Sociology

Subheadline

With a focus on the Halifax area, Timothy Bryan says his research challenges the notion that cities are dangerous while rural spaces are peaceful and quiet

Crime is often perceived as an urban phenomenon whereas rural life is viewed as more bucolic – but Timothy Bryan is putting these ideas to the test.

An assistant professor in the department of sociology at ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga, Bryan analyzes how urban and rural residents perceive and imagine street safety.

“Often, criminological research has assumed certain things about crime. Crime is often perceived as something that happens in urban areas,” says Bryan, whose research revolves around the policing of hate crime and criminal justice reform in Canada.

“What this project wants to do is to disrupt some of those binaries that assume that urban spaces are always spaces of danger and that rural spaces are somehow these peaceful, quiet spaces.”

He is currently focused on the Halifax area, where two recent events have largely shaped the view of public safety. The first is the April 2020 mass shooting that left 22 people dead in rural Nova Scotia, sparking an inquiry into the RCMP’s efforts to keep residents safe.

The other event was increased scrutiny of street checks that disproportionally targeted African Nova Scotian residents. A March 2019 study by Scot Wortley, a professor at U of T’s Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, showed that Black residents were six times more likely to be street checked in the Halifax area compared to white residents.

Bryan travelled to Halifax last year to interview residents about their feelings on street safety and policing. He was supported by an IGNITE grant from the Black Research Network, a U of T institutional strategic initiative.

“On the back of these two events, what I found was that many residents were rethinking their relationship with police,” Bryan says, adding many had previously reported a positive relationship with police or had no negative relationships with police.

“But recent events actually started to have residents think differently about whether police were capable of keeping them safe, whether police wanted to keep them safe, or whether the presence of police was even a sign of safety.”

The Wortley report ultimately made 53 recommendations focused on street checks, data collection and police-community relations. In October 2019, street checks were permanently banned in Nova Scotia.

Another element of Bryan’s project will use a combination of participant-produced drawings of street scenes and interviews to address questions about street safety and how police contribute to these perceptions.

He says the exercise not only helps him gain a deeper understanding of the perceptions of urban and rural spaces, it also asks participants to explain what they would change to make their neighbourhoods safer.

“I’m hoping that the images not only provide a method of getting at the data and people’s responses,” he says, “but become a kind of artifact in themselves as a kind of snapshot of how it is that people are coming to understand where they live, how they live and perhaps what they want changed about the areas within it.”

He is currently completing about 40 interviews with participants in Halifax and developing those responses into an academic publication. He hopes to present preliminary findings at research conferences.

U of T sociologist explores homecare workers' capacity to avoid coercive labour conditions

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 15:00:55 +0000

U of T sociologist explores homecare workers' capacity to avoid coercive labour conditions

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 11/22/2023 - 10:00

Cutline

(photo by Vecteezy)

U of T Mississauga staff

Topic

Breaking Research

Global

United States

Subheadline

Researchers examined the impact of California’s in-home support service program on homecare providers' ability to advocate for themselves

How much power do homecare workers have to resist being exploited by their employers?

For Asian women working in this occupation in California, the answer is shaped by several factors, including filial obligations, cultural traditions, language barriers, economic status, state employment regulations, labour unions, immigrant organizations and disability rights groups.

Cynthia Cranford, a professor of sociology at the ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga, examines this complex subject in a new study published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.

Cynthia Cranford (supplied image)

Cranford joined scholars from the University of California, Florida Atlantic University and Brown University to analyze how the inequalities of gender, race, class and immigration shape these workers’ ability to refuse coercive labour conditions.

Their investigation, funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Partnership Grant, also examined the role of California’s in-home support service (IHSS) state-funded care program in enabling and inhibiting self-advocacy by care providers.

“The state, in the design of its program, opens the door for homecare workers to slip into servitude,” says Cranford, author of the 2020 book Home Care Fault Lines: Understanding Tensions and Creating Alliances. “How can they collectivize and access supports within their community to navigate these situations?”

The situations to which Cranford is referring were illuminated through interviews with 60 homecare providers. They include:

Being expected to work unpaid overtime and serve members of their family
Being subjected to verbal abuse
Being accused of stealing
Having food thrown at them.

The interviews were arranged with the help of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and three partnering community organizations: Asian Immigrant Women Advocates, the Filipino American Services Group and the Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California.

