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York psychology professors, alumni named top in Canada

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Two faculty members from York University, and two alum, are among the top most productive clinical psychology professors in Canada, according to a new paper published in the journal Canadian Psychology, the national publication of the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA).

Joel Katz (2021 image)
Joel Katz
Matthew Keough

In a paper authored by researchers from the University of Regina, the University of Ottawa and Queen’s University, Matthew Keough and Joel Katz are among the top 15 per cent of men professors from CPA-accredited clinical psychology programs.

Keough, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Health’s Department of Psychology, is one of the top four to be recognized in the early career category (10 years or fewer), while Katz, a Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology and Canada Research Chair in Health Psychology, is one of the top eight named in the late career category (21 years or more).

Joining the York professors are York alum Simon Sherry (BA ’00), in the mid career category, and Andrew (Hyounsoo) Kim (BA ’08) in the early career category.

The paper, “Assessing the Publication Productivity of Clinical Psychology Professors in Canadian Psychological Association-Accredited Canadian Psychology Departments: A 10-Year Replication Study,” offers an overview from the past decade of professors’ average and annual publication counts, citation counts and h-indices.

The paper concludes: “The field of clinical psychology has flourished over the last decade, with regard to research and clinical training. Publication counts, citation counts, and h-indices have at least doubled in the last 10 years across all professorial ranks for men and women. The present study results suggest gendered differences are diminishing.”

Katz leads the Human Pain Mechanisms Lab at York University. His research focuses on risk and protective factors for chronic pain in children and adults. He is the recipient of several awards, including: Senior Investigator Award, CPA Health Psychology Section (2021); CPA Traumatic Stress Section Award for Excellence (2020); Fellow, American Psychological Association, Division 53 (2019); CPA Donald O. Hebb Award for Distinguished Contributions (2016); and more.

“I’m honoured to have been included as one of the most cited active Canadian clinical psychologists,” said Katz. “It’s amazing to see how productive our field has been over the past 10 years and to know that my York U colleague Matt Keough made the list in the early career category. I can’t wait to see what the next 10 years will bring.”

Keough’s research focuses on improving understanding of the etiology and treatment of addictive behaviour, including both substance use and behavioural addiction. He is the recipient of several awards, including: Certificate of Recognition from Student Accessibility Services at York University (2023); Top-Cited Paper Recognition in Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research (2022); New Investigator Award from Research Manitoba (2017); and more.

“I feel so honoured to be part of such an amazing list of psychological scholars,” said Keough. “This recognition reminds me how much the field has grown, and how much we do, as a discipline, to better understand and treat mental health disorders. I owe a great deal of thanks to my colleagues at York University for their unwavering support and collaboration. And, special kudos to my colleague and friend Joel Katz, who was recognized in the established career category.”

Professor challenges mobile app design standards, wins award

Maleknaz Nayebi, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering, received a Distinguished Paper Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Technical Community on Software Engineering in recognition of work on app system function and user satisfaction.

Nayebi received the award at the 31st IEEE International Requirements Engineering 2023 Conference for her research paper titled “User Driven Functionality Deletion for Mobile Apps.”

Maleknaz Nayebi
Maleknaz Nayebi

The paper builds upon Nayebi’s ongoing work to develop a stronger understanding of the needs and preferences of software users through techniques such as data mining and population studies, to challenge conventional laws of software engineering and improve user experience and system function.

“Software products are governed by a law of growth,” she says. “We are told that offering more and adding new features to software applications will help keep customers satisfied.”

This law, known as Lehman’s Law of Growth, has long served as a fundamental principle in software evolution. Nayebi is questioning this rule by presenting compelling empirical evidence that highlights its inaccuracies.

“Our research showed that against Lehman’s Law of Growth and common beliefs, the functionality of software applications and particularly mobile apps can actually decrease overtime. This is why we explored ways to remove unnecessary features without affecting the experience of users,” she says.

