EUC Research Update – March 2025

Accolades, Awards and Acknowledgements

Andil Gosine’s work has received worldwide attention after his planned exhibition “Nature’s Wild with Andil Gosine”, at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington DC, was suddenly cancelled as a consequence of executive orders from the Trump administration. Among other artists, the exhibition was to have featured the work of EUC students Andrew Carenza, Giuliana Racco, and Natalie Wood. Andil has been interviewed in many media outlets, including a Guardian article titled Creating art under Trump will become harder but will remain vital. The article tracks the consequences of the numerous executive orders issued by Donald Trump in his first weeks in office. Among them was an order to terminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices, positions, grants and contracts and to repeal prior executive orders that ensured equal opportunity in the workplace. These orders had an immediate effect on the art scene, cancelling art shows that included DEI themes, including exhibitions of African American artists and LGBTQ+ people of colour. For more on the cancellation of Andil’s exhibition see news stories in The Washington Post, HyperAllergic, the Guardian (March 1st and March 14th), the Globe and Mail, and more than 50 other global media outlets.

In more positive news, Geography at York University has been ranked #2 in Ontario, #4 in Canada, and in the top 100-150 in the World, in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025. For more details, please see News@York.

York also landed in the top 35 institutions in the world for advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), according to the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2024 , which analyzes universities’ contributions to achieving the UN SDGs in research, stewardship, outreach and teaching. In addition, Maclean’s 2025 University Rankings included York as one of the top five best comprehensive universities in Canada.

Sheila Colla has received the NSERC Award for Science Promotion individual award for her efforts in making conservation science more accessible. The award honours individuals and groups who make an outstanding contribution to the promotion of science in Canada through activities encouraging popular interest in science or developing scientific abilities. Colla is a member of the Executive Committee of York’s Bee Ecology, Evolution and Conservation (BEEc) research centre and her NSERC Save the Bumblebee discovery research project aims to save the North American bumblebee species from varied environmental stressors. She is also a co-investigator in the Finding Flowers interdisciplinary research project (with Lisa Myers) which studies the relations between the conservation of native plants and pollinators, along with the care for Indigenous artistic practices, cultures and languages. Colla is also part of the BumbleBeeWatch organization, a North American Citizen Science network that advances invertebrate conservation in collaboration with Wildlife Preservation Canada and the Xerces Society.

Roger Keil has a new co-edited book, with Nicholas Phelps from University of Melbourne and Paul Maginn from University of Western Australia, titled Peripheral Centralities: The Lost and Past Urbanity of the Suburbs (Routledge, 2025). The book features work by scholars and practitioners in architecture, urban/landscape design, urban geography and urban planning. It seeks to examine present-day and proposed/imagined developments, via a social, political, cultural, environmental and/or design lens. Each development represents a new peripheral centre – iconic architectural focal points, self-contained master planned developments, future employment/infrastructure hubs, or loci of alternative living/politics. The book is a product of a series of seminars on Peripheral Centralities: Lost, Past, Present and Future exploring the significance of urban peripheries and their role in urban development, funded by the Urban Studies Foundation.

Peter Victor and Eric Miller received funding from Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) for a project Measuring Ontario’s Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity, The project will link economic production and consumption in Ontario to the state of ecological resource use (Ecological Footprint) and availability (Biocapacity) from 2005-2020. The project will calculate the biocapacity of lands and waters within Ontario’s boundaries, and relate it to provincially-scaled classifications of land use/cover. Data generated by the project is expected to help ground sustainable development in Ontario by providing MNR with a benchmark Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity assessment. In addition, the project will include time series analysis that will enable an evaluation of performance with respect to Ontario’s Biodiversity Strategy targets.

Melissa De Young, MES Alumna, has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of Pollution Probe, effective April 1, 2025. She has held a steady progression of leadership roles at Pollution Probe, including serving as Director of Policy and Programs (leading the Circular Economy and Water Programs), and Project Manager, working on a range of issues related to environmental health, chemicals management, Great Lakes and freshwater, circular economy and transportation. A certified Project Management Professional (PMP), Melissa has extensive experience in designing, implementing and overseeing policy and environmental protection initiatives and public engagement campaigns. Notable initiatives under her leadership have included the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup, Plastics Pathway, Electric Mobility Adoption and Prediction, and the development of an innovative machine learning tool in support of adaptive watershed management.

