Welcome to the October 2022 edition of the EUC Research Update - bringing you highlights from research activities at York's Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change. We invite you to view our past updates on our Research News page.
Research Spotlights

Jose Etcheverry on bringing youth from the inner city and from First Nations to build Climate Solutions Parks

Sarah Rotz on performing and pushing back on diet culture: Exploring gendered messaging on Instagram

Mark Winfield on Ontario's deepening hydro mess

Steven Tufts on labour shortages a long-term problem at border crossings

Tamo Campos on impact field of Canadian documentary films

Calvin Lakhan on why the war on plastics can do more harm than good
Accolades, Appointments and Awards

Nicole Arsenault, MES alumna, was a finalist for the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Campus Sustainability Research Award for her MES Research Paper on “The Role of Universities Towards a Sustainable Future: Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals” (Supervisor: Alice Hovorka; Advisor: Jose Etcheverry). The award recognizes published and unpublished research that contributes to the advancement of higher education sustainability.

Deborah Barndt received a SSHRC Connections grant for her project Earth-to-Tables Legacies to expand transnational arts-based research, exchange, and education on food sovereignty to Sinanche, Yucatan, Mexico. The project will hold an intergenerational and intercultural dialogue about food sovereignty through a workshop of collaborators exchanging knowledge and co-producing arts-based, transmedia educational materials and exploring themes central to food sovereignty. Project collaborators include EUC graduate students and multimedia artists, Alexandra Gelis and Chandra Maracle, and ES PhD alumna, Lauren Baker as co-applicant.

Jose Etcheverry received new funding from the Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada (CEWIL Canada) to build Climate Solutions Parks (CSPs) in Toronto and Penetanguishene. The CSPs focus on student experiential learning and skills development in the key areas of community-focused agriculture, renewable energy, electric mobility, First Nations knowledge, sustainable construction and eco-tourism. Project coordination is led by MES graduate Dale Colleen Hamilton and administration by MES student Codrina Ibanescu.

Sarah Flicker, Environmental Studies PhD Sarah Switzer, York MA alumna Roxanne Ma, received funding from CIHR for their research on "Let's get sexfluent: Exploring new models for modernizing youth HIV resources in Canada". Sexfluent is the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research's new bilingual online national youth resource that addresses HIV and STBBI prevention through a comprehensive approach that examines gender identity and sexuality, modern dating and relationships, sexual pleasure, mental health, substance use and harm reduction. Let's Get Sexfluent! is a collaboration between community-based organizations across Canada, academic researchers, peer researchers, youth leaders, and people living with HIV that aims to enhance Sexfluent programming to be shared widely to improve online HIV and STBBI outreach across Canada and around the world. Flicker is also a co-investigator in a CIHR-funded project grant on Mobilizing Indigenous community-led STBBI research to increase impact and advance new knowledge with the Communities Alliances & Networks (Vancouver). The project will identify and develop effective Indigenous knowledge translation and mobilization (IKTM) strategies to enact research findings that are meaningful to communities, inform policy and health program action in ways that lead to healing and reconciliation.

Leora Gansworth, Geography PhD alumna, has been awarded a Provostial Postdoctoral Fellowship at York. Leora will hold the fellowship at the Center for Indigenous Knowledges and Languages and Osgoode Hall Law School, where she and will work with Deborah McGregor. Leora describes her planned postdoctoral work as follows: “My research will continue to investigate environmental health priorities as determined by Indigenous Peoples. I am especially interested in working with those who continue to seek mino-bimaadiziwin, a good way of life, in reciprocity with all our relations, and an emphasis on restoring kinship with migrating eels.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been declared a co-laureate of the 2022 Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity, together with the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Ellie Perkins served as one of the authors in the 6th Assessment Cycle and was instrumental to IPCC’s success. The Jury of the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity, led by Dr. Angela Merkel, selected the IPCC and IPBES out of 116 nominations from 41 countries, in recognition of “…the role of science on the front line of tackling climate change and the loss of biodiversity.” The prize was launched by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 2020 with the objective of distinguishing persons and organisations from around the world whose work has greatly contributed to mitigating the impacts of climate change.

Carmen Ponce has been appointed as a new CITY postdoctoral visitor for the GenUrb project under the supervision of Professor Linda Peake. She has been previously affiliated as a Visiting Researcher at York's Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean. Ponce has a PhD in Economics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and a MSc in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin. Her areas of interest include climate change, poverty and inequality, rural development and child work.

Araby Smyth has also been re-appointed as CITY postdoctoral visitor for the GenUrb project. Smyth works primarily in the areas of economic, feminist and urban geographies and has conducted qualitative research in Mexico and the USA. Her role in the GenUrb project, alongside others, is to comparatively analyze interview and life history data on the theme of money, debt, and finance in women’s everyday lives. For more information on her research work, read her EUC Research Spotlight.