Professor Maleknaz Nayebi (middle) with Dr. Fabiano Dalpiaz (left) and Dr. Jennifer Horkoff (right) at the 31st IEEE International Requirements Engineering 2023 Conference.
Professor Maleknaz Nayebi (middle) with Fabiano Dalpiaz (left) and Jennifer Horkoff (right) at the 31st IEEE International Requirements Engineering 2023 Conference.

Though researchers are beginning to understand the advantages of removing specific features from software applications, the ways in which feature deletions impact users are less understood. To bridge this gap, Nayebi conducted various case studies in collaboration with researchers from the University of Calgary and the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security. Information collected from these studies was used to develop RADIATION (Review bAsed DeletIon recommendATION), a recommendation tool that can help developers identify the best software application features to delete, without affecting user experience.

RADIATION applies machine learning methods to scan through different software application reviews from users and identify constructive opinions. In this way, RADIATION can evaluate user perspectives regarding different software application features and determine the best options for removal without provoking negative user feelings.

Nayebi’s research has the potential to be applied across many fields and disciplines. She is currently working with various companies that can use feature removal methods to solve issues with emergency management and e-health software applications, while satisfying the software design preferences of users.

AGYU earns awards for exhibit, education programs

Meleko Mokgosi: Imaging Imaginations
Meleko Mokgosi: Imaging Imaginations

Two awards for the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) recognize the impact of the facility’s programming in both exhibiting art and offering educational opportunities to the community.

The 46th Annual Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries (GOG) Awards, which took place Dec. 2, named the AGYU as the recipient of its Education Award and its Exhibition, Design and Installation Award.

The GOG Awards is the only annual juried awards program of its kind, recognizing the “outstanding achievement, artistic merit and excellence of arts institutions and professionals in the public art gallery sector.”

“It is always encouraging to be acknowledged by your peers. The GOG Awards give those of us working in public art galleries and museums the time to reflect on the work being presented in our field and give due credit to those who are pushing their work in truly engaging and creative ways,” says Jenifer Papararo, director/curator, Art Gallery of York University. “We at AGYU are proud of our colleagues Felicia Mings and Allyson Adley, who both received awards for their unique programs. Adley was awarded for Arts on My Mind, a program she developed in the community to give youth access to develop their crafts by pairing them with professional musicians and poets from the Jane-Finch neighbourhood. Mings, who won for the exhibition design for Meleko Mokgosi: Imaging Imaginations, a curatorial response to space and community that featured a massive, nine-panel figurative painting spanning 16 feet high and over 40 feet in length.”

Read about these exhibits, and how they exemplify excellence in the arts, in this YFile story.

The AGYU was also noted as a partner in the GOG’s First Exhibition in a Public Art Gallery Award, which went to the Art Gallery of Peterborough for the Tim Whiten – Elemental: Earthen exhibit. Whiten is a professor emeritus at York University with a prolific career in the arts.

The AGYU is a socially minded not-for-profit contemporary art gallery that is a space for the creation and appreciation of art and culture. It is a supported unit of York University within the President’s Division. It is externally funded as a public art gallery through the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, local and international foundations, embassies and its membership, who support all of its programs.

Find out more about AGYU programming.

Centre for Feminist Research celebrates feminist scholarship with new award

Rear view of four diverse women

York University’s Centre for Feminist Research has launched the inaugural Medal for Excellence in Feminist Scholarship in Canada to support and raise the profile of the rich and diverse contributions of feminist scholars nationally.

Ena Dua, Bonita Lawrence and Meg Luxton.
From left to right: Ena Dua, Bonita Lawrence and Meg Luxton.

“This award is a reminder that feminist research matters and that feminists of all genders are producing rigorous, relevant research and writing for our times,” says Elaine Coburn, director of the Centre for Feminist Research. “It creates a space to celebrate all that is excellent in feminist scholarship, across Canada.”

The award was created with an anonymous donor to honour and bring visibility to the work of three York University faculty members – Ena Dua, Bonita Lawrence and Meg Luxton – who have set standards of excellence by transforming understanding of women’s everyday realities and struggles through anti-racist, Indigenous feminist and feminist political economy scholarship.

