One-stop collection and analysis with Archive-It and the Archives Unleashed Project

July 31, 2020

Internet Archives Project FEATURED image for the YFile email

Internet Archive servers (photo by Ian Milligan). — Internet Archive servers. Photo by Ian Milligan

Suppose you’re an archivist, librarian, or historian who’s trying to document and preserve for posterity a narrative of the COVID-19 pandemic or the ongoing Black Lives Matters protests. You’ll naturally be gathering documents from the web, and with tools available today, it won’t be difficult to accumulate thousands or even millions of relevant records. How can you make sure that a scholar down the road can actually use the material that you’ve collected?

Right now, working with data at scale is difficult for historians and other scholars in the humanities and social sciences. Since 2017, the Archives Unleashed Project has been at the forefront of making this possible, through accessible tools, platforms, and learning materials. This next project will combine the Archives Unleashed Project’s analytical tools with the Internet Archive’s Archive-It service, a best-in-class web archiving and access solution and infrastructure, to further lower barriers in web archiving and provide an end-to-end process for collecting and studying archived web records and data.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $1,084,087 CAD grant to the University of Waterloo to support the “Integrating Archives Unleashed Cloud with Archive-It” project. Led by Professor Ian Milligan, from the University of Waterloo’s Department of History, alongside co-investigators Jimmy Lin, professor and Cheriton Chair at Waterloo’s Cheriton School of Computer Science, Nick Ruest, digital assets librarian in the Digital Scholarship Infrastructure department of York University Libraries, and Jefferson Bailey, director of Web Archiving & Data Services at the Internet Archive, this project represents the next stage of the Archives Unleashed Project. With this funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the project hopes to bridge the current gulf between web archiving collection, access, and data-driven analysis.

Web archiving is the process of collecting portions of the World Wide Web to ensure the information is preserved in an archive for future researchers, historians, and the public. It’s critical to preserve webpages: we have all encountered “404 Not Found” errors as we browse the web, reminders that information is continually lost, gone missing, or is deleted. Think of how many people have experienced the world during the social distancing of COVID-19: our news, social interactions, learning, working, and beyond. “Data is rapidly becoming the building blocks of our histories,” Milligan explains. As future historians try to piece together our current moment, from exploring misinformation to privacy concerns to social media phenomena, they will need tools and platforms to make sense of all this information.

Such a project is only possible through interdisciplinary collaboration. Partnering with librarians and archivists such as Bailey and Ruest is essential both to be able to apply cutting-edge approaches to the ethically-informed extraction and arrangement of web archival data, but also for the creation of documentation and learning guides to ensure people can use these materials. Combined with Lin’s information retrieval background, and Milligan’s subject-matter expertise of a historian, the interdisciplinary team is confident that future users will be able to make sense of the web archive data their tools generate.

This project represents a follow-up to an effort that began in 2017 with the same name, also funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to develop web archive search and data analysis tools. Armed with these powerful tools, researchers, scholars and archivists now have the ability to access, share and investigate our online history since the early days of the World Wide Web, including many culturally significant events that are interwoven into the basic fabric of our collective consciousness such as 9/11.

The success of Archives Unleashed has resulted in The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funding a new three-year phase of the project. This new effort will combine the services that Archives Unleashed has developed with those of the Internet Archive’s Archive-It and Archive-It Research Services programs. Archive-It is a web archiving and digital preservation service used by over 700 institutions around the world. Users, from universities and cultural organizations to governments and NGOs, have used the service to preserve tens of billions of web records and many petabytes of data. “Researchers, from both the sciences and the humanities, are finally starting to realize the massive trove of archived web materials that can support a wide variety of computational research,” said Bailey. “We are excited to scale up our collaboration with Archives Unleashed to make the petabytes of web and data archives collected by Archive-It partners and others more useful for scholarly analysis.”

“Our first stage of the Archives Unleashed Project,” explains Lin, “built a stand-alone service that turns web archive data into a format that scholars could easily use. We developed several tools, methods and cloud-based platforms that allow researchers to download a large web archive from which they can analyze all sorts of information, from text and network data to statistical information. The next logical step is to integrate our service with the Internet Archive, which will allow a scholar to run the full cycle of collecting and analyzing web archival content through one portal.”

In the example of future historians struggling with thousands upon thousands of COVID-19 pages, with Archives Unleashed Project tools and platforms, they could take all the documents collected about COVID-19 and use them to explore research questions such as what were the most common words people used to describe the pandemic, or what were the links to information about COVID-19. Were people linking to the Public Health Agency of Canada, to Public Health Ontario, to the World Health Organization, to various news websites, or to personal websites, maybe even conspiracy theory websites?

The funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will make the indispensable integration between collection and these forms of analysis a reality. Ruest explains, “With this new funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the integration of Archives Unleashed and the Internet Archive’s analysis service will further unleash the potential of web archive data. Imagination, not tools, will become the limit of scholarship.”

SSHRC invests $4.7M in York researchers studying issues related to individuals and society

July 8, 2020

York University has received more than $4.7 million in funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) as part of the 2019-20 SSHRC Insight Grant competition.

The funds totalling $4,749,532 will be dispersed among 29 researchers at York, and are among a total of $91 million awarded to more than 1,253 researchers from 60 different Canadian institutions.

“York University is delighted to see 29 researchers receive SSHRC Insight Grants for a total funding of well over $4 million dollars,” said Amir Asif, vice-president research and innovation. “These projects are stellar examples of how we aspire, through our research, to better understand the human condition and to employ the knowledge we gain in the service and betterment of society. I want to wish all recipients every success as they move forward with their projects.”

The projects undertaken by the funded researchers will address topics such as:

social media and mental well-being;
how climate risks affect banks’ financial losses, liquidity and decisions related to loans; and
transitional housing and permanent housing for homeless people.

SSHRC is dedicated to supporting an inclusive and diverse research environment. Of the funded researchers, 644 (51 per cent) self-identified as women, 34 (three per cent) as Indigenous peoples, 168 (13 per cent) as members of visible minorities and 40 (three per cent) as persons with disabilities.

See the complete list of Insight Grant recipients.

The Insight Grants support research excellence in the social sciences and humanities. Funding is available to both emerging and established scholars for research initiatives of two to five years. Stable support for long-term research initiatives is central to advancing knowledge. It enables scholars to address complex issues about individuals and societies, and to further our collective understanding.

In May, SSHRC announced that it had permanently changed the Insight Grants submission deadline to Oct. 1 from Oct. 15. For more information on this subject, consult the news article.

York University announces 12 York Research Chair appointments

July 1, 2020

Eight emerging and four established researchers across the University will join the York Research Chairs (YRC) program, York University’s internal counterpart to the national Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program, which recognizes outstanding researchers. Two of these appointments are renewals.

These YRCs belong to the seventh cohort of researchers to be appointed since the establishment of the program in 2015. These YRCs’ terms start July 1 and run through to June 30, 2025.

“Our new YRCs exemplify the extraordinary contributions of York’s researchers,” said President and Vice-Chancellor Rhonda L. Lenton. “York is committed to ensuring that our research, scholarship and creative activities are focused on the needs of the communities we serve and on the complex challenges facing our society – from climate change to racism. In the current context, as the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, research focused on creating positive change is even more important. The YRC program is central to that commitment, and we are proud to support the ongoing excellence of our outstanding researchers through this initiative.”

The YRC program seeks to build research recognition and capacity, with excellence in research, scholarship and associated creative activity serving as selection criteria. “This program mirrors the federal CRC program to broaden and deepen the impact of research chairs at York in building and intensifying world-renowned research across the institution. These new YRCs are undertaking visionary work that has local, national and international impact,” said Vice-President Research & Innovation Amir Asif.

Tier I YRCs are open to established research leaders at the rank of full professor. Tier II YRCs are aimed at emerging research leaders within 15 years of their first academic appointment.

Tier I York Research Chairs

Ilijas Farah
York Research Chair in Foundations of Operator Algebras

Ilijas Farah, Faculty of Science, singlehandedly developed the field of the applications of logic to operator algebras, revealing deep and unexpected connections between the foundations of mathematics and some of the most concrete and ubiquitous mathematical objects. A top researcher in both of these hitherto unrelated subjects, he was invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians. He was also fortunate to supervise some spectacularly talented PhD students.

Stephen Gaetz
York Research Chair in Homelessness and Research Impact

Stephen Gaetz, Faculty of Education, is the director of the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, the Homeless Hub, and Making the Shift – Youth Homelessness Social Innovation Lab. He has a long-standing interest in understanding homelessness – its causes, how it is experienced and potential solutions. His research is defined by his desire to ‘make research matter’ through working in collaboration with partners to conduct and mobilize research so as to have an impact on policy and practice.

Obiora Okafor
York Research Chair in International and Transnational Legal Studies

Obiora Okafor, Osgoode Hall Law School, has had his YRC renewed. This renewal supports the continuation of Okafor’s research on Canada’s human rights engagements with various African countries, including in the sub-areas of economic and social rights, judicial strengthening, institution building, democratization and poverty alleviation. This work includes a study on Canada’s human rights engagements with the African Union as a body.