Mark Terry's artwork on the emerging shorelines of Antarctica has been selected as part of the final exhibition on “Right The Future" at the Markham Community Art Exhibit. Terry is a digital artist, documentary filmmaker and adjunct professor at EUC.
York University has partnered with STEPS – an award-winning cultural organization that facilitates public art initiatives across Canada – to showcase community artwork on the construction hoarding on Enterprise Boulevard, in front of York's Markham Campus site.
Congratulations everyone on your awards, appointments and achievements!
Publications and Reports
Bain, A. (2022). Queer affordances of care in suburban public libraries. Emotion, Space and Society, Vol. 45, November.
Bain, A. and Podmore, J. (2022). The Scalar Arrhythmia of the LGBTQS Social Inclusion Policies: An Analysis of the Peripheral Municipalities of a ‘Progressive’ City-region. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. July.
Birch, K. (2022). "Bioeconomies" in Handbook of Critical Environmental Politics, edited by Pellizzoni, Luigi, Leonardi, Emanuele, Asara. Edward Edgar.
De Vidovich L., Biglieri,S., Iacobelli, J. and Keil, R. (2022). COVID-19 in the Lombardy Region: Socio-spatial peripheries and forgotten densities of long-term care in Cities Learning from a Pandemic: Towards Preparedness, edited by Simonetta Armondi, Alessandro Balducci, Martina Bovo, Beatrice Galimberti. Routledge.
Fawcett, L. and Johnson, M. (2022). Oceanic, Multispecies, Resilient Resistance: Whales, Noise Pollution and Tiny House Warriors. Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, Vol 9, No. 3, Fall.
Foster, J. (2023). Post-Industrial Urban Greenspace Ecology, Aesthetics and Justice, Earthscan from Routledge.
Fraser, G. (2022). Song for the Widowmaker. Friessenpress. Available in eBook, paperback & hardcover.
Keil R. and Wu, Fulong (2022), Eds. After Suburbia: Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century. University of Toronto Press.
Kipfer, S. (2022). Urban Revolutions: Urbanisation and (Neo-)Colonialism in Transatlantic Context. Historical Materialism Book Series, Volume 262. Brill.
Kipfer, S. and Mallick, A. (2022). 'Stretch' and 'Translate': Gramscian Lineages, Fanonist Convergences in the (Post) Colony. In Historical Materialism. Brill.
Kipfer, S. (2022) “Antonio Gramsci and the Prison Notebooks (1929-1935)” in Camilla Perrone ed. Critical Planning & Design: Roots, pathways, and frames(Cham: Springer) 191-203
Ekers, J., S. Kipfer and A. Loftus (2022) “Articulation, Translation, Populism: Gillian Hart’s Engagements with Antonio Gramsci” in Ethnographies of Power: Working Radical Concepts with Gillian Hart, Edited By Sharad Chari, Mark Hunter and Melanie Samson (Johannesburg: Wits University Press) 163-186.
Korosi, J. and Coleman, K. (2023). (Paleo) limnological data for small, shallow lakes at or near the Scotty Creek Research Station in the Dehcho region (Northwest Territories, Canada). YorkSpace.
Long, M. (2022). 'Geomedia as a Pedagogical Tool: Toward Sustainability Competence,' in The Emerging Role of Geomedia in the Environmental Humanities, edited by Mark Terry and Michael Hewson. Rowman & Littlefield.
Long, M. (2022). 'Geomedia', in Engaging STEM: A Guide to Interactive Resources, by Elena Chudaeva; Alexander McGlashan; Howard Gerhard; Marta Wolniewicz; and Michael Long. ECampus Ontario Open Educational Resource.
March, Loren and Lehrer, U. (2022). Common Areas, Common Causes: Public Space in High-Rise Buildings During Covid-19. Urban Planning, 7(4), Open Access Journal, September.
Marchese, A. and Hovorka, A. (2022). Zoonoses Transfer, Factory Farms and Unsustainable Human–Animal Relations, Sustainability, 14, 12806.
Smyth, A. (2022). Proceeding through Colonial Past-Presents in Fieldwork: Methodological Lessons on Accountability, Refusal, and Autonomy. Antipode.
Sotomayor, L. and Gilbert, L. (2022). Sanctuary City, Solidarity City, and Inclusive City (Yet to Come): Living Invisibly in Toronto in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Theorizing Local Migration Law and Governance, edited by Moritz Baumgärtel and Sara Miellet. Cambridge University Press.
Urbanik, J. and Hovorka, A. (2022). Animal Geographies in the Time of COVID-19: Challenges and Opportunities. In: Brunn, S.D., Gilbreath, D. (eds) COVID-19 and a World of Ad Hoc Geographies. Springer, Cham.
Terry, M. (2022). Speaking Youth to Power: Influencing Climate Policy at the United Nations. Palgrave MacMillan.
Wood, P. and Rossiter, D. (2022). Unstable Properties: Aboriginal Title and the Claim of British Columbia. UBC Press.
UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies is thrilled to announce the publication of “Memories and Futurities,” its 21st volume! You can access the volume online. And, if you’re on York University’s Keele Campus, free physical copies will soon be available on the stand in the HNES lounge.
The volume includes scholarly essays by Naomi Norquay (Rumination on a “fisherman’s path”: Land as palimpsest), Fernando Silva e Silva (Chronotopographies: Chronotopes and the Crafting of Fictions), and Benjamin J. Kapron (Storying Futures of the Always-Already Extinct: Challenging Human Exceptionalism; Exploring Animal Survivance); conference presentations by Angela P. Harris (The Politics of the [x]), Usha Natarajan (Law & Critique: Hubris in a Time of Environmental Change), and Michelle Murphy (Chemical Futures and Environmental Data Justice); poetry by Madeleine Lavin (unspoken poems for a passed lover), Jaz Papadopoulos (Water Memory), and Wesley Brunson (Dragonfly); visual artwork by Angie Lea Tupper (Afterglow) and Oonagh Butterfield (Vascular Memory); multimedia works by Kelly King (Unsettling the Homestead) and Sophia Jaworski (Requiem to window sealant); and reviews of the books Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters by Aph Ko and Syl Ko (review by Mandy Bunten-Walberg), Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present by Robyn Maynard (review by Rachel Lobo), and The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf (review by Scott Lillico).
Undercurrents is edited by a team of Environmental Studies graduate students at EUC. Managing editors for this volume were Sarah Iannicello and Benjamin J. Kapron. Congratulations to Sarah, Ben and the whole team!
EUC Research in the Media
Kean Birch co-authored an article titled "The great convergence – Does increasing standardization of journal articles limit intellectual creativity". The article explores the process of standardization of publication formats as the amount of work published increases. The authors argue that standardization practices of article publication are largely driven by the researchers' incentive to streamline their daily routines as well as removing the elements of complexity from research practices. The main focus of the article is to examine how such methods affect research papers in the field of Science and Technology Studies.
Sheila Colla discussed the biggest threats wild bees face in an interview with Rewilding Magazine on "Why wild bees matter, and how we can all help save them". Expounding on what people can do to get involved in supporting and saving them, she says: "When people ask how they can help the bees, the number one thing I say is to contribute photos to Bumble Bee Watch or another community science program. Obviously planting plants is another way to support not just pollinators but all sorts of wildlife. So that would be number two. But for that you need access to land and time and resources. Submitting photos is something that anyone can do.".
Join us for some lunchtime words and music at the launch of Gail Fraser's new book Song for the Widowmaker, an engaging, deeply moving tale of immigrant struggle, from an arduous life in Scotland, to the adversities and dangers of mining work in America. The book brings the time and places of a world gone by to life, demonstrating the eternal power of love and commitment in overcoming monumental challenges. The book was launched earlier at the Arts & Letters Club, Toronto. The event at York will be held on Tuesday, November 8, 1-2pm at the EUC Lounge.
EUC and the City Institute in cooperation with University of Toronto Press and the York University Bookstore invite you to a book launch of After Suburbia: Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Roger Keil and Fulong Wu and published by the University of Toronto Press. This is the latest in the Global Suburbanisms book series. The book launch will be held on November 1, 4:30pm at Room 519, Kaneff Tower, York University. The book launch is part of the Peripheral Centralities seminar series, sponsored by the Urban Studies Foundation, that will be held at York from November 1-2 at York University.
Sarah Rotz was featured in YFile in an article "Professor looks toward the future of teaching and learning in post-pandemic world." Pondering the pros and cons of technology, Rotz notes that it is hard to predict how the classroom of the future will look, but she believes there must be thought given to how technology is used. “I’m happy to use it to the extent that it supports our work and builds collaboration, but there are lots of issues about the politics of technology and questions about where our data goes and who administers it. There is a push toward corporatization of the technology space and we can’t take these things lightly as an institution. We have a responsibility," she concludes.
Cate Sandilands delivered an Environmental Humanities Lecture on “Loving the Difficult? Scotch Broom, Plant Invasions, and the Botanical Politics of Decolonization” at the Cogut Institute for Humanities at Brown University. In this lecture, Sandilands explains Scotch broom's history, with illuminating insights on the plant's habitat and how land colonization is currently affecting its existence. The lecture gives important insights on ongoing eradication strategies and practices that ignore Indigenous people's philosophies. She also delivered an Environmental Humanities Workshop on "Fiction and Other Truths: Creative Writing as Inquiry in the Environmental Humanities".
Dayna Scott penned an article on "How Does the Settler State Prime a New Extractive Frontier?" for the Midnight Sun Magazine in which she describes her experience participating in the Attawapiskat River excursion. Scott mentions that the excursion allows the invited group of individuals to see the launch of Neskantaga's sturgeon protection program which is heavily intertwined with commitment of the Neskantaga First Nation to preserve sturgeon population of the river. Other important topics explored in the article included the disruption to the cross-generational conveyance of language, laws and practices by government established institutions even as it is being actively overcome.
Luisa Sotomayor has been cited in an article in the Irish Examiner on student housing crisis noting that the cost of living crisis particularly surrounding housing, rent and accommodation makes it impossible to live on campus, leaving students demanding change. "A lack of affordable housing can impact the academic, health and wellbeing of students, as they face not only a high level of stress, but also a socio-economic burden that can further marginalise them and reproduce social hierarchies, and class, gender, racialist or ageist divides," notes Sotomayor.
The Talking Treaties Collective will celebrate the website launch of the book "A Treaty Guide for Torontonians" with Elder Dr. Duke Redbird on Wednesday, November 9th, 5-7pm at the Textile Museum of Canada, followed by an activation of Ange Loft's Dish Dances movement education videos. In 2021-22 Ange Loft, Victoria Freeman, Martha Stiegman, and other collaborators, created this artful book, an associated website, and a new short dance-based film (Dish Dances), all of which were featured at the 2nd Toronto Biennial of Art in Spring 2022. The event is in partnership with Toronto Biennial of Art, Centre for Indigenous Knowledges and Languages at York University, Art Metropole and Jumblies Theatre & Arts. Copies of the book are available at the Museum Shop and through Art Metropole.

