has so far been an “adventurous story” full of fear, hope, resilience and relief.

At age seven, Zyfi was smuggled into Australia under a false name as a child refugee claimant. At 16, after a forced return to her native Albania, she emigrated to Canada carrying only a suitcase and teddy bear.

Now a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, Zyfi is examining how public policy shapes the plight of asylum seekers and migrants in Canada. Her work is shedding valuable light on some of the little-known – and sometimes shocking – injustices faced by refugee claimants in a country widely thought to be among the most welcoming and multicultural in the world.

“The work that I do is very much informed by my lived experiences,” she says. “It’s where I find the strength to do it.”

Why is Zyfi examining the refugee experience through the lens of criminology and not political science?

“Lots of people have asked me that,” she says. “Even I had moments when I’d wonder, ‘Am I in the right department?’ But the deeper I go into my research, the more confirmation I get that I am doing the right thing.”

This is due to the phenomenon of “crimmigration,” a term that’s used to describe how refugee claimants are often subjected to processes normally associated with the criminal justice system.

“Immigration is an administrative field, while the criminal justice system is a lot more heavy-handed,” Zyfi explains. “And yet, we’re using criminal justice mechanisms to deal with what should be an administrative process. That doesn’t make sense.”

In some ways, she says, Canada’s approach to refugees is a good news story.

In the last decade, for example, the country has welcomed more than 40,000 Syrian refugees, and has been in the vanguard of acceptance for those fleeing persecution on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.

But there is darker side, too. Many Canadians are unaware that children can be held in detention with or without their parents and that adult asylum seekers who can’t be accommodated in holding centres have been detained in provincial jails alongside those serving criminal sentences.

Canada is also one of the few countries in the Global North where there is no legal limit on detention, meaning that claimants can spend years in jails or holding centres before their cases are heard.

“They rarely get access to legal aid and many of them can’t speak the language,” Zyfi says. “So they don’t even understand what’s happening. They’re unaware of their rights and terrified of being deported.”

Zyfi says she is particularly interested in the role technology plays in immigration and asylum processes and application assessment procedures. In an effort to reduce dependence on migrant detention, some asylum seekers are now granted temporary freedom but monitored in ways that are highly controversial.

These methods include the use of electronic ankle monitors as well as voice reporting via cellphone – both of which can fail if batteries or cell reception run out. Facial recognition software is also gaining in popularity.

But even a small technical mistake, Zyfi argues, can place a claimant’s life in danger. “There’s this idea that technology is going to solve all our problems,” says Zyfi. “It’s going to make faster decisions, better decisions. The decisions are faster, but that doesn’t always mean that they are better.”

Zyfi’s concern about the rights of asylum seekers is born from her own experiences.

Born shortly after the fall of communism in Albania, her early life was spent amid the anarchy and civil insurrection that followed the collapse of the country’s economy. “We had to hide under the tables, because bullets could fly through at any minute,” she recalls. “One flew through our balcony window. The arms depots were open; anybody could get bullets, a grocery bag full of grenades, whatever they could find. It was a free-for-all.”

Using a false name, Zyfi made her way to Australia with her mother and sister via a human smuggling network. But the family was expelled from Australia in 2005 when Albania was deemed to be a safe country of origin. “I remember my mother packing up our entire life in a shipping container,” she says.

Four years later, Zyfi came to Canada and two years ago, after a lengthy series of applications and various immigration statuses, she was finally granted citizenship.

Now, she is firmly committed to making life better for other migrants and refugees, including by giving them a bigger say in decisions that affect them. In policymaking, “our stories are not being incorporated in a meaningful way,” she says. “To me, that is the saddest part.”

The groundswell of private support for Syrian refugees – Zyfi herself was an enthusiastic sponsor – shows that caring for survivors of global crisis is a Canadian value. But she says that civil society alone cannot provide the support needed, and the government can do more – not only for immigrants deemed to be economically desirable, but for those whose lives are in jeopardy.

“Historically, immigration has been key to the Canadian economy. It has also been a fundamental tenet of nation-building and multiculturalism,” Zyfi says. “But we are doing the bare minimum. We have the capacity to do so much more.”

�山ǿ�� urban studies course explores wildfire response in Canada's North

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 19:57:57 +0000

�山ǿ�� urban studies course explores wildfire response in Canada's North

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 08/12/2024 - 15:57

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Clouds of smoke billow into the air as forest fires burn in the Northwest Territories in 2015, leaving trees damaged and charred (photo by Sherry Galey via Getty Images)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Our Community

School of Cities

Faculty of Arts & Science

Geography and Planning

Graduate Students

Innis College

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Subheadline

As part of a graduate seminar, students and professors visited Yellowknife to study the city's 2023 wildfire evacuation with an eye to informing future policy recommendations

Wildfires such as the one that devastated Jasper, Alta., in July are becoming ever more common in Canada due to increased record-high temperatures and drought conditions associated with climate change.

One year ago, it was Yellowknife that found itself under threat, forcing a near-complete evacuation of its 20,000 residents. Unlike Jasper, Yellowknife's homes and businesses were ultimately saved from destruction, but the Northwest Territories capital is nevertheless reviewing its wildfire response plans so it will be better prepared in the future.

And the city is receiving valuable assistance from the University of Toronto.

Professors and graduate students from the urban studies program at Innis College recently visited the city to research disaster response policies and make suggestions on possible improvements.

“We ended up designing a course that provided a retrospective on the evacuation experience as it related to government officials and the non-profit sector,” says David Roberts, an associate professor, teaching stream, in the department of geography and planning in the Faculty of Arts & Science and director of the urban studies program.

“The students are now working on projects that will provide policy recommendations for the future.”

