Welcome to the July 2024 edition of the EUC Research Update - bringing you highlights from research and other scholarly activities at York's Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change. We invite you to view our other recent updates on our Research News page.
Research Spotlights
Luisa Sotomayor: Vertical peripheries and the embodied costs of social housing financialization in Colombia
Gregory Thiemann and Tyler Ross: Multi-institutional research team led by York finds innovative ways of tracking polar bears in the Arctic
Sébastien Lambelet: Revitalizing preemptive power by investigating the housing policies and the development dynamics of Toronto and Ottawa-Gatineau
Accolades and Awards
EUC extends a warm welcome to Dr. Ahmed Abu Shaban as a visiting professor from July 2024 to June 2025. As a professor and dean at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, Palestine, Dr. Abu Shaban brings over 15 years of academic experience in Environmental Sociology, Climate Change, Green Circular Economy, and the Socioeconomics of Rural Development. He has worked extensively in Palestine and internationally, focusing on programs that empower vulnerable groups economically. This year at York, Dr. Shaban will teach ENVS 3400 Introduction to Climate Change Policy and Science and ENVS 4350/5350 Climate Justice in EUC, as well as SOSC 4040 Issues in Business and Society in the Business and Society program in LAPS. His courses will provide students with practical insights into sustainable development strategies.
Raju Das has been awarded a Critical Social Science Perspectives in Global Health Research (CPGH) seed grant for his research titled "Scorching Sites: Examining the Health Impacts of Climate Change on Construction Workers." The CPGH Seed Grants support York University-based research that contributes to the Dahdaleh Institute's research themes of planetary health, global health and humanitarianism and global health foresighting. The award follows the fifth annual CPGH Workshop held in April 2024. For more info about CPGH, visit their project page.
Mahtot Gebresselassie has been awarded funding by York's inaugural Global Research Excellence (GRE) program for her research on “Extreme Weather and Travel Behavior Changes.”
GRE funding aims to support York faculty members who are developing research, training or capacity development projects with global collaborators. Mahtot will be working with a collaborator from the City University of New York (CUNY).
Andil Gosine received a new SSHRC Connections grant for his project titled "Nature's Wild: Call & Response" that will support outreach activities to further engage research findings connected to his book "Nature's Wild: Love, Sex and Law in the Caribbean."
The project will support the training of graduate students toward the publication of their scholarly writing and production of artworks for exhibition in March 2025 as part of the 31st annual Eco Arts Festival at EUC. Expected outputs of the project include the publication of a special edition of PREE journal featuring the students' works, and a panel of experts presentation during the run of "Nature's Wild" at the Art Museum of the Americas in June 2025.
Jennifer Korosi received a subgrant from the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) Cumulative Impact Monitoring Program for the project "Assessing the impact of aerator installation on the chemical and biological recovery of Frame Lake" led by Mike Palmer from the North Slave Research Centre, Aurora Research Institute, Inuvik, Northwest Territories.
The project will investigate the influence of aerator installation on Frame Lake in the City of Yellowknife, through regular sampling of water chemistry, phytoplankton, and zooplankton across seasons before and after aerator installation.
Also involved in the project is Geography PhD candidate, Amanda Little, whose research is focused on the impacts of mining-related arsenic contamination on plankton communities in lakes in Northwest Territories.
Joseph Mensah has been awarded a plaque of appreciation by the African Mobility Scholars Association (AMSA) in recognition of his outstanding contribution to advancing mobility and scholarship in Africa and beyond. AMSA is an Africa-focused non-profit research organization whose primary goal is to promote African mobility research and to contribute to discussion on global as well as Africa-centered mobility issues. It consists of scholars and experts in mobility studies and related fields, consisting of both individual and institutional members.
Barbara Rahder, Professor Emerita and former dean of the Faculty of Environmental Studies, has released her memoir titled "Out of Sight! Memoir of a San Francisco Hippie" (Friesen Press, 2024). The book is Barbara's coming-of-age story set in the iconic time and place of 1960s San Francisco. It weaves one young woman’s experience during a transformative time with unflinching observations on gender, race, and power. Sad, funny, painful, and always very real, Barbara’s story brings a new, critical perspective to the hippie era. And throughout it all ripples an undercurrent of disturbing family tensions. Things that are hidden “out of sight” are not easily confronted, but secrets have a way of surfacing.
