Anthropolgy

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U of T Mississauga

If you could choose any new course to study this year, would you focus on the present and explore the air quality in Peel Region – and its impact on residents? Would you look to the future and learn how to help a robot understand its surroundings?

Or would you travel back in time to learn about the lives of prisoners and asylum patients by studying their remains?

For her lesson on the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, Madeleine Mant dressed as a war nurse. This year she is teaching Behind Bars: Anthropology of Institutional Confinement.
(Photo by Drew Lesiuczok)

“By looking at human skeletons from people who might have died in a hospital, asylum and institution, we can ask some sort of broad questions about health and power and structural violence,” says Assistant Professor Madeleine Mant, who will use archaeological records and artifacts to examine questions of health, power and the impact of institutions in her new course, Behind Bars: Anthropology of Institutions and Confinement.

It’s just one of a diverse array of offerings from the ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga that are new for the 2022/2023 academic year:

Robotic Perception

Humans can automatically perceive the world around us and understand what is happening in our environments. We already know where objects are, and what state they are in, by the time we start consciously thinking about what we see and hear around us.

But robots aren’t quite there yet.

Perception is highly challenging for robots, explains Assistant Professor Igor Gilitschenski from the department of mathematical and computational sciences, and students enrolled in Robotic Perception will learn about the challenges computer scientists face when deploying perception algorithms on a robot – as well as algorithms that can be used to address these challenges.

“At the end of the course, students will be able to better understand, what are the challenges involved in making a robot understand its environment,” says Gilitschenski.

GIS Capstone Project

This year, geography students will map air pollution throughout Peel Region as part of the GIS Capstone Project, a new course that will allow them to gain real-world experience as they work with external partners in the public and private sector.

Tingting Zhu, an assistant professor, teaching stream in the department of geography, geomatics and environment, says one of the projects will allow students to map air pollution throughout Peel Region and see its impacts on residents. Students will also look at the correlation between air pollution levels and socioeconomic status, and how disadvantaged groups are impacted by air pollution.

Zhu says this experiential learning course will give students real-world knowledge and experience that can’t be learned in a classroom.

“Experiential learning lets students actively apply their knowledge and skills learned in the program,” says Zhu. “I hope students can hone their professional competencies like communication skills, problem-solving skills, and management skills along with their technical skills.”

Behind Bars: Anthropology of Institutions and Confinement

The Kingston Prison for Women operated from 1934 to 2000. A new course, Behind Bars, will examine archeological records and tackle broad questions of health, power and structural violence. (photo by Bob Olsen/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Artifacts such as skeletal remains, physician notebooks and confiscated prisoner-made tattoo machines can tell a much larger story of marginalized or institutionalized people, and the health inequities they faced throughout history.

In this interdisciplinary course, taught by the department of anthropology's Mant, students will have the opportunity to examine these various archeological records and learn about institutions’ effects on the human body, as well as the impacts of separation on people.

“By looking at human skeletons from people who might have died in a hospital, asylum and institution, we can ask some sort of broad questions about health and power and structural violence. Looking at the type of archeological or archival records, we can start to think about the effects of institutions through time,” Mant explains.

She hopes the course will help students think more critically about the long-term effects of separating people from others.

“I hope this class is a chance for students to think about health-care access through time, to think about ethics, as well as thinking about questions of disability and care within society,” she says.

Linguistics and Computation

When you type “The cricket jumped over the fence” on your computer, how does it know if the word “cricket” refers to the game or the insect? How can it tell the difference between a grammatical and ungrammatical sentence?

In this course led by Assistant Professor Barend Beekhuizen from the department of language studies, students who have either a background in linguistics or a computing science will be introduced to how linguistics and computing intersect – and how computational algorithms and data structures can be used as a formal language model.

Politics and Social Justice

Problems around gender equality, racism and wealth distribution aren’t just social justice issues. They are also political issues.

Politics and Social Justice, led by Assistant Professor Martha Balaguera Cuervo from the department of political science, will introduce political science students to the concept of social justice as a political issue. This course will focus on human rights, economic and social inequity, fairness and inclusion – with key concepts including power, identity, conflict, and structural racism, to name a few.

Anishinaabe Storytelling and Oral Tradition

Maria Hupfield, assistant professor in the department of English and drama and an artist and Anishinaabe-kwe of Wasuaksing First Nation, will lead students on a journey exploring the legends, beliefs and values of the Anishinaabek Nation.

In this course, which uses a transdisciplinary approach, students will explore the Anishinaabe story through many different forms including dance regalia, weavings/baskets, poems, songs, and Anishinaabe legends – as well as creation stories and guest speakers.

Researchers find link between apes in Africa and 10-million-year-old ape fossils in Hungary, Spain

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 15:41:10 +0000

Researchers find link between apes in Africa and 10-million-year-old ape fossils in Hungary, Spain

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 04/07/2021 - 11:41

Cutline

A re-examination of the inner ear canals of two extinct great ape fossils from approximately 10 million years ago – one from Spain and another from Hungary – shows a close relationship with humans and living African apes (image by John Sibbick)

Sean Bettam

Topic

Global

An analysis of prehistoric ape fossils previously discovered in Hungary and Spain is adding weight to the theory that the ancestors of African apes and humans evolved in Europe before migrating to Africa between nine and seven million years ago.