The view over Yellowknife’s Old Town (supplied image)

This seminar, which was also taught by Assistant Professor Aditi Mehta, is one of several Multidisciplinary Urban Graduate Seminars (MUGS) being offered by �山ǿ��’s School of Cities.

Roberts and Mehta created the class in consultation with Rebecca Alty, Yellowknife’s mayor and a visiting expert, or Canadian Urban Leader, at the School of Cities.

Mehta says that the seminar’s multidisciplinary nature was key to crafting a well-rounded response to the crisis.

“We were very deliberate in picking students from different disciplines so that we could create knowledge and think about what happened from different perspectives,” she says, adding that students who successfully applied came from backgrounds including geography and planning, forestry, anthropology, landscape architecture and public health.

The seminar’s participants pose for a group photo at the Bush Pilot’s Monument in Yellowknife (supplied image)

The 10 graduate students visited sites and interviewed government officials, community organizations, residents and Indigenous leaders. They explored how to build improved communication infrastructure in the city and investigated the connections between a local housing crisis and climate change.

They also studied how Indigenous Peoples, including members of the Dene Nation living in Yellowknife, suffer disproportionate harms due to wildfire. Research shows that while 12 per cent of the entire Canadian population is at risk, that number rises to 32 per cent for on-reserve First Nations communities.

Léo Jourdan, who is completing his master of science degree in forestry at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, says the seminar provided him with an opportunity to examine wildfire science from a different angle.

“The research we do in our lab has to do with wildfires, but from a scientific point of view – in the sense that we try to answer ecological questions about the origins of these fires. So this class was a great opportunity to broaden my perspective and learn more about the human side of wildfires, and I think it did an amazing job.”

Jourdan explains that most wildfires are a natural – and necessary – phenomenon. “A lot of the forest in Canada co-evolved with fires, and their ecosystems would not function without them,” he says. “The issue we’re facing now, however, is that the wildfires are getting more intense and the communities closer.”

The seminar group enjoyed the city’s culinary and cultural offerings (supplied image)

For Lilian Dart, the course offered an opportunity to explore her twin interests in environmental justice and housing policy.

“One of the focuses was to look at how people experiencing homelessness were evacuated,” says Dart, a PhD student in the department of geography and planning.

She notes that in the wake of the wildfire evacuation, a team from professional services firm KPMG conducted an audit that revealed significant holes in the system that allowed vulnerable populations to fall through.

“People without housing, for example, did not have social safety supports that other people did,“ she says. “They also had comorbidities that affected their health, making them even more vulnerable.”

Dart’s final assignment for the course is a policy paper that examines this issue. “My recommendations are mostly to do with how the municipality can better support service organizations in their collaboration with one another. How can resources be co-ordinated? And how can people work together to ensure a more organized response?”

Jourdan, for his part, is proposing that Yellowknife adopt the principles of FireSmart, a national program that leads the development of programs and resources to help Canadians increase their resilience to wildfires.

Mehta says Yellowknife’s mayor provided the group from �山ǿ�� with some recommendations of her own. “She gave an important critique of planning education in our country, noting that people rarely study the problems that cities in northern Canada are facing,” Mehta says. “Instead, we are overly focused on big cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.”

Roberts says that the policy recommendations written by Dart, Jourdan and the other students will be offered “not just to the mayor, but to everyone else we talked to – those working in the non-profit field and at the territorial level, as well as those who work with the Dene.

“We’re now thinking about other ways of presenting this information, such as returning to Yellowknife to ensure that the dialogue we’ve started is able to continue.”

'Hyperpolyglot' �山ǿ�� grad speaks 11 languages… and counting

rahul.kalvapalle — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 13:26:26 +0000

'Hyperpolyglot' �山ǿ�� grad speaks 11 languages… and counting

rahul.kalvapalle Tue, 07/30/2024 - 09:26

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Xin Yi Lim discovered her passion for Hispanic linguistics while completing her bachelor's degree at �山ǿ�� (all photos supplied)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Our Community

Spanish & Portuguese

Faculty of Arts & Science

International Students

Linguistics

Varsity Blues

Subheadline

Xin Yi Lim, who will receive her master’s degree in Hispanic linguistics this fall, says “it’s like I have 11 channels in my brain.”

Born in Malaysia, Xin Yi Lim was raised in a family where English, Malay, Mandarin and Cantonese were all spoken regularly – but that was merely a jumping off point for her multilingual talents.

The University of Toronto student, who will officially graduate this fall, is conversationally proficient in 11 languages – five more than are required for a person to be described as a hyperpolyglot.

In addition to the five languages spoken by her family, Lim now also speaks Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Turkish and Swahili.

@uoft Meet #UofTGrad24 Xin Yi Lim, who speaks 11 languages 🗣️ Lim is set to graduate this week with a master’s in Hispanic linguistics with a collaborative specialization in diaspora and transnational studies from the department of Spanish and Portuguese in the Faculty of Arts and Science. Originally from Malaysia, Lim says she fell in love with Toronto’s diverse community and hopes to continue living in the city. Following fall convocation, she hopes to pursue a career that combines her passions for graphic design and languages. Discover the full story via our link in bio or at uoft.me/b1j. #UofT #convocation #polyglot #hyperpolyglot ♬ original sound - University of Toronto

And the list continues to grow.

“Languages have opened doors to so many friendships and work opportunities for me,” Lim says. “Learning them is a genuine way of creating connection.”

As part of her master's degree in Hispanic linguistics with a collaborative specialization in diaspora and transnational studies from the department of Spanish and Portuguese in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Lim examined how Spanish evolves and changes for bilingual Colombians in Toronto.