Dua is a professor and graduate director in sexuality and women’s studies in the School of Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies who teaches critical race theory, anti-racist feminist theory, postcolonial studies and feminist theory. She has taken up the question of racial justice, from feminist perspectives, across all of her writing. She forthrightly confronts racial injustices in Canada, and her scholarship has unpacked racial, gendered inequities in the University with the aim of creating space for each and all voices in the academy.

Lawrence (Mi’kmaw), who teaches in the Indigenous Studies program, has taken up the questions of colonialism and Indigenous identity, especially centering the experiences of non-status and urban Indigenous people. Her important work has looked at Indigenous Peoples’ “fractured homelands” under colonialism and celebrated strong Indigenous women, their power and their agency, despite a genocidal context.

Luxton is a professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, and one of Canada’s best-known feminist political economists, with her work shedding new light on gender divisions of labour and the relationship between paid employment and unpaid domestic labour; working class lives, communities and class politics; and the history of the women’s movement, in Canada and internationally.

“We hope that the new award, in honouring these three scholars, makes clear the ways that feminisms must and does take up questions of racism, indigeneity and working class women’s lives as central to anti-oppressive feminist scholarship,” says Coburn. “Together, they inspire us to feminist scholarship that matters: scholarship that looks squarely at injustice and that celebrates and supports struggles for a more just world.”

Over the next 10 years, the medal will provide each recipient with $500, and winners will be invited to give a lecture at the Centre for Feminist Research – both to help further scholars and the Centre’s impact on the challenges still facing women today.

“We hope that others see this medal and CFR’s activities, more broadly, as contributing to important national and international conversations about women’s struggles for equality and our hopes for more just and liveable worlds,” says Coburn.

Applications for the Medal for Excellence in Feminist Scholarship in Canada will be evaluated by a committee of three faculty members. Those interested in being on the committee can write to cfr-coor@yorku.ca with their CV and one paragraph expressing their interest by Jan. 15, 2024.

Applications for the medal will open on Jan. 30, 2024 and the deadline is March 1, 2024 for submissions. The inaugural winner will be announced on May 1, 2024.

AGYU programs shortlisted for prestigious awards

Exhibition view: Meleko Mokgosi: Imaging Imaginations, 2023. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.

Two programs offered by the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) have been shortlisted for the 46th Annual Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries (GOG) Awards.

The GOG Awards, which will be announced during a Dec. 2 ceremony, is the only annual juried awards program of its kind, recognizing the “outstanding achievement, artistic merit and excellence of arts institutions and professionals in the public art gallery sector.”

“For more than two decades, the GOG Awards have given the visual arts sector in Ontario a place to acknowledge the value of its role in building and supporting artists and shaping the cultural fabric of daily life by celebrating the pivotal work of public art galleries,” says Jenifer Parpararo, AGYU director/curator. “Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries estimates that 99 per cent of Canadians engage with arts, culture and heritage in some way every year. It is paramount that we come together to celebrate and honour our burgeoning cultural sector and to recognize the hard-working people who break down barriers and reach new horizons with their impactful projects.”

The programs nominated for an award were led by AGYU Curator Felicia Mings and AGYU Education and Community Engagement Coordinator Allyson Adley.

The nominated exhibits and programs are:

Meleko Mokgosi: Imaging Imaginations, which was on view from Jan. 20 to June 10. Curated by Mings, this exhibition is shortlisted for two GOG Awards: Exhibitions of the Year Budget over $50,000 and Exhibition Design & Installation.

Meleko Mokgosi: Imaging Imaginations
Exhibition view: Meleko Mokgosi: Imaging Imaginations, 2023. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.

For Imaging Imaginations, Mokgosi’s first solo exhibition in Canada, the artist debuted new works from his series Spaces of Subjection, 2022. Within this growing body of work, Mokgosi examined the complexities of subjecthood and the politics of identity and identification.