John Lau (MES '19) was recently recognized as one of York University’s 2024 Top 30 Alumni Under 30 for his contributions to environmental sustainability as a senior advisor at the Ontario Energy Board's Energy Transition department. After graduating from York, Lau helped combat climate change through his work at Natural Resources Canada, where he monitored and analyzed international and domestic clean energy policies and led cooperation between federal and provincial governments to report on the progress of clean energy policy implementation. He then joined the Natural Gas and Hydrogen team at Natural Resources Canada, where he has led the federal government's policy and market analysis on gaseous fuels. Moreover, Lau spearheaded projects focused on natural gas sector decarbonization and advancing progress toward net-zero emissions for Canada and its allies.
Meetkumar Patel is a recipient of EUC's Undergraduate Research Award which provides opportunities for selected students enrolled in EUC undergraduate majors to tackle a focused research project under the mentorship of a faculty member. He is working with Gail Fraser on the project "Comparing trail camera images with passive acoustic monitoring to measure predator disturbances in a double-crested cormorant colony at Tommy Thompson Park."
Other EUCURA awardees are Shazde Mir, who is working with Teresa Abruzzesse on the project "Seeds of Change: Cultivating urban revitalization through agriculture and community building in Gary, Indiana (USA)"; Katherine Tse, who is working with Adeyemi Olusola on the project "Modelling the impact of runoff on catchment hydrology: Application of HEC-HMS within the Upper Humber River Catchment;" and Aidan Carino, working with Jennifer Korosi on the project "Understanding spatial and seasonal variation in phytoplankton production in two south-central Ontario lakes that experience harmful algal bloom".
Guilianna Racco has been granted an EUC Dissertation Field Research Award. Guilianna's project entails the research and production of participatory, socially-engaged artworks focused on physical, mental and emotional borders. Her work is being undertaken in Barcelona with female migrants of diverse sexual orientations, mainly from Latin America. Her project proposes an artistic exploration of borders through the elicitation of records (writing, drawing, voice and video) combined with textile techniques expressing lived migration experiences of participants as “explorers” of a foreign land/culture, and of physical, mental and emotional borders.
Christian Costanzo-Vignale has been awarded the Leslie Sanders Prize for the Study of Canada for his MA thesis on Disinformation, Exclusion and its Politics: Canadian Right-Wing Extremist Community within a Digital Landscape. The Leslie Sanders Prize for the Study of Canada recognizes a Master's student whose thesis, MRP or equivalent on a Canadian topic best advances knowledge of Canada. This award is offered in honour of a long-standing member of the Robarts Centre community who made substantial contributions to the study of Canada.
Christian also received earlier a Paul Simpson-Housley Award which is awarded annually to one MA/MSc graduate student in Geography with an outstanding thesis or major research paper and one PhD student in Geography with an outstanding dissertation.
Publications and Reports
We are proud to announce the release of the EUC IMPACT REPORT 2023-2024.
The report focuses on the theme "Towards Just and Sustainable Cities" - focusing on work at EUC to advance a just and sustainable future for cities and urban regions, both in Canada and around the world.
The report highlights the breadth of interdisciplinary activities underway in the EUC community, the wide range of community-engaged research and teaching that we undertake, and the global reach of our engagements and impacts.
Attia, C.-M., & Flicker, S. (2024). The affective toll of COVID-19 on queer joy: A study of young people in Toronto, Melbourne and New York. Sexualities.
Basu, R., Cranney, B., Isla, A., Makarchuk, L., Concepcion, E.P., Perez, V.P., Peralta, C., Rojbi, A., Eds. (2024). Cuban Women: Politics, Culture and Revolution, Canadian Woman Studies, 36 (3,4).
Belmessous, F., Blanc, M., & Kipfer, S. A. (2024). Éditorial : Racisme, racialisation et production de l’espace. Espaces et sociétés, 190 (3), 9–19.
