Past Seasons

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Professor Sheliza Ibrahim

Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy

Questioning the collective imagination of contemporary issues from a science and numeracy lens 

Contemporary issues are understood and shaped by the collective imagination. In this lecture, I introduced young scholars to the critical thinking required to navigate perspectives and positions through quantitative reasoning and socio-scientific understanding. They use the conceptual framework of critical visualization to capture images from local societies and analyse them using frames of reference grounded in critical pedagogy, actor-network theory and place-based education.  They question how socio-scientific values influence contemporary issues, and how quantitative reasoning and data interpretation validate our understanding of these contemporary issues. Some issues examined include, food security and local greenhouses, STEM careers for Black professionals, urbanization and wildlife preservation, and communication during the COVID19 pandemic.

SESSION RECORDING

Professor Ken Derry

Department of Historical Studies 

“We Are Our Stories”: Healing and Indigenous Films

Stories are incredibly powerful. They tell us who we are. They can create, and destroy, entire communities. Indigenous storytelling has always taken many different forms, and one of the most recent forms is film. Movies have made it possible for Indigenous stories to reach, and affect, a much wider audience more quickly than ever before. In this lecture, I consider the ways in which a number of recent Indigenous films made in Canada connect with Métis scholar Jo-Ann Episkenew’s understanding of how stories can help with healing. These ways include giving voice to trauma; pushing back against colonial myths; affirming Indigenous histories and ways of knowing; and promoting joy.

SESSION RECORDING

Professor Liz Coulson

Department of Language Studies

Going Glocal:  Affordance in the use of VR and AI as teacher and leadership training tools in local and global classrooms

Advancements in the use of immersive technologies for teaching and learning are being described as the next revolution in how we deliver instruction.  From prompt engineering to learner customization in a 4D and 360 worlds, it’s exciting for us to continue to wonder what the use of new tools like Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality actually look like, sound like and feel like in a classroom? In this talk we will imagine the futuristic classroom together while reflecting on the warnings and cautions from the founders of the technologies themselves. How do we temper our excitement with a methodical analysis of human- centered design principles and values to inform the way forward? This talk describes a current research project underway to assess immersive technologies as they are used to support vulnerable learners. I will also share the promise of AI and VR environments as a safe training space for future teachers and leaders to rehearse, test and refine pedagogies in both local and global classrooms.

Professor Andrea Olive

Department of Political Science 

Department of Geography, Geomatics and Environment

Protecting the Prairies

Canada’s grassland prairie ecosystem is iconic but under threat. This talk, based on the new book Protecting the Prairies, explores the history of grassland conservation through the life of a farmer turned politician turned conservationist. The story illustrates how conservation is for everyone and how all Canadians should get involved in protecting the places and species they love.

Professor Loren Martin

Department of Psychology

Pain and the Social Brain

Human health is inextricably linked to psychological and social factors within an individual's environment. Strong social bonds correspond with better health outcomes such as reduced stress, and lower rates of anxiety and depression, and are protective against the development of chronic pain. Increasingly, pain has been recognized to occur within a social sphere and is commonly communicated to and influenced by others. While our understanding of biological and psychological processes in pain is reasonably well developed, the social dimension of pain has received far less attention. It is of considerable surprise to many that social contexts and social interactions affect pain sensitivity in laboratory animals—but such observations have been made, and interest in the topic is growing. In this lecture, I will discuss recent work done by my lab using laboratory mice that examines how pain responses are changed by the presence of another individual and the brain circuits that control these changes. Understanding the influence of social context on pain will gives us fundamental insight into the mechanisms that engage empathy and pain circuits that are crucial for survival.

SESSION RECORDING

Professor Lindsay Schoenbohm

Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences

The Big One: The Where, When, and How Bad of Earthquake Science 

The biggest earthquake you’ve never heard of happened in Chile on February 27, 2010. It was the sixth largest ever recorded, with a magnitude of 8.8. It caused three minutes of intense shaking, and the tsunami it generated resulted in damage as far away as Japan. Yet only 550 people died in this earthquake. Compare it to what happened in Haiti just a month earlier, on January 12, 2010. That earthquake you definitely remember because it was awful, and you and countless others donated to the rescue and recovery effort. As many as 220,000 people died. But this earthquake was only a magnitude 7.0, 500 times less powerful than the Chile earthquake. What’s the difference? Prediction and preparedness. This lecture will explore how and how well we can predict the location and timing of earthquakes. We’ll also discover what makes some earthquakes so deadly. And in case you are wondering, yes, a major earthquake is possible in southern Ontario. Come find out more so you can be prepared for the next big one! 

Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Professor John Percy

Department of Chemical & Physical Sciences

Misconceptions about the Universe: From Everyday Life to the Big Bang

A misconception is a belief that is strongly held, but actually incorrect.  In this profusely-illustrated, non-technical presentation, This talk will provide a gentle overview of astronomy by touching on a wide variety of common misconceptions, from everyday life (e.g., the cause of the seasons) to things in our solar system, to black holes, UFOs, and the Big Bang. I shall emphasize the many causes of these misconceptions, since these same causes are responsible for much of the other misinformation and "fake news" which is so rampant in today's society.  Lots of time for Q&A.

SESSION RECORDING

Professor Mairi Cowan

Department of Historical Studies 

Demonic Infestation in 17th-Century Quebec: "The Diabolical Arts and Daily Lives of Early Canada”

What can we learn about history from studying beliefs about witches and demons? In researching a case of bewitchment and demonic possession in 17^th-century Quebec, Professor Cowan has gained insight into the everyday experiences and deep anxieties of colonists in early Canada. This research project has brought her from the shores of the St. Lawrence River to the Vatican archives as she follows stories about strange signs that appeared in the sky in 1660, a teenaged domestic servant who acted as if possessed, disputes between a bishop and a governor about how to respond to reports of demonic interference, treatments by nuns in a hospital, the execution of a miller accused of witchcraft, and a healing ritual performed by an unexpected agent. Mairi’s analysis of these stories shows us what the people of New France feared as both natural and supernatural threats, and reminds us that their colonial endeavour was in a precarious position.

SESSION RECORDING

Professor Omidali Jazi

Department of Mathematical & Computational Sciences

COVID-19 Pandemic: Tracking the Global Outbreak, Statistical Modelling, Vaccine Efficacy

This talk will illustrate the global outbreak of coronavirus during the first phase of the pandemic. As well as the statistical methods for modeling infectious diseases. Lastly, Professor Jazi will talk about the efficacy of the mRNA vaccine.

Professor Rafael Chiuzi

Department of Management

Exprocity! The surprising Science behind Effective Team Performance

Have you ever wondered how to increase engagement and achieve better performance with your team? Do you have questions about remote team management in flexible work arrangements? In this intriguing Lecture Me! talk, Dr. Rafael Chiuzi will share with you the surprising science underlying high-performing teams and some practical ideas you can apply to your life. After three years of research and hundreds of participants, Dr. Chiuzi has summarized all the evidence and will present it using real-life examples.

Professor Negin Dahya

Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology

Learning Technology Systems in Everyday Life: Women’s Experiences Navigating Refugee Resettlement

This research presents findings from nine focus group discussions (n=23) with women in Washington State who have experienced forced migration and are now living in the USA. The data set additionally includes interviews with refugee service providers, including public librarians (n=21). Adopting a Feminist STS framework, and drawing on transformative research design practices, the study focuses on what types of technology education and access are available through refugee service providers, as well as addressing women’s lived experiences of technology starting in their countries of origin and moving through this migration into the USA. Distinctly, this research has engaged participants in discussions about expanded notions of technology, including tools like household appliances, transportation technology, and financial services like ATMs, in addition to digital technology like mobile phones and online media. Preliminary findings from this research offer a picture of what types of technology education and access services are available to women. Additionally, through this research we address how women learn to navigate technology systems in everyday life, across domestic, public, and government spheres.

SESSION RECORDING

Professor Elizabeth Johnson

Department of Psychology

How Children Learn Language?

Long before children learn to tie their shoes or ride a bike, they master language. By the age of 2, children typically know hundreds of words and are stringing together grammatically meaningful multi-word utterances. How do children master the language so quickly and seemingly effortlessly, while adults often struggle for years to simply learn to order a meal in a new language? In this talk, I will summarize the state of the art in child language acquisition. I will outline some active debates in the field (e.g., does baby talk facilitate early language acquisition) as well as debunk some classic myths about how language learning works (e.g., learning more than one language at once is detrimental to a child’s development). I will also discuss best practices for helping children develop strong language skills and summarize our recent findings regarding the pandemic’s impact on infant and toddler language development. Instructions for how you and your child can learn more about children’s development by getting actively involved in local research projects at universities in the Mississauga-Oakville area will be provided. 