A reconstruction of the skull of Rudapithecus from Micro-CT scans (image courtesy of David Begun)

A re-examination of the inner ear canals of two extinct great ape fossils from approximately 10 million years ago – Hispanopithecus from Spain, and Rudapithecus from Hungary – shows a close relationship with humans and living African apes, according to a study by an international team of researchers published recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

The specimens date back to a period three to four million years before the oldest known potential pre-human from Africa, the six to seven-million-year-old Sahelanthropus from Chad.

“The new evidence from the inner ear supports the hypothesis that hominines originated in Europe and dispersed into Africa along with many other mammals between nine and seven million years ago, but does not definitively prove it,” says David Begun, a professor in the department of anthropology in the Faculty of Arts & Science and one of the co-authors of the study.

“Compared with all contemporary apes, the inner ear structures of both Hispanopithecus and Rudapithecus most closely resemble those of African apes,” adds Begun, who led a team that discovered a Rudapithecus skull during field excavations at the Hungarian site of Rudabánya, where Begun has been directing research since 1997.

“The inner ears of Rudapithecus in particular are remarkably similar to those of living chimpanzees and gorillas, which are the closest relatives of humans.”

U of T anthropologist David Begun led a team that discovered a Rudapithecus skull during field excavations at the Hungarian site of Rudabánya, where Begun has been directing research since 1997 (photo courtesy of David Begun)

The two species lived about 10 million years ago during the Miocene epoch and are members of an extinct tribe known as dryopithecins, a sub-group of the family of hominids that includes a range of great apes, both living and extinct. Hominids, in turn, are divided into two subfamilies: the pongines, which include orangutans that evolved in Asia, and hominines – the group that includes African apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas), humans and their fossil ancestors.

While establishing relationships between living and extinct species that make up the tree of human evolution is one of the great challenges in paleoanthropology, it is well accepted that Miocene great apes play a significant part in completing the puzzle. Using advanced micro-CT scanning technology, the researchers analyzed the kinship between the species based on the structure of their semi-circular inner ear canals. This anatomical structure has previously revealed itself to be informative in reconstructing the genetic relationships between fossil primate species.

The technique allowed the researchers to analyze the deformation between continuous surfaces of the bony structures, and then to quantify the differences in shape between individuals and species. Begun and his colleagues were able to better describe these features of Hispanopithecus and Rudapithecus and compare them with apes living today.

“The results confirm that both are indeed hominids according to their robust canals, which is a unique character of great apes and humans,” says Begun.

He adds that, over time, changes in the semi-circular canals of the inner ear, which are involved in balance, also help to explain how humans evolved from spending most of their time in the trees to coming down to the ground.

Researchers, however, remain divided in their view of how dryopithecins are related to living apes. Some feel they are most likely to be a remnant of the great apes that lived before the Asian and African branches split. Others, including Begun, believe that dryopithecins are already on the hominine line.

“Even though the specimens predate the earliest known hominines from Africa by at least three million years, more evidence is needed,” says Begun who, along with his students, is currently studying new fossils from Europe that he hopes will resolve this debate.

Strange dreams during COVID-19? You're not alone, U of T researchers say

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 17:34:39 +0000

Strange dreams during COVID-19? You're not alone, U of T researchers say

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 09/30/2020 - 13:34

Cutline

With the support of U of T's COVID-19 Student Engagement Award, graduate students at U of T Mississauga sought to understand how the pandemic was influencing people's dreams (image by Bruce Christianson via Unsplash)

Topic

Researchers from the ��߲ݴ�ý are attempting to peer into our unconscious minds to better understand the relationship between dreams and waking life – particularly during a stressful global event like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Leela McKinnon, Erica Kilius and Noor Abbas are graduate students in the lab of U of T Mississauga anthropologist David Samson, an assistant professor who studies how evolution influences human and primate sleep behaviour. Samson’s current research investigates the theory that humans have evolved to have dreams and nightmares as a way to rehearse for real threats in the daytime.

With that in mind, the student researchers sought to understand how the pandemic might be influencing the dreams of fellow students.

“Never before have we had an overarching global experience where everyone is feeling some sort of effect,” says McKinnon. “We thought it would be interesting to understand what the U of T community is feeling.”

The dream team: ��߲ݴ�ý graduate researchers Erica Kilius, Leela McKinnon and Noor Abbas.

With financial support from U of T’s S COVID-19 Student Engagement Award, the trio collected data from 84 U of T students from 22 countries around the globe. Respondents answered survey and interview questions about the content and themes of their dreams, providing short descriptions of specific dreams that occurred during the early lockdown phase of the pandemic. They also reported whether they felt their cultural background influenced the content or interpretation of their dreams.

The researchers then analyzed the responses according to what Abbas described as “the big five” themes that researchers track in dream analysis: characters, social interaction, settings, emotions and misfortunes.