Biglieri, S., Bochenek, J., Abdalla, S., Hartt, M., Lopez, K. J., Keil, R., & Weldrick, R. (2024). Networked everyday lives in the ‘care-full’ city: A framework for examining the complexities of immigrants living with dementia, carepartners, and care workers. Journal of Urban Affairs, 1–23.
Brand-Correa, L.I. (2024). Demand-side, socio-cultural and systemic solutions: the contributions of Max-Neef’s work for climate change and sustainability. In L. Valenzuela, & M. del Valle Barrera (Eds.), Beyond Ecological Economics and Development: Critical Reflections on the Thought of Manfred Max-Neef. Routledge.
Bras, T. and Das, R.J. (Eds, 2024). Interrogating the Future: Essays in Honour of David Fasenfest. Brill Studies in Critical Social Sciences.
Das, R.J. (2024). Questioning Poverty, Questions for Poverty Analysis: Towards a Basic Theoretical Framework. World Marxist Review, 2 (2), 103-126.
Flicker, S., Owino, M., MacEntee, K. (2024). Bringing Intersectionality Theory to Life: Storying Experiences of Navigating the Triple Pandemics Through Cellphilming as Activist Scholarship. In C. Mitchell, S.M.H. Sadati, L.J. Starr, & S. Roy, (Eds.), Re-visioning Cellphilming Methodology (4th ed., pp.97-112).
Gebresselassie, M., & Wood, P. (2024). Addressing Toronto’s Congestion Will Take More Than Technology. Spacing.
Kapoor, I., Fridell, G., Sioh, M., de Vries, P., Uluorta, H., Richter, H., Caiconte, C., & Gómez, M. (2024). Book forum: Global Libidinal Economy. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 25 (1), 108–133.
Keil, R. (2024). Pandemics, cities, and health policy. In R. K. Vogel (Ed.), Handbook of Urban Politics and Policy (pp. 523–538). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Korosi, J. B., Adano, R. C., Do, P. H. P., Hall, R. I., Jeyarajah, J., Stewart, E. M., Wiklund, J.A., & Thienpont, J. R. (2024). Ecosystem impacts of an invasive charophyte (Nitellopsis obtusa) interpreted in a multiple stressor context using paleolimnology. Lake and Reservoir Management, 40 (2), 132–144.
McAllister, C. (2024). The Work of Grace and the Problem of the Social in a Dam Conflict in Chilean Patagonia. American Religion, 5 (2), 105–125.
Mulvihill, P. (2024). Environmental disasters and the elusiveness of prevention. Disaster Prevention and Management.
Olusegun, C., Ogunjo, S., Olusola, A. (2024). Detecting Decadal Temporal Shifts in Rainfall Across the West African Sahel During the Twentieth Century. In M. Ksibi, A. Sousa, O. Hentati, H. Chenchouni, J.L. Velho, A. Negm, J. Rodrigo-Comino, R. Hadji, S. Chakraborty, & A. Ghorbal (Eds.), Recent Advances in Environmental Science from the Euro-Mediterranean and Surrounding Regions (4th ed.).
Olusegun, C., Ogunjo, S., Olusola, A. (2024). Trends in the Spatial Extent of Precipitation Over West Africa in the Twentieth Century. In M. Ksibi, A. Sousa, O. Hentati, H. Chenchouni, J.L. Velho, A. Negm, J. Rodrigo-Comino, R. Hadji, S. Chakraborty, & A. Ghorbal (Eds.), Recent Advances in Environmental Science from the Euro-Mediterranean and Surrounding Regions (4th ed.).
Olusola, A., Ogunjo, S., & Olusegun, C. F. (2024). Imprints of large‐scale climate oscillations on river flow in selected Canadian river catchments. River.
Rahder, B. (2024). Out of Sight! Memoir of a San Francisco Hippie. Friesen Press.
Shaffer, D.K., & Hovorka, A. (2024). Expansive education leadership: Two viewpoints on learning, and leaning into, spacious leading. In N. Lemon (Ed.), Doing Things Differently: Raising Awareness of Wellbeing and Selfcare as a Priority in Higher Education (pp. 225–237). Routledge.
EUC Events and Media Coverage
Gail Fraser was featured in a City News report titled "Cormorants have taken over the Toronto Islands. The reason? Two bald eagles".