Natalie Wood, ES PhD candidate, recently held a talk moderated by Amber Williams King, MES alumna, on her exhibit at the Space Gallery titled They Say We Can’t Breathe Underwater. The talk is part of Andil Gosine's Nature's Wild/EAJ Seminar Series on Caribbean Queer Visual Ecologies. The exhibit grapples with Wood's experiences of balancing the grief of living as a diasporic Black queer woman with her desire for seeking healing and creating joy. Wood is an award-winning Trinidadian-born, Tkaronto-based visual and media artist. Her multimedia artwork cohabits the areas of popular culture, education and historical research and explores her fascination with counter-narratives, healing cultures and icons that liberate Black and Queer communities. Her practice includes painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, video, and performance, and extends into her work as a curator, educator, and community-based queer activist. She is presently completing a research creation project for her PhD focused on Black Queer Resistance through Caribbean Carnivals.
Mark Winfield has been cited in The Energy Mix news breaking article titled "'Very Nasty Trade-Off' As Ontario Picks Gas, Nuclear Over Renewables" examining the Ontario government's decision to choose gas-fired power plants instead of renewable energy options. Winfield argues that society should not be picking between two catastrophic options but rather focus on avoiding them. In addition, he points out the increasing risk of extending the lifetime of nuclear plant use when it has objectively exceeded its intended life span.