Kursad Atalay is our new visiting researcher (working with Ellie Perkins) from Adnan Menderes University (ADU), Aydin, Turkey. Kursad serves as a research assistant at ADU’s Department of Economics and Finance while pursuing his doctoral thesis titled “A Critical Analysis of the Concept of Nature in Economic Thought” at Ege University, Bornova, Turkey.

The research focuses on the intersection of economic thought, environmental philosophy, and sustainability and seeks to critically examine the contemporary understanding of nature from a historical and philosophical perspective. Kursad’s visiting scholarship is supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey.

Publications and Reports

Bain, A. L., and Sharp, B. W. (2025). Hacking suburban social infrastructure: glitch subjects and queer practices of social reproduction. Urban Geography, 1–27.

Barratclough, A., Young, B., Thiemann, G., Higdon, J., Raverty, S., Houde, M., Matthews, C., Dominguez-Sanchez, C., and Ferguson, S. Bowhead whale mortality event in Nunavut, Canada – Autumn, 2020. Journal of Cetacean Research and Management.

Behera, S., and Das, R. (2025). WCN25-1993 Chronic Kidney disease as a public health challenge in South Asia: A literature review. World Congress of Nephrology 10 (2).

Birch, H. (2025). More than ‘self-help’: The urban governance of the Ebola outbreak in Monrovia, Liberia. Geoforum, 161, 104250.

de Vries, P. and Kapoor, I. (2025). Psychoanalytic political ecology. Political Geography, Volume 118, 103297.

Durowoju, O.S., Obateru, R.O., Adelabu, S., Olusola, A. (2025). Urban change detection: assessing biophysical drivers using machine learning and Google Earth Engine, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment. 

Gebresselassie, M., Michalek, J., Nock, D., and Harper, C. (2025). Analyzing disparities in app-hailed travel during extreme heat in New York City. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment.

Gingrich, K., Brand-Correa, L., Howarth, E., and Stratton, A. (2025). Degrowth in a settler state: Climate-just economic transitions and Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Ecological Economics.

Igbozurike, J., C., Adeyefa, A., O., Obateru, R., O., and Olusola, A., O. (2025). Spatial variability of sediment grain size across stream orders in the headwater catchment of Omi River Basin, southwestern Nigeria. Hydrology and Hydraulics.

Kapoor, I., & Fridell, G. (2025). Mind the gap: Response to our critics. Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue Canadienne d’études Du Développement, 46(1), 41–47.

Kapoor, I., and Fridell, G. (2025). Reworking development today: What drain theory and decoloniality lack. Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue Canadienne d’études Du Développement, 46(1), 1–19.

Phelps, N., Keil, R., and Maginn, P. (2025). Peripheral Centralities: The Lost and Past Urbanity of the Suburbs. Routledge.

Scott, D., N. (2025). Infrastructural (Dis)Entitlement: Tactics of dispossession on the critical minerals frontier. Journal of Law and Political Economy.

Strange, J.P., Colla, S.R., Adams, L.D., Duennes, M.A., Evans, E.C., Figueros, L.L., Lehmann, D.M., Moylett, H., Richardson, L., Sadd, B.M., Smith, J.W., Smith, T.A., Tripodi, A.D., Spevak, E.M., Inouye, D.W. (2025). An Evidence-based rationale for a North American commercial bumble bee clean stock certification program, Journal of Political Ecology. 

Ward, K., Abbruzzese, T., Bunnell, T., Cardullo, P., Chang, C.C., Miller, B., Ribera-Fumaz, 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. 

Winfield, M., and Stirling, M. (2025). “The environment, megacity growth, and ineffective policy: Housing policy reform in Ontario”. Chapter 9 in, H. McKeen-Edwards, M. Campbell- Verduyn, eds., Ineffective Policies: Causes and Consequences of Bad Policy Choices, Bristol University Press.

Wu, W., J., Remmel, T., K., and Ouellette, M. (2025). Overlapping Landsat scene classifications and focal context to identify Boreal disturbance mapping uncertainty. Geographical Analysis.

EUC and Associated Events

EUC recently hosted the 31st Eco-Arts and Media Festival (March 17-28, 2025). The two-week festival was co-organized by hatem hatem, Lou Holloway, and Lisa Myers as Environmental Arts and Justice Program Coordinator. Titled Fugitive Ecologies, the festival featured artists and facilitators creating artwork and workshops that address entangled legacies of colonialism, ecological rupture, and displacement while cultivating space for speculation and multispecies storytelling. The festival embraced the concept of fugitives—the displaced, the decomposed, the insurgent—as catalysts who challenge linear histories and reimagine relationships with land beyond extraction and ownership. Through installations, performances, and workshops, participants engaged in acts where dissonance and haunting become fertile ground for speculative repair.

At its core, Fugitive Ecologies asked: How do we listen to the stories lands hold? From the oceanic breath of Blue Devil to the decaying brickwork of Stong House, the festival transformed colonial voids into liberatory acts of communal healing and resurgence.

The eco-arts and media festival also marked the opening of the newly renovated Wild Garden Media Centre funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation-John R. Evans Leaders Fund and the Ontario Research Fund. Read the YFile story on the new centre.

On Thursday, April 3, 12pm, York’s Scholars Hub @ Home Speaker Series presents Ilan Kapoor who will deliver a talk on “The Trump Regime’s Predatory Imperial Moves.” This provocative discussion will address the political, economic and psychosocial factors explaining the Trump regime’s recent trade and land grab moves against the likes of Canada, Ukraine, Gaza, Greenland, and the Panama Canal. Kapoor will also assess the likelihood of their success/failure. Register here.

A note from Phyllis Novak – Join us weekly every Tuesday from 5:30-7:30pm to seed what we will plant at Maloca Community Garden this spring! Lots of beautiful seeds. Thanks to those who have been joining so far. So much sweet work. So appreciated.

We’ll start doing some direct sowing and field work twice per week as of April 9, Tuesday and Thursday. For more info, contact Phyllis Novak, Director, Maloca Living Labs.

On Friday, April 4, 12-2pm, EUC presents the fourth seminar in the Africa is (Not) a Country series, with the theme “It Is My Work! Intellectual Property and Glocalization in Africa.”

Speakers include Drs. Desmond Oriakhogba from the University of Western Cape, South Africa, Faith Majakolagbe from the University of Alberta, and Teshager Dagne from York University. Register here. For more information, kindly email dasiedu@yorku.ca.

On Thursday, April 10, 1-2:30pm, the Faculty of Education will hold an online roundtable on Planning, Implementing, and Sustaining Large-Scale Long-Term Research Programs.

Speakers include Professors Stephen Gaetz who will explore these issues from the perspective of his work on homelessness, including the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, the Homeless Hub and Making the Shift; Debra Pepler who will discuss the importance of an interdependent approach to relationships and co-creation in moving research to impact based on her embedded scholarship and her leadership in the Promoting Relationships and Eliminating Violence Network (PREVNet); and Roger Keil who will focus on effective knowledge dissemination in large research projects, highlighting strategies to engage diverse audiences, navigate publishing challenges, and tackle misinformation in the digital age. Register here.

On Wednesday, April 16, 12:30-2pm, the Sustainable Energy Initiative (SEI) presents a talk on Hydrogen, Pension Fund Investments and the Future of Gas Infrastructure. Hydrogen has been highly promoted as a potential substitute for fossil gas in the decarbonization of energy systems. The repurposing of fossil gas infrastructure to transport hydrogen has been proposed as part of the strategy. Others argue that the use of hydrogen as replacement for fossil gas faces intractable barriers and that its role in decarbonization pathways is likely to be far more limited than its proponents suggest. Speakers include Adam Scott from Shift Action for Pension Health and Planet Health as well as Paul Martin from Spitfire Research and Hydrogen Science Coalition. They will discuss this area of research and its implications for investments and energy systems transitions. Register here.

On Wednesday, April 30, EUC will be hosting the annual Change Your World event at York University. The goal of the Change Your World conference is to inspire youth in Ontario to be the next generation of environmentally active citizens.

High school students and teachers will be coming to this dynamic one-day conference that brings together youth and community organizations from across Ontario to discuss, collaborate and learn how to make sustainable and equitable change in our world.

Since 1991, York University has been hosting the International Political Economy and Ecology (IPEE) Summer School organized by the Graduate Programs in Environmental Studies, Geography and Politics. This year, the theme of the course is “Coloniality and the War on Social Reproduction: A Feminist Perspective” with guest instructor, Dr. Silvia Federici, Emerita Professor, Hofstra University, and EUC Course Director, Dr. Anna Zalik.

The course will discuss capitalist development as a process of recolonization that, worldwide, undermines the conditions and possibility of social reproduction. The topics to be studied include: the new ‘enclosures’ and their ecological impact; new forms of warfare; and the global debt crisis (international and public debt). We will also discuss how communities are organizing in defence of their lives and territories and the role that grassroots feminist movements are playing in this context.