Her linguistic journey began at the age of 12, when she began studying Spanish and joined a team that competed in language competitions.

In addition to language, Lim also competed in figure skating as a member of the Malaysian junior national team. In fact, it was her skating career that inspired her to learn Turkish – after encountering the Turkish national team, and their language, at a training camp in Switzerland.

Lim didn’t intend to focus on languages and linguistics when she arrived at �山ǿ��. She initially enrolled in life sciences with the intention of becoming a cardiac surgeon. But it wasn't long before she switched to a specialist program in Spanish.

A key turning point came when she took a course on linguistic varieties of Spanish taught by Professor Laura Colantoni. “She’s an amazing professor and her course was so intriguing, so I decided to pursue linguistics and took more courses with her,” says Lim, who earned an honours bachelor of arts in Spanish with a specialist in Hispanic linguistics and a minor in Latin American studies in 2023.

Along the way, she challenged herself by taking a new language course every year: French, Turkish, Portuguese, Italian and Swahili.

She didn’t need to take a course for Indonesian, though. “Because my dad worked in Indonesia for about 15 years, we picked that up too,” she says.

Lim has competed in and taught figure skating in both Malaysia and Canada

While she added to her list of languages, Lim also advanced her prowess in skating as a member of the Varsity Blues figure skating team in 2020 and 2021. She also holds a 1st Kyu in Kyokushin karate and is a bartender, mixologist and graphic designer.

Going forward, Lim hopes to continue skating professionally, including by performing internationally as a skater with Disney on Ice.

And, no surprise, she also plans to continue expanding her range of languages.

“When you learn another language, you’re really expanding your cognitive load — and that in turn helps you learn your next language,” says Lim, who describes being able to converse in 11 languages as feeling “like I have 11 channels in my brain.”

She adds that the biggest benefit has been her ability to connect with more people and cultures. “Nelson Mandela said, ‘If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart,’” she says.

“After I learned that saying, I never saw languages in the same light. I realized that even if I could only say a couple of words in somebody else’s language, it would let them know how much time, compassion and effort I have for understanding other cultures.”

Next on her list? Arabic. “I’m so interested to learn it. It’s one of the most diverse and popular languages in Toronto, but the script is really challenging,” Lim says.

“That one requires time.”

Researchers reveal the small changes that can make a picture more likeable

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 20:44:32 +0000

Researchers reveal the small changes that can make a picture more likeable

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 01/24/2024 - 15:44

Cutline

(Photo By Alex Zea/Europa Press via Getty Images)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Breaking Research

Faculty of Arts & Science

Research & Innovation

Subheadline

“We show that by selecting certain contours in an image ... we can make people like an image more or less”

We’ve all had the experience of looking at a picture – of a sunset, a person, a sleek vehicle or adorable animal – and finding it enormously pleasing.

But why? Are we culturally conditioned to gain pleasure from certain images and not others, or is there something else going on in our brains?

Understanding the psychological mechanisms that underlie aesthetic perceptions is a key activity in the lab of Dirk Bernhardt-Walther, associate professor in the University of Toronto’s department of psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

A recently published paper in Psychological Science co-authored by Bernhardt-Walther and PhD student Delaram Farzanfar shows that by modifying mere lines and contours in a scene, one can increase its likeability.

In the study, the researchers asked 75 participants to rate how much they liked line drawings of complex scenes. The researchers then derived a statistical model of the importance of contour properties – such as orientations, curvature, junctions and symmetry – to measure the aesthetic appeal of the drawings.

By selectively removing contours based on their predicted appeal, Farzanfar and Bernhardt-Walther generated two versions of each drawing. One was predicted to be liked more than the other. When a new set of 77 participants were shown these manipulated drawings, they indeed preferred one version more than the other, as predicted by the statistical model – even though the two drawings depicted the same scene.

“These are the properties that we measured and manipulated,” says Bernhardt-Walther. “We show that by selecting certain contours in an image based on these properties, we can make people like an image more or less.”

(Image via Psychological Science)

Other studies have been conducted on aesthetic valuation of images. But Bernhardt-Walther says these studies examined images as a whole – not the shapes or spatial relationships contained within them.

“We think that’s important,” he says. “We developed these algorithms to measure contour properties, and we can use these algorithms in other studies. Our lab made a major effort during the pandemic to develop these techniques to measure contour properties that could not be measured automatically before.”

The set of algorithms, known collectively as the Mid-Level Vision Toolbox, was able to predict, and then confirm, that structural regularities in an image increase the likelihood that people will find it pleasing. In particular, the presence of “T junctions” in a scene – the effect created when a horizontal line is placed atop a vertical one – elevates a picture’s likeability.

The researchers believe that regularity in the way lines and shapes appear in a picture may elicit a sense of psychological safety in the viewer; arrangements that are more familiar, and that make geometric sense to viewers, may thus appear to be more likeable.

Marketers, designers, architects and others all stand to benefit from studies such as this, which help to increase our scientific understanding of aesthetic preference.

“The scientific study of aesthetics can help us develop evidence-based interventions for improved subjective well-being and social connectedness” says Farzanfar, who is also a registered psychotherapist.

Farzanfar is conducting follow-up studies on this line of work with Norman Farb, an associate professor of psychology at �山ǿ�� Mississauga.

Though researchers in Bernhardt-Walther’s lab concentrate on the neural and computational principles behind high-level sensory perception, they are making important contributions toward uncovering an emerging language of aesthetics. And with his training as a physicist, computer scientist and psychologist, Bernhardt-Walther is well-placed to ensure that the new discoveries being made are technically sound.