Laurie Wilcox
York Research Chair in 3D Vision

Laurie M. Wilcox, Faculty of Health, is a member of the Centre for Vision Research and VISTA (Vision: Science to Applications). Her research focuses on the neural mechanisms responsible for human depth perception and how depth information is processed under complex real-world conditions. She has a long history of collaboration with industry partners, for instance in 3D film (IMAX, Christie) and more recently in virtual and augmented reality (Qualcomm Canada) and image quality (VESA).

Tier 2 York Research Chairs

Ali Abdul-Sater
York Research Chair in the Regulatory Mechanisms of Inflammation

Ali Abdul-Sater, Faculty of Health, is interested in identifying novel regulators of inflammation and understanding how these regulators control immunity and the inflammatory response. He is pursuing several avenues of research: the roles of the protein TRAF1 in controlling inflammatory and autoimmune diseases; the role of Type I interferons (proteins made in response to the presence of viruses) in bacterial and viral responses; and how exercise regulates the immune response.

FES Professor Sheila Colla — Sheila Colla

Sheila Colla
York Research Chair in Interdisciplinary Conservation Science

Sheila Colla, Faculty of Environmental Studies, is an ecologist using scientific principles to address real-world conservation issues. Her research focuses on the conservation of lesser understood native species such as bees, butterflies and flowering plants. She works closely with environmental NGOs, landowners, academic partners and government agencies to implement conservation management based on the best available science. She wants her research to inform relevant environmental and agricultural policy.

Mike Daly
York Research Chair in Planetary Science

Mike Daly, whose YRC was renewed, is in the Lassonde School of Engineering. This appointment recognizes Daly’s outstanding contribution to space-flight instrumentation research at York. The YRC will enable his participation in NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and the return of Canada’s first sample of material from another solar system. Knowledge gained from Bennu could provide key information about the origins of Earth and the solar system.

Sarah Flicker
York Research Chair in Community-Based Participatory Research

Sarah Flicker, Faculty of Environmental Studies, is an expert in community development, health promotion and adolescent well-being. Flicker’s innovative program of research focuses on the engagement of youth and other allied actors in environmental, sexual and reproductive justice. She works across methodologies using participatory approaches for social change.

Eve Haque
York Research Chair in Linguistic Diversity and Community Vitality

Eve Haque, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, has research and teaching interests that include multiculturalism, white settler colonialism and language policy, with a focus on the regulation and representation of racialized groups in white settler societies. Her current research focus is on the recognition and language rights of non-official language communities in Canada. She is also the author of Multiculturalism Within a Bilingual Framework: Language, Race and Belonging in Canada.

Ali Sadeghi-Naini
York Research Chair in Quantitative Imaging and Smart Biomarkers

Ali Sadeghi-Naini, Lassonde School of Engineering, is an emerging leader in multi-disciplinary research at the intersection of AI, biomedical engineering, biophysics and oncology. His seminal studies demonstrated, for the first time, that quantitative ultrasound biomarkers at low frequencies can detect cell death induced by anti-cancer therapies. He seeks to develop quantitative imaging and biomarker technologies integrated with innovative machine learning and computational modeling techniques for precision medicine and personalized therapeutics.

Valérie A. M. Schoof
York Research Chair in Primate Behavioural Endocrinology

Valérie A.M. Schoof, Glendon Campus, is a primatologist whose research program, funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and New Frontiers in Research Fund, focuses on the ecology, sociality, physiology and life history of wild primates in East Africa, and the biological, geographical and cultural factors influencing human-wildlife interactions. She is also the director of the Primate Behavioural Endocrinology Lab, recently funded by Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Research Fund.

Marlis Schweitzer
York Research Chair in Theatre and Performance History

Marlis Schweitzer, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design, is a theatre and performance historian with a specialization in 19th and early-20th century Anglo-American performance. Schweitzer plans to use her YRC to explore urgent questions about the relationship between historical casting practices, theatre’s role in the circulation and perpetuation of racist stereotypes, and the onstage representation of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) individuals in contemporary Anglo-American performance.

Four York graduate students receive prestigious Vanier Scholarships

July 1, 2020

Four York University PhD students conducting cutting-edge research have been awarded the prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship for 2020.

Valued at $50,000 per year for three years during doctoral studies, the Vanier scholarship is awarded by the Government of Canada to doctoral students whose work displays excellence in three equally weighted selection criteria: academic excellence, research potential and leadership.

From the social impact of climate change in Ghana to the role of vocality in women’s resistance in India, this year’s Vanier Scholars once again show the paradigm-shifting ambition and global impact of York research.

Vanier Scholars

Cameron Butler
Anthropology

Cameron Butler’s thesis “Fertilizing Settler Bodies: Tracing Global Phosphorus Transfers through the Fraser Valley, BC” will trace the movements of phosphorus around the planet in order to understand how the modern Canadian food system is sustained.

