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Eight Faculty of Arts and Science students have been earned awards for Project-based and Portfolio PhD Research. This award provides financial support for students pursuing doctoral research who are undertaking a project option and/or a portfolio PhD.

The funding supports graduate programs, which are responding to increased student demand for non-traditional, or “alternative” doctoral formats that accommodate different research contributions and applications, new forms of knowledge mobilization, the development of new competencies, and that foster student awareness of the transferable skills acquired in the completion of the doctoral degree.

“We were so impressed with the range of the scholarship being pursued by our students who have embraced the Project-based and Portfolio PhD thesis. Students in the Faculty of Arts and Science have been leading the way in re-imagining what forms rigorous and creative doctoral research can take,” says James Fraser, Associate Dean (Graduate).

Earning the awards are:

Bojana Babic (Department of Film and Media) - Her PhD project adopts a research-creation approach to explore domestic space as a narrative, social, and aesthetic construct. This exploration is driven by a desire to understand how “impossible” or altered spaces—conceptualized through narrative theory, architecture, and philosophy of space—reflect, distort, and challenge our perceptions of home, belonging, and identity. How do we live in and through spaces that are constantly being negotiated, contested, and reimagined?

Saskia De Wildt (Environmental Studies) - His research engages with the question of how to ethically bring together the different knowledge systems of western-based genomic science and Inuit Quajimajatuqangit in the context of Nunavut of polar bear monitoring and management in the Nunavut Settlement Area (NSA). With his PhD research has explored whether it’s possible to rethink the challenges of ethical knowledge reconciliation through an arts-based, post-disciplinary practice-based approach within an otherwise natural science heavy research project.

Tracey Guptill (Cultural Studies) - She is examining intersectional ecodramaturgies, specifically in relation to vocality (the lived voice) as a theatrical tool for understanding ecological organicity and settler accountability. Her research will occur via the creation of an embodied performance that explores organicity and that exploring the body-voice connection enables the performer to experience an interconnection between the organicity of the human body and the organicity of the natural world.

Ahmed Ismaiel (Department of Film and Media) - His project will consist of a dissertation and a hybrid documentary film that will provide both an observational account of the realities of Egyptian rural women breadwinners, and incorporate scripted segments that feature the story of Isis, as recreated and played by an actress. He will focus on the sacred village of Abydos, famous for its magnificent temple complex that prominently features the Isis myth on its walls.

Linghui Jin (Philosophy) - The research focuses on the often-overlooked history of Chinese “comfort women,” who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during Japan’s military expansion and occupation in neighboring regions during the Second World War. Through her project, the aim is to illustrate their experiences in Northeast China, using visual narratives to engage the public in critical reflection on wartime sexual violence and its enduring impacts.

Jung-Ah Kim (Department of Film and Media) - Her research is an autoethnographic exploration focusing on her interaction with weaving since her arrival in Canada and the traditional Korean carpet she discovered in the Canadian museum. It explores how hands-on involvement in learning about weaving became an opportunity for personal observations and reflections that shaped her understanding of technology, labour, and women, ultimately transforming her relationship with the technical world around me.

Masoud Babadi Ataabadi (Department of Geography) - Landsat image timeseries are pivotal for studying land use/land cover (LULC) and landscape change due to their extensive historical archive spanning over 50 years. However, the low temporal resolution and more importantly irregular clear skyobservations are some of the main drawbacks of Landsat data, restricting its applicability. This research seeks to address this challenge by employing advanced deep learning (DL) techniques to reconstruct irregular and sparse Landsat time series.

Melanie Murdock (Department of Gender Studies) - Her research objective is to perform a comprehensive program evaluation of Ontario’s Midwifery Education Program (MEP) to evaluate its ability to provide midwives the training required to become 2SLGBTQQIA+- inclusive care providers upon graduation. Her research will be articulated through Feminist Theory (FT) and Queer Theory (QT).

Learn more about the awards on the webpage.