“I’ve been trained as an experimental physicist, so I want to measure things. If you tell me something is beautiful, I want to know – how do you measure that? We’re always trying to measure new effects in tightly controlled experiments. It’s an exciting time because there’s so much to do in this field.”

Wars, Diaspora & Music: �山ǿ�� courses explores the role of music during times of war

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 17:17:03 +0000

Wars, Diaspora & Music: �山ǿ�� courses explores the role of music during times of war

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 12/07/2023 - 12:17

Cutline

Simon Bikindi, right, a Rwandan singer-songwriter, is pictured with his lawyers and a United Nations guard at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2008 (photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Our Community

Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies

Faculty of Arts & Science

Undergraduate Students

Victoria College

In the 1990s, Simon Bikindi was Rwanda’s most popular musician – a United Nations official even dubbed him the “Rwandan Michael Jackson.” A sometime wedding singer, Bikindi’s lyrics often told of love stories and his country’s beautiful landscape.

But Bikindi’s music could also be dangerous. Over the three months in which almost a million Tutsis were massacred during the Rwandan Civil War, the country’s Radio Télévision Libre des Milles Collines repeatedly broadcast the singer’s violent, inflammatory songs. In 2008, Bikindi, an ethnic Hutu, was convicted for his role in inciting war crimes.

The Bikindi story is but one of the case studies covered in “Wars, Diaspora and Music” – a University of Toronto course in the Faculty of Arts & Science that explores the important role that music often plays in ethnic conflicts, wars, exile and displacement.

“We look at how music can be a weapon – as military music and propaganda,” says course creator Anna Shternshis, the Al and Malka Green Professor of Yiddish Studies and director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies.

“But we also look at songs created by people under duress – songs about love and the reclamation of humanity, when everything has been destroyed.”

Shternshis says she conceived of “Wars, Diaspora & Music” while working on Yiddish Glory, the Grammy-nominated album of Holocaust-era Yiddish songs she assembled with Russian performer Psoy Korolenko.

Anna Shternshis is the director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and is the Al and Malka Green Professor of Yiddish Studies (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Yiddish Glory is part of the course’s syllabus, along with music from many other conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries. That includes music from Rwanda, Korea, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Palestine.

“I decided to take this course as I had never heard of anything like it,” says Anjali Joshi-Dave, who is in her third year as a member of Trinity College. “Although I do not play any musical instruments, I adore music and was interested to see its connection to violence and diasporas from an academic perspective.”

Gabriella Batikian is a fourth-year member of Victoria College. A member of the Armenian diaspora, she grew up listening to a wealth of music from her heritage – much of which was produced around the time of the 1915 Armenian genocide.

She says the course helped her contextualize such music, as well as that from other countries.

“We do a deep analysis of the lyrics that we’re studying,” Batikian says. “And it’s really interesting to learn how music can be used for good and for bad. We’ve learned how it can be used as a propaganda tool and to incite violence. But at the same time, music is also used to comfort survivors of war. That’s the main thing – discovering the power that music truly holds.”

War invariably involves displacement – hence its connection to diasporic communities longing for home. To this end, students learn about initiatives such as the U.S.-based Refugee Orchestra Project.

Shternshis is a scholar of refugee experience and a supporter of refugees in Toronto.

“In class, we’ve discussed what kind of music is created in refugee camps,” she says. “Listening to music like this becomes a way of learning what people really care about. And I think that when students examine events in future, they will count music among the sources they use to try and make sense of them.”

By studying music produced within different conflict environments, Shternshis has drawn several unique insights. She notes, for example, that the closer a musician is to conflict, the less “martial” the music becomes. That includes war songs in which soldiers sing about their loved ones back home, or joke about inferior army food.

“A lot of soldiers also learn to play a musical instrument, because they desperately need the emotional break,” she says.

Hearts of Pine by Joshua D. Pilzer (Oxford University Press)

The course also features a unit on Hearts of Pine, a book by Joshua Pilzer, an associate professor in the Faculty of Music. The book explores how Korean women used song as a means of coping with trauma while forced into sexual enslavement during the Second World War.

“When people live through sexual violence in war, very few songs describe the violence itself,” says Shternshis, noting it was a phenomenon she noticed when interviewing Holocaust survivors who were also musicians. “They sing about everything else but that.”

Shternshis has been teaching “Wars, Diaspora & Music” since 2018 and changes the syllabus every year to incorporate music from the world’s current wars. “I keep hoping that this will become a historical course,” she says ruefully. “But it is always contemporary.”

Last year, for example, she monitored music – emerging in real time on social media – created during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This year, she and her students are keeping watch on music from the Israel–Hamas war with the help of a student translator.

While it is painful to engage with contemporaneous pain, Shternshis says it’s a valuable way of recording experiences and emotions that are easily forgotten with the passage of time.

What unites the music studied in the course is its enormous power – both to incite killing, as in the case of Rwanda’s Bikindi, but also to provide healing.

Shternshis says the latter may ultimately be stronger than the former.

“If a person who lives under extreme duress is able to enjoy music, that often gives them incredible strength to move on,” Shternshis says, adding that her course offers a glimpse of the human spirit at its most threatened – and most triumphant.

“We are asking: What are the things that people are saying, or singing, or even laughing about in conditions that are not designed for life at all?”

�山ǿ�� science historian's research on woolly mammoths comes alive in children's play

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 13:20:44 +0000

�山ǿ�� science historian's research on woolly mammoths comes alive in children's play

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 10/13/2023 - 09:20

Cutline

The Last Mammoth, a children’s play, was developed by �山ǿ�� science historian Rebecca Woods and her PhD student Alexander Offord (supplied image)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Our Community

Faculty of Arts & Science

Subheadline

The Last Mammoth sees a young girl and her mammoth friend explore questions about climate change, extinction and environmental preservation

One summer day in 2022, a gold miner working in the Yukon came upon something even more valuable than what he was looking for: an almost perfectly preserved woolly mammoth, with skin and hair intact.