An essential nutrient for agriculture and historically, phosphorus historically went through smaller local cycles where soil phosphate levels remained at sufficient levels. With industrial agricultural production, farmers have had to apply fertilizers to maintain high levels of phosphorus in the soil and allow for large crop yields. Producing fertilizers has meant mining phosphate rock, which exists in few places on Earth. On a global scale, intensive farming and fertilizer use is rapidly depleting phosphorus reserves, raising concerns about future scarcity and the potential global collapse of our modern agricultural system.

“However,” says Butler, “people in the global north play a much larger role in depleting global phosphorus reserves, despite the universally shared impacts. My research project ask how white settlers in Canada specifically are implicated in global movements of phosphorus, how they knowingly or unknowingly depend on the labour of people of colour and migrants to sustain them, and whether they are aware of their own role in these systems.”

To answer these questions, Butler will conduct fieldwork in diverse spaces of the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, and explore how people form relationships with one another, locally and globally, through the phosphorus that passes between them. “Fundamentally, I’m interested in how the global distribution of phosphorus across the globe is being rapidly changed through systems of white supremacy, settler-colonialism and capitalism,” he adds. “Through this research, my goal is to understand what ethical responsibilities white settlers like myself have to the vast array of people, nonhuman beings, and places that sustain us.”

Rajat Nayyar
Theatre

Rajat Nayyar seeks to study the power of women’s songs and vocality in rural North India as a form of everyday resistance within patriarchal social contexts.

His proposed dissertation is titled “Women’s Vocality, Radical Sociality: Re-Imagining Power, Folklore & Audiovisual Ethnography in Rural North India,” and looks at North India from the 19th century onward, when forms of women’s entertainment attracted the attention of British colonial lawmakers, upper-caste social reformers, Hindu nationalists, revivalists, and an emerging middle class that sought to initiate change in the social and customary behaviour of women and lower castes. Embarrassed by the women’s public gatherings and their “vulgar” folk songs, these social reformers aimed to construct “new women” who would enjoy the benefits of British education while cherishing the innate values of “Indian womanhood.”

“My ethnographic, community-based research aims to address how conventional understandings of the relationship between caste, class, gender, religion and power may be questioned through the study of Indian women’s folk songs,” says Nayyar. “Focusing on ‘gaari’ songs that hurl abuses at men during wedding rituals, my research will explore the ways in which these expressions of vocal resistance are improvised, crafted and performed in everyday life, both within and outside the gendered ritual context. I will study the politics, performativity and sonic potentiality of voice as a form of social and political agency. Furthermore, I will provide filmmaking and acting workshops to community members at village schools, in order to improvise and co-produce a series of films.” In addition to exposing community members to a new perspective of India’s colonial history, these workshops will equip participants with digital filmmaking and archiving skills.
His dissertation will also be accompanied by a self-reflexive ethnographic film and an analysis of the activist potential of collaborative and creative research methodologies in safeguarding communities’ folklore.

Laura Keane
Mathematics and Statistics

Laura Keane’s research interests focus on using applied mathematics to solve real-world problems. Her research, titled Hybrid mathematical modelling, analysis, and simulation to improve design and operation of lithium-ion batteries, tackles an evergreen global problem: energy.

“We are facing increasing global energy demands due to rising levels of industrialization in developing countries,” says Keane. “In addition to this, there is increasing pressure to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels in order to combat climate change. One solution to these energy dilemmas are lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). LIBs are rechargeable batteries which are commonly used in portable devices such as mobile phones. They have the highest energy densities among all rechargeable batteries which makes them an attractive candidate for powering technologies of the future, such as electric vehicles. However, in order to move to a predominately battery-powered society there are several issues that need to be addressed in relation to battery operation and safety.”

For her PhD research, Keane will seek to develop models of LIBs, using mathematical tools and numerical simulations to investigate the factors hindering LIB performance such as thermal runaway (the process by which a battery overheats), short circuiting (the failure of an electrical circuit) and capacity fade (the slow loss of charge over multiple charge and discharge cycles). The overall goal is to improve battery operation, design and performance.

Balikisu Osman
Environmental Studies

Since 1960, Ghana has witnessed several climatic changes, including an increase in annual temperature by 1 degree Celsius and a decrease in rainfall by 2.4 per cent per decade. These changes have exposed the country to weather extremes such as droughts, floods and windstorms. Yet, agricultural activities are highly dependent on rain-fed schemes, as only about 0.2 per cent of the farmlands are under irrigation.

In the northern part of Ghana, the grassy savanna landscape combines with persistent chronic poverty situation to further exacerbate households’ vulnerability to climate risks and food insecurity, says Osman. “Through the Ghana climate change policy, the government prioritizes food security and has a strategic focus to develop climate-resilient agriculture and food systems. A major challenge to this policy, however, is the paucity of research identifying indigenous knowledge and best practices to achieve the policy goals.”

