The Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change is a community of people engaged in making a positive, just and sustainable change in our world. Our Dean's Highlights will recognize and celebrate the monthly achievements of our community members. Share in our recognition for our outstanding scholars, inspiring students, successful alumni, dynamic staff and supportive friends.
Alison Bain’s SSHRC funded project, Queering Canadian Suburbs: LGBTQ2S place making outside of central cities, has two forthcoming articles selected for publication, one titled “Whither ‘queer’ suburbanisms? Beyond suburban heteronormativity and the hegemony of the queer urban” in the Progress in Human Geography and the second titled, “Placing LGBTQ+ urban activisms” in Urban Studies.
Kudos to Jenny Korosi for her recent NSERC Alliance Grant as co-applicant on “Discontinuous Permafrost Partnership". The grant is led by Laurier University and is a collaboration between researchers at Laurier U, York U, University of Waterloo, and University of Alberta, partners from the Government of the Northwest Territories, and First Nations in the Dehcho (Northwest Territories).
Congratulations to John Lau, Policy Research Analyst for Natural Resources Canada, MES’19, and a member of the social exergy + energy lab, is named one of the top 30 under 30 sustainability leaders by Corporate Knights
Post Doc and Waste Wiki lead, Calvin Lakhan provided expert insights into community and household waste management practices to the Toronto Sun.
Mark Winfield shared his expertise with Global News on the recent International Energy Agency report. Watch the full video, Pandemic cuts growth forecast as oil demand set to hit 2030 plateau: IEA report here.
Jennifer Hyndman was a featured panelist for an event marking the International Day of Peace and celebrating 75 years of the United Nations.The panel Reframing the Migration Debate: Community Based Sponsorship and Safe Pathways? ran Oct. 13 and was hosted by Justice and Peace, a non-profit organization based in the Netherlands.
In the fourth-year seminar Critical Geographies of Education (EU/GEOG 4700) Ranu Basu welcomed the Consul General of Cuba - Tania Lopez Larroque and two other guest speakers (Professor Julio Fonseca and former TDSB Trustee Elizabeth Hill) to join us in a workshop on Anti-Imperial and Anti-Colonial Education: Exploring the Literacy Campaign in Cuba. Basu, also, participated in two co-organized sessions organized by the AAG and AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition: Participatory Forum on New Requirements for Ethical Geographic Science in Rapid Research and Ethics and Human Rights While Working in the Fast-paced Geospatial Research Environment of COVID-19
Cate Sandilands published two short essays related to the "Plantasmagoria" project were published in European art-books: “Q is for Quench,” in Grace Gloria Denis, In, From, and With: Exploring Collaborative Survival (Berlin: Circadian) and “Timber. Douglas-fir. Art. / Bois. Sapin de Douglas. Art.,” in Laura Drouet and Olivier Lacrouts, Plant Fever: Towards a Phyto-Centric Design (Brussels, studio d-o-t-s / CID au Grand-Hornu).
Kean Birch was published in the Toronto Star sharing his insights. Read “This is how Canada should deal with Big Tech”
Martha Stiegman and colleague, Dr Sherry Pictou (Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law and Management, Dalhousie University) were interviewed by Dr. Peter André (Professor, Department of Political Science, Carleton University) for his EcoPolitics Podcast. In the episode, "Treaty Relations and Environmental Politics in Canada", we discuss two documentary films we made together ('In Defense of Our Treaties" (2008) and "We Story the Land" (2016). Both films explore treaty relations in Mi’kma’ki.
The Earth to Table Legacies project hosted its global launch and Thanksgiving Address on October 12. The project team includes Professor Emeritus Deb Barndt and PhD Candidates Chandra Maracle and Alexandra Gelis
The work of PhD Candidate 
Susan Morrissey Wyse & Christina E. Hoicka featured in Yfile’s Brainstorm, By and for Local People: Grad Student Looks at Energy Through Justice Lens
Gail Fraser was featured in the most recent of edition of Innovatus, highlighting the impacts of her AIF grant and the impact it has on her ENVS 1500, The Web of Life: Introduction to Environmental Science course for first year YUStudents.
Fraser was also a guest on the Toronto Public Library’s Environmentalist in Residence series with MES Alumni Andres Jiminez.
Honor Ford Smith received a $20,000 research grant from the Helen Carswell Chair of Community-Engaged Research in the Arts to undertake research on “Oral histories, music and food justice” with the Regent’s Park School of Music.
Ford Smith was also appointed Associate Director of the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean at York (CERLAC) early this Fall.
MES-York Planning Alumni Committee (MYPAC) hosted its first ever Planning Case competition. 5 student teams went head to head in front of a professional judging panel, which included:
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- Sabrina Colleti (MES 2002): Manager, Planning – WSP
- David MacMillan (MES 2014): Program Manager – City of Toronto
- Andria Oliveria (MES 2012): Project Manager, Transportation Planning – City of Brampton
- Anand Balram: Senior Policy Planner, Land Use Planning – City of Brampton
Congratulations to the winning team - Team 4 – P.E.D (Danielle Tivoli, Erik Retz, Liam Ryan, Paul Berkun-Drevnig)
Professor Raju Das pens a new article for The Bullet “What Questions Must Students Ask Their Educators, and Why?’
Professor Linda Peake, has three forthcoming publications including a co-edited book “feminist urban theory for our time: rethinking social reproduction, the urban and its constitutive outside. (London: Antipode Book Series), co-authored chapter, “Tiwa’s morning”, in The Handbook of Global Urbanism: Essays on the City and its Future (London: Routledge) and another co-authored chapter “Gender” in COVID-19 and Similar Futures: Geographical Perspectives, Issues and Agenda.
The Indigenous Environmental Justice Project, led by Deborah McGregor, along with MES planning student Dali Carmichael, and MA student Kim Tran, and undergraduate student, Emilia Khaliil, have joined with the EUC Recruitment team to provide their “Listening to the Land” workshop online for high schools in the GTA.