The baby female calf was thought to have been resting in the permafrost for more than 30,000 years.

It was among the biggest paleontological finds in Canadian history – and the latest milestone in a great tradition. Since the 18th century, frozen woolly mammoth specimens (usually skeletons or bones) have been periodically found in diverse locations around the world.

A science historian, Rebecca Woods shows how animals such as frozen woolly mammoths can teach us about the march of history (supplied image)

Such finds captured the imagination of Rebecca Woods, an associate professor in the University of Toronto’s department of history in the Faculty of Arts & Science. Her current research focuses on the place of frozen woolly mammoths in the global history of science – work that is being transformed by Alexander Offord, her research assistant and a PhD candidate at the Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology (IHPST.)

Alongside his academic career, Offord and his partner Nicole Wilson are the artistic directors of Toronto theatre company Good Old Neon. Their new children’s play is called The Last Mammoth, which sees a young girl and her mammoth puppet friend embark on a journey to explore questions about climate change, extinction and environmental preservation.

Alexander Offord is a PhD candidate at the Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology and co-artistic director of Toronto theatre company Good Old Neon (supplied image)

Woods, who is cross-appointed to IHPST, says she first became interested in mammoths through her research on sheep.

“As a historian of science I find myself drawn to stories about animals and the ways in which they can help us understand different historical processes,” she says.

For example, in her 2017 book The Herds Shot Round the World: Native Breeds and the British Empire, 1800-1900, she illustrated how farmers in Australia and New Zealand created sheep breeds to serve British meat markets. In the early days of refrigeration, diners were mistrustful about eating meat that had been slaughtered six months previously – so vendors decided to allay their fears by pointing to the example of a famous woolly mammoth discovered earlier in the century in Siberia, which had been unearthed from ice and fed to dogs without harm.

“That story got me thinking about how the scientific and cultural meanings of mammoths have changed since that time,” says Woods. “For contemporary audiences, in a moment of great anxiety about global warming, frozen mammoths preserved by permafrost serve as a loud warning bell about a warming earth. It’s totally different than how they were first understood in the early 19th century.”

Indeed, recent reports suggest that as the planet warms and permafrost melts, ever more mammoth discoveries are being made.

Along with an impressive baby mammoth, The Last Mammoth’s animal characters include two mischievous raccoons (supplied image)

The idea for a children’s play was born out of a desire to showcase Woods’s research in schools – and Offord, not surprisingly, played a key role.

“We’d never made theatre for young audiences before,” Offord says, admitting that the subject matter did not immediately lend itself to a production for kids.

“A lot of children’s shows are very optimistic and shiny. And we said to ourselves, ‘How do we speak to some of the darkness that children will go through on this topic in a way that is respectful to them?’”

First workshopped in September, The Last Mammoth’s script continues to evolve (supplied image)

Offord says he feels an urgency to the project given the climate crisis.

“Mass species extinction is happening,” he says. “And because it’s new, adults don’t really have the language to talk about it, let alone in a way that kids will understand.”

He adds that he felt it was necessary to create a piece that made these concepts accessible to children in a fun and honest way.

With funding from a SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant and sponsorship by the Jackman Humanities Institute, The Last Mammoth was first workshopped in early September for an audience of elementary school students and caregivers. The feedback is being used by Offord’s company as it continues to develop the script.

Though in its early stages, the play offers ample proof that it’s not only possible, but necessary to translate academic research on serious issues that will affect future generations.

“To me it feels like an incredible honour,” says Woods. “What I appreciate so much about it is that a cross-generational audience from all walks of life can learn about my research – embodied in this incredibly evocative puppet, these gifted actors, and Alexander and Nicole, who’ve figured out how to make it all come alive.

“It’s a play that really gets at the emotional core of what’s at stake in the work that I do.”

Archaeologist looks to ancient solutions to help solve contemporary global problems

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 20:04:06 +0000

Archaeologist looks to ancient solutions to help solve contemporary global problems

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 08/22/2023 - 16:04

Cutline

Justin Jennings, the curator of world cultures at the Royal Ontario Museum and an associate professor in �山ǿ��’s department of anthropology, explores alternative methods of resolving global issues in his new book, Rethinking Global Governance (photos supplied)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Our Community

Archeology

Faculty of Arts & Science

Subheadline

“Other societies had political, social and economic ideas that could be very useful as we look at the decades ahead of us”

As the world grapples with cross-border challenges such as climate change, pandemic disease, cybercrime and income inequality, it may be tempting to look to the United Nations and other international organizations for solutions.

Or is it time to change our modern thinking about the best way to address global problems?

Justin Jennings thinks so.

The curator of world cultures at the Royal Ontario Museum, Jennings is an associate professor in the department of anthropology in University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts & Science who has been researching different societies – some of them thousands of years old.

In doing so, he says he has learned a great deal about alternative methods of resolving difficult issues and maintaining order – insights that form part of his new book, Rethinking Global Governance.

“The book is structured to say that global governance could benefit from some of these lessons,” Jennings says. “Other societies had political, social and economic ideas that could be very useful as we look at the decades ahead of us.”

Jennings notes the world has changed significantly since many of the current crop of international organizations were first convened in the 20th century in the wake of two catastrophic world wars. Authoritarianism and nationalism are once again on the rise and trading blocs based on Western ideals did not anticipate the rise of economies in the East – all of which can make international co-operation more difficult.

Yet, Jennings says before the rise of the nation-state people often governed themselves in a more flexible, borderless way.