Osman will contribute with her work, titled “Analyzing climate risks and management responses for food security in northern Ghana.”

“One of the objectives of my research is to address this identified need by building on the existing literature and providing empirical evidence to advance our knowledge on the effects of climate risks as well as management responses in the area of food security,” she says. “My research underscores the importance of indigenous climate risk responses and helps understand how they contribute to sustainable food security. It also serves as a basis to gather experiences and share knowledge to guide Ghana’s climate change strategies and actions for the food and agricultural sector.”

York University creates new hive of interdisciplinary bee research

July 1, 2020

Researchers from disciplines across York University, including biologists, social scientists and mathematicians, will develop a hive of research when York’s new Centre for Bee Ecology, Evolution and Conservation (BEEc) becomes an Organized Research Unit (ORU) starting July 1.

The Senate of York University approved the move earlier this year to make BEEc the University’s 26th ORU, enabling it to dive deeper into the crisis affecting the health and decline of bees globally.

“York University’s ORUs have a strong history of highly innovative and collaborative research,” said Vice-President Research & Innovation Amir Asif. “Steeped in York’s tradition of collegial interdisciplinarity, ORUs serve as synergistic hubs for participatory research programs that bring together expertise from across disciplines.”

The new ORU will provide a place where experts can collaborate on innovative, cutting-edge research on bees to help further knowledge, train future leaders in the field, educate the public and affect policy that will make a difference for pollinators locally, as well as globally.

“We are thrilled that our proposal was approved by Senate. The bee crisis is multidimensional and there is no simple solution. BEEc will allow us to bring talented biologists and mathematicians, but also engineers, social scientists and economists to help us answer the big questions in the field,” says Amro Zayed, research chair in Genomics and BEEc director.

BEEc researchers will study the health, behaviour, biodiversity, genomics and conservation of bees, with the goal of enhancing their long-term sustainability, and that of the important crops and plants that rely on bees for pollination.

Some of the core researchers include:

Associate Professor Amro Zayed of the Faculty of Science uses genomics to understand why native bees and honey bees are declining, and develops tools to circumvent these declines.

Assistant Professor Sheila Colla of the Faculty of Environmental Studies researches native bees to find out why they’re in decline and develops conservation efforts with a special focus on at-risk bumblebees.

Professor Laurence Packer, a Distinguished Research Professor, studies native bees and is constantly contributing new species records to the global list of over 20,300 species. He has built and continues to maintain the largest Canadian collection of bees, currently estimated at over 500,000 specimens from all over the globe.

Professor Sandra Rehan of the Faculty of Science is an expert on social insect genomics and pollinator health combining molecular evolution, behavioural ecology, population genetics and phylogenetics to understand the sociobiology, biogeography, nutritional requirements and sustainability of bees.

Professor Jane Heffernan of the Faculty of Science and director of York’s Centre for Disease Modelling is applying her modelling skills to help understand how pathogens and pests affect colony health.

Three York University professors earn York-Massey appointments

July 1, 2020

York University Professors Carmela Murdocca, Mark Winfield and Deborah Britzman have earned Massey College appointments for the 2020-21 academic year. Murdocca, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, has been offered the position of York-Massey Fellowship; while Britzman, Faculty of Education, and Winfield, Faculty of Environmental Studies, were awarded York-Massey Visiting Scholarships.

“We are very pleased that Professors Murdocca, Britzman and Winfield were awarded these honours,” said Amir Asif, vice-president Research & Innovation at York University. “The York-Massey Fellowships and Visiting Scholarships represent an important opportunity for our academics and researchers to expand their areas of scholarship and contribution to their various disciplines in a broader context.”

Massey College is an independent college situated on the University of Toronto campus. The fellowship provides the selected faculty member with prime office space in the college for the academic year and the status of a full senior resident of the college, with all privileges enjoyed by senior Fellows. The title “York Fellow of Massey College” remains for life or while mutually agreeable. Membership in the Massey Alumni Association is granted to visiting scholars at the completion of their program.

York-Massey Fellowship (2020-21): Carmela Murdocca

Murdocca will use this fellowship to work on her book manuscript titled “Testimony, Racial Violence and Redress.” She will also begin the research project Colonial and Racial Genealogies of Socio-Legal Personhood.

“Testimony, Racial Violence and Redress” explores the social, legal and representational field of testimonies of racial violence in an era of political redress. The book’s manuscript considers the relationship between testimony, ongoing racial violence, criminalization and the politics of redress.

To better understand the interconnections between testimony, racial violence and redress, the book outlines a national landscape of redress in Canadian politics and culture in response to racial violence, focusing on diverse testimonial sites that mark racial and human difference.

