EUC Research Update – June/July 2025

Accolades, Awards and Acknowledgements

Congratulations to all our graduates, especially those who have been conferred their PhD degrees. Thank you to the supervisors for a job well done!

PhD in Environmental Studies

• Laurence Butet-Roch: Toxic Images: Visual Representation of Industrial Contamination and Frontline Communities. Supervisor: Cate Sandilands
• Alexandra Simpson: (Un)Masking Along the Line: (In)visibility, Embodiment, and Place in Contemporary Pipeline Debates. Supervisor: Cate Sandilands
• Isaac Thornley: No Pipeline to Utopia: Ideology, Disavowal, and the Politics of the Trans Mountain Expansion. Supervisor: Ilan Kapoor

PhD in Geography

• Émile Baril: Platform Labour, Migration, and Resistance: Organizing Against Hyper-Exploitation in Paris and Toronto’s Food Delivery Industries: Supervisor: Steven Tufts
• Linn Biörklund: Moving, Waiting, Searching Across Borders: Gendered Geographies of Violence, Disappearance and Contestation in Southern Mexico: Supervisor: Jennifer Hyndman
• Dominik Formanowicz: An Immigrant Neighbourhood as a Site of Planetary Urbanization: The Case of St. James Town, Toronto. Supervisor: Joseph Mensah
• Mantha Katsikana: The Affective Geographies of Social Reproduction: The Case of Athens Under Austerity. Supervisor: Linda Peake
• Maryam Lashkari: Feminist Counter-Geopolitics: Knowledges, Practices, and Spaces of Activism in Iranian Diasporas. Supervisor: Alison Bain
• Wendy Medina De Loera: Mining networks in the Making: Sand and Stone Mining in the Jeneberang River, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Supervisor: Peter Vandergeest
• Charvaak Pati: Consciousness and Action among Auto Workers in India: The Maruti Movement, 2007-2017. Supervisor: Raju Das

Alison Bain recently co-published the first edition of their new book Queerburbia: LGBTQ2S Suburban Place-Making (2025) which examines LGBTQ2S place-making/unmaking/remaking on the peripheries of Canada’s three largest city-regions (Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal). The book investigates print media and census representations, civic and para-public allyship, individual and collective activism, and everyday practices of living and dreaming as revealed through photo-elicitation interviews and collective counter-mapping that together unmake and remake suburban places as queer. It offers a comparative case study of how large Canadian city-regions become queerer through LGBTQ2S suburban place-making/ unmaking/remaking. For urban scholars, the book deepens place-making theory with the conceptual introduction of the neologism “queerburbia” as a means to re-envision metropolitan peripheries as sites of queer futures. As well, it offers civic leaders, urban planners, and policymakers insights into the complex dynamics of municipal LGBTQ2S misrecognition and critical allyship strategies beyond rainbowization.

Laurence Butet-Roche is one of the recipients of this year’s Governor General’s Gold Medals, which recognize the outstanding scholastic achievements of graduate students in Canada. She earned her PhD in environmental studies where her research explored how to document environmental harm without reinforcing the idea that communities facing pollution are damaged or expendable. Focusing on Canadian news coverage of Aamjiwnaang First Nation, located in southern Ontario’s Chemical Valley, her work used participatory methods and photography to develop new ways of portraying frontline communities that honour their complexity, strength and resilience. Cate Sandilands served as her supervisor, with Dayna Scott and Lisa Myers as committee members. Laurence’s scholarship draws on her professional experience as a writer and photographer focusing on environmental justice issues. She is currently pursuing her inquiry into the entanglements of the politics of visibility, representational justice, and petroculture as a post-doctoral fellow in Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University, with funding from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec.

Melvin Chan received the Susan Mann Dissertation Scholarship for the 2025-26 academic year. The Dissertation Scholarship is awarded to assist outstanding doctoral students in their final year of doctoral study to concentrate exclusively on and complete their dissertations. The award is designed for students who have made significant progress on the research and writing of their dissertations to facilitate timely degree completion.