“AGYU would like to thank Meleko, Jack Shainman Gallery and the Anderson Ranch Arts Center for helping us realize this exhibition. We want to acknowledge the dedication and support of the entire AGYU team, and especially Clara Halpern, assistant curator, during the run of the show,” said Papararo. “Thank you also to our team of installers – Carmen Schroeder, Uros Jelic, Gray Richards, Nadine Maher, Christian Echeverri, Dave Ronchka and Matthew Koudys – who helped us bring the curatorial vision to life and kept the works safe. And with special thanks to the Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation for their financial support of this exhibition.”

The 2022 edition of Art on my Mind, a series of free songwriting, vocal and performance workshops, is nominated for the Education Award. Presented in partnership with the Black Creek Community Farm, this program was geared towards youth in the Jane-Finch community. It included live performance workshops facilitated by hip-hop powerhouse Dynesti, and songwriting and vocal production workshops with rising R&B and soul singer Kibra.

A workshop session during Art on my Mind.
Art on My Mind workshop with mentors and participants, 2022. Photo: Allyson Adley.
Performance during Art on my Mind
A performance during Art on my Mind showcase, 2022. Photo: Allyson Adley.

Participants were able to enhance performance by developing dynamic stage presence, writing meaningful lyrics and honing their vocal production skills. In addition to receiving personalized performance coaching from experienced artists, selected participants also had a paid opportunity to perform at the AGYU’s end-of-program showcase celebrating the Black Creek Community Farm’s 10-year anniversary on July 23, 2022. This free event featured performances by the program facilitators, Kibra and Dynesti, along with performances by R&B, reggae, dancehall and hip-hop artists Terence Penny, Nicole Chambers, Zenesoul, Mez Mariye and Teepolo.

Art on my Mind also included mural painting workshops with acclaimed visual artists Curtia Wright and Ray Vidal, which culminated in the painting of a shipping container that was transformed into a Black Creek Community Farm landmark.

“We want to acknowledge the support of the AGYU team and 2022 Young Canada Works Communications Assistant Shadio Hussein,” said Papararo. “Art on My Mind would not have been possible without the expertise and dedication of our workshop facilitators and participants, as well as our wonderful partners at Black Creek Community Farm.”

Art on My Mind was funded by the Toronto Art Council through the Animating Toronto Parks program and supported by the Toronto Art Foundation’s Arts in the Parks program.

The AGYU was also noted as a partner in a nomination for the Tim Whiten – Elemental: Earthen exhibition at the Art Gallery of Peterborough for the First Exhibition in a Public Art Gallery award. Whiten is a professor emeritus at York University with a prolific career in the arts.

The GOG Awards ceremony takes place Dec. 2 in the Sears Atrium at Toronto Metropolitan University. To purchase tickets to attend, visit the event page.

Anucha family creates new award to support Black entrepreneurs

Young Black man working at a desk

A new award created and funded by the Anucha family is the first of its kind to support Black entrepreneurs at YSpace, York University’s entrepreneurship and innovation hub.

The award commemorates the family’s son and brother Alfred Anucha, a visionary, young entrepreneur who passed away at the age of 26. A former York student, Alfred was also the founder of Stay Ulo, a network of properties that offers flexible apartment rentals with a hotel experience.

ALFRED ANUCHA AWARD

Alfred’s passion for entrepreneurship and his unwavering belief in the potential of young people to create were the cornerstones of his life, shared family members at a recent event to announce the award. “ ’Bet on yourself. Bet on the future.’ This was Alfred’s mantra and encapsulates the vision of the Alfred Anucha Award,” said Adanna Anucha, Alfred’s sister. “Our family is excited to support young, Black entrepreneurs to ‘bet on yourself’ just as Alfred did. We hope this award will serve as a living tribute and memorial to honour Alfred’s legacy as a true innovator and dreamer.”

The award will support aspiring Black entrepreneurs in partnership with YSpace and the Black Entrepreneurship Alliance. Self-identifying Black individuals (Canadian citizens, permanent residents and protected refugees) are eligible for this award, with a preference given to Black male entrepreneurs under the age of 30, in recognition of the historical underrepresentation by Black male entrepreneurs in this space.

Each year, a maximum of four entrepreneurs will receive $2,500 each in recognition of their commitment to their craft. Additionally, recipients can take advantage of YSpace’s specialized programming free of charge to nurture their ventures. Current and past program participants are eligible and encouraged to apply for this award, which will be available annually for the next five years.

The award is also a testament to the deep connection the Anucha family shares with York University. Alfred’s mother, Uzo Anucha, is an associate professor at the School of Social Work in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. She is also the York Research Chair in Youth and Contexts of Inequity. Alfred’s four siblings have also attended York University.

David Kwok, director of entrepreneurship and innovation at YSpace, said, “YSpace is honoured to have this partnership and support of the Anucha family. This award will be a catalyst for many young, Black entrepreneurs to receive the funding and support necessary to continue their impactful work in the community. Our collaborative efforts will create greater access and growth for these Black-led businesses.”

Applications for the first round of awards are open from Nov. 20 to Dec. 15. More information about the application processes will be available on the YSpace website.

York students engaged in heart, brain research earn inaugural award

medical hospital research brain black doctor

Four York University students were recognized with an inaugural award for Black scholars – an initiative by the Heart & Stroke Foundation, Brain Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health (CIHR-ICRH) – for their work and research in heart and brain health.

The Personnel Awards for Black Scholars were launched earlier in 2023 with the intent of promoting Black representation and inclusivity within the heart and/or brain health research community.

“These awards will help enable equitable and accessible treatment and care for heart disease and stroke for everyone in Canada,” said Doug Roth, chief executive officer of Heart & Stroke, in the announcement.

The multi-year awards seek to financially support 12 master’s students for up to two years and seven doctoral students for up to three years. The awards aim to enable students to focus on their studies, undertake a program of research and engage with mentors as part of their training and development.

The recipients from York University are:

Patrick Hewan

A psychology master’s student, Hewan’s work focuses on cognition and brain function in older adulthood. Among his accomplishments are a Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada Undergraduate Research Award and, most recently, an oral presentation award at this year’s Faculty of Science annual undergraduate summer research conference for a talk titled “Microstructural integrity of the Locus Coeruleus is related to decision-making in older adults.”

Toluwanimi Faromika

Faromika is a psychology master’s student interested in cognitive psychology across populations – including infants and seniors, as well those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and more. Her current research will explore spatial memory and the factors that can impede our ability to navigate the world. In addition to her academic work, she is also the host of “The BrainCore Podcast,” which explores the latest psychology and neuroscience research.

CeAnn Marks

A psychology and neuroscience graduate student, Marks’s work looks to advance mental health knowledge through research on traumatic brain injuries, mood disorders and trauma. Her current research includes studying sex differences in concussion recovery and the impact of emotional trauma on motor performance. Among her accomplishments are earning the BIPOC Award in Medical Science and Medicine Biotechnology earlier this year.

Ngozi Iroanyah

A PhD student in health policy and equity studies, Iroanyah’s research centres on the implications of dementia policy on the experiences of racialized ethnocultural diverse seniors in Canada. Her current thesis explores the experience of racialized immigrant seniors with Ontario’s dementia strategy to identify gaps in service delivery and care models. Additionally, Iroanyah is currently manager of diversity and community partnerships at the Alzheimer Society of Canada and has over 15 years of experience in health care in both Canada and abroad, in the fields of health research and administration – including having worked for the Public Agency of Canada in the Dementia Policy Unit.

Further information about the award can be found here: heartandstroke.ca/what-we-do/media-centre/news-releases/19-black-scholars-in-canada-to-receive-inaugural-funding-awards.