Murdocca’s research explores the intersections of racial carceral violence and the socio-legal politics of repair.

York-Massey Visiting Scholarship (2020-21): Mark Winfield

A major focus of Winfield’s research over the 2020-21 period will be examining the impact of the emergence of populist governments in Canada, United States, European Union and elsewhere on climate change mitigation and low-carbon sustainable energy transition policies. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, “these developments have highlighted the political fragility of low-carbon transitional strategies in unexpected ways,” he said. They also represent significant threats to the capacity of the global community to respond to the climate change challenge.

The principle outputs of the visitorship will be two major book projects. An edited volume on low-carbon sustainable energy transitions in the age of populism and pandemic will bring together an interdisciplinary team of leading researchers from Canada on climate change policy and low-carbon energy system transitions. Winfield will also be completing a sole-authored monograph on environmental politics and policy in Ontario focused specifically on the long-term challenges facing the province, including climate change, decision-making around major infrastructure investments and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

To learn more about the York-Massey Visiting Scholarship (2020-21) for Professor Deborah Britzman, see this previously published YFile story.

About Massey College

Massey College consists of junior Fellows, made up of graduate students; senior Fellows, consisting primarily of faculty; journalism Fellows; members of the Quadrangle Society (leaders in business, the legal profession and philanthropy); as well as visiting scholars and alumni, of whom an increasing number come from York University. The college offers an extraordinary experience by providing a community that allows all members to expand their horizons academically, socially and culturally.

The York-Massey Fellowship and York-Massey Visiting Scholarships were open to full-time faculty members planning to go on sabbatical or other leave during 2020-21.

York University launches new academic plan for 2020 to 2025

June 28, 2020

Today, York University officially launches its new academic plan that will chart its path for the next five years. The plan, which is titled “Building a Better Future: York University Academic Plan 2020-2025,” received a strong endorsement by the University Senate during its meeting on Thursday, June 25.

“The University Academic Plan 2020-2025 is about coming together to make positive change for our students, our campuses, and our local and global communities. It reflects the significant opportunities that York will embrace over the next five years in advancing our vision to provide a broad sociodemographic of students with access to a high-quality research-intensive University committed to the public good,” says York Provost and Vice-President Lisa Philipps. “I am confident that this new UAP will continue to project our commitment to our values of excellence, progressiveness, diversity and inclusivity, social justice and equity, and sustainability.”

A document rooted in York University’s history and values

An inspirational document that is rooted in York University’s history, values and commitment to a more just and sustainable future, the new UAP 2020-2025 was developed following extensive community input obtained through 22 consultations with Senate committees, students, Faculty councils and staff over a period of nine months. In addition, its authors considered more than 3,000 written responses provided by University community members via polling software, online forms and email correspondence

As a result, the new University Academic Plan 2020-2025 is truly a communal effort, says Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies Professor Carl S. Ehrlich, who is Chair of Senate’s Academic Policy, Planning & Research Committee (APPRC). “Over this past academic year, we have held innumerable consultations with – and received feedback from – every segment of our York University family at every stage of our journey. The resulting document is one that is truly reflective of where our University currently is and of what our hopes and aspirations for the future are,” says Ehrlich. “For the most part eschewing specificity for the sake of inclusivity, all members of our community should be able to find themselves and their interests/concerns reflected in some manner in this new UAP.”

The new University Academic Plan 2020-2025 identifies six priorities

A dynamic document that was designed to grow and change, Ehrlich says the built-in flexibility of the new UAP should allow the University to continue doing what it has done and does best, while moving forward in both anticipated and unanticipated new directions for the future, whether academically, communally, or socially.

“We are the inheritors of a proud academic tradition that provides us with a solid foundation as we continue building upon it,” observes Ehrlich. “The new UAP challenges us to act responsibly as members of a vast array of differing intersectional communities, both local and global. And as a diverse community, we can exemplify irenic interactions and mutual social responsibility, while keeping our minds open to various ways of viewing and understanding ourselves and the world in which we live.”

“I would like to thank Provost and Vice-President Academic Philipps and APPRC Chair Carl Ehrlich for their leadership, and to everyone who contributed to the new UAP,” says President and Vice-Chancellor Rhonda L. Lenton. “York’s strong planning culture, exemplified in this plan, has always positioned us for success. Thanks to the hard work of the community, we have a powerful new guiding document that will allow us to expand the positive change we create in the world through research, innovative teaching and a commitment to community engagement.”