As Cranford notes, the IHSS program in California, which employs more than 500,000 homecare providers, stands out as a model in the U.S. for empowering homecare workers who are members of the SEIU with the right to engage in collective bargaining for fair wages and benefits.

Yet, the authors note the union limits its interventions in cases of homecare worker mistreatment. Due to concessions it has made to disability rights groups, it does not engage in workplace strikes that could jeopardize the health and well-being of people who need continuous care.

As well, they write, the IHSS program grants employers full autonomy over the hiring, firing and supervising of homecare workers, taking a “hands-off approach to regulating employment conditions in homecare,” which leaves workers vulnerable to inhumane treatment.

The IHSS program allows for spouses, parents, children and other relatives to be paid care providers. While it is beneficial for a relative to be paid for work that they might normally perform for free out of a sense of family duty, Cranford and her colleagues found that family dynamics often contribute to a sense of “unfreedom” since they create expectations to perform extra tasks beyond their paid hours, and threats of firing for non-compliance.

This issue is exacerbated by California’s insufficient resourcing of the program, they say, as those who receive care often need funding for more care hours than allotted by the program. Other mitigating factors include the ethno-cultural expectation of female servitude among older care receivers, and the financial precariousness and limited English proficiency of some care providers.

Yet, as the authors note, many of the homecare workers they interviewed found ways to respond to their dilemmas of servitude. Taking advantage of what few supports their union offers, they have engaged in grassroots community organizing to cultivate group solidarity among homecare workers, sought help when facing unreasonable demands at work in order to improve working conditions and sometimes resorted to blacklisting abusive employers.

Some also connected with local immigrant organizations to help advocate for their rights.

“These women are confronting servitude in multiple ways, and when they have collective support from their unions and other community groups, they are capable of confronting it,” Cranford says.

Search for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls hampered by police apathy: Researchers

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 14:58:49 +0000

Search for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls hampered by police apathy: Researchers

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 06/05/2023 - 10:58

Cutline

Participants walk in the Women's Memorial March in Vancouver to remember missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (photo by Liang Sen/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Truth and Reconciliation

Women

Subheadline

'The problem of Indigenous women being overpoliced and underprotected is all across Canada'

Content warning: the following contains disturbing subject matter.

In Canada, research shows Indigenous women are 400 per cent more likely than other Canadians to go missing. The problem is so pervasive that the Canadian government does not know how many Indigenous women are missing or have been murdered. Estimates suggest that around 4,000 Indigenous women and girls and 600 Indigenous men and boys have gone missing or been murdered between 1956 and 2016.

To identify the barriers faced when searching for missing and murdered friends and family, Jerry Flores, an associate professor of sociology at the ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga, and graduate student Andrea Román Alfaro set out to gather testimony from Indigenous women and Two-Spirit individuals.

Andrea Román Alfaro (supplied image)

Their findings are discussed in an article titled “Building the Settler Colonial Order: Police (In)Actions in Response to Violence Against Indigenous Women in ‘Canada,'” which was published in the journal Gender & Society.

While several studies have sought to identify why Indigenous Peoples continue to disappear, few have looked at the role of police in violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQ+ people, says Román Alfaro, a sixth-year PhD candidate in sociology.

“The problem of Indigenous women being overpoliced and underprotected is all across Canada,” she says, citing a 2004 Amnesty International report.

For their article, Flores – Román Alfaro’s PhD supervisor and a volunteer with several of Toronto’s Indigenous-led organizations – conducted close to 50 face-to-face interviews.

When COVID-19 restrictions blocked their ability to do more in-person work, Román Alfaro suggested including the 219 personal statements from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls to expand their sample of respondents.

“The testimony of the women at the inquiry allowed us to see that in their stories, the narratives are all very similar,” Román Alfaro says. “Then we went looking for what is happening in society that lets this happen.”

Román Alfaro helped code the respondents’ stories to identify common themes. The team soon identified police indifference as a major thread, with 209 of 219 testimonies referring to negative interactions with police in the management of their missing person cases.

The article highlights two major styles of behaviour that the woman said police employed: justifying violence and dismissing violence.

The research found that Canadian police repeatedly use negative labels such as “runaways” along with slurs when responding to reported cases of violence against Indigenous women and girls.

“There’s nothing we can do,” or “it’s inevitable,” people report hearing from police when trying to report an Indigenous woman missing, the article says.

A participant in the 2022 annual Red Dress Day march in Edmonton holds up a sign (photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The testimonies include complaints that loved ones were provided little or no information on their cases and that police gave up quickly in the search for bodies or culprits. In some cases, police suggested a missing person’s report should be done no earlier than two or three months after a disappearance.

Respondents also noted indifferent attitudes, stereotyping and the blaming of poverty, mental health issues and lifestyle choices. Respondents said these responses instilled in them doubt, shame and fear of the police.

Born in Peru, Román Alfaro wasn’t aware of the Indigenous experience in Canada when she was growing up, but says the themes are familiar.

“I had done a lot of work around violence and victims of violence, marginalized groups, state violence and low-income women in Peru – so I came in with that knowledge,” she says. “I didn’t grow up knowing about Indigenous life on Turtle Island, but this situation, of a culture of women being disappeared and murdered, was not foreign to me.”

Flores is now writing a book using the data, which he hopes to publish by the end of the year. Román Alfaro, whose own field of research includes how people respond to and resist violence, says she also wants to delve further into the findings.

“I would like to do more work on how a community heals from this violence,” she says. “Red Dress Day, Orange T-shirt Day – these are ways to keep people remembering this issue and those people who exist in these communities, and how they can reconcile with such a tragedy.”

Román Alfaro says she would like to talk to police about their perceptions of interactions with Indigenous Peoples and find out whether efforts are being made to improve relations.

“The families and friends (of the missing and murdered women) want information, they want to know something is being done, to be involved in the process or to know someone is looking for their loved ones,” Román Alfaro says. “That’s one very big gap in all this: how to deal with the families. They want to know what happened – they need to know what happened.”

Flores and Román Alfaro believe their article’s findings have important implications for future research and policy.

While the Calls for Justice of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls include demands for decolonial education and training for officers, Román Alfaro says their research has identified a need to look for alternatives to the police for state-provided victim support.

“There is still a lot of work to do from the Truth and Reconciliation recommendations,” Román Alfaro says.

“It’s a long way from saying what the problem is, to doing something about it.”

While researching violence in Peru, U of T PhD candidate helps a community find joy

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 21:33:10 +0000

While researching violence in Peru, U of T PhD candidate helps a community find joy

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 02/28/2023 - 16:33

Cutline

U of T PhD candidate Andrea Román Alfaro is researching the dynamics and politics of violence in her hometown Callao, Peru while taking steps to set up an innovative arts program for local youth (photo courtesy of Andrea Román Alfaro)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Global Lens

Global

Graduate Students

Andrea Román Alfaro has always been fascinated by her Peruvian hometown’s struggle with violence and crime – the subject of her doctoral studies.

With support from the the School of Graduate Studies’ Connaught PhDs for Public Impact Fellowship Program, the PhD candidate in the ��߲ݴ�ý’s department of sociology in the Faculty of Arts & Science says she is both learning about life in Callao’s most dangerous neighbourhoods as well as inserting herself into the vigorous social life of Puerto Nuevo ⁠– effectively a suburb located on Callao’s outskirts.

An advocate of participatory action research, Román Alfaro seeks to improve her environment while learning about it.

She is also taking steps to bring hope to its youth through an innovative arts program.

“My interest in doing this research comes from the fact that I grew up hearing people say ‘Oh, Callao is so dangerous,’” she says. “So that is how I got interested in the topic – trying to understand how violence works there. How people understand it, how they respond to it and how they survive it.”

In many ways, Peru is a country in crisis. Since the arrest of former president Pedro Castillo in December, approximately 60 people have died and more than 600 have been injured in violent clashes between protesters, the military and police.

In Callao – a seaside city immediately to the west of Lima that is part of the Lima Metropolitan Area – the murder rate is twice as high as it is in the rest of the country. As Peru’s major seaport and the location of its biggest airport, the city is rife with organized crime, political corruption and gang warfare centred on the cocaine trade. Life is especially difficult in tiny Puerto Nuevo, one of Peru’s oldest asentamientos humanos, or shanty towns. There, the community largely comprises Black and Indigenous migrants who have settled there seeking work in the fishing industry.

The government recently extended a state of emergency in Callao, severely restricting the rights of its citizens – a development that echoes the federal government’s decision several years ago to impose a six-month sentence on the city in a bid to stop rampant crime.

Román Alfaro’s ethnographic research covers the entire ecosystem of violence, from politicians and police on one end to marginalized citizens on the other. She focuses in particular on two groups: women and young people.

“Women help us to understand that connection between what is happening in the home and what is happening outside,” Román Alfaro says. “Young people tend to experience the most police violence –especially young men. They also get involved more in different forms of violence.”

Román Alfaro was introduced to Puerto Nuevo years ago while helping her uncle, who worked for an environmental NGO, with a successful cleanup effort. At the time, trucks trundled through the streets carrying minerals from mining sites. Lead dust spread through the air, poisoning local citizens. The situation was made even worse when people who lacked money for basic necessities jumped aboard the trucks, stole bags of lead and sold them from their homes.

Local youth receive a lesson in self-defence (photo courtesy of Andrea Román Alfaro)

It was in Puerto Nuevo that Román Alfaro saw someone shot and wounded before her eyes. And yet, she affirms that there is much more to the community than pain and violence.

“People there love bands and parties. They also experience joy and make the most out of their social situation,” she says.

While her research involves many interviews with government workers, politicians, ex-prime ministers, police officers and academics, she also converses with locals in “kitchens, dining rooms, streets, at parties – everything that makes up everyday life for them.”

Román Alfaro is an advocate of participatory action research, where scholars seek to improve an environment while learning about it.

She has always been an activist, organizer and volunteer. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, she co-founded The People’s Pantry, which continues to provide homecooked meals and care packages to those struggling with food insecurity.

“I can’t get involved with people and do nothing about their problems,” Román Alfaro says. “My research can’t just be knowledge for knowledge’s sake – and that’s especially true when you research violence. I can’t exist in a world with this much suffering and not do anything.”

Citizens participate in a discussion circle (photo courtesy of Andrea Román Alfaro)

In Puerto Nuevo, Román Alfaro organized a Christmas party last year, with gifts for 350 children and the delivery of 50 grocery baskets. She also organized workshops for kids in the community that were centred around drumming, arts and crafts, boxing and music. In addition, she’s now working toward the opening of a youth-led community centre.

This spring, she plans to engage teachers who’ll teach young people about photography and videography, as well as helping them to construct a community archive project. A key part of Román Alfaro’s work is getting youth in the community to help with managerial responsibilities and learn job skills.

Román Alfaro organized a Christmas party in Puerto Nuevo, featuring gifts, entertainment and workshops (photo courtesy of Andrea Román Alfaro)

As the city of Callao grapples with crises old and new, Román Alfaro remains cautious about the possibilities for peaceful transformation.

“In many ways, the vision of young people there is limited in terms of what they think they can do. So seeing them say: ‘Wow, I did this!’ makes me realize something good is happening. Hope is the last thing you lose, but hope is not enough. That’s why I think it’s so important to keep working.”

Canada taps U of T researcher for new Black Justice Strategy steering group

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:22:26 +0000

Canada taps U of T researcher for new Black Justice Strategy steering group

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 02/16/2023 - 11:22

Cutline

Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, an associate professor of sociology at U of T Mississauga, conducts research on race, crime and criminal justice (photo by Brian Summers)

Topic

Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, an associate professor of sociology at the ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga, has been named to Canada’s new Black Justice Strategy steering group and will co-author its recommendations to the federal government.

“I’m pleased to be taking part in such an important initiative,” said Owusu-Bempah, whose research examines race, crime and criminal justice. “The development of Canada’s Black Justice Strategy provides an opportunity to make meaningful change for Black communities that could have a positive impact for generations to come.”

The official announcement was made on Parliament Hill this week by a panel that included Minister of Justice and Attorney General David Lametti, Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion Ahmed Hussen and Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth Marci Ien.

“Many of us like to tell ourselves that justice is colour blind but, in the criminal justice system, we know it’s not,” said Lametti, noting that Black adults are overrepresented as victims of crime and are also consistently overrepresented in Canadian jails, making up about nine per cent of those in prison despite comprising less than four per cent of the overall population.

We have a lot of work to do to make Canada’s Black Justice Strategy a reality. It was nice joining @DavidLametti and colleagues yesterday for this important announcement. https://t.co/lf2nW2ki2I
— Akwasi Owusu-Bempah (@AOBempah) February 16, 2023

The nine-person steering group will be speaking with leaders, experts and members of Black communities across Canada to create recommendations by the end of 2023 to help reform and modernize the criminal justice system.

The goal, said Lametti, is to begin implementing changes in 2024.

“It’s an ambitious timeline,” he said. “But the circumstances demand it.”

The steering group is the first step in fulfilling a pledge made by the Liberal government in 2019 to address anti-Black racism and discrimination in the criminal justice system after advocacy groups and the United Nations criticized the overrepresentation of Black Canadians in federal prisons.

“Black people in Canada have a long history of mistrust and experiences of injustice with our criminal justice systems,” said Owusu-Bempah. “For as long as Black people have existed here, our legal and justice institutions have served to oppress them … we know significant changes need to be made to the way we administer justice in this country.”

Owusu-Bempah’ s co-author will be fellow committee member Zilla Jones, a criminal defence lawyer and anti-racism educator based in Winnipeg.

“(The strategy) is a historic acknowledgment by the Government of Canada that systemic anti-Black racism exists in Canada and that it has poisoned our justice system, negatively impacting the integrity of our communities and the futures of our children,” said Jones. “This initiative aims to give real meaning to the principles of redress and reconciliation.”

Owusu-Bempah’s appointment to the steering group follows his recent engagement by the Peel Police Services Board to help its Governance and Human Rights Committee address systemic racism – specifically anti-Black racism.

Before joining U of T Mississauga, Owusu-Bempah held positions with Canada’s National Judicial Institute, the Public Health Agency of Canada and Ontario’s Ministry of the Solicitor General.

He is the co-author of Waiting to Inhale: Cannabis Legalization and the Fight for Racial Justice.

Watch Akwasi Owusu-Bempah discuss his research on race, policing and cannabis

U of T Mississauga's first-ever Indigenous rematriation adviser seeks rightful owners of 40,000-artifact collection

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 15:11:24 +0000

U of T Mississauga's first-ever Indigenous rematriation adviser seeks rightful owners of 40,000-artifact collection

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 11/28/2022 - 10:11

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Robin Gray, an assistant professor of sociology, is U of T Mississauga's first-ever adviser on Indigenous rematriation (photo by Drew Lesiuczok)

Kate Martin

Topic

Our Community

Anthropology

Indigenous

Sunnybrook Health Sciences

Robin Gray doesn’t believe in empty promises – which is why she’s embracing a new role after being appointed the ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga’s first-ever special adviser on Indigenous rematriation.

“It’s not enough just to say it,” says Gray, an assistant professor in U of T Mississauga’s department of sociology. “You have to walk the walk.”

In particular, Gray has been asked to advise on a plan for the safekeeping of a large collection of Indigenous artifacts now housed in U of T Mississauga’s department of anthropology. The plan – part of the university’s ongoing commitment to Truth and Reconciliation – will centre Indigenous protocols and laws and confront colonial harms, recognizing the urgency of reconnecting Indigenous people with these cultural heritage materials too long held institutionally.

“We heard about (the collection) through the media – stories on CBC and CTV – and we thought ‘What? How did they get here?’” says Gray, who is a member of U of T Mississauga’s Indigenous Table. “And it turned out it wasn’t just a few artifacts stored here at UTM, but in fact 40,000 – just an incredible number.”

The collection came to the department of anthropology after the artifacts were uncovered during the development of a subdivision near Hurontario Street and Highway 403 in Mississauga.

The excavation of "Midden 1" during the dig at the Antrex Village site in Mississauga in the early 1990s (photo by ASI Heritage)

Ancestors and artefacts

Now known as the Antrex Site, the 1.6-acre area revealed nine longhouses and is believed to have been occupied in the 13th and 14th century by up to 500 people, including ancestors of the Huron-Wendat, Wyandot and Haudenosaunee nations. Researchers believe it was also regularly visited by members of the Anishinaabe. The artifacts, which include fragments of handmade pottery, beads, effigies, pipes, axes, hammers, arrowpoints, bracelets and pendants, were uncovered and catalogued by Archeological Services Inc., with assistance from Erindale College Archaeological Field School in 1992.

Now, guided by Indigenous communities and the U of T Mississauga Indigenous Table, the university hopes to help reunite the items with their rightful owners in a process known as rematriation. That process represents one small step in U of T Mississauga's commitment to become better at honouring its responsibility to Indigenous communities and lands and to being accountable for building the right relations.

“Most people are more familiar with ‘repatriation,’ but this is different,” says Gray, who is also currently working on a book titled Rematriation: Paradigms for Indigenous Futurity that won U of T Mississauga’s First Book Manuscript Workshop Competition. “‘Rematriation’ is not just wordplay, it’s not just feminizing a word. It has decolonial potential if we take it seriously.”

Repatriate vs. Rematriate

She says repatriation is related to traditional Euro-western and patriarchal ideas about personhood, nationhood, property and ownership, while rematriation is rooted in Indigenous values.

“With repatriation, you have to do all these negotiations to gain permission to access your own culture. Even though it is supposed to be righting a historical wrong – restorative justice – it’s still approached as ‘prove to me it’s yours,’” says Gray, noting many First Nations communities are matriarchal, with leadership roles held largely by women.

“In rematriation, you use the laws of the source nation. It says, ‘It's the source nation's call. It's their unique needs, priorities, and values that matter.’ You have to be humble about that. Let that be the framework for making decisions about what happens by being accountable to partnership and collaboration.”

Although the concept of rematriation is only just beginning to gain ground in the academic world, Gray says she grew up with it, inspired by her late aunt Lee Maracle, an acclaimed author, orator and U of T instructor.

“She introduced these ideas in the ’80s, and I want to keep her legacy alive by continuing the work,” says Gray. “One of the last conversations we had was about rematriation.”

Convocation Inspiration

Gray, who is also cross appointed to departments of anthropology and sociology in the Faculty of Arts & Science on the St. George campus, says U of T Vice-President and U of Mississauga Principal Alexandra Gillespie approached her about the adviser position after hearing Gray discuss rematriation in her speech at June’s convocation ceremonies. Gillespie and Gray had also been working together for more than a year through U of T Mississauga's Indigenous Table.

The speech made me think differently... about how to do things in a good way, to live by our core values,” says Gillespie, who adds that the project also aligns with U of T's Response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Answering the Call Wecheehetowin, and U of T Mississauga’s Strategic Framework, which has as its central hub a commitment to truth, openness and reciprocity.

Gray says she has seen exponential growth in recruiting and retaining Indigenous faculty, staff and students at U of T Mississauga since joining the department of sociology in 2018, and that the creation of the adviser position further demonstrates an ethic valued by her own ancestors – the Ts’msyen – known as Amuks’m, meaning to listen attentively.

“Truth and Reconciliation is about asking people to listen and react,” she says. “Not just to learn and absorb but to do something about it.”

Call to Action # 67 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission requires Canada to develop best practices for heritage institutions, including for their restoration of Indigenous cultural property.

“(U of T Mississauga is) an institutional power and, as gatekeepers of the artifacts from the Antrex Village site, we have to consider our accountability,” Gray says. “For (Gillespie) to see the value of that and provide this opportunity for me, it makes such a difference when the leader takes that seriously and listens intently.”

A boulder used as a grinding surface south of House 4 at the Antrex site in Mississauga (photo by ASI Heritage)

Mapping next steps

Gray plans to provide Gillespie, the Indigenous Table and other partners with a map of next steps about the artifacts by June 30, 2023.

A key step, says Gray, has been identifying parties with an interest, including local Indigenous communities. She will demonstrate a commitment to building better relationships by listening to, learning from and staying in contact with the source community.

“We want to identify any partnerships that have been made or, on the flip side, any lingering questions, concerns or obstacles that prevent a decision on the collection: where should it go, be housed, whether here at U of T or returned to a community, or to their own archives or cultural centres,” says Gray. “And it's up to the source community to make those decisions. Not me. Not UTM. UTM just has to be responsible and accountable to play their part in making things right.

“I want to protect the best interests of the Indigenous communities and their belongings, which many Indigenous communities consider ancestors or something very sacred, as not just inanimate things – but things with a spirit that connect us to place and people, to culture and knowledge.”

Local history

Gray says a grant from the Peel Social Lab has allowed her to hire an assistant who will be vital in helping her research the heritage landscape and the poetics and politics of return in Ontario.

“I’m not from here – I’m not Anishinaabe, Wendat or Haudenosaunee, not from the Mississaugas of the Credit,” says Gray, whose own family is Ts’msyen from Lax Kw’alaams, B.C. and Mikisew Cree from Fort Chipewyan, Alta.

“To rematriate, you really have to localize the context and understand the landscape of reclamation for Indigenous people in a specific area or region.”

Gray will also review other attempts in Ontario to reunite Indigenous artifacts with their source nations, including a U of T project which dealt with Wendat human remains. There are not many precedents to draw on. That adds to Gray's challenge, but it also indicates the urgency of her work.

A just future

“We want to know what possibilities and pitfalls to be aware of and then imagine otherwise for a more just and decolonialized future,” she says, noting Canadian museums hold more than six million artifacts from Indigenous nations, but lack a federal policy or law to guide their return.

Many of those items are “captured forms of heritage, acquired under duress,” Gray says, adding she believes her U of T Mississauga report can help modernize protocols for protecting cultural items.

“I hope we will encourage other institutions to become comfortable being uncomfortable and take that gatekeeper role seriously, and model a more relational and decolonial approach in processes of return,” she says.

From Africana development to decarbonization: 34 U of T researchers awarded Canada Research Chairs

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 19:01:13 +0000

From Africana development to decarbonization: 34 U of T researchers awarded Canada Research Chairs

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 11/16/2022 - 14:01

Cutline

Scott Gray-Owen, Caroline Hossein and Marianne Hatzopoulou are three of 34 scholars at U of T who were awarded new or renewed Canada Research Chairs (photos by Nick Iwanyshyn, courtesy of Caroline Hossein, by Johnny Guatto)

Scott Anderson

Topic

Our Community

Leah Cowen

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Unity Health

Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research

Cell and Systems Biology

Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Canada Research Chairs

Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Computer Science

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Hospital for Sick Children

History

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Rotman School of Management

University Health Network

U of T Scarborough

Thirty-four scholars at the ��߲ݴ�ý have been awarded new or renewed Canada Research Chairs in fields ranging from artificial intelligence to health and history.

Many of the Canada Research Chairs are working on topics related to complex global challenges – advancing knowledge that will help accelerate the transition to clean energy, for example, achieve more equitable societies or develop new treatments for cancer and other debilitating diseases.

François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s minister of innovation, science and industry, announced the chairs at the Canadian Science Policy Conference on Nov. 16, along with funding for a range of research programs and projects across the country – including the containment level 3 lab at U of T's Temerty Faculty of Medicine that enables researchers to study certain high-risk pathogens.

Among the 19 new chairs at U of T is Caroline Hossein, an associate professor in global development studies at U of T Scarborough. Named a tier two chair in Africana development and feminist political economy, Hossein studies “solidarity economies,” a movement that emphasizes social benefit over financial gain. She is writing a book about “rotating savings and credit associations” in Canada. These are small groups of immigrants, usually from Africa and the Caribbean, who often lack access to bank capital and come together to help each other financially.

Scott Gray-Owen, a U of T professor in the department of molecular genetics, was named a new tier one chair in infectious immunopathogenesis. His research aims to understand how pathogens such as bacteria and viruses infect their hosts and evade the immune response. In 2021, Gray-Owen was named the inaugural director of a new, forward-looking initiative at U of T called the Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC), which seeks to combat new infectious diseases and prevent the rise of future pandemics. In that role, he also oversees U of T’s Combined Containment Level 3 Unit, a biosafety facility at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine that enables researchers to conduct research on certain pathogens.

How cities affect our health is the research interest of Marianne Hatzopoulou, a professor in the department of civil and mineral engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. She was named a new tier one chair in transport decarbonization and air quality. Hatzopoulou creates models of emissions from road transportation and evaluates how this air pollution affects the local population. Not long ago, she was involved in a study that used low-cost sensors to measure carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, coarse particulate matter and other pollutants at nearly 70 sites across Beirut, identifying air pollution hot spots where people were most at risk. She also examined the effects of natural gas fracking in the northeast region of British Columbia. Another study examined the potential improvement in air quality resulting from the widespread adoption of electric vehicles.

Among the U of T faculty whose Canada Research Chairs were renewed is Jean Philippe Julien, senior scientist with the molecular research program of SickKids Research Institute and an associate professor in the department of biochemistry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine. Julien also received support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF), which helps provide research infrastructure associated with the Canada Research Chairs program, for his project, “Molecular Biological Systems for the Study of Antibody-Antigen Complexes.” Named for late U of T President Emeritus John R. Evans, the fund helps institutions recruit and retain outstanding researchers and provide them with the necessary tools and technology to perform their work.

(See the full list of new and renewed Canada Research Chairs at U of T)

“I’d like to commend all ��߲ݴ�ý researchers who were named new Canada Research Chairs or who had their chair renewed in this latest round,” said Leah Cowen, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives.

“The Canada Research Chair program provides critical support for researchers across our three campuses who are generating new knowledge, developing key innovations and helping to address some of the world’s most complex challenges.”

Established in 2000, the Canada Research Chair program invests up to $310 million annually to attract and retain top academic talent in disciplines spanning engineering, the natural sciences, health sciences, humanities and social sciences.

Here is the full list of new and renewed Canada Research Chairs at U of T:

New Canada Research Chairs

Aimy Bazylak in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Tier 1 in clean energy.

Denise Belsham in the department of physiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in neuroendocrinology.

Maged Goubran at the Sunnybrook Health Science Centre and the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in artificial intelligence and computational neuroscience.

Scott Gray-Owen in the department of molecular genetics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in infectious immunopathogenesis.

Robin Hayeems at the Hospital for Sick Children and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Tier 2 in genomics and health policy.

Marianne Hatzopoulou in the department of civil and mineral engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Tier 1 in transport decarbonization and air quality.

Caroline Hossein in the department of global development studies at U of T Scarborough, Tier 2 in Africana development and feminist political economy.

Muhammad Husain at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and the department of psychiatry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in treatment innovation in mood disorders.

Courtney Jones at the University Health Network and the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in leukemia stem cell metabolism.

Andrea Knight at the Hospital for Sick Children and the department of paediatrics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in mental health and chronic disease of childhood.

Sushant Kumar at the University Health Network and the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in genomic medicine.

J. Rafael Montenegro Burke in the Donnelly Centre in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in functional metabolomics and lipidomics.

Deborah O'Connor in the department of nutritional sciences in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in human milk and infant nutrition.

Vijay Ramaswamy at the Hospital for Sick Children and the department of paediatrics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in pediatric neuro-oncology.

Gregory Schwartz at the University Health Network and the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in bioinformatics and computational Biology.

Jay Shaw in the department of physical therapy in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in responsible health innovation.

Anastasia Tikhonova at the University Health Network and the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in stem cell niche biology.

Burton Yang at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in cardiac remodeling.

Darren Yuen at Unity Health Toronto and the department of medicine in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in fibrotic injury.

Renewed Canada Research Chairs

John Calarco in the department of cell and systems biology in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 2 in neuronal RNA biology.

Myron Cybulsky at the University Health Network and the department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in arterial wall biology and atherogenesis.

David Duvenaud in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 2 in generative models.

Julie Forman-Kay in the Hospital for Sick Children and the department of biochemistry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in intrinsically disordered proteins.

Bryan Gaensler in the David A. Dunlap department of astronomy and astrophysics in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 1 in radio astronomy.

Alec Jacobson in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 2 in geometry processing.

Jean-Philippe Julien at the Hospital for Sick Children and the department of biochemistry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in structural immunology.

Kang Lee in the department of applied psychology and human development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Tier 1 in moral development and developmental neuroscience.

David Levin in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 2 in simulation-driven graphics and fabrication.

Jed Meltzer at Baycrest Hospital and the department of psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 2 in interventional cognitive neuroscience.

Sean Mills in the department of history in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 2 in Canadian and transnational history.

Kimberly Pernell-Gallagher in the department of sociology in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 2 in economic sociology.

Arun Ramchandran in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Tier 2 in engineered soft materials and interfaces.

Andras Tilcsik at the Rotman School of Management, Tier 2 in strategy, organizations, and society.

Haley Wyatt in the department of biochemistry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in mechanisms of genome instability.

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