He says one such society is the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, a group of First Nations Peoples in the northeastern region of North America. The Confederacy’s constitution, known as the Great Law of Peace, outlined a detailed, thoughtful process to be used when seeking consensus on important decisions.

In fact, when crafting their own constitution, the founding fathers of the United States were initially curious about incorporating ideas from the Great Law of Peace, Jennings says.

“I quote from John Adams in the book, who said the framers of the constitution could learn a lot from the Haudenosaunee,” he says.

“[But] then they didn’t – because those ideas weren’t in their wheelhouse.”

While Jennings notes that some ancient societies were also hierarchical – ancient Egypt, he says, was a “pyramid society in more ways than one” – he asks whether a more decentralized governance model, where power is more equitably shared, might not be more responsive to our changing times.

“The galactic polities of traditional Southeast Asian kingdoms were often organized around a centre, with different groups in and out of the orbit of that centre. There wasn’t a lot of effort towards creating rigid connections between that centre and other places. Now, is this a good idea? I’m not sure. But it’s a different idea and one that should be explored because putting patches on the big bucket that is the nation-state isn’t proving very effective.”

A council meeting held by the Onondaga, one of the nations of the Haudenosonee Confederacy, is depicted from the 1700s (Illustration by H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images)

He says decentralization could be useful when it comes to dealing with climate change since some of the most affected regions are located far from the centres of decision-making.

“Perhaps we can start to build new coalitions of impactful groups and provide them with the capacity to work through solutions that adapt to local conditions,” Jennings says. “Then get funding for them that isn’t tied up in red tape.”

In other parts of the book, Jennings describes ways in which perennial problems were managed in the past. He shows how the Enga people of Papua New Guinea defused warfare and resolved economic inequality through a system known as the “tee cycle,” and how societies such as the Pomo of northern California organized daily life by creating order out of anarchy.

Hippies experimented with anarchy in the 1960s, he adds, “but communes often failed because members weren’t looking at solid examples of communal, collective, egalitarian structures that lasted millennia.”

While Jennings is studying smaller societies, he believes there are nevertheless learnings that could inform global governance.

“Certainly there are scalar elements,” he says. “As a community gets larger it does tend to get more hierarchical, and the decision-making process changes. But this book suggests there may be alternative pathways. Those New Guinea tee cycles, for example, created vast amounts of wealth moving from one side of the country to the other. Thanks to a solid overarching structure, they had a playing field that was much larger than the village where they lived their day-to-day lives. This allowed them to interact with and organize hundreds of thousands of people doing things hundreds of kilometers away.”

As the world changes and our concerns mount, Jennings says rather than rely on ideas that clearly aren’t working, we should look to the past to find new solutions.

“Human history is all about trying to solve problems together,” he says. “We’ve been doing it successfully for many years. Now, as we take on some of the biggest challenges that humans have ever faced, it would be wrong for us not to be looking at other ways that people can come together to solve issues, especially because the context in which some groups used to – and in some cases still continue to – live is in many ways parallel to where our societies are going in this increasingly globalized world.”

Using smartphones, �山ǿ�� PhD candidate works with Nigerian women to protect communities

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:11:01 +0000

Using smartphones, �山ǿ�� PhD candidate works with Nigerian women to protect communities

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 08/02/2023 - 10:11

Cutline

Wumi Asubiaro Dada's PhD project involves working with local organizations and women in Nigeria to protect their home communities through the use of geospatial imagery and a mobile app (photo courtesy of Wumi Asubiaro Dada)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Global Lens

Anthropology

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Graduate Students

Growing up in Nigeria, Omowumi (Wumi) Asubiaro Dada was outspoken, argumentative and animated by injustice.

It was obvious to her family what path her life would take: “They always said, we know you’re going to be a lawyer,” she says of her career in human rights law and feminist advocacy that has spanned two decades.

Now as a PhD candidate at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts & Science, Dada is working with local organizations and women in Nigeria to help them achieve justice by protecting their home communities through the use of modern technology – work that is being supported by a Connaught PhDs for Public Impact Fellowship.

In particular, she’s helping women in Kaduna – one of Nigeria’s 36 states – become a major force in conflict prevention and resolution. Dada worked with her PhD supervisor Kamari Maxine Clarke, a distinguished professor in the department of anthropology, and a local organization known as the CLEEN Foundation to create a project called the Early Warning Early Response (EWER). The system trains villagers, including women, to use publicly available geospatial imagery to identify planned attacks before they happen. A mobile app then sends push alerts to warn others to be prepared.

So far, 120 women have been trained on EWER since it was launched in 2021.

“They’ve been able to get information across, which, in some cases, has led to a de-escalation of violence,” says Dada. “And when there is a trigger, meetings are called. One of the conditions of these meetings is that women must form part of the quorum, which has increased their participation in decision-making in conflict prevention. Another effect is that women have brought other women into the fold.”

Dada believes that women can play a prominent role in defusing violence, which is a massive problem in Nigeria’s northern region. That includes kidnapping, sexual assault, village burnings and murder.

The sources of violence are complex and varied, Dada explains. “Kaduna in particular is very unsafe,” she says. “The violence there started as religious and ethno-communal clashes, with many reprisals and counterattacks and has now changed in dynamics to kidnapping, village burning with various violations such as murder and sexual assault.”

Climate change has also played a role.

“A lot of land has been affected by desertification,” Dada says. In the Lake Chad Basin across the border, “people who make their living by herding cows have lost their livelihood and become desperate, which has also led to crime.”

In all these cases, she notes, the voices of women are regularly ignored. “This is because they’re not considered part of the problem. And because they bear the brunt of much violence, they’re simply considered victims. I’m pushing the argument that we need to recognize the agency of women – it’s important that they be part of the solution.”