Other EUC media and news coverage

YFile News featured Muna Udbi Ali‘s SSHRC Insight Development multi-university collaboration project Exploring the impact of Black faculty cluster hires in Canadian universities with Cornel Grey (Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at University of Western Ontario) and Stephanie Latty (Criminology, Toronto Metropolitan University). The research team draws on Black feminist and critical race scholarship to address anti-Black racism in higher education.

As part of March’s SDG month, YFile News also featured Jennifer Foster’s SSHRC Insight Grant project on Rubble to Refuge with Gail Fraser, Justin Podur, as well as the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) advocating nature-first urban planning and advancing sustainability of the Leslie Street Spit.

The Urban Climate Futures Today (ENVS3800) class, taught by Hillary Birch (PhD Candidate, Environmental Studies), toured the RC Harris Water Treatment Plant in Toronto this month.

With plant manager Gordon Mitchell as their guide, students got a firsthand experience of the infrastructure and its operations. The class took time to reflect on the significant role this water treatment plant has played in the urbanization of Toronto and discussed how climate change is impacting the city’s water management strategies today. 

Jennifer Korosi’s collaborative work to rebuild Canada’s first Indigenous-led research station with Indigenous communities in the Dehcho region in Northwest Territories, Canada, has been featured by YFile as part of the SDG month celebration reflecting university-community partnership in climate science. With the Dehcho Collaborative on Permafrost, the project aims to generate leading-edge scientific and Indigenous knowledge on permafrost, and to use it to co-develop new support tools and risk management strategies to manage permafrost and adapt to permafrost thaw. See related news in the EUC research spotlight on (Re)Building Canada’s First Indigenous-led research station.

Mark Winfield was interviewed in a CityNews article on Experts say Ontario’s excess electricity could short circuit Ford’s 25 per cent U.S. surcharge. The article questions the effectiveness of Doug Ford’s 25 per cent surcharge on electricity supplied to neighbouring states Minnesota, Michigan and New York. While Ford argues it is the best course for retaliation, experts like Winfield point out that Ontario generates too much power and may need to sell it at negative prices to take it off their hands. Winfield also says that states may look to other markets in the U.S. to try to make up the shortfall they may have following Ford’s surcharge. He was also interviewed for an article in Barrie Today, titled Ford’s target in U.S.- Canada trade war? Americans’ kitchen tables.

The Ecological Footprint Initiative (EFI) recently held their first ever undergraduate data workshop. This half-day event introduced undergraduate students to the concept of ecological footprint and biocapacity, how to interact with the data in Excel, and possibilities for research applying the data.

This workshop was organized and led by Eric Miller, Director of EFI, Kiona Lo, Senior Data Analyst at EFI, Kaitlin Pal, Undergraduate Research Assistant at EFI, and Peri Dworatzek, Partnership Coordinator for the International Ecological Footprint Learning Lab.

Members of the International Ecological Footprint Learning Lab (IEFLL) at York also hosted a virtual workshop on community scaling. Eric Miller, Director of the Ecological Footprint Initiative in EUC, presented details about how data and calculations are done in the back-end of ecological footprint calculators with examples of two projects, one with a group of Toronto Parishes and one with the Métis Nation of Ontario. Dr. Katie Kish, Assistant Professor at Cape Breton University and EUC MES graduate, presented on the community-based participatory methodological approaches used in those two projects that Eric spoke about. Anne Kok and Dr. Wolmet Barendregt from the Netherlands presented their research (journal article) that makes recommendations to improve ecological footprint calculators for different types of people. Peri Dworatzek, EUC PhD student and IEFLL Partnership Coordinator, organized and moderated the workshop. In the coming weeks there will be a recording of the workshop posted to the IEFLL YouTube account. 

On Thursday, April 10 at 11am, IEFLL will hold a virtual workshop on Geographic Scaling of Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity. This second workshop is part of the series on downscaling approaches for ecological footprint and biocapacity. This workshop will focus on research that geographically scales ecological footprint and biocapacity to different areas, such as municipalities and provinces. There will be three presentations, one by Dr. Jennie Moore from the British Columbia Institute of Technology, one by Les Kuyck at the City of Calgary, and one by Peri Dworatzek, EUC PhD student. Registration link.  

On Earth Day, April 22 at 12 noon, the Ecological Footprint Initiative is hosting the virtual launch of the new edition of the Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts. This includes data up to the year 2024. Co-producers of these accounts from York University and the University of Iceland will be presenting new findings from this edition of data. Register here.