Anxiety, fear and confusion were the top-reported emotions experienced by dreamers. Respondents also reported that their dreams were more vivid, and that they were having more nightmares than good dreams.

About a third of respondents recalled dreams specifically related to COVID-19, including details like personal protective equipment and social distancing that could be linked to the pandemic. One student reported dreaming about a restaurant meal and receiving a bill for the same amount as their tuition fees.

“That’s exactly what we would expect if outside anxieties and fears come into dreams, because that’s what people are experiencing in real life,” McKinnon says. “It seems that dreams are related to outside stressors, and that they might have a sort of function. Further analysis may support this idea of threat simulation.”

Abbas notes that female respondents reported higher incidents of finding themselves in negative situations and on the receiving end of physical aggression in their dreams.

Abbas says this could be interpreted as evidence that there is a difference between how women and men perceive threats. “That we see more in females than in males could indicate a difference in how they rationalize an external threat in their dreams,” she says.

Researcher Noor Abbas illustrated a selection of dreams recounted by study responents.

The researchers were also interested in the relationship between culture and pandemic dreams.

“Culture can influence whether the dreamer naps during the day or stays out late,” Kilius says. “In dreams, culture may also influence the appearance of ancestors, or whether dreams can help to make decisions.”

Nearly a quarter of respondents reported that their cultural background had played a role in how their interpreted their pandemic dreams. One respondent reported dreaming of snakes – usually a good sign in the respondent’s Hindu culture. Another dreamer reported seeking safety, even when danger had passed, which they attributed to cultural background.

“Threat perception is dependent on your culture,” says Abbas, who illustrated some of the reported dreams for the team’s report. “The way you understand external threats would be perceived the same way.”

The student study is related to a larger research project headed up by Samson, whose current research explores the idea that dreams may prime us for next-day behaviour. Samson recently received support from the John Evans Leadership Fund infrastructure grant from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation to build a unique sleep laboratory focused on testing evolutionary hypotheses about the function of dreams.

“If we rehearse an event in the alternate state of consciousness we call dreaming – usually manifesting as a social or physical challenge in our environment – we are biologically priming our success if we happen to face those threats in the future while awake,” Samson says.

“There is the tantalizing possibility that the way our Paleolithic ancestors dreamed may have enhanced their likelihood of survival and reproduction. In other words, from the vantage point of natural history, dreams may be part of the human success story.”

The researchers say we can take comfort in the knowledge that people everywhere are sharing common experiences, even while asleep.

“Talking about your dreams or thinking it through can sometimes help make these connections,” Kilius says. “We would reassure people that this appears to be normal, and that they aren’t alone.”

From hip-hop to healthy soil: 56 U of T researchers receive Connaught New Researcher Award

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 13:03:29 +0000

From hip-hop to healthy soil: 56 U of T researchers receive Connaught New Researcher Award

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 09/17/2020 - 09:03

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Lauren Cramer, one of 56 Connaught New Researcher Award recipients at U of T, is using architecture to theorize about hip-hop and the points of articulation between the aesthetics of Blackness and visual culture (photo courtesy of Lauren Cramer)

Paul Fraumeni

Topic

Cell and Systems Biology

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Biology

Cinema Studies

Connaught Fund

Drama

Earth Sciences

Economics

Electrical & Computer Engineering

English

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Faculty of Medicine

Faculty of Music

Geography and Planning

History

Humanities

Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology

Management

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Philosophy

Political Science

Psychology

Rotman School of Management

When you think of hip-hop, what comes to mind?

For many, it might be music. But Lauren McLeod Cramer is quick to point out that music is only one part of hip-hop’s broad culture – a culture that touches on everything from the way we speak, to the clothes we wear, to matters of race and identity.

The assistant professor at U of T’s Cinema Studies Institute will be exploring hip-hop’s global influence even further in a new research project called “A Black Joint: Hip-Hop and the Architecture of Blackness,” where she will use architecture to theorize about hip-hop and the points of articulation between the aesthetics of Blackness and visual culture.

“This project is about hip-hop and space,” says Cramer, who joined U of T in 2019 after earning her doctorate in communications from Georgia State University. “I realized that when I was talking with students about race and critical race theory, and about Blackness, it was clearer to them when I put it in spatial terms.”

“It is easier to understand visually or in 3D. I think of Blackness not as a characteristic of the body but as a way of seeing or experiencing space – from buildings to neighbourhoods.”

Cramer is one of 56 winners of the Connaught New Researcher Award, which recognizes assistant professors within the first five years of a tenure-stream academic appointment (see full list below). The awards, part of U of T’s commitment to fostering excellence in research and innovation, are designed to help recipients establish a strong research program and increase their competitiveness for external funding.

This year’s recipients, who will share $1 million in funding, represent the broad spectrum of research undertaken at U of T in the humanities, life sciences, social sciences and physical sciences and engineering.

“Lauren McLeod Cramer’s research reflects the broad range of scholarship at the ��߲ݴ�ý and the Connaught New Researcher Award plays a key role in supporting such important and emerging areas of study,” says Ted Sargent, vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives.

“I want to extend my congratulations to Professor Cramer and all of the other award winners this year. I’m personally looking forward to seeing where this exceptional group of investigators takes their work in the years to come.”

As for Cramer, she says that “hip-hop visual culture has grown to include a staggering number of objects: music videos, films, photography, digital art, painting and even architecture.”

She says her project will explore the spatial nature of hip-hop through a wide range of objects from different cultural spaces and times, including: the choreography of Beyoncé’s “Formation” music video, the subterranean architecture of “the sunken place” in Jordan Peele’s 2017 horror film Get Out, Charles Gaines’s fine art photography and architect David Adjaye’s noted public buildings, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture (part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.).

Cramer says that once we are past the pandemic and can travel more easily, the Connaught award will enable her to see that architecture first-hand.

“I was incredibly excited after I was told I had won one of the awards,” she says. “I believe that hip-hop allows Blackness to travel through space. Thanks to this funding, I can now map that space.”

In response to the protests against anti-Black racism surrounding the most recent incidents of police brutality – including the killing of George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake – Cramer says it’s necessary to approach issues “at the appropriate scale” if you want to have a serious conversations about anti-Blackness.

“Racial difference is made and enforced through space: urban planning, environmental action, transportation and the built environment,” she says. “So, it is helpful to think about anti-Blackness in the spaces that we occupy, including pop culture.

“That means looking at architectural design, both real – like Adjaye’s work – and imagined, such as in in hip-hop music videos, as a way to understand how race is formed. What is particularly interesting to me is how hip-hop visual culture’s experimental aesthetics might also show us how Blackness can deform space.”

The funding for the Connaught New Researcher Award comes from U of T’s Connaught Fund, which was founded in 1972 when the university sold the Connaught Medical Research Laboratories for $29 million. This year, the Connaught New Researchers program has awarded funding to 14 researchers in humanities, nine in life sciences, eight in physical sciences and engineering, and 25 in social sciences.

Here is the full list of winners of the 2020 Connaught New Researcher Award:

Humanities

Mark Campbell, department of arts, culture and media, U of T Scarborough

Urvashi Chakravarty, department of English, U of T Scarborough

Lauren McLeod Cramer, Cinema Studies Institute, Faculty of Arts & Science

Anup Grewal, department of historical and cultural studies, U of T Scarborough

Ellen Lockhart, Faculty of Music

Christian Pfeiffer, department of philosophy, U of T Scarborough

Adrien Rannaud, department of language studies, U of T Mississauga

Anjuli Raza Kolb, department of English and drama, U of T Mississauga

Laura Risk, department of arts, culture and media, U of T Scarborough

Victor Rivas, department of Spanish and Portuguese, Faculty of Arts & Science

Timothy Sayle, department of history, Faculty of Arts & Science

Avery Slater, department of English and drama, U of T Mississauga

Anna Thomas, department of English and drama, U of T Mississauga

Elizabeth Wijaya, department of visual studies, U of T Mississauga

Life Sciences – Social

Amaya Perez-Brumer, Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Nicholas Spence, department of sociology, U of T Scarborough

Life Sciences – Molecular

Scott MacIvor, department of biological sciences, U of T Scarborough

Adam Martin, department of physical and environmental sciences, U of T Scarborough

Heather McFarlane, department of cell and systems biology, Faculty of Arts & Science

Glenn Mott, department of biological sciences, U of T Scarborough

Derek Ng, department of biology, U of T Mississauga

Nicole Novroski, department of anthropology, U of T Mississauga

Scott Yuzwa, department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology, Faculty of Medicine

Physical Sciences

Merve Bodur, department of mechanical and industrial engineering, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Xu Chu, department of Earth sciences, Faculty of Arts & Science

Gwendolyn Eadie, David A. Dunlap department of astronomy and astrophysics, Faculty of Arts & Science

Dan Gregory, department of Earth sciences, Faculty of Arts & Science

Nicolas Papernot, Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Silvana Pesenti, department of statistical sciences, Faculty of Arts & Science

Ting-Kam Leonard Wong, department of computer and mathematical sciences, U of T Scarborough

Masayuki Yano, U of T Institute for Aerospace Studies, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Social Sciences

Elizabeth Acorn, department of political science, U of T Scarborough

Andrea Allen, department of anthropology, Faculty of Arts & Science

Martha Balaguera Cuervo, department of political science, U of T Mississauga

Michael William Best, department of psychology, U of T Scarborough

Waqas Butt, department of anthropology, U of T Scarborough

Laurent Cavenaile, department of management, U of T Scarborough

Nicole Charles, department of historical studies, U of T Mississauga

Akash Chattopadhyay, department of management, U of T Mississauga

Alexandre Corhay, Rotman School of Management

Negin Dahya, Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology, U of T Mississauga

Michelle Daigle, department of geography and planning, Faculty of Arts & Science

Claudia Milena Diaz Rios, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Greg Distelhorst, Centre for Industrial Relations & Human Resources, Faculty of Arts & Science

Jim Goldman, department of economics, U of T Mississauga

Cassandra Hartblay, department of anthropology, U of T Scarborough

Christopher Higgins, department of human geography, U of T Scarborough

Janelle Joseph, Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Arlo Kempf, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Fikile Nxumalo, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Rachel Ruttan, Rotman School of Management

Jason Spicer, department of geography and planning, Faculty of Arts & Science

Anton Tsoy, department of economics, Faculty of Arts & Science

Mark Wade, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Jue Wang, department of geography, geomatics and environment, U of T Mississauga

Jennifer Wemigwans, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

3Qs at the U with Science Sam: (Ep. 3) David Samson on sleep

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 25 May 2020 15:44:55 +0000

3Qs at the U with Science Sam: (Ep. 3) David Samson on sleep Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 05/25/2020 - 11:44

Topic

We know sleep is important, and yet sometimes we just can’t get enough. What should we do to try to get a better night's rest?

In episode three of 3Qs at the U, Samantha Yammine – a ��߲ݴ�ý alumna, neuroscientist and science communicator better known as Science Sam on social media – speaks with David Samson, a sleep expert from U of T Mississauga.

“You want good sleep hygiene and you want good light hygiene,” says Samson, an assistant professor of anthropology who studies the connection between sleep, our health, and other cognitive functions. “Sleep hygiene means that the environment that you're sleeping in is distraction-free. You don't want any big LCD screens blasting you with blue-wave light because blue-wave light … is going to inhibit melatonin and melatonin is the principal hormone that drives your sleep-awake regulation.”

3Qs at the U is a weekly video series in which Yammine asks a U of T researcher three questions on a timely topic. It’s produced by U of T Scarborough interactive digital producer Cory Lawrence.

See a complete list of episodes

Social distancing and blame: U of T researcher on lessons from past pandemics

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 20:15:16 +0000

Social distancing and blame: U of T researcher on lessons from past pandemics

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 03/26/2020 - 16:15

Cutline

Three men wear masks in Alberta during the Spanish Influenza epidemic in 1918 (photo by Library and Archives Canada, PA-025025)

Topic

Public meetings are banned. Theatres, schools, colleges and churches are closed. Business hours are restricted across Canada.

It sounds like the current state of affairs. But it also happened in 1918.

While our experiences today with COVID-19 may seem unprecedented, there are clear lessons to be learned from pandemics past, according to ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga anthropologist Madeleine Mant.

“Most folks I know haven’t seen anything this intense,” she says. “I certainly haven’t in my lifetime. But if we talk about 1918 influenza, none of this is new – it’s just faster and different.”

Much of the response to the 1918 pandemic, also known as Spanish flu, sounds familiar. Mant says some Canadian towns started to attempt total quarantine and the province of Alberta made it compulsory to wear a gauze mask when outdoors. Business owners suffered, too.

In fact, people today are facing many of the same challenges and are offering the same critiques they did 102 years ago. Mant points to an anonymous letter in a newspaper in 1918 where the writer references businesses closing at 4 p.m. to help fight the flu, writing, “Is the flu germ more active after 4 p.m. than previous to that hour?” Similar commentary can be found today as businesses restrict their hours.

When businesses in 1918 had to shut down for a time, there were calls to the government to help small businesses with “sickly trade and bruised feelings,” Mant says.

The 1918 influenza outbreak was unusual in that it killed so many people, including those between 20 and 40 years old.

“Pandemics are difficult emotionally as well as biologically for a lot of different reasons,” Mant says. And they have “incredible effects on history.”

An emergency hospital at Camp Funston, Kan., cared for large numbers of soldiers sickened by the 1918 flu (photo via National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington, DC. Image number NCP 1603)

Shame, blame and stigma often go hand-in-hand with pandemics. A good example of this is syphilis, Mant says. It emerged as we now know it in the 15th century when Italy and France were at war. As soldiers disbanded, they returned to their homeland, bringing syphilis with them, leading to an epidemic in Europe.

Everyone needed to name the disease, Mant says, explaining the French called it the Italian disease, the Germans and Italians called it the French disease, the Russians called it the Polish disease, while the Polish called it the German sickness.

“We immediately get a sense that everyone is saying it’s coming from somewhere else. It’s not our fault. This dirty disease we’re connecting to sexual behaviour is someone else’s fault,” Mant says.

Of course, we know it’s really a bacterium, but suddenly it means something socially, she adds.

This same pattern of blame can be found when the bubonic plague, caused by bacterium transmitted by fleas on rats, spread through the trade routes. Also known as the Black Death, the disease was scary because it could kill anyone, rich or poor, and there was no acquired immunity.

“What’s important about Black Death in the 14th century is we immediately start to see stigmatized groups being punished,” Mant says. “We see stigma played out in very terrifying ways.”

She explains there was a belief that God was punishing people. Jewish individuals and sex workers were targeted, with records showing vulnerable and marginalized individuals being burned alive because people thought that if they got rid of the “sinners”, God would stop punishing them.

The emergence of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s also saw the use of language that targeted specific groups.

“I hate saying this part of history because it’s so deeply offensive, but we have to talk about it,” Mant says before explaining that when it first emerged in the United States, HIV/AIDS was known as GRID (gay-related immune deficiency) and 4H, which stood for homosexuals, heroin users, hemophiliacs and Haitians.

Calling it “emotional and awful language,” Mant says the government was essentially telling people their lifestyles and who they were was making them sick.

As the world grapples with a new virus, the language being used to describe this faceless foe is important.

“When we have people insisting on calling COVID-19 “the Chinese virus,” that is language being used as a weapon and we can’t ignore it,” Mant says. “It’s not even being subtly racist. It’s just openly stigmatizing.

“There’s a moral imperative that we keep each other safe. That’s the really important thing we can learn from these past pandemics. Countries and societies can certainly pull together, but we will slow ourselves down if we spend time blaming.”

While we’re once again seeing something scary in 2020, things are different, Mant says. With mass communication we can get information to people faster than ever before and co-ordinate large-scale actions. We have knowledge of the infectious agent, we know what it is and well-stocked labs are working to combat it.

“What we need now are the effects of small-scale cumulative action,” Mant says, referring to social distancing, grabbing groceries during off-peak hours and staying home as much as possible. “Disease has been with us since we’ve been around and it’s not necessarily going to go away, but our actions can ensure that the effects are not catastrophic.”

U of T study finds evidence of a new type of social organization in primates

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 16:20:30 +0000

U of T study finds evidence of a new type of social organization in primates

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 10/31/2019 - 12:20

Cutline

The study of African colobus monkeys by researchers at U of T Scarborough could shed light on how human social organization became so complex (photo by Zaruba Ondrej via Shutterstock)

Topic

U of T Scarborough

A study by researchers at the ��߲ݴ�ý has uncovered a new type of social organization in primates – one that may help further our understanding of human evolution.

The research, led by U of T Scarborough’s Julie Teichroeb and PhD student Samantha Stead, for the first time finds evidence of a multi-level society in a species of African colobus monkeys.

The monkeys group together in small units. Some units consist of one male and multiple females, while others include multiple males and multiple females.

“We haven’t seen multi-male units like this before,” says Teichroeb, who is an assistant professor in the department of anthropology and an expert in primate behaviour and the evolution of social organization in primates.

“Other primates that form multi-level societies are one-male/multi-female units – they don’t form multi-male/multi-female units, so this species is unusual in that regard.”

The researchers found at least three levels of social organization in the species, known as Colobus angolensis ruwenzorii, which lives near Lake Nabugabo in Uganda. The three levels include smaller core units that cluster into larger clans, with clans sharing a home range within an even larger band.

The multi-male core units can have up to eight adult males – all of them reproductive males, meaning they get a chance to mate with females. They also get along with each other.

“The males do a lot of greeting behaviour like hugging each other or passing infants around to bond with one another,” says Teichroeb.

“Males interacting a lot with infants is odd behaviour among other species of colobus monkeys to begin with, but using infants to bond with each other is very unusual.”

In other primates, when two groups meet it usually results in conflict, but in a multi-level society, these groups tend to tolerate each other. While there is evidence of multi-level societies in a few primates, including geladas (a relative of baboons) and hamadryas baboons, they don’t form multi-male/multi-female units like these colobus.

Teichroeb says the males may get along because there’s an ample food supply, or because they are clustering together to fight bachelor males wanting to enter the group. It could also be that they are related – something Teichroeb hopes to explore more through genetic data they’ve collected.

The researchers found evidence of males dispersing to other core units within the band, while females dispersed outside of the band, which suggests that males are more closely related than females within the band.

“Females dispersing and mating outside of the band in a multi-level society is proposed for our human ancestors, so this species could be a good parallel for understanding human evolution,” Teichroeb says.

She adds that our human ancestors also showed evidence of male bonding while remaining in the geographical area where they grew up, another characteristic of this colobus species.

The study, which received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the American Association of Physical Anthropology, is published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Teichroeb hopes to explore the possibility of a fourth tier of social organization in these monkeys since they didn’t observe a band coming into conflict with another band while doing their research. They also want to further explore the reasons behind the unusual male bonding behaviour.

“We have this notion that we understand all the variation in social organization in primates, so finding this new type of organization goes to show there could be different patterns out there we’re not aware of,” Teichroeb says.

Rescuing crops, reframing history and researching MMIW: 2019 Connaught New Researcher Award winners announced

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 14:05:45 +0000

Rescuing crops, reframing history and researching MMIW: 2019 Connaught New Researcher Award winners announced

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 09/09/2019 - 10:05

Cutline

Three of this year's 52 winners of the Connaught New Researcher Award: Eliana Gonzales-Vigil, Shauna Sweeney and Jerry Flores

Jenny Rodrigues

Topic

Mathematical and Computational Sciences

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Awards

Biochemistry

Biology

Chemistry

Computer Science

Connaught Fund

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Earth Sciences

Economics

English

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Institute for Management & Innovation

Faculty of Information

Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering

Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Management

Mathematics

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Molecular Genetics

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Philosophy

Political Science

Psychology

Women and Gender Studies

Insects destroy up to one quarter of global crops each year, resulting in estimated losses of up to $470 billion. Even in greenhouse conditions, pests can still cause damage by making their way inside through vents.

It’s a problem the ��߲ݴ�ý’s Eliana Gonzales-Vigil aims to tackle by better understanding the complex relationship between plants and bugs.

The biological sciences researcher at U of T Scarborough is specifically looking at how to protect crops from the cabbage looper, a common pest of tomatoes and other vegetables such as peppers, cucumbers and – of course – cabbage.

“My long-term goal is to understand how plants defend themselves from insect herbivores,” Gonzales-Vigil said.

“But to achieve this, we need to understand all the players involved.”

Gonzales-Vigil is one of 52 winners of this year’s Connaught New Researcher Award, designed to help recipients establish a strong research program and increase their competitiveness for external funding. The award is part of U of T’s commitment to fostering excellence in research and innovation by supporting faculty members who are launching their academic careers.

Read the full list of Connaught New Researcher Award winners here

Up to $1 million will be distributed among this year’s winners.

“I would like to congratulate all the winners of the Connaught New Researcher Award,” said Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives.

“These researchers are doing exciting, innovative work across many different disciplines. It’s the ��߲ݴ�ý’s hope that this funding will help set the stage for world-leading scholarship and important new discoveries.”

(photo courtesy of Eliana Gonzalez-Vigil)

Gonzales-Vigil is embarking on a study to explore how impacting the gut microbiome of the cabbage looper may help tomato plants be more resistant against the insect’s attack.

“We want to test the idea of whether the microbiome of the cabbage looper is being affected by the plant’s chemistry. If yes, then can we manipulate the plant’s chemistry by adding something like a probiotic that would impede insect growth?”

She added the Connaught award will help kick-start a new line of research after having most recently focused on how poplar trees defend themselves through a waxy compound secretion.

“Having the Connaught has given me the freedom to start something that’s new,” she said, adding that she hopes her research will eventually lead to insect control methods that can be used around the world.

Shauna Sweeney

(photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

During her undergraduate studies, U of T’s Shauna Sweeney was drawn to Caribbean history courses – in particular the history and the economy of the markets in Caribbean nations. It was an area of research Sweeney, who is herself of Jamaican background, wanted to explore further.

An assistant professor in the department of history and at the Women & Gender Studies Institute, Sweeney is currently working on a manuscript that examines the prominent role of enslaved women in developing an informal economy in the Caribbean.

She said that by selling or trading goods to each other, enslaved women asserted their own economic rights and ultimately laid the groundwork for a free community following abolition.

“In conventional studies of capitalism that consider the deeply violent and exploitative context of slavery, enslaved peoples' own economic lives and politics tend to fall out,” Sweeney said. “So, it’s important to me to restore the social and economic importance of trading to enslaved people and their descendants.”

“In addition to being commodities on paper, enslaved people actually were agents in their own economies and had economic interests of their own.”

Sweeney plans to conduct further transnational research with the Connaught award, travelling to Europe to visit the Archivo de Indias (Archives of the Indies) and the Archives Nationales d’Outre-mer (National Overseas Archives).

The research trips will also help lay a foundation for her second project, which will focus on white female slave owners.

Jerry Flores

(photo courtesy of Jerry Flores)

As a Mexican who was born and raised in Los Angeles, U of T Mississauga’s Jerry Flores brings an outsider’s perspective to a high-profile research project in Canada: an ethnography of missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) and men in Toronto.

Flores, an assistant professor in the department of sociology, previously published a book about young, incarcerated Latina women.

As he heard more stories about MMIW, he began to notice similarities.

“The experiences of a lot of these women go like this: They’re abused at home by a partner or a family member and run away to get away from it,” Flores said.

“They end up on the street and participate in high risk behaviour or may end up getting involved in drugs or sex work. They meet a new partner – for young women, it’s usually an older man – that brings them home, but quickly spirals into drugs, alcohol and abuse.”

Specifically, Flores wants to study the circumstances in which Indigenous people make their way to Toronto. He’s asking: What challenges did they face to come here? Have they lost people on their journey to Toronto? What stories have they heard?

Flores is working closely with local organizations, including the Native Women’s Association of Canada and the Aboriginal Law Society in Toronto, to gather stories. Funding from the Connaught New Researcher Award will help compensate participants for their time and provide support for the community organizations that are assisting Flores in his research.

“By definition, ethnography is a study of culture. I’m trying to understand the culture of the Indigenous community in Toronto – how they negotiate life, the challenges and the high points. What is it that they need, what do they want to accomplish, and how can we as a collective – U of T Mississauga and U of T in general – support them?”

Flores hopes that the study will be able to provide concrete recommendations for policy, community action and scholarship on MMIW.

Here is the full list of winners of the 2019 Connaught New Researcher Award:

Humanities:

Tania Aguila-Way, assistant professor, department of English

Barend Beekhuizen, assistant professor, department of language studies, U of T Mississauga

Brendan de Kenessey, assistant professor, department of philosophy

Catherine Evans, assistant professor, Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Cindy Ewing, assistant professor, department of history

Sarah Gutsche-Miller, assistant professor, Faculty of Music

Adam Hammond, assistant professor, department of English

Rosalind Hampton, assistant professor, department of social justice education, Ontario Institute For Studies in Education

Mary Elizabeth Luka, assistant professor, department of arts, culture and media, U of T Scarborough

Luther Obrock, assistant professor, department of historical studies, U of T Mississauga

Shauna Sweeney, assistant professor, department of history and Women & Gender Studies Institute

Katherine Williams, assistant professor, department of English

Life Sciences/Social Cultural

Jennifer Brooks, assistant professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Aaron Conway, assistant professor, Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Marzyeh Ghassemi, assistant professor, departments of medicine and computer science

Quinn Grundy, assistant professor, Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Péter Molnár, assistant professor, department of biological sciences, U of T Scarborough

Olli Saarela, associate professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Molecular

Michael Garton, assistant professor, Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering

Eliana Gonzales-Vigil, assistant professor, department of biological sciences, U of T Scarborough

Thomas Hurd, assistant professor, department of molecular genetics

Hyun Kate Lee, assistant professor, department of biochemistry

Baohua Liu, assistant professor, department of biology, U of T Mississauga

Physical Science

Melissa Anderson, assistant professor, department of Earth sciences

Amy Bilton, assistant professor, department of mechanical and industrial engineering

Maryam Mehri Dehnavi, assistant professor, department of computer science

Maria Drout, assistant professor, department of astronomy and astrophysics

Murat A. Erdogdu, assistant professor, departments of computer science and statistical sciences

Tovi Grossman, assistant professor, department of computer science

Fan Long, assistant professor, department of computer science

Semechah Lui, assistant professor, department of chemical and physical sciences, U of T Mississauga

Fabio Pusateri, assistant professor, department of mathematics

Arul Shankar, assistant professor, department of mathematical and computational sciences, U of T Mississauga

Diana Valencia, assistant professor, department of physical and environmental sciences, U of T Scarborough

Stanislav Volgushev, assistant professor, department of mathematical and computational sciences, U of T Mississauga

Joseph Williams, assistant professor, department of computer science

Mark Wilson, assistant professor, department of chemistry

Social Sciences

Monica Alexander, assistant professor, departments of statistical sciences and sociology

Noel Anderson, assistant professor, political science, U of T Mississauga

Jennifer Brant, assistant professor, department of curriculum, teaching and learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Michelle Cameron, assistant professor, department of anthropology

Laura Cirelli, assistant professor, department of psychology, U of T Scarborough

Fedor Dokshin, assistant professor, department of sociology

Emine Fidan Elcioglu, assistant professor, department of sociology, U of T Scarborough

Jerry Flores, assistant professor, department of sociology, U of T Mississauga

Ethan Fosse, assistant professor, department of sociology, U of T Scarborough

Charles Martineau, assistant professor, department of management, U of T Scarborough

David Price, assistant professor, department of economics, U of T Mississauga

Tahseen Shams, assistant professor, department of sociology

Jennifer Stellar, assistant professor, department of psychology, U of T Mississauga

Jia Xue, assistant professor, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and Faculty of Information

Marius Zoican, assistant professor, department of management and Institute for Management and Innovation, U of T Mississauga

Neanderthal-like ancestors had fingers like ours, finds study co-authored by U of T expert: CBC News

rahul.kalvapalle — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 15:03:22 +0000

Neanderthal-like ancestors had fingers like ours, finds study co-authored by U of T expert: CBC News

rahul.kalvapalle Fri, 09/06/2019 - 11:03

Cutline

DNA from a bone at the base of the pinky finger of a young girl was originally used to identify Denisovans (© MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology)

Topic

Little is known about the Denisovans, an ancient human species related to Neanderthals, but a new study co-authored by the ��߲ݴ�ý’s Bence Viola is helping anthropologists put a finger on the mysterious hominins’ place in human evolution.

Viola, an assistant professor in the department of anthropology, and researchers from France and Russia used a long-lost piece of Denisovan fossil to digitally reconstruct the species’ finger. The result was indistinguishable from modern humans’ slender fingers, and very different from the blunt, stubby digits of the Neanderthals, CBC News reported.

"Until now, all we knew was how their teeth looked," Viola told CBC News, referring to the Denisovans’ massive molars. “All these little pieces allow us to build a picture of who the Denisovans were.”

The finding suggests that the Denisovans, who were identified less than a decade ago, may have been more similar to humans than previously postulated.

Read the CBC News story here

‘The responsibility of truth-telling’: U of T student blends disciplines to document youth criminal court proceedings

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 18:58:39 +0000

‘The responsibility of truth-telling’: U of T student blends disciplines to document youth criminal court proceedings

noreen.rasbach Fri, 08/09/2019 - 14:58

Cutline

“Documentaries have the responsibility of truth-telling and I want to be part of that," says Innis College student Tara Suri (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Jovana Jankovic

Topic

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Cinema Studies

Ethnography