Six priorities for action

The UAP 2020-2025 contains six priorities for action, which are based on the University’s enduring commitment to critical inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge that comes from many differing perspectives and ways of knowing. The six priorities are:

21st Century Learning: Diversifying Whom, What, and How We Teach
Every York University graduate, regardless of background or field of study, must be equipped with the knowledge, transferable skills, and values to navigate a 21st century world in which change is the only constant.
Knowledge for the Future: From Creation to Application
As change accelerates around us, York University aims to be more responsive to its communities by generating critical knowledge and works of art, ideas and innovations that engage multiple perspectives while propelling Ontario as a global knowledge-economy leader.
From Access to Success: Next Generation Student Supports
With many of the University’s students facing current challenges and uncertain futures, York will devote additional attention to supporting students of all backgrounds and circumstances to complete their studies successfully and to realize their full potentials.
Advancing Global Engagement
York University draws people from around the world who seek to learn from each other and to gain the global fluencies needed to work locally and across borders toward a better future.
Working in Partnership
York University understands that by partnering with other entities and sectors it gains vital insights and capacity to create positive impact for its students, campuses, and broader communities.
Living Well Together
Making positive change requires that all members of the University’s diverse community feel welcomed into a sense of belonging, common purpose, and shared responsibility to support and enrich each other’s work.

A challenge to elevate York’s contributions to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

The new UAP serves as a blueprint for action, positioning York University as an agent of positive change in a world facing a convergence of unprecedented trials from climate change, a global pandemic, racism and xenophobia, poverty and inequality. The plan responds with a challenge to elevate York’s contributions to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which offer a framework for UN member countries to take urgent action in 17 areas that are critical to ensure peace and prosperity for people and the planet. York University’s new UAP serves as a rallying call for students, faculty and staff – a call to bring their expertise from across disciplines to work together to build new tools, develop strategies and solutions to global challenges.

A graphic showing the UN sustainable development goals — The United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals

“Building a Better Future: York University Academic Plan 2020-2025” positions York as a University with distinctive capabilities to rise to these challenges and uncover the opportunities that lie within them.

The document states, “We believe that at this juncture, to make a better future, the world needs more of York University.” To learn more, read the full version of “Building a Better Future: York University Academic Plan 2020-2025,” available here: https://vpap.info.yorku.ca/files/2020/06/Building-a-Better-Future-YorkU-UAP-2020-2025.pdf.

Director of Research Impact Canada, York’s David Phipps awarded two honours this spring

June 28, 2020

David Phipps

David Phipps, assistant vice-president, Research Strategy & Impact, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation at York University and director of Research Impact Canada (RIC), was awarded two major honours this spring for his exceptional work and leadership:

the top research administration award in Canada from the Canadian Association of Research Administrators (CARA); and
the foremost international award from the International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS).

“These awards are testimony to David’s decade-long development of research leadership, management and administration, knowledge mobilization and research impact at York University and with Research Impact Canada, Canada’s knowledge mobilization network,” said Amir Asif, vice-president research & innovation.

The Walter Hitschfeld Award

In June 2020, Phipps was bestowed the top honour from CARA, the Walter Hitschfeld Award, in recognition of his dedicated and outstanding contribution to CARA. For his exceptional impact on the enhancement of the research management setting in Canada and he will also be granted Honorary Lifetime Membership in CARA.

In order to be eligible for this award, the nominee should have at least seven years of professional research administration experience; the nominee’s activities have made a significant contribution to the development of research administration in Canada; and the nominee has consistently contributed to the profession through active participation in CARA or on behalf of CARA, or to the corpus of research administration.

“David is a visionary leader and internationally acclaimed expert. His efforts and expertise have been instrumental in society’s progression from seeing impact and Knowledge Mobilization in terms of traditional metrics like citation factors, to examining how research leads to change in organizations, communities and the wider world. This shift in how we see impact has not just been in relation to our roles as administrators in grant development and research dissemination, but for faculty as well, particularly in the social sciences and humanities,” said Deborah Zornes, president CARA.

“David is also a tireless supporter of excellence in research administration and its vital role in the research process. He richly merited CARA’s highest award and we are grateful to him for his successes, which not only advance research and the profession of research administration but also reflect back on York University and CARA,” Zornes added.

INORMS Award for Excellence in Research Management Leadership

Phipps’ second honour was the INORMS Award for Excellence in Research Management Leadership. This award, bestowed to him in May 2020, was established to recognize outstanding examples of research management leaders who have made substantial contributions to the research management profession internationally.

Nominated candidates for this award must be a current signed-up member of an INORMS association; able to show that their contributions are congruent with the objectives of INORMS; able to provide evidence of outstanding contributions to the research management profession; and able to provide evidence of how they will continue to provide visionary leadership in research management internationally.

“David has done much to internationalize the body of knowledge on research management, leading the way in the relatively new areas of knowledge mobilization and research impact. He has published widely, speaks around the world and has chaired many international committees and working groups. His visionary leadership in research management, on an international scale, makes him a deserving winner of this prestigious award,” said Stephanie Bales, Chair, INORMS 2020 Planning Committee.

To learn more about RIC, visit the website. Information about the Walter Hitschfeld Award can be found here. Information about the INORMS Award can be found here.

To learn more about Research & Innovation at York, follow us at @YUResearch; watch our new animated video, which profiles current research strengths and areas of opportunity, such as Artificial Intelligence and Indigenous futurities; and see the snapshot infographic, a glimpse of the year’s successes.

By Megan Mueller, senior manager, Research Communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, York University, muellerm@yorku.ca

York scholar receives Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship

June 24, 2020

Salman Hussain

York University Postdoctoral Fellow Salman Hussain (Anthropology) has been named as one of this year’s recipients of the prestigious Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship.

The Banting is valued at $70,000 per year for two years and supports postdoctoral researchers who will positively contribute to the country’s economic, social and research-based growth. The scholarships have allowed researchers to conduct ambitious fieldwork research and devote substantial time to work without the financial pressures that might typically arise.

In his research, Hussain seeks to investigate how law and medicine define a “third gender” in South Asia—examining how the concept has been legally and medically institutionalized in the case of hijras (transgender performers) in Pakistan.

Titled Hijra Human Rights and Legal Recognition in Pakistan: Gender Justice, ‘Third Gender’ and Embodied Identity, his project will study the role cosmetic and surgical knowledge and practice plays in helping produce, as well as, contest legal definitions of “third gender”/LGBTQI identities. Hussain’s research takes place in the context of recent South Asian Supreme Court judgements (delivered in Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India between 2007 and 2018) striking down colonial laws regarding homosexuality and sodomy that have legally recognized a “third gender” by drawing upon international human rights norms.

“These cases have been celebrated by human rights activists, but there has been no academic analysis of these judgements and how they have impacted the legalization, as well as the medicalization of ‘third gender’ identities,” said Hussain. “How did these higher courts interpret medical knowledge and surgical expertise and what influence have these legal readings had in terms of defining gender and sexual identities, shaping rights assertions, encouraging new forms of bodily intervention for third gender claimants, and orienting medical practice?”

His research will also consider how and why the judicial use of human rights norms to remove the ingrained social marginalization and cultural stigma suffered by sexual minorities may be producing new forms of social inequality. “Significantly, there has been little empirical or theoretical exploration of organized sexual minority engagement in activism and litigation for human rights in the region, their work in implementing these laws, nor any comparative analysis with struggles elsewhere,” he said. “This project will ethnographically study how marginalized sexual minorities themselves interpret human rights norms, engage with the courts, organize for their rights, and how these struggles impact their communities and their understandings of their identities.”

Putting COVID-19 diagnostic tests to the ‘test’ — how do they hold up?

June 17, 2020

Featured illustration of the novel coronavirus

As SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to mutate, it is important to check the efficacy of current diagnostic tests, say York University researchers, who found seven out of 27 methods had potential sequence mismatch issues that may lead to underperforming or false-negative COVID-19 test results.

Many of the tests were developed early in the outbreak when the virus was first identified and sequenced. The researchers say it is important to re-evaluate them periodically to ensure they still work.

“COVID-19 tests use polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays to diagnose the virus in patients, but if those assays are mismatched due to genetic variability in the viral genome, that raises the concern that the tests may not be detecting all the circulating variants of the virus and results could be inaccurate,” says York research associate Kashif Aziz Khan, corresponding author of a new study published June 10 in the journal Royal Society Open Science with Associate Professor Peter Cheung of the Faculty of Science.

Correcting any mismatches between the assays and the SARS-CoV-2 genome may help to improve the sensitivity and accuracy of some of the diagnostic tests.

A screenshot of a cell phoneDescription automatically generated — A drawing showing the variation in test results

The early sequencing of the virus allowed for the development of several PCR detection protocols by multiple national organizations that were published by the World Health Organization (WHO), but it may have also led to tests that do not account for variations and mutations.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1lV1liWE9k

This is not uncommon with viruses and has led at times to improper diagnosis of influenza, dengue, rabies, respiratory syncytial virus, hepatitis B and human immunodeficiency virus.

The researchers tested genetic variations in more than 17,000 publicly available viral genome sequences worldwide and performed an exhaustive evaluation of 27 published diagnostic PCR assays, including those recommended by the WHO.

“These findings are potentially important for clinicians, laboratory professionals and policy-makers as it gives them a better idea of which tests may deliver the best results and how to ensure the tests they are using are properly matched to the virus genome,” says Khan.

The study, “Presence of mismatches between diagnostic PCR assays and coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 genome,” was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

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