SESSION RECORDING

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

 

Professor Sonia Kang

Department of Management

Naming and Framing: Perceptions of Racial Groups

Racial group labels such as black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC); white; visible minorities; and First Nations are among many terms used to categorize people in both formal and informal contexts. Although these kinds of labels are used widely, there is uncertainty around correct or even appropriate labels to use. In this Lecture Me! talk, Dr. Sonia Kang will share recent research on preferences of racial group labels.

Professor Sarah Hillewaert

Department of Anthropology

Yoga as Development for Africa

Professor Hillewaert studies the introduction of yoga and mindfulness as new forms of development in Eastern Africa. She explores why North American yoga practitioners travel to countries like Kenya to teach yoga and mindfulness and considers how local communities respond to these new ideas. What negotiating is required for "yoga as development" projects to be successful? And what does this trend tell us about the changing stakes of humanitarianism today?

NOT AVAILABLE

Professor Otto Yung

Department of Management

Risk is certain. So what does the data tell us?

We’ll apply volatility models from the field of Finance to analyze 
historical market prices from traditional blue-chip stocks to 
exchange traded funds. Discussions will also include popular 
“meme” stocks and Cryptocurrencies.

Professor Sherry Fukuzawa

Department of Anthropology

Professor Nicole Laliberte

Department of Geography, Geomatics and Environment

Councillor Veronica King-Jamieson

Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation

Community-engaged Learning with Local Indigenous Community

Professor Rasmus Larsen

Forensic Science Program

Department of Philosophy

Psychopaths: Dangerous Social Predators or Stigmatizing Cultural Lore?

Psychopathy is a psychiatric syndrome associated with chronic behaviors and a profound lack of conscience. A Stereotypical psychopath is commonly described as a dangerous social predator, utterly incapable of empathy and remorse. In this talk, Professor Larsen presents the surprising results from recent research, which he thinks not only challenge widespread beliefs about psychopaths, but also question the existence of the syndrome itself.

SESSION RECORDING

Professor Jerry Flores

Department of Sociology

Disappearing in the City: An Urban Ethnography of Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women

This talk will investigate the factors that place Indigenous women at risk of experiencing interpersonal and institutional forms of violence in large urban settings like Toronto where most Indigenous women are last seen alive and well.

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Professor Judith Andersen

Department of Psychology

Overriding the Stress Response

Professor Judith Andersen studies stress and resilience among first responders. In this talk, she will share intervention techniques successful in reducing stress during crisis. 
 

Professor Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi

 

Department of Historical Studies 

Pathologizing Iran and Islam

Professor Tavakoli-Targhi explores how the cholera epidemic in the 19th century facilitated the deployment of medical prognosis and diagnosis in Iranian politics. It also explains how the shift from humoral to microbial hygiene led to the reconceiving of jinns as germs, and the emergence of a Pasteurian conception of Islam focused on social, spiritual, and political health. 

A Land of Her Own: Tales of Three Women Authors from Quebec Literature

Quebec offers a fertile ground for authors of a variety of origins, cultures, and languages who are united by several common factors: transculturation, immigration, identity and alterity, memory, and relationship with French, among others. This talk will present diverse ways that these topics are depicted by three authors from Quebec; KimThúy, Ying Chen, and Aki Shimazaki. Participants will be invited to reflect on how the authors’ stories relate to their own thoughts and experiences.  

Professor Tracy Rogers

Forensic Science Program & Department of Anthropology

Found: Human Remains

Join Dr. Tracy Rogers to discover how human remains cases are investigated.

The Big One: The Where, When, and How Bad of Earthquake Science 

Cooking is a primal way of expressing love and hospitality. It is also how many people express their creativity. In this latter manner, it is very much like fine art: painting, music, poetry, dance, and the rest. So why do so many thinkers deny that cuisine is a form of art? In this talk, I'll try to explain, and show that, the nay-saying notwithstanding, cooking can be an art form.

Professor Rhonda McEwen

Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology

Communicating during COVID-19: China and the Diaspora

After the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was first detected in China in December 2019, it spread rapidly, threatening lives as well as social, economic, and emotional well-being in one of the world's most densely populated countries. People relied more heavily on technologies to stay connected to each other, to shop online, and acquire information. This talk is about people's uses of technologies during a pandemic.