Focusing on the settings of the animal shelter, animal rescue, and veterinary school, Melvin’s PhD research explores how humans can learn-teach with rabbits in mutual and interdependent relationships and how these processes and relationships are shaped by coloniality and affective dynamics.

Andil Gosine will be a Getty Scholar from January-June 2026. The 2025–2026 Getty Research Institute theme explores the many layers of the concept of repair — whether in healing damaged objects, commemorating societal fractures, or addressing historic wrongs through artistic and institutional means. Getty Scholars engage with a vibrant intellectual community and the Getty’s world-class resources, including vast library and special collections. The program fosters interdisciplinary collaboration and nurtures scholarship that contributes to the broader public understanding of cultural heritage. Gosine’s project, entitled Coolie Créole: Art For and Against ‘Us’, considers issues of representation and its burdens through examination of contemporary Caribbean visual arts. Since its inception in 1985, the Getty Scholars Program has supported approximately 1,300 scholars from more than fifty countries, providing a collaborative space for inquiry and exchange at the Getty Center and Getty Villa in Los Angeles.

Peter Homenuck published a new book on Keys to a Successful Consulting Career
True Stories from the Field (Friesen Press, 2025), an essential guide for new and prospective consultants. Homenuck is Professor Emeritus at EUC (formerly FES) and served as the CEO of the Professional Skills Development Institute and has over forty years of consulting experience across North America. Most recently, Peter served on the board of governors of the First Nations University of Canada for four years. He has written hundreds of reports, including for the US Environmental Protection Agency; the US Post Office; Health Canada, the government of the Northwest Territory; many First Nations in Canada; private sector companies including Harley Davidson Canada and DeBeers Diamonds and many community groups. Peter is also recognized as a major expert witness for environmental and planning projects. His expert witness skills and knowledge have allowed him to train people from both government and private sectors.

Martina Jakubchik-Paloheimo is EUC’s new postdoctoral visitor. She will be working with Gregory Thiemann on the project “Conserving Subarctic Biodiversity: Building Comprehensive Understanding of the World’s Southernmost Polar Bears in the Face of Climate Change.” The project will study seasonal polar bear distribution and habitat to protect people and wildlife to form an essential input to community polar bear safety plans and actions.

The Weston Family Foundation-funded project is in collaboration with the Mushkegowuk Council, a regional political organization representing several First Nations in Northern Ontario. The study is expected to address knowledge gaps about the population of polar bears and will shape management approaches, conservation practices and partnerships and ensure that the Cree communities continue to live in harmony with polar bears.

Jennifer Korosi received a grant from ArcticNet to study the “Impacts of thaw and fire on downstream aquatic ecosystems on the peatland-rich Taiga Plains”. The project has four objectives: storage and lability of carbon, nutrients, and mercury in peatlands; availability and mobility of solutes in peatland porewater and headwaters; modelling of solute transport under various scenarios; and studying the impacts of thaw and fire on peatland lake functions. The research will allow informed risk management at community, watershed, and territorial levels. It will study the storage, mobilization, and downstream transport of organic carbon, nutrients and mercury across the Taiga Plains, with research to be done at five peatland sites across a 1,200 km transect. Working across the transect will allow the researchers to understand whether there are common impacts across the gradient from continuous to sporadic permafrost. Partners include Indigenous organizations at each site that builds on already established relationships to ensure significant collaborations, knowledge exchange, and use of the findings.

Vanessa Smikle has been appointed as Strategic Engagement Specialist for the Energy Modelling Hub (EMH) project, a pan-Canadian initiative led by the University of Calgary, Institut de l’énergie Trottier (Polytechnique Montréal), the Institute for Integrated Energy Systems (University of Victoria), and York University through Mark Winfield. The EMH bridges the gap between energy modelers, policymakers, and stakeholders to support evidence-based decision-making for an affordable, decarbonized, reliable, and equitable energy system in Canada. Vanessa will lead efforts to facilitate strategic engagement activities, manage collaborative initiatives such as the Multi-Model Comparison Forum, and promote awareness and understanding of EMH’s suite of open-source tools. She will also play a critical role in advancing EMH’s mission by fostering collaboration and strengthening relationships between Canada’s energy modelling community and its diverse stakeholders.

Ximena Martinez Trabucco is our new SSHRC postdoctoral fellow who is supervised by Carlota McAllister. Her research focuses on “Ethnic Political Identities, Multicultural Policies, and Land Rights in Northern Chile: The Case of Afro-Descendant Claims in the Valleys of Azapa and Lluta.” It explores how ethnic political identities, international agreements on Indigenous rights, and the adoption of multicultural policies by Latin American states collide and intersect to shape access to land, create new landscapes, and transform land into a resource with multiple, and sometimes conflicting, valences. The study contributes to ongoing discussions about the nature of land in the context of globalization, multiculturalism, and neoliberalism. By focusing on the specific case of Afro-descendant claims in northern Chile, the research addresses critical questions about how international legal frameworks intersect with national policies and local identity politics. Ultimately, the research attends to the future of land and its affordances for the lives of humans and other species.

Philip Kelly will be ending his post as EUC Associate Dean for Research, Graduate and Global Affairs (ADRGG) at the end of June. He has held this role since July 2020 and served as Acting/Interim Dean while Alice Hovorka was on leave in 2023/24. He will be on sabbatical in 25/26 to rejuvenate and pursue his research on labour migration in the Philippines and Southeast Asia.

Thank you, Philip, for your dedication, leadership and vision to uphold research excellence at EUC and for your tireless efforts and initiatives to support our graduate students as well as the global outreach work of our faculty. Wishing you success in your future research endeavours!

Welcome back Carlota McAllister, who re-assumes the role of ADRGG this July 1, 2025. Carlota brings with her experience and expertise from an impressive scholarly career and slew of service contributions to York. She served as former director of the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean and was on the Executive Committee of the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Her current research project examines river conflicts in Chile and Guatemala, exploring how these bodies of water are imagined and engaged as political actors in movements against the dispossession of Indigenous, peasant, and poor urban communities.

It is with deep sorrow that we are sharing the sad news about the passing of EUC Associate Professor Sheila Colla. Sheila was diagnosed in 2023 with biphasic pleural mesothelioma, a rare form of thoracic cancer caused by exposure to asbestos affecting the lining of the lungs. We have been blessed by her presence in the Faculty and we will remember her as a pioneering conservation scientist and educator whose work bridged the gaps between pollinator health, urban ecosystems, and social justice. Throughout her career, Sheila exemplified leadership in both science and advocacy, especially as a woman of colour in STEM.

A role model for aspiring scientists and actively contributes to initiatives that promote diversity and equity in the field, Sheila was dedicated to her outreach efforts, mentoring young ecologists and citizen scientists, and inspiring others to take part in the conservation movement. She played a pivotal role in the successful campaign to have the rusty-patched bumblebee listed as endangered in both Canada and the U.S. Her scientific expertise has been crucial in shaping pollinator advocacy, inspiring several campaigns that engage both citizens and policymakers alike. A GoFundMe page has been set up by Sheila’s friends that chronicled her cancer journey and to offer financial support to her family she left behind.

Publications and Reports

Bain, A., L., and Podmore, J., A. (2025). Queerburbia: LGBTQ2S Suburban Place-Making. Routledge.

Bunch, M., J., Waters, B., M., Ganguli, N., Adhanom, M., Nyuon, A., K., Christine, B., & Badhane, H. Comparing resilience outcomes in feed Ii and Acl projects in South Sudan using the Repart framework. Social Science Research Network.

Carroll, D., Redvers, N., & McGregor, D. (2025). Rebuilding a KINShip approach to the climate crisis: A comparison of Indigenous knowledges policy in Canada and the United States. Indigenous Resurgence Amidst Climate Disruption, 13(1), 66-93.

Coleman, K., Palmer, M., Quinton, W., Thienpont, J., & Korosi, J. (2025). Spatiotemporal variability in chromophoric dissolved organic carbon in small, shallow lakes from discontinuous permafrost peatlands (Taiga Plains, Northwest Territories, Canada). Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

Das., R., J., & Latham, R., E. (2025). Being a critical social scientist: An interview with David Fasenfest. Class, Race and Corporate Power, 13(1).

Deng, Q., Woldegerima, W., A., Zhang, W., Asgary, A., Kong, J., D., Flicker, S., Ogden, N., H., Orbinski, J., Bragazzi, N., L., & Wu, J. (2025). Uncovering the impact of infection routes on within-host MPXV dynamics: Insights from a mathematical modeling study. PLOS Computational Biology, 21(5).

Gansworth, K., & McGregor, D. (2025). Anishinabek knowledge and climate disaster. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science.

Gebresselassie, M. and Baljko, M. (2025). Accessibility of third-party transit apps and the role of transit agencies and their open data. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Volume 32, 101504.

Haritaworn, J. (2025). Risky migrants and citizens in need of protection. In Intersectionality and the City. Routledge.

Homenuck, P. (2025). Keys to a Successful Consulting Career: True Stories from the Field. FriesenPress.

Kelly, P., Marschke, M. and Vandergeest, P. (2025) Migrant Labour, Working Conditions and Complex Jurisdictions in Asian Distant Water Fisheries. In New Directions in South-South Migration, Edited by Jonathan Crush, et al. Springer, 349-366.

Kerekes, T., MacKell, S., Elsayed, H., & Colla, S. (2025). Floral use competition between honey bees and bumble bees within an urban community. Cities and the Environment, 18(1).

Kipfer, S. (2025). Imperial landscapes. In Reimagining Urban Marxisms. Routledge.

Li, Q., Hu, B., Shang, J., & Remmel, T., K. (2025). Two-stage deep learning framework for individual tree crown detection and delineation in mixed-wood forests using high-resolution light detection and ranging data. Remote Sensing, 17(9), 1578.

Meng, R., L., McGregor, A., McGregor, D., McGregor, L., Nahwegahbow, & Chow-Fraser, P. (2025). A framework for doing things in a Good Way: Insights on Mshiikenh (Freshwater Turtle) conservation through weaving Western science and Indigenous knowledge in Whitefish River First Nation. Ecology and Evolution, 15(5), 71431.

Obateru, R.O., Okhimamhe, A.A., Fashae, O.A., Olusola, A.O. et al. (2025). Assessing the status of ecosystem regulating services in the urbanising Rainforest and Guinea savanna ecological regions of Nigeria using InVEST models, Urban Climate, Volume 61, 2025, 102410.

Quesnel, A. and Tufts, S. (2025). Toward a labour geography of cryptocurrency: Place, pensions and protests. Progress in Economic Geography, Volume 3, Issue 2, 100046.

Sandilands, C. (2025). “Cli Fi,” The New Quarterly 174 (Spring): 50-54.

Sandilands, C. (2025). “Forest: Suite for the Anthropocene,” Insert Art 7 (Spring).

Scott, D. N. (2025). Infrastructural (Dis)Entitlement: Coercive Dispossession on the Critical Minerals Frontier. Journal of Law and Political Economy. UC Berkeley. Vol 5, Issue 1.

Thornley, I. (2025). “Ring of Fire Conflict Reveals Gaps in Ontario’s Economic Nationalist EV Battery Fantasy.” Energy Humanities, April 1.

Thornley, I. (2025). “Battery: Can batteries foster a radically just energy transition?” in Power Shift: Keywords for a New Politics of Energy, edited by Imre Szeman and Jennifer Wenzel. West Virginia University Press.

Ward, K., Abbruzzese, T., Bunnell, T., Cardullo, P., Chang, I., C., Miller, B., Fumaz, R., R., Shin., H., Spicer, Z., & Woods, O. (2025). A comparison of comparisons: Evidence from an international comparative study of ‘smart cities’. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space.

