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.