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Moby Dick's Latest Fight: Why Plastic and Sound in our Oceans Matter

We thought oceans were limitless, filled with danger and mystery. While some mystery remains, we now realize that our reach is more impactful and expansive than previously imagined. This presentation traces some changes in the oceans with a focus on whales. We will examine how the increasing presence of sounds and plastic affect whales, and how these impacts reflect changes and concerns on the oceans.

Coping with the Cold: The Winter Ecology of Freshwater Fishes

Will shorter winters under a changing global climate be ‘bad’ or ‘good’ for freshwater fishes in Ontario?

Grandmothers Behind the Scenes

Research shows that mothers’ mental health is essential to family wellbeing, especially for immigrants and resettled refugees. In this talk, Dr. Kahil brings attention to an understudied population: grandmothers. Through personal narratives from recently conducted interviews with Syrian newcomer mothers and grandmothers in the GTA, Kahil highlights the behind-the-scenes influence of grandmothers on the emotional wellbeing of their daughters and granddaughters. The talk will show the significance of grandmothers for the settlement of newcomer families and offer some suggestions for what this means for the future of Canadian society.

Climate Change: Taking the Earth's Temperature

Professor Moore has for over 25 years taken the earth’s temperature and done in depth analysis on how and why it is changing. He has flown through winter storms in the Arctic, climbed some of our highest peaks, measured Arctic sea ice and examined ice cores.  Now, he would like to share his findings and thoughts with you, so, you can better understand what climate change means to you.

Italian-Canadian Foodways: Redefining Italian Culinary Culture

Participants will embark on a North American food tour as the talk explores the influence that Italian immigration has had on food, from recipes and traditions to eateries and industries, both locally and abroad. Fastening the link between consumption and identity, we will chart the ways in which food is replete with cultural meaning: what it represented when immigrated, and how it became (and remains) one of the most important contributions to Italian cultural identity.

Professor Rosa Hong

Department of Language Studies

A Land of Her Own: Tales of Three Women Authors from Quebec Literature

Quebec offers a fertile ground for authors of a variety of origins, cultures, and languages who are united by several common factors: transculturation, immigration, identity and alterity, memory, and relationship with French, among others. This talk will present diverse ways that these topics are depicted by three authors from Quebec; KimThúy, Ying Chen, and Aki Shimazaki. Participants will be invited to reflect on how the authors’ stories relate to their own thoughts and experiences.  

***CANCELLED***

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Gothic Jane Austen

What is the Gothic, what does it have to do with Jane Austen?  The eighteenth-century witnessed the birth of novels dealing with dark secrets, violence, and terror; their popularity reached a peak in the 1790s when Austen began writing her novel Northanger Abbey. In this talk, Professor Robinson discusses Gothic fiction and shows how a close reading of Northanger Abbey uncovers dark secrets, violence, and terror, too. Austen's novel may be a courtship novel, but as Professor Robinson reveals, it is no lighthearted romance.

A Very Different Future: How the Fourth Industrial Revolution is Reshaping How We Live

This talk will explore the implications of a blend of emerging and current technologies that are transforming industries and how we live.

#Dante: Teaching the Classics Through the Contemporary

It is easy to forget that the great literary works of the past enjoyed pop culture status in their day and time.  While terms such as trending, viral, and zeitgeist are thoroughly modern, we can use them to help us harness the context in which classics, such as Dante's Divine Comedy, were written.  By doing so, we gain not merely a 21st century appreciation for them, but step back in time and re-create the world in which they too went viral.

Considering the Human Dimensions of the Urban Forest

What is the urban forest and how does it differ from natural landscapes? Millions of tax dollars go to support municipal forest management projects, including tree planting, pruning, park design, silviculture, and yet urban forests are novel ecosystems that lack ecological integrity. Property-level decisions are constantly changing the structure and function of the urban forest, but who is making these decisions and are they considering best management practices when they do?

How Video Games Can Make You a Better Person

Professor Sanja Hinić-Frlog 

Department of Biology

Lessons from the Fossil Birds

Features of fossil birds can be used to reveal how modern birds evolved to skillfully move in both aerial and aquatic environments

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Professor Claudiu Gradinaru

Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences