Brazil

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Entrepreneurship

Health Innovation Hub

Research & Innovation

UTEST

An international team of researchers, led by experts from the ��߲ݴ�ý’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, has conducted one of the first field trials for a synthetic biology-based diagnostic platform that could provide rapid, de-centralized and low-cost patient testing for infectious diseases such as the Zika virus.

The work, conducted on-site in Latin America, revealed the potential for the cell-free synthetic biology tools and companion hardware. Published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the study’s results show that the novel diagnostic platform has analytical specificity and sensitivity equivalent to a U.S. Centres for Disease Control (CDC) PCR test for Zika and a diagnostic accuracy of 98.5 per cent with 268 patient samples collected in Recife, Brazil.

The platform is also programmable and can be similarly applied to detect any pathogen sequence. In addition to validating highly accurate diagnostic results for Zika, the team also achieved similar diagnostic performance for chikungunya virus, another mosquito-borne arbovirus.

“We see emerging diagnostics, like the paper-based tests we’ve developed, as having tremendous near-term potential to augment existing PCR capacity, improve equity in access to health care and aid in the responses to public health crises,” said Keith Pardee, assistant professor in the department of pharmaceutical sciences in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.

The portable diagnostic platform is a combination of a cell-free, paper-based test and a field-ready companion device that allows data to be collected using image-based colour analysis – purple for positive and yellow for negative. Called “PLUM” (Portable, Low-cost, User-friendly, Multimode), the toaster-size reader presents results from up to 384 samples and displays them in a single image capture.

Prior to the current global COVID-19 pandemic, the 2015-2016 outbreak of Zika virus in Latin America emphasized the urgent need for rapid and low-cost testing that can be deployed beyond the reach of centralized diagnostic labs, according to Pardee, a Canada Research Chair in Synthetic Biology and Human Health.

“We were investigating and developing this technology well before the COVID-19 pandemic brought these issues to light at the global level,” he said. “We’ve now been able to apply it and validate it in a region of endemic disease, which is really promising because these tools are meant to enable health systems to better respond to future outbreaks of infectious disease, particularly in low-resource settings.”

From left: Margot Karlikow, Seray Çiçek, Livia Guo and Keith Pardee (photo courtesy of Livia Guo, LSK Technologies)

Lindomar Pena, of the department of virology at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) in Rio de Janeiro, led the Brazilian team that collaborated on the project.

“This robust diagnostic platform displayed desirable features to be used in developing countries such as Brazil and in laboratories with basic infrastructure,” Pena said. “We hope it can be further developed and deployed in the Brazilian network of public health laboratories to diagnose Zika patients, trace contacts and identify hot-spot areas with active community transmission.”

The hardware and software that make up PLUM were originally developed by co-authors Livia Guo and Seray Çiçek as part of their graduate work in the Pardee lab. To keep production costs low, Guo and Çiçek – who are co-founders of LSK Technologies, a startup that aims to commercialize PLUM – used customizable software programs and off-the shelf electronics, enabling the device to be built for approximately US$500 per unit.

On the molecular side, the cell-free tests can be freeze-dried, allowing for distribution without refrigeration and, significantly, all of the molecular components of the test are independent of the PCR-supply chain.

“Here we have demonstrated that these two technologies combined create a low-cost, highly accurate diagnostic tool,” said study lead author Margot Karlikow, a post-doctoral researcher in the Pardee lab from 2016 to 2021 and now co-founder of En Carta Diagnostics.

“We also demonstrated that it is feasible to transport the platform across a significant distance and implement it effectively in another country. In many low- and middle-income countries, there is no PCR testing available outside of main cities, so the ultimate goal is that this platform be used as a high-quality alternative to PCR in more regional settings.”

As part of their publication, the team shared a roadmap of how they were able to transport the diagnostic technology from Canada to Latin America so that other teams might benefit from their experiences.

Guo, Çiçek and Karlikow successfully moved their work with the Pardee lab to establish health tech startups, LSK Technologies and En Carta Diagnostics, respectively. The entrepreneurship and incubator community at U of T was instrumental in the process.

In particular, Guo and Çiçek collaborated closely with the H2i and UTEST incubators.

“Both H2i and UTEST were great in terms of making introductions and helping to expand our network,” said Çiçek, explaining that H2i helped the team figure out a road map from the regulatory and product design standpoint while UTEST helped with customer discovery so they could better understand and mitigate customer pain points.

“The entrepreneurship community at U of T helps foster regular and valuable discussions between entrepreneurs around their challenges,” said Karlikow who is now running En Carta Diagnostics from Paris. “With so much support available, it helps you to make the decision to start your company to push your vision and product forward.”

Showing that the platform could be transported and accurately detect Zika virus in patient samples is a significant step forward in creating more accessible and de-centralized testing, says Pardee.

However, the extraction of RNA from patient samples still requires liquid handling by skilled technicians at this stage. “With performance on patient samples now validated, we are tackling these next challenges, like sample preparation, so that the platform and PCR-like diagnostic capacity can be distributed more broadly into the communities where they are needed.”

The team is hoping the successful field-based patient trial will move the work forward with added momentum.

“This step of translating the technology from the lab and applying it in a real-world setting was so important,” said Karlikow. “This was more than just the science involved – we made it applicable. We took it to the real world and it worked.”

U of T's Andrea Allen studies the 'invisible' Black women of Brazil’s LGBTQ community

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 08 Jul 2021 14:37:50 +0000

U of T's Andrea Allen studies the 'invisible' Black women of Brazil’s LGBTQ community

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 07/08/2021 - 10:37

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Andrea Allen, an assistant professor of anthropology, has spent her professional life researching marginalized people in Brazil, particularly Black women in the LGBTQ community (photo courtesy of Andrea Allen)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies

Anthropology

Faculty of Arts & Science

LGBTQ

Andrea Allen has spent her professional life researching marginalized people in Brazil – a country known for racial, cultural, sexual and religious diversity, but which also suffers from economic inequality and intolerance.

The assistant professor in the ��߲ݴ�ý’s department of anthropology and the Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies in the Faculty of Arts & Science has taken a particular interest in Black women in Brazil’s LGBTQ community. Allen’s 2015 book Violence and Desire in Brazilian Lesbian Relationships showed that, while lesbian women in the country reject a cultural norm of male domination and female submission, they themselves are not exempt from intimate partner violence in their own relationships.

Allen says she found her way to Brazil through a fortunate accident.

“In many ways I owe my interest in Brazil to the United States military,” she says, noting that, as an undergraduate, she joined the United States Army Reserve and was given the opportunity to learn a second language – which turned out to be Portuguese.

“I mean, I had no choice in the matter. I was an enlisted soldier.”

Returning to university as a double major in religion and African-American studies, Allen’s newfound linguistic fluency merged with her interest in the Brazilian religion of Candomblé. Like Santeria and Vodun (also known as voodoo), Candomblé is a new world religion originally practised by enslaved people from Africa.

“For my senior year, I did an independent research project about the experiences of LGBT practitioners of Candomblé,” she says. “There was a perception that this religion celebrated same-sex sexuality, so I was particularly interested in learning about the experiences of lesbian women with it.”

Years later, Allen’s PhD dissertation also sprang from research conducted in Brazil – but on a very different topic. “I wanted to focus on the relationship between nationalist ideologies and nationalism, and how they might influence lesbian women,” she says.

However, the link proved difficult to make. And while talking to her subjects, she started to notice something else:

“They’d say, ‘My girlfriend slapped me.’ Or, ‘Here’s a bruise, here’s a scar that I got from my girlfriend.’ The more I talked to people, the more I realized that this was a common experience. And once I began to realize that intimate partner violence was an important theme of my research, another closely related theme was infidelity.”

Intimate partner violence is indeed common in Brazil, where 25 per cent of women are estimated to be physically victimized by men. As Allen found, however, this phenomenon was also very much present in lesbian relationships.

“One of the things I argue is that, when we talk about violence, it’s important to look at it not only as a product of masculinity, but as a human enterprise. We can then look at how the histories of different peoples and places can influence and shape how people think about violence,” she says.

Allen’s research has largely been conducted in the port city of Salvador de Bahia, where the population is 80 per cent Black. And yet, the city’s municipal leadership is overwhelmingly white, with white residents earning more than three times what Black residents do.

Consequently, Allen argues that to be not only Black, but female and queer in Salvador, is to be “invisible,” with few outlets for expression. This frustration has given rise to a vibrant culture of protest in the city – protests that appear beautiful and joyful to tourists, but are rooted in sorrow. Street paintings are one example. Another is Banda Didá, an all-female drumming group.

“Culture in itself is a form of activism,” Allen says. “The fact that Banda Didá is an all-female drum corps is significant, because in many Candomblé temples, only men are allowed to play drums during religious ceremonies.”

Formed in 1993, Banda Didá is an all-women Afro-Brazilian percussion band that is itself a form of protest (photo: O Rebucetê (CC BY-NC 2.0))

Allen’s next book will focus on religion. When she was completing a master of theological studies degree at Harvard Divinity School, she noted how Brazilian immigrant women in the Boston area would use religion to relieve the many stresses caused by dislocation. This led to her interest in how the LGBTQ community in both Brazil and the diaspora interacts with evangelical Protestantism.

In Brazil the question is fraught, given the increasing involvement of right-wing evangelicals in Brazilian politics. But only lately, says Allen, has evangelical religion become politicized. “If you look at the history of mainstream evangelicalism, you see this idea that ‘we should not be of this world.’ But the last time I was in Brazil, at a church run by two lesbian pastors, one of the pastors’ sermons criticized evangelicalism for not following the true spirit of the Word.”

Allen’s continuing research shows that while Brazil’s cultural richness is justifiably the envy of the world, it is also a country beset by myths. Chief among these is its reputation as a model of racial and sexual tolerance.

“White Brazilians like to think of Brazil as a land of happiness – almost a racial paradise. But if you look underneath, you see a lot of racial, sexual and gender inequality. You can’t look at any one of these things without looking at the others,” she says. “Because that is the history of Brazil.”

��߲ݴ�ý graduate builds community at Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy through volunteer work

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 14:41:19 +0000

��߲ݴ�ý graduate builds community at Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy through volunteer work

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 06/05/2020 - 10:41

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Giovanna Schver held various positions in the Pharmaceutical Sciences Graduate Student Association and has been active in U of T’s student chapter of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Sciences (photo courtesy of Giovanna Schver)

Eileen Hoftyzer

Topic

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Student Leadership Award

Giovanna Schver says she spent more time at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy than at her home during the six years she spent working on her PhD in pharmaceutical sciences.

On top of her academic work, she volunteered and participated in student government activities, helping to build the graduate student community at the faculty. She was recently recognized for her efforts with the ��߲ݴ�ý Student Leadership Award (formerly Gordon Cressy Award).

“The Faculty of Pharmacy was my home for six years, so receiving recognition from U of T was amazing,” she says. “It’s almost like being recognized by your family.”

Schver first visited U of T for a four-month research trip while was working on her master’s degree at the Federal University of Pernambuco in her hometown of Recife, Brazil. She later decided to come back to the faculty and work under supervision of Professor Ping Lee for her PhD, which focused on developing new strategies to enhance the delivery of poorly soluble drugs so they can be more effectively absorbed by the body.

While Schver took on small volunteer roles early in her PhD, she began getting more involved a few years into her degree when she was elected to student government. She held various positions in the Pharmaceutical Sciences Graduate Student Association (PSGSA), including social director and president, leading a team that organized many social, fundraising and education events. She also developed two successful new initiatives: a mentorship program that paired graduate students with mentors based on their career goals and a series of lunch-and-learn events that allowed students to learn more about professors’ careers in an informal environment. Both programs helped boost students’ interactions and created a greater sense of community in the faculty.

Most recently, Schver has been active in U of T’s student chapter of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Sciences. On the committee, she established a research collaboration between U of T, Université de Montréal and the University at Buffalo (The State University of New York), which led to joint research days and free workshops for U of T students.

Schver says that volunteering has many benefits. She says it helped her develop skills that she can use in her future career, including managing a large team of volunteers. “You can develop a lot of transferable skills while volunteering that you can’t just by working on your PhD project,” she says. “All the opportunities that I had to be involved helped me develop personally and made me more prepared to join the work force.”

In April, Schver successfully defended her thesis virtually and, only a week later, she found a position as a pharmacokinetic scientist at a research organization.

Brazil's humane refugee policies: Good ideas can travel north, U of T expert says

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 16:42:23 +0000

Brazil's humane refugee policies: Good ideas can travel north, U of T expert says

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 02/12/2020 - 11:42

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In this March 2018 photo, Venezuelan children wait for a meal at a migrant shelter set up in Boa Vista, Roraima state, Brazil (photo by Eraldo Peres/AP Phot)

Audrey Macklin

Topic

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Faculty of Law

Migrants

The Conversation

The global north tends to view the global south as a source of refugees, and it often implements policies aimed at preventing those refugees from reaching the global north.

Brazil recently set a bold precedent that should make those northern states adjust the lens. Its policy toward Venezuelan refugees, in contrast to its wealthier peers, is pragmatic, humane and sensible.

Venezuela’s political, economic and social collapse has generated a population hemorrhage: More than 4.5 million, or one in seven Venezuelans, have left, and most remain in the region. Colombia hosts around 1.5 million. About 260,000 have entered Brazil through its northern border with Venezuela at a rate of about 500 per day. Three elements of the Brazilian response stand out.

First, Brazil has provided basic shelters and services – not detention – to meet the urgent and immediate needs of people streaming across the Venezuelan border into Roraima province. Brazil partners with United Nations agencies, as well as international, regional and domestic aid agencies that contribute financial and logistical assistance. The Brazilian government has also initiated a policy to redistribute arrivals to the interior of Brazil to reduce the burden on Roraima.

In this February 2019 photo, Venezuelans stand behind a sign reading ‘Venezuela-Brazil Limit’ near a border checkpoint in Pacaraima, Roraima state, Brazil, on Venezuela’s southern border (photo by Ivan Valencia/AP Photo)

Next, Brazil has expanded the scope of entitlement to refugee status. The 1984 Cartagena Declaration adopted a regional approach to refugee protection, mindful of the history of Latin American states as both producers and recipients of refugee flows.

The international refugee definition contained in the UN 1951 Refugee Convention is individualistic and requires proof that applicants fear personal persecution. But the Cartagena definition supplements that narrow approach by including people who have fled their countries because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances that have seriously disturbed public order.

In June 2019, Brazil’s National Committee for Refugees issued a detailed report concluding that the crisis in Venezuela falls under the purview of the Cartagena Declaration. People labelled as migrants elsewhere because they fall outside the narrow terms of the UN Refugee Convention definition are included as refugees under Cartagena.

Bolder step

In December 2019, Brazil took an even bolder step: It dispensed with the requirement of individualized refugee status determination for each Venezuelan asylum applicant.

Applicants in Brazil, with documentary proof of identity and without a criminal record, will receive refugee status without an interview. Refugee status, in turn, entitles them to permanent resident status, access employment, public health care, education and other social services available to Brazilians.

After four years, they may apply for naturalization. Within the first month of the policy, about 21,000 Venezuelans were processed under this new system.

Put this in comparative perspective: Unlike the United States and Australia, Brazil has not set up detention centres, separated families and caged children in order to punish Venezuelans for fleeing intolerable circumstances.

That means that Brazil has not wasted scarce resources on vicious and futile deterrence strategies. Brazil also applies a refugee definition that responds to contemporary patterns of forced migration. And unlike other states with sophisticated refugee status determination regimes, Brazil’s group-based recognition of Venezuelans avoids the creation of a mammoth backlog of Venezuelan asylum applications.

Resources that would have been wasted processing individual Venezuelan asylum claims will be directed at managing settlement and integration, and on determining asylum claims from other places.

Some are just passing through

Not all Venezuelans who arrive in Brazil seek asylum.

Many transit through Brazil in order to rejoin family or friends in nearby states, such as Argentina or Chile. Others go back and forth between Brazil and Venezuela to deliver food, medicine and other necessities to family and communities who remain there. And some do not wish to see themselves as refugees and so do not claim that legal status.

Brazil also allows Venezuelans to obtain two-year renewable temporary resident permits that also give them access to employment and to public services like health care and education.

There is good reason to believe that whether they are admitted on temporary permits, or permanently as refugees, most Venezuelans will go home voluntarily if and when the circumstances that caused them to flee have improved. That’s another advantage of regional integration programs that enable people to live, work and continue their lives in proximity to their country of origin.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro plays with a Venezuelan boy at an event for beneficiaries of a program to receive Venezuelan migrants in January 2020 (photo by Eraldo Peres/AP Photo)

Regional solidarity plays a paradoxical role in Brazil’s initiative. The Cartagena Declaration, as well as a regional free movement initiative under the Mercosur trade bloc, show the emergence of South American co-operation in migration.

On the other hand, President Jair Bolsonaro has not distinguished himself in the past as a champion of refugees and displaced people. One wonders whether his antipathy toward Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro might have more to do with the Brazilian hospitality shown to Venezuelans fleeing Maduro’s regime than solidarity. One is reminded here of refugee politics during the Cold War. But whatever the motive, the current policy has much to commend it.

Not perfect

The system is certainly imperfect. Brazil is a middle-income country, and so the quality and availability of public services is uneven.

Bureaucratic inefficiency and lack of co-ordination among different branches of the state cause delay and confusion. Venezuela is not the only source of asylum-seekers; Brazil also receives asylum seekers from Haiti, Africa and the Middle East.

Local aid organizations struggle to fill service gaps, but their resources are also strained by the surge in Venezuelan arrivals.

The absence of habitable and affordable accommodation is also a massive and critical problem in Brazil. Refugees may have no alternative but to live in extremely dangerous and violent places. Language training is weak, though Portuguese is relatively easy for Spanish-speakers to learn. Even though refugees can lawfully seek employment, some employers still take advantage of newcomers by overworking and underpaying them.

These are problems. But they are better problems to have than thousands of severely traumatized children, thousands of drowning deaths in the Mediterranean and the abuse, torture, rape and killing of people seeking refuge in the detention centres of Libya or Manus Island.

We have something to learn from the Brazilians. If Brazil can find an efficient, pragmatic way to welcome, protect and integrate hundreds of thousands of forced migrants arriving at its border, so can more affluent states. Good ideas –like good people – can migrate north, and we should welcome them.

Audrey Macklin is a professor and chair in human rights law and the director of the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the ��߲ݴ�ý.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

U of T researcher launches app to tackle violence against Brazil's LGBTQ community: Reuters

rahul.kalvapalle — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 16:15:07 +0000

U of T researcher launches app to tackle violence against Brazil's LGBTQ community: Reuters

rahul.kalvapalle Thu, 12/19/2019 - 11:15

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Supporters participate in the Walk of Lesbian and Bisexual Women in São Paulo, Brazil in 2017 (photo by Cris Faga/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Topic

��߲ݴ�ý mental health expert Monica Malta has helped launch an app that lets LGBTQ people in Brazil list safe spaces and notify others in case of a threat, Reuters reports.

Called "Dandarah" after a trans woman who was murdered in 2017, the app uses crowdsourcing to map places where attacks occur as well as police stations, health clinics and NGO offices.

Malta, who has researched violence faced by transgender women in Brazil, told Reuters she hopes the app will contribute to curbing transphobic violence in Brazil, one of the world’s most dangerous countries for gay and trans people.

“The key issue for us to think about was ... how could we build upon everything the community had and foster something that could give them a better tool to not only report (violence), but also reach out and support each other,” said Malta, an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine and an independent scientist at the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Bruna Benevides, a trans activist involved in the project, told Reuters the app “encourages the population to report crimes so we can reduce omission and impunity.”

Read the article at Reuters

U of T researchers volunteer to help Brazilian university build its first qualitative health research program

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 22:17:34 +0000

U of T researchers volunteer to help Brazilian university build its first qualitative health research program

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 12/04/2019 - 17:17

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From left to right: U of T Associate Professor Denise Gastaldo, Margarida de Aquino Cunha, the rector of Brazil's Federal University of Acre and Rozilaine Redi Lago, who was a visiting U of T PhD student (photo courtesy of Dalla Lana)

Françoise Makanda

Topic

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Rozilaine Redi Lago, a visiting PhD student at the ��߲ݴ�ý’s Centre for Critical Qualitative Health Research (CQ) four years ago, taught the only qualitative research course at the Federal University of Acre (UFAC) in Brazil following her graduation.

But she saw a pressing need for an entire program – a goal that U of T’s Denise Gastaldo and Brenda Gladstone, both volunteers with Academics Without Borders (AWB), are now helping to realize.

“She created a group which included her colleagues from several faculties who had training in qualitative research and said, ‘Please come here to help us get started,’” says Gastaldo, an associate professor at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing who is cross-appointed to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

The Amazon region of Brazil desperately needs qualitative public health training. UFAC offers the region’s only public health PhD program with a single quantitative focus. The resource-starved region faces serious and complex public health issues that require both quantitative and qualitative research approaches.

“While they have been monitoring endemic diseases like malaria, dengue and leprosy, they also need information on social and cultural practices to create more effective programs to prevent and treat these diseases,” says Gastaldo, who is the former CQ director.

Access to care is an ongoing issue. Large rivers surround the equatorial region. Intemperate weather hampers patients’ ability to access care. The region is also home to 20,000 Indigenous residents who speak over 15 languages and observe various health-related cultural norms.

Gastaldo and Gladstone, an assistant professor at Dalla Lana, will offer their time and expertise to help Redi Lago develop UFAC’s – and the region’s – first and only academic qualitative health research program.

AWB is a Canadian not-for-profit organization that works with universities in low-and-middle income countries on capacity building projects that improve or expand existing institutional programs. The AWB Network, a consortium of Canadian universities and colleges that support AWB’s mission, offers academics opportunities to participate in capacity building projects as volunteers or introduce projects to AWB.

The network also connects universities’ needs with the network’s participating university experts. The network’s first U of T volunteers will support the Brazilian university with more and better qualitative research training opportunities.

“They are one of the top public health programs in the region, and that’s why they were eager to have better collaboration,” says Gastaldo.

She has supported administrators as they developed an educational plan. Now, the UFAC’s program coordinators are discussing the establishment of master’s- and PhD-level courses. In the coming months, both Dalla Lana professors will work with instructors and students to develop a new curriculum.

“We have high hopes for this collaboration,” says Gastaldo. “We expect students will become supervisors and teachers in Acre and in the Amazon region. CQ interdisciplinary curriculum is an inspiration for graduate programs in other countries. There are great opportunities for high quality qualitative research to be conducted in Acre in the near future.”

'Piecing together a puzzle': Undergraduate students travel to Brazil to document and preserve Indigenous languages

geoff.vendeville — Mon, 08 Jul 2019 13:58:13 +0000

'Piecing together a puzzle': Undergraduate students travel to Brazil to document and preserve Indigenous languages

geoff.vendeville Mon, 07/08/2019 - 09:58

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Gregory Antono, centre, works with speakers of Macuxi, an Indigenous language spoken in the area between Brazil and Guyana (photo courtesy via uoftbrazil.blog)

Jovana Jankovic

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Undergraduate Students

Victoria College

Woodsworth College

Indigenous Peoples speak more than 4,000 of the world’s estimated 6,700 languages, but language scholars predict at least half – likely more – of those languages will go extinct by the year 2100.

Three undergraduate students in the ��߲ݴ�ý’s Faculty of Arts & Science recently visited the city of Boa Vista, Brazil, in the northwestern state of Roraima, to study Indigenous languages with locals and help preserve some the region’s Indigenous languages: Macuxi, Ye’kwana and Taurepang.

The students went as part of a course taught by Suzi Lima, an assistant professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese, and the Faculty of Arts & Science Research Excursions Program.

Octavia Andrade-Dixon, a Woodsworth College student taking human geography and Portuguese, focused on Taurepang, a language spoken mainly in the Venezuelan savannah, with some speakers on the Brazilian side of the border near Guyana. While some documentation of Taurepang exists in Portuguese and Spanish, there is little in English.

“Our work expands on existing information while presenting it in other languages,” Andrade-Dixon says. “And our consultant was of the Brazilian Taurepang community rather than the Venezuelan population, which may present some variation. So, in some regard, we are uncovering new information.”

The trip taught her about the challenges that come with translation and fieldwork, she adds.

“I also learned how skillful you have to be to find answers,” she says. “I watched Professor Lima change sentences to be more culturally relevant, create elaborate scenarios and draw pictures to reach our objectives. It felt as though I was piecing together a puzzle.”

Lima, who supervised the research trip, says she wanted “to put students in a central role as researchers and independent thinkers.”

“I always try to explore experiential learning activities in my courses,” she says.

From left to right: U of T students Octavia Andrade-Dixon, Guilherme Teruya and Gregory Antono (photo courtesy of uoftbrazil.blog)

Lima, her students and their Brazilian hosts and partners at the State University of Roraima held “elicitation sessions” – one-on-one meetings between a researcher and an Indigenous language consultant focused on a particular aspect of the language. That includes anything from translating a list of simple nouns to unraveling more complex linguistic concepts.

On one day of language sessions, some students worked on adjectives, comparitives and measurements in Ye’kwana, while another group did the same in Taurepang, according to linguistics student Gregory Antono who blogged about the experience.

Antono, a recent Victoria College graduate who took Spanish and Latin American studies, worked on Macuxi, which is spoken in the borderlands of southern Guyana, northern Brazil and eastern Venezuela.

He says his courses at U of T prepared him for the trip.