Webber, C. (2025). Book Review: Nick Bernards 2024: Fictions of Financialization: Rethinking Speculation, Exploitation and Twenty-First Century Capitalism. London: Pluto Press. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, June.

Whitney, R., A., & Sotomayor, L. (2025). Peripheral best practices and the politics of visibility: Urban planning and social urbanism in Mexico City. Cities, 158, 105667.

EUC and Associated Events

Upcoming Events

From July 4-13, MES graduate and incoming PhD student Mosa McNeilly premiers IN THE DIVING BELL at A Space Gallery. This interdisciplinary work, developed through a combination of theoretical research, movement improvisation, and visual art production, is set in an unconventional venue. Featured in an intimate space for an audience of 60, the performance occurs in the north gallery, with a large-scale artwork on exhibit in the adjacent south gallery. Drawing on African and Caribbean history and memory, McNeilly’s solo performance is a mash-up of mime, movement, mask, and installation.

Creator, performer, and visual artist McNeilly, an 100 Accomplished Black Canadian Women honouree, brings together a dynamic team of collaborators. These include EUC Professor Emerita and dramaturge Honor Ford-Smith, recipient of the Honorary Associateship Award in recognition of contributions to Theatre and Performing Arts in Canada, and EUC PhD alumna Camille Turner, winner of the Toronto Biennale Artist Award.There will be two Black Out performances. An optional Q&A and exhibition viewing are offered after each show. Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Ontario for funding support.

On Tuesday, July 8, 2-5pm in Kaneff Tower 519, the CITY Institute invites you to its Research-to-Practice Series interactive workshop on Transforming our Living Spaces: Participatory Approaches to Feminist Urbanism. The workshop will explore the counter-model that feminist urbanism offers to cities shaped by the intersecting forces of patriarchy and capitalism. Drawing on more than two decades of work at Col·lectiu Punt 6 in Barcelona, Dr. Sara Ortiz Escalante will introduce and facilitate participatory methods for incorporating intersectional feminist perspectives into planning practice. The workshop will be tailored to urban practitioners, planning students, and the general community. Space in this workshop is limited. Please RSVP here.

As part of the SSHRC-funded research collaboration between York University (Toronto, Canada) and CIDER at the Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia), the CITY Institute and EUC invite advanced and early-career scholars to participate in a two-day workshop on Vertical Peripheries: Planning and Citizenship in Colombia’s Commodified Periurban Housing Towers. to be held at Universidad de los Andes on August 21–22, 2025 at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.

The workshop will explore the emerging phenomenon of vertical peripheries — high-rise housing developments located on the expanding edges of cities, particularly (but not exclusively) in the Global South. The workshop will also serve as a platform to shape contributions for a forthcoming special issue in a high-impact academic journal dedicated to this theme.

The Marxist Studies in Global and Asian Perspectives Research Group at York University will hold a conference on The Power of Marxist Thought from September 26-27, 2025 at York University. The conference will assess the impact and importance of Marxism in the context of the wider intellectual realm, and how central theory is to its very existence. Papers by scholars from across disciplines will include topics on anthropology, economics, human geography, political science, social psychology, sociology, among others that are expected to demonstrate intellectual power of Marxist thought, especially in relation to the serious problems and issues facing humanity. The event is sponsored by Science & Society; Critical Sociology; Socialist Register; YorkU Global Labour Research Centre; Alternate Routes; Capital & Class; and EUC. For more info, contact the Organizing Collective at msgap@yorku.ca.

EUC in the Media

The second episode of the podcast Sounds Like Land! on Tmicw-kt: Our Land Is My Language is available now. Nestled in Secwepemc and Syilx territories, Tania Willard speaks with Dr. Jeanette Armstrong, Dawn Morrison, and Dr. Janice Dick Billy, on language restoration, revitalizing traditional land and food practices, and about language as an indicator of ecological and community health.