Join an international and university-wide network of researchers interested in studying the Canadian environment! The Environmental Research Group at the Robarts Centre brings together graduate students and faculty at York University studying aspects of the Canadian environment from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives including sciences, social sciences, humanities, fine arts, health and engineering. The groups provides a forum for researchers to share findings and explore key issues in environmental research.
Why join the Environmental Research Group at Robarts Centre?
Increase the exposure of your research within the York community, outside of your unit and Faculty
Participate in annual social and academic events to grow your network of colleagues with shared interests
Access student training opportunities
Receive preference for some awards managed by the Robarts Centre
Join a community of researchers without taking on additional service commitments
Email robarts@yorku.ca if you are interested to join the group!
Contact Us
The EUC Research Update is compiled by the Research Office at EUC: Research Officer Rhoda Reyes, Associate Dean Research, Graduate & Global Affairs Philip Kelly, and Research Assistant Igor Lutay. Thanks to Paul Tran for the web design and development.
We welcome the opportunity to pass along research-related information and achievements from our whole community - faculty, postdocs, visiting scholars, students, and retirees.
News for future updates can be submitted using the EUC Kudos and News form, circulated monthly. Or, send your news directly to: eucresea@yorku.ca
If you are not on the EUC community listserves, but would like to receive this Research Update each month, send an email to eucresea@yorku.ca
Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC)
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