Dada adds that communities in Nigeria often left to fend for themselves with no assistance. Established in the days of colonial rule, the male-dominated police force is, like other units of the justice system, located far away and lacks the resources to properly assist rural communities, she says. This has resulted in widespread vigilantism – which can mean defensive violence, but also the prevention of crime before it happens.

This is where women come in.

“There’s a lot happening in the domestic sphere that is actually political,” she says. “Women often hear things being planned before anyone else hears about it. And women can influence the actions of others.” Dada points out that in pre-colonial society, women’s roles as keepers of knowledge, leaders of ritual and even warriors were far more respected than they are today. In her own Yoruba tradition, for example, many deities were female – which had a general effect on how human women were perceived.

Dada began her post-secondary studies immediately after high school and was practising law by age 21.

“At first, I worked in public interest litigation and human rights education, mostly representing incarcerated prisoners awaiting trial,” she says, noting this, too, is a critical problem in Nigeria, where the system is badly underfunded and some prisoners are held in congested facilities without bail for decades.

It was just one of the many problems Dada confronted in Nigeria’s legal system over the years – experiences that prompted her to identify the plight of women and make significant contributions to the women’s movement. That includes designing and managing a wide range of projects for non-governmental organizations, government and international development agencies.

As part of her current work, Dada seeks to advance Nigerian women’s participation at all levels of community justice administration. In addition to crime prevention, she is exploring restorative justice: examining the root causes of crime, and how best to reintegrate those who have offended back into society.

One of her Connaught Fellowship aims will be to present her findings at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women next year. There, she hopes to show how women’s work in domestic life should not be dismissed – but appreciated for its value in political and public life.

She says her PhD studies are helping her realize her community justice goals.

“If you have your sights set on changing structural inequality, this qualification can help you do that,” she says. “I’m engaging with ways to amplify the voices of people who would not ordinarily have the opportunity to make an impact on the structures that control their lives.”

Magazine uses fiction to explore the toll taken by climate change – and our response

siddiq22 — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 17:27:35 +0000

Magazine uses fiction to explore the toll taken by climate change – and our response

siddiq22 Mon, 07/24/2023 - 13:27

Cutline

From left: Steven Bernstein, Matthew Hoffmann and Teresa Kramarz are co-editors of We Did It!?, a new publication that examines aspects of life in a fictional world that has achieved its net-zero carbon emissions goals (supplied images)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

City & Culture

Environmental Governance Lab

Climate Change

Faculty of Arts & Science

Political Science

School of the Environment

�山ǿ�� Mississauga

�山ǿ�� Scarborough

A new publication launched by the Environmental Governance Lab (EGL) in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Arts & Science is using speculative fiction to examine the toll climate change may take on our planet in the years ahead.

Set in an imagined Canada of 2050, the stories, poems, interviews and even advertisements in EGL's magazine We Did It!? explore aspects of life in a world that has managed to achieve its net-zero carbon emissions goals – but has yet to fully realize a fair and equitable low-carbon society.

For example, emissions in the magazine’s fictional Canada of the future have been reduced by 80 per cent following public forays into biofuels and carbon capture. The country is also less meat-dependent and less focused on consumption, with a circular economy centred on the reuse of existing materials.

However, supply-chain disruptions from wars, floods and heatwaves have led to periods of rampant inflation.

Steven Bernstein (supplied image)

“The magazine is taking place in the future, and is informed by all the social, political and technological processes that were required to get there,” says Steven Bernstein, Distinguished Professor of Global Environmental and Sustainability Governance at �山ǿ�� and the co-director of the EGL.

“It shows that this will not be a straightforward process – and that even if our climate goals are met, they won’t necessarily be met in a way that we envisage now.”

Bernstein, who is also the chair of department of political science at �山ǿ�� Mississauga, is a co-editor of We Did It!?, along with EGL co-directors Matthew Hoffmann, a professor of political science at �山ǿ�� Scarborough, and Teresa Kramarz, assistant professor at the School of the Environment in the Faculty of Arts & Science. Together, the trio oversaw a large team of writers, researchers and designers involved in the magazine’s production.

Matthew Hoffmann (supplied image)

The project was inspired in part by the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act that enshrined the federal government’s Net Zero by 2050 pledge into law, and also by a magazine published by Lund University in Sweden that reflected on what higher education might look like 20 years into the future.

The researchers say they strived to paint an even-handed portrait of the potential road ahead.

“Going between dystopia and utopia was definitely a goal from the outset,” Hoffmann says.

“We want readers to be able to see themselves in these pathways to 2050. That means telling stories about political and personal struggles, while also telling stories about things going well. It’s definitely a mix.”

Teresa Kramarz (supplied image)

One decidedly dystopian story is “Thirsty,” written by Kramarz, which depicts a lithium mine in the Argentinian desert that has displaced an Indigenous community – leaving its people fighting for water, food and electricity.

“In ‘Thirsty,’ I’m trying to call attention to the question of a just transition,” Kramarz says. “There’s no doubt we need to decarbonize, but it worries me that in doing that we aren’t paying enough attention to people and places.”

We Did It!? was crafted through an intensive workshop process, supported by the Alan Dean Family Symposium on Environmental Governance, where energy transition experts were brought in to provide writers with the accurate technical information they needed to develop and write their stories.

The EGL plans to work on more issues of We Did It!? and to devise other artistic, creative ways to engage citizens on the topic of climate change. In addition to the magazines, some ideas may include virtual reality or video games.

“There are all sorts of opportunities, as well as different kinds of media we may not have considered yet,” Bernstein says.