Sounds Like Land explores the deep and powerful relationships between Indigenous languages and ecological knowledge. Through rich conversations with Indigenous artists, knowledge holders, and language speakers, listeners are invited to hear the land, the swamps, and our non-human kin. Throughout the podcast, hosts and guest speakers discuss how care for language and for the environment are profoundly intertwined. This work is a celebration of cultural stewardship, sovereignty, and the brilliance of Indigenous peoples living, learning, working, and dreaming on their lands.

The podcast is promoted through social media channels such as Spotify, Apple, Instagram, Facebook and through its website as well as partner organizations. Stemming from the recent success of “MIIJIM,” Finding Flowers’ 2020-21 conversation series, which connected more than 4000 attendants in seven episodes, the research team composed of Lisa Myers, Sheila Colla, Tania Willard, and Dana Prieto hopes to expand its audience while centering Indigenous voices and audiences.

Dayna Scott’s SSHRC Partnership project on Infrastructure Beyond Extractivism: Material Approaches to Restoring Indigenous Jurisdiction recently held a webinar on Reclaiming Indigenous Jurisdiction in the Climate Crisis: Analyses of ‘Critical’ Infrastructure. The panel drew together critical scholars from law, geography, and anthropology with community partners and land-based practitioners who are working to restore Indigenous jurisdiction in the context of the climate crisis.

From standing against pipeline projects to revitalizing Indigenous systems of land and fire stewardship, fighting for a radically ‘just transition’, the panelists spoke across a diversity of strategies for reclaiming jurisdictional authority and remaking the material and socio-technical infrastructures that sustain collective life on Indigenous lands. The panelists spoke of the pitfalls of colonial laws and how they limit Indigenous jurisdiction and autonomy to regulate land use, cultural practices, and livelihoods based on Indigenous laws and governance. They shared how reclaiming Indigenous jurisdiction and ensuring a just transition in the climate crisis requires strategic resistance and reimagining Indigenous rights.

Martha Stiegman is also part of a SSHRC Partnership Development project on Living Relations: Sharing Stories of Decolonizing Food System Transitions in Aotearoa and Canada” co-led by Dr. Peter Andree at Carleton University and Dr. John Reid at the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre (NTRC) at the University of Canterburry in ANZ.

A 20-minute documentary of the project’s 2024 gathering in N’Dakimenan, the traditional territory of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai, provides an overview of its goals and of the relational research methodology it is using.

From 2024 to 2027, Living Relations is sharing stories of how Indigenous and settler partners are working together to respond to the food system sustainability transition challenge in Aotearoa New Zealand (ANZ) and Canada. The knowledge sharing project will amplify and build dialogue among Indigenous-led food system sustainability initiatives to show how such initiatives strengthen Indigenous food sovereignty and improve broader societal resilience.

Gail Fraser was interviewed in a Cottage Life article titled, If cormorants aren’t actually bad for the ecosystem, can we bear to let them exist? Currently, cormorants are subject to the Ontario government-sanctioned hunt because they are accused of causing decline in fish populations.

However, Fraser points out that this is an oversimplification of how ecosystems function. “Ecosystems are very complex. There are lots of reasons that fish may or may not be prevalent in a particular area. The lakes have changed a lot over the years, and much of it is caused by humans,” she notes.

Mark Winfield penned an article in the Hill Times titled “Amid rapid global growth, renewable energy’s Canadian future remains uncertain“. In this article, Winfield notes that in Canada, the defining feature of renewable energy development has been profound instability. The instability for the renewables sector has been the result of multiple factors: unexpected local opposition; changes in government; and established utilities with deep connections to incumbent technologies and actors.

He expressed optimism that the challenges can be overcome by improved grid management, geographic distribution of assets and rapid technological developments taking place in the field of energy storage. Renewables, in combination with energy storage, demand rapid response, optimization of provincial interconnections, and development of distributed energy resources to offer the best option for achieving the desired outcomes.