“My studies have made me think critically about the complexities surrounding Indigenous communities,” he says. “I’ve also learned to think more critically about the role of linguists and other academics who conduct research on and with these communities, which was particularly relevant for this trip.

“Getting to apply what I learned in a classroom was challenging, but deeply rewarding.”

Antono adds the language consultants were eager to collaborate on the project.

“During one session, one of my consultants took out a USB key to share audio recordings of the Macuxi language. Another consultant enthusiastically showed me his bilingual Macuxi-Portuguese bible and spoke about his efforts to create more pedagogical material for his language.”

Lima says the experiential aspect of fieldwork is key to developing not only students’ academic skills but their people skills, too.

“Research-oriented courses help students develop organization, communication and reasoning skills that will be useful in different fields and careers,” she says. “Moreover, the exchange of views and ideas is a very meaningful part of this course. Listening to others helps us understand our own reality better. Participating in collaborative research with Indigenous communities in Brazil has brought a lot to my life, and I hope it gives the students a similarly enriching experience.”

The research trip to Roraima wasn’t limited to academic activities. The students visited a refugee camp for Indigenous Peoples from Venezuela, attended a dance performance inspired by the songs of Brazilian singer Elis Regina and sampled local culinary specialties like vapatá, a stew made from a woody shrub called manioc, and kibe, a small, fried hand-held snack of rice and seasoned beef.

They also ensured the knowledge exchange wasn’t a one-way street by giving presentations on Canada’s Indigenous Peoples to their hosts at the State University of Roraima.

“It is one thing to learn in the classroom, but nothing beats getting first-hand experience learning in the field,” Antono says. “Especially from instructors with such profound experience. We learned and laughed a lot, and we are grateful and inspired.”

Five reasons why you can’t miss the 2016 Olympics – from U of T's Bruce Kidd

lavende4 — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 18:31:09 +0000

Five reasons why you can’t miss the 2016 Olympics – from U of T's Bruce Kidd

lavende4 Tue, 08/02/2016 - 14:31

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Statue of Christ the Redeemer gazes down at Rio de Janeiro's Maracana Stadium (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Bruce Kidd

Author legacy

Bruce Kidd

Topic

There is no getting around it – the uncertain conditions, environmental challenges, reports of local corruption and even threats of violence, generate considerable anxiety – even cynicism, about the upcoming Olympics and Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro.

But let’s put this into perspective. This isn’t the first time the challenges of staging the Games have sparked worries and protests. We had them in Canada too, when we staged the Olympics in Montreal in 1976 and the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Vancouver/Whistler in 2010. Moreover, most of the world’s large urban centres face conditions not unlike those found in Rio. Most athletes know this, and have competed in similar conditions around the globe. The ��߲ݴ�ý athletes and coaches who will be in Rio won’t be daunted — they’re very excited about competing there.

That doesn’t mean we should uncritically accept what isn’t right in our world. We should be dismayed by the cost to mount the Games, by the egregious example of doping and cheating that has rightly eliminated so many from competition, that what began as a project to advance international understanding has now to be protected by billion-dollar surveillance and security. It doesn’t have to be this way, and we need to accelerate efforts to find effective alternatives.

But during the Games, let’s put the contradictions aside and enjoy the Olympic and Paralympic spirit. I wish I could be there in person. I will wholeheartedly be there in spirit, glued to the media coverage.

Here’s why:

1. The global community comes together under peaceful auspices. Delegations from 207 national communities, including first time entrants Kosovo and South Sudan, will march in the Parade of Nations — a record. Where else does the entire world come together in celebration of excellence, humanity and diversity? At a difficult time for the world, with unrelenting wars, poverty and misery, the Olympics showcase the possibilities of an inclusive world, with international and intercultural respect and understanding.

2. Rio will be a feast of sport, with 306 sets of medals up for grabs in 28 Olympic sports, many of which are rarely broadcast in the mono-culture of North American television, such as water polo, canoe slalom, handball, and race walking. Obscure? Perhaps. Athletic? Decidedly. Compelling? You bet. And in almost every sport, the competitions will be genuine world championships (not the parochial ‘world’ of our North American leagues).

3. 313 Canadian athletes, including about a dozen from the ��߲ݴ�ý, will give us lots to cheer about as they go up against the best of the world. If you got to know them during the 2015 Pan Am & Parapan American Games in Toronto, this is the chance to see them on the world stage.