Fraser comments on the population of cormorants, which has doubled this summer on the Toronto Islands. She believes the presence of cormorants indicates a healthy ecosystem supporting them, and highlights that “if we want the birds to return to Tommy Thompson Park, we also need to manage the waters around the park to reduce the amount of human disturbances.”
To close off the exhibition "The Plural of He," curated by Andil Gosine, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art held a celebratory event held on July 17, to launch the catalog for the show, and to celebrate other publications related to the show. The multifaceted exhibition explores the life and work of Colin Robinson (1961–2021), the Trinidadian-American poet, critic, and unsung hero of social and sexual liberation movements in New York, the Caribbean, and throughout the world. In newly commissioned works, artists including EUC PhD student Natalie Wood and alumna Amber Williams-King draw from their resonances with materials encountered in Colin’s archive. Through their engagements, they find continuity between their lives and his, echoing and extending Colin’s pursuit of connection, community and justice.
Andil and Natalie were also part of The Colin Robinson Reading Hour + Lime to further celebrate "The Plural of He" exhibition inspired by the politics and poetics of Caribbean queer activist and writer Colin Robinson. The event was sponsored by Another Story Bookshop.
Ilan Kapoor’s co-authored book, Global Libidinal Economy (2023), the first book to examine global political economy with a psychoanalytic lens, is the subject of a book forum in the journal, Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory. The forum comprises four critical commentaries, as well as two interventions by the book co-authors (an introduction to the main arguments of the book, and a response to the forum contributors).
Ilan also penned an opinion on “Spivak, politics of pronunciation, and the search for a just democracy: The controversy over Gayatri Spivak’s recent public rebuke of a young Dalit scholar,” in Al Jazeera in June 2024 noting that the controversy over Gayatri Spivak’s public rebuke of a young, Dalit scholar may seem like a storm in a teacup, but it has important social and political implications.
EUC alumna Victoria MacPhail and Sheila Colla's research paper was featured in a YFile article titled "Community science volunteers can set scientific world abuzz with new bumble bee sightings." The paper, Bumble Bee Watch community science program increase scientific understanding of an important pollinator group across Canada and the USA, was published in the journal PLOS ONE. “We really value the contribution of community scientists and the breadth of data they are able to gather, including a wide range of locations and species. As scientists usually lack the resources and time to do this kind of field work over such a large geographic area, it really shines a spotlight on the importance of community science programs,” says MacPhail, who conducted the research as part of her PhD at York’s Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC) supervised by Sheila Colla. Victoria is now working as Issues Manager at Environment & Climate Change Canada.
Steven Tufts wrote an op-ed article in The Globe and Mail titled "LCBO strike could herald long and nasty battle over who sells booze in Ontario." The article reflects on how the provincial government’s decentralization of liquor distribution to wine stores, convenience outlets, grocery chains, and corner stores, in an effort to increase consumer access, has increased retail competition, threatening the livelihoods of Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) and Beer Store employees. The Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) has responded with a strategy to protect the wages and working conditions of its current members, mobilize community support, and advocate for the growth and expansion of unionized locations. Tufts argues that in order to avert extended labour disputes, the government must formulate a comprehensive strategy to address the displacement of alcohol retail workers and ensure that unions are granted a significant role in the transitional process.
Mark Winfield penned an op-ed article in The Globe and Mail titled "Ontario turning urban planning over to developers – what can go wrong?" In this article, Winfield writes that Ontario's current government has heavily influenced urban planning in the Greater Toronto Area by prioritizing developer interests.
Winfield argues that effective urban planning and municipal control must be reinstated to ensure functional, affordable, and sustainable urban spaces. He suggests imposing time limits on development approvals to curb speculative behaviours and emphasizes the need for robust protections for affordable rental housing. Recognizing that developer self-interest may not align with public policy goals is crucial for Ontario to address its housing market dysfunction.
Contact Us
The EUC Research Update is compiled by the Research Office at EUC: Associate Dean Research, Graduate & Global Affairs Philip Kelly, Research Officer Rhoda Reyes, and Work-Study Students Xinyu Mei and Kira Jordun. 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
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