AMS Healthcare awards fund York research on history of medicine

Crop close up Indian woman doctor in white uniform with stethoscope taking notes, using laptop, writing in medical journal

Earlier this month, Canadian charitable organization AMS Healthcare announced two York University scholars as recipients of its 2023 History of Healthcare Awards Program: Jody Hodgins, a PhD candidate in the Department of History; and Kenton Kroker, an associate professor in the Department of Social Science, both in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

The AMS History of Healthcare Awards Program promotes scholarship, teaching and public interest in the history of health care, disease and medicine. Health-care professionals, students and researchers can apply for three types of awards: postdoctoral fellowships of $45,000, doctoral research awards of $25,000 and project grants of up to $10,000. The program aspires to convene networks, develop leaders and fund crucial activities in medical history, health-care research, education and clinical practice.

Hodgins and Kroker are two of the eleven 2023 award recipients selected by an expert review panel. These outstanding scholars will act as leaders to enhance the impact and value of history of health-care research in Canada and beyond and help shape the future of Canadian health care.

Jody Hodgins

Jody Hodgins
Jody Hodgins

Hodgins received the AMS History of Healthcare Doctoral Research Award, worth $25,000, for her project titled “Meeting Demands for Animal Healthcare: Veterinary Medicine in Rural Southern Ontario, 1862-1939,” which will explore the interdependence between animal, human and environmental health to show advancements in public health and the role veterinary medicine had in shaping our current understanding of modern medicine and health-care practices. 

“I am grateful to AMS Healthcare for their support of the history of medicine community and honoured to receive this award alongside such company,” she said.

Hodgins will examine four key developments that occurred between 1862, marking the establishment of the Ontario Veterinary College, and 1939: the production of animal health knowledge in popular sources; the need for veterinary intervention with unrecognizable diseases that could transfer from animals to humans; the popularity of quack medicine; and the technological advancements available with the rise of professionalization.

“I am thankful for this opportunity and the support of my supervisor, Sean Kheraj, and committee members Jennifer Bonnell and Colin Coates, whose invaluable guidance will help me to contribute a history of veterinary medicine that offers a better understanding of how people living in rural communities managed health before professional veterinarians were quickly available and affordable in rural environments,” she said.

Kenton Kroker

Kenton Kroker
Kenton Kroker

Kroker received the AMS History of Healthcare Project Grant, worth $20,000, for his historical study titled “Innovation, Expertise, and Equity: Creating Sleep Medicine within Canada’s Universal Health Care System, 1970 – 2000.” Kroker asks what effects Canada’s evolving system of universal health care had on sleep medicine since 1970.

“I’m thrilled to use this grant money to hire a Science and Technology Studies doctoral student (Hana Holubec) to help me examine the evolution of sleep medicine in Canada,” he said.

Drawing inspiration for his study from his late colleague Professor Gina Feldberg, who called for more comparative studies to better understand how health care has unfolded differently in Canada and the U.S., Kroker has been fascinated by the delicate balance Canadians try to execute in creating an accessible health-care system that also facilitates innovation.

“Medical interest in sleep appeared – almost out of nowhere – simultaneous with the development of Canada’s universal health-care system,” he explained, “so I started to wonder whether a close historical study of this field might reveal the ways in which the Canadian model of health-care provision affected the development of this new medical sub-specialty.”

To execute his project, Kroker will combine personal interviews of Canadian sleep medicine researchers and practitioners with a historical analysis of published biomedical literature to help reveal the ways Canada’s universal health-care system impacted technological innovation, patient care, and professional status and structure in an emerging field of medical expertise.

“The results,” he said, “will illustrate the complex ways that equitable access and biomedical innovation have interacted in the recent past. It might also help us better understand the benefits and drawbacks of our current system of health-care provision – and perhaps even improve it.”

Applications for the 2024 AMS History of Healthcare Awards will open on Jan. 8, 2024, with over $250,000 in funding available. For more information, visit the program website. 

Professor wins prestigious prize for nonfiction

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Last week, York University Professor Christina Sharpe was awarded the 2023 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction for her book Ordinary Notes (Knopf Canada, Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Macmillan Publishers, Daunt Books, 2023). The prize, worth $75,000, is given annually for excellence in literary nonfiction, to a work that demonstrates a distinctive voice and a compelling command of language.

Christina Sharpe close-up portrait
Christina Sharpe

“I was thrilled that Ordinary Notes was recognized and received the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction,” said Sharpe. “It was an honour to be on the shortlist with the other authors and hopefully it means that the life of the work is extended and that the book will reach more people.”

It has been quite a year for Sharpe, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York. A profile in the New York Times accompanied the launch of her book in April and dubbed her “the woman shaping a generation of Black thought.” Ordinary Notes has since received extensive praise – from the Guardian, The Yale Review, the Boston Globe, Bookforum and Publisher’s Weekly, to name a few – for its literary innovation and careful examination of questions about loss and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake. It was also a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

In Sharpe’s winning book, a series of 248 notes are used to weave artifacts from the past – public ones alongside others that are personal – with present realities and possible futures, constructing an immersive portrait of everyday Black existence. The notes gather meaning as they’re read.

The Writers’ Trust Prize jury said, “With tenderness, bravery and razor-sharp poetic language, Christina Sharpe invites the reader to witness the ordinary joys and sorrows of Black lives and how they are transformed within the everyday reality of systems of racial supremacy. In doing so, she creates a new narrative space at once intimate, deeply informed and uncompromising.”

When asked about the book’s unique format, Sharpe shared that this was a carefully considered choice. “I wanted to write a book in which form does something,” she explained. “There are four books in particular that greatly informed the form and approach of my book: Adrienne Kennedy’s People Who Led to My Plays, Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging and The Blue Clerk, and John Keene’s Annotations.”

The result is a book that the jury said, “calls upon the reader to witness and wrestle with the notes and stories that Sharpe, a scholar and poet, so generously shares with us.”

In addition to Ordinary Notes, Sharpe has authored two other books of nonfiction, Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects and In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, the second of which was named by the Guardian and The Walrus as one of the best books of 2016 and nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.

Since 2011, the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction has been sponsored by businesswoman and writer Hilary M. Weston, the 26th lieutenant Governor of Ontario. This year, it is funded by the Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation, and the prize purse has increased from $60,000 to $75,000.

For more information about the awards, visit Awards | Writers’ Trust of Canada (writerstrust.com).

Professor wins Petro-Canada Emerging Innovator Award

Molecule of DNA forming inside the test tube equipment

Bill Kim, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, has received the 2023 Petro-Canada Emerging Innovator Award to support his cutting-edge biological chemistry and genome editing research program.

While point mutations in DNA, caused by replication errors or environmental damage, are found in clinical samples from cancer patients, the role of most mutations in causing disease is unknown, impeding the development of new therapeutics. The award will enable Kim to develop new methods of creating genetic mutations in cells to better understand and treat diseases.

Bill Kim
Bill Kim

Leveraging a gene editing technology called clustered regular interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and a CRISPR-derivative technology called “base editing” that he co-invented, Kim aims to target disease-associated DNA sequences in cell cultures and create various point mutations to study their impact on protein and cellular function. He will engineer a class of proteins known as DNA glycosylases, which remove the nucleotide bases within DNA; when bases are removed, the cell repairs them by introducing one of the four nucleotides in a semi-random manner. This innovative method will generate diverse mutations that can be studied further to understand their impact on disease. Kim’s approach is anticipated to be more efficient than the conventional base editing strategy he originally co-developed.

Kim is an emerging world leader in genome editing technology development. Throughout his scientific career spanning 11 years, his work on genome editing technology development has been published in world-class journals including Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Communications and Science Advances, collectively accruing more than 5,400 citations. The CRISPR base editing technology that he co-invented is a revolutionary genome editing method that has gained widespread adoption in hundreds of laboratories worldwide. The technology was a finalist for Science magazine’s 2017 Breakthrough of the Year.

The Petro-Canada Emerging Innovator Award is given to outstanding new full-time faculty members beginning their academic career at York University. The awards program is a commitment by Petro-Canada (now Suncor Energy) and York University to encourage excellence in teaching and research that will enrich the learning environment and contribute to society.