4. Remarkable competitors from other countries, each with a moving story to tell. Two I will be following closely are Dutee Chand (100 metres, India) and Caster Semanya (South Africa, 800). Both women have been vilified in the media and ostracized by some members of the sports community for challenging track and field’s unfair sex test and both will no doubt face extra pressure in Rio. Yet they have persisted, kept their heads high and made the Olympic standard to qualify for Rio. They are such remarkable and courageous women, I will be cheering loudly for them.

5. Rosie MacLennan. She’s the Team Canada flag bearer, the defending Olympic champion in the trampoline, and a ��߲ݴ�ý alumna and graduate student. As a budding social scientist, she’s becoming an insightful observer of international sport, as well as a gifted leader. I look forward as much to her comments as seeing her fly through the air.

As the Games begin, let’s stand together as the world is treated to the very best of sport.

Bruce Kidd is vice-president and principal of ��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough. A former Olympian, he has written extensively about the politics of sport.

U of T undergrads off to Brazil to research poverty

sgupta — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 10:37:55 +0000

U of T undergrads off to Brazil to research poverty sgupta Wed, 10/07/2015 - 06:37

Cutline

Getting the chance to help design a research project from the ground up? “As an undergraduate student, it's invaluable,” says Alexa Waud

Terry Lavender

Author legacy

Terry Lavender

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Features

Undergraduate Students

Experiential Education

Education

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

It’s not unusual for ��߲ݴ�ý professors to travel abroad to do field research. It’s not even out of the ordinary for graduate students to do so.

But for undergraduate students, the chance to fly to another country to do original research is an opportunity not to be missed.

Alexa Waud and two other undergraduate students will be travelling to Brazil in December to investigate that country’s approach to alleviating poverty. For Waud, the chance to help design a research project from the ground up is irresistible.

“I haven’t had that chance before. As an undergraduate student, it’s invaluable to understand how that process works – starting with a literature review, then an annotated bibliography, determining the questions, getting ethics approval and the rest of it.”

Waud is in her third year at U of T, doing a double major in peace, conflict and justice studies and environment and health. She and the other students, including two students in the masters of global affairs program, will be travelling with Professor Joseph Wong of political science to find out why Brazil’s Bolsa Familia program is so effective at getting funds directly to the poor.

Bolsa Familia – the largest conditional cash transfer program in the world – provides a direct cash transfer to 14 million poor families and has a 75 percent success rate in getting the funds into the hands of those who need them, Wong says.

“These conditional cash transfers have had a positive effect on child health, including a significant decrease in under-5 mortality rates,” he says. “It’s a remarkable record, but I don’t have time to do all the research myself, so I recruited these phenomenal undergraduate students to help me out.”

Wong recruited the undergraduate students from former participants in the Munk School of Global Affairs Munk One program, where he teaches a first-year course in global innovations. (Learn more about Munk One.)

Wong and his students will be meeting with government officials, health care workers and program recipients. Divided into two teams, they’ll travel to the capital city Brasilia, to Salvador in the northeast part of the country, to São Paulo and to Belo Horizonte.

Wong says he’s not surprised by the students’ enthusiasm to participate. “For them this is just a fantastic research experience. All of them are motivated by issues of poverty reduction, they’re motivated by issues of development, and here’s an opportunity for them to get into a particular initiative or project, to get into it very deeply.”

In a discussion paper on U of T's three priorities released last week, President Meric Gertler talked about the importance of re-imagining undergraduate education and emphasizing research-based, experience-based and international learning.

“Over the past 10 plus years we have dramatically scaled up the number of research opportunities for undergraduates,” Gertler said, “championed experiential and service learning and expanded the range and variety of international experiences available to our students. We need to build on these successes and maintain this momentum.

“Participating in research provides a valuable opportunity for students to develop key skills – to enhance their problem-solving ability and creativity, to foster their capacity for team work and to sharpen their communication skills (both written and oral).”

What Toronto's health experts can learn from Brazil: Howard Hu

sgupta — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 10:36:34 +0000

What Toronto's health experts can learn from Brazil: Howard Hu sgupta Mon, 10/05/2015 - 06:36

Cutline

“To truly improve the health of entire communities, societies and countries, we must acknowledge and repair health inequities and partner with marginalized populations,” says Howard Hu

Nicole Bodnar

Author legacy

Nicole Bodnar

Topic

Research