We Did It!? conveys public policy information in a clear, accessible way by showing how major climate decisions affect ordinary people – and, in turn, how people can play their part as consumers and voters in shaping those decisions.

“With this publication, we want to contribute to the public conversation around what’s going to have to happen in the next 25 years,” Hoffmann says.

“It’s not that there’s too little talk about the climate, but I’d say we’re not talking and thinking about the right things. We need to have a more expansive dialogue about what we want our society to be, and what large-scale choices we want to be making. We hope that storytelling like this is a good way to do that.”

Drag is having a moment – but its long history is marked by persecution and resilience

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 15:45:23 +0000

Drag is having a moment – but its long history is marked by persecution and resilience

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 06/27/2023 - 11:45

Cutline

A drag queen leads the Trojan group as thousands gathered for the massive 2023 Pride parade in Toronto (Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Our Community

Faculty of Arts & Science

Graduate Students

LGBTQ

Subheadline

�山ǿ�� scholar Kevin Nixon researches the evolution of the vibrant art form

Drag isn’t just having a moment right now – it’s having an extravaganza.

There’s drag brunch, drag trivia and drag bingo. There are drag cabaret and drag burlesque shows; drag violinists and drag science lectures; even Drag Camp for those wanting to sharpen their sashay. And of course, drag queen story time.

“Traditionally when we think about drag, we think about performance art that involves gender-bending and gender play in some form,” says Kevin Nixon, a PhD candidate in the University of Toronto’s department of anthropology in the Faculty of Arts & Science. “There’s an artistic component, of course. But it’s also quite political and has a long history in terms of activism.

“Traditionally, drag queens were framed only as cisgender men, and drag kings only as cisgender women. But the concept has exploded to encompass much more than it used to.”

Some 10 years ago, Nixon began ethnographic research for his doctorate. He conducted interviews with 30 to 40 drag performers all over Ontario and in other parts of Canada and has since informally interviewed many more. He has also performed in drag himself. After taking a leave from the university, he’s now writing his dissertation and has recently taught courses in sexual diversity studies and on gender from an anthropological perspective.

“When I started this work,” Nixon says, “RuPaul’s Drag Race was in its infancy. Since then, drag has become more mainstream. But in many ways it has stayed consistent.”

Drag is about glamour, sass and joie de vivre. But Nixon says drag performers have always been subject to persecution.

“When police raided bars in the 1950s and 60s, drag queens would have to show they were wearing male undergarments under their dresses – if they were wearing undergarments associated with the opposite sex, that was considered illegal.”

Over the years, as drag has become more accepted and inclusive, it has also been the subject of what Nixon calls “boundary debates.” Some feminists, for example, see drag as a mocking appropriation of femininity, “but you also see cisgender women happy to participate in an exaggerated entertaining, colourful form that they might not have access to in their daily lives.”

And while there are now many transgender as well as cisgender drag queens, “some trans scholars are vehemently against that inclusion, because they see drag as representing an identity that’s put on and then taken off,” Nixon notes.

But Nixon’s own research reflects the idea that today, anyone can not only enjoy but also participate in drag. Examining the topic through the lens of race, sexuality and ethnicity, he’s witnessed the true breadth of drag performance, especially in Toronto.

“Toronto has had a very vibrant drag culture, going back to the 1950s and even before that,” he says. “We’ve had some really popular performers who’ve made it big internationally. I also think the multicultural component is fascinating, in that we’ve got many performers producing shows that incorporate elements of different cultural customs and practices.”

In order to add an “auto-ethnographic” element to his research, Nixon also briefly performed himself under the name Roxy Foxx.

“I used to joke with my friends that I had to walk a mile in their heels,” he says. “That was invaluable for me. There was something really interesting about being part of that scene and learning my way through performance: from hairstyles, how to do makeup, how to create costumes and things like that. It’s hard work, absolutely – a skill set I still don’t have to this day! But it’s also how I learned about some of the discrimination that drag performers experience.”

In recent times, that discrimination has been increasing. In particular, the introduction of drag queen story time in libraries has met with opposition from conservatives, who accuse drag queens of “grooming” youngsters.

This view stems in part from a refusal by some people to consider how broad the spectrum of drag really is.

“The idea that drag performances by their very nature are always sexualized is problematic,” Nixon says. “Certainly in bars and nightclubs, you’re going to have these salacious performances. But drag queen story times are just about exaggerated costuming, and the hyperbolic play with gender that children find fascinating. In this context, I’ve heard drag queens compared to clowns. It’s about playing with appearance – it’s visually appealing, but it’s certainly not sexual.”

And yet, in the U.S., the state of Tennessee recently passed legislation banning adult drag performance as well as story time. Ten other states have either introduced or are drafting similar legislation.

“I think of this as a convenient scapegoat to take attention away from other issues, such as gun laws,” Nixon says. “The drag queen becomes the monster. It’s a convenient trigger, particularly when you see things like RuPaul’s Drag Race, which is a very public manifestation of gender non-conformity. That makes people very uncomfortable.”

This suppression is especially perplexing in light of the tremendous social justice efforts made by drag performers over the decades – including a strong tradition of charitable fundraising. At the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, American performers regularly put on shows to raise money for sick people who’d been rejected by their families and lacked health insurance. Here in Toronto, drag queens have raised over a million dollars for the Casey House hospice. And they have consistently staged many other fundraisers for various hospitals, community centres and other causes.

“When you think of Pride, the image of a colourful, bright drag queen might pop into your mind,” Nixon says. “They really play a key function within communities of bringing people together and increasing social solidarity. That’s a function that sometimes gets negated – and one that’s very much ignored through this demonization of the drag queen.”