Jackman Scholars-in-Residence (SiR) 2022 at U of T Scarborough

The Jackman Scholars-in-Residence (SiR) program is currently accepting Faculty Supervisor applications for the SiR 2022 program which is planned from 2-27 May 2022. 

Research- and teaching-stream faculty at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, working in the Jackman Humanities Institute’s (JHI) broad definition of the “Humanities” (including political theory, interpretive social science, education, music, architecture, and the arts) are invited to submit proposals.

This year in addition to 20 in-person projects running across all three campuses, there will be an online-only session for up to 5 projects with international scope. 

Benefits to Supervisors include:

• 5 paid Research Assistant’s (RA) for the full 4 weeks to work on projects
• $2,000 in research funds from JHI to support their activities
• The opportunity to move projects forward working in collaboration with outstanding students

For more information - Call for Faculty Proposals SiR 2022. Interested faculty can submit questions and proposals to the SiR Project Manager Ira Wells.

The deadline for proposals is Wednesday, 24 November 2021. Applicants will be notified of a decision by Thursday, 16 December 2021.

2021 Virtual Scholars-in-Residence Projects (listed below) are affiliated with UT-Scarborough, UT-St.George and UT-Mississauga.

Project Description: There is broad consensus that an early step for pre-literate children is learning that particular patterns of visual symbols (letters) map onto particular sounds; this is referred to as phonics instruction. However, phonics programs disagree on exactly which rules to teach. Student RAs will work as a team to examine what is taught in several popular phonics programs. Different students will take the lead on different parts of a phonics program, but we will work collectively and meet regularly to discuss challenges and standardize our examination methods. Background in linguistics, psycholinguistics, education, and or computational linguistics would be an asset; we will try to tailor the work based on each student’s strengths and interests.

Project Description: This project is dedicated to Canada’s first newspapers. Printed in the second half of the eighteenth century in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI, Québec and Ontario, these newspapers are extremely hard to find. The goal of this project is to provide a database giving access, for the first time, to electronic editions of these newspapers. Each newspaper will be given a bio-bibliographical introduction providing extensive information on the context of publication, the printers, and our first journalists. Since these documents are searchable, we will also investigate the content of these newspapers especially in the context of decolonization. Students with interests in Early Modern history, Canadian history, book history, as well as students in computer sciences are encouraged to apply. This is a bilingual project: students with a near-native level in French are especially welcome.

Project Description: Why do visible-minority immigrants vote for right-wing parties, even when these parties adopt platforms that appear racist and anti-immigrant? Student RAs will recruit subjects and conduct interviews with foreign-born Canadians who have voted or seriously considered voting for the Conservative party and other right-wing parties in Canadian elections. RAs will also be tasked with compiling social media posts (e.g., TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) that have been produced by right-wing parties and associations for new Canadians. Experience in conducting interviews and/or critically analyzing social media posts is an asset, but not a prerequisite. Training will be provided in qualitative research work. Students who are new Canadians, who come from immigrant households, and/or who are embedded in immigrant communities in the GTA are especially encouraged to apply. Likewise, familiarity with Tagalog, Cantonese, Mandarin, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Somali, Amharic, Hausa, or Jamaican Patois is an asset, but not required.

Project Description: This project seeks student RAs interested in the well-being aspects of leisure-time music and sports participation. We will be working on four interrelated projects: (1) a web ethnography to identify key stakeholders; (2) direct contact with leading organizations involved with education and promotion of music-making and sports; (3) a scoping review of development opportunities, motivational factors, and attitudes related to leisure-time music and sports participation; and (4) development of an Airtable database of key resources. Members of the team may also collaborate with a similar student research team at the University of Sheffield to generate cross-national comparisons on leisure-time organizations and opportunities.

Project Description: This project will study the tricks played by tricksters, characters in stories who can read minds and manipulate others for their own ends, across cultures and across time, but with a particular focus on collections of precolonial African oral tales, postcolonial African literature, and North American literature. Examining how tricksters win trust will reveal the nature of the trust that is the basis for collective life in different societies. Examining how trust is abused in trickster stories will reveal the attitudes of story-tellers, novelists, dramatists, and their audiences toward the basis of social trust. Student RAs will collect trickster tales, films, and contemporary novels and examine them to ask: How does the trick work? What does the trickster assume about other people? What aspect of ordinary interactions does the trick take advantage of? When is the trickster admired and when is he feared and denounced? 

Project Description: In partnership with Ingenium-Canada’s Museum of Science and Innovation, this project provides students with training to develop their historical research skills, oral history and interviewing skills, and digital history skills towards the creation of an interactive and engaging digital history exhibit. Following an intensive Instructional Boot Camp, students will interview former General Motors employees, conduct and collate primary research, visit the Canadian Automotive Museum and the GM plant in Oshawa, and help plan the design of the online exhibit that tells the story of four decades of work at GM’s Oshawa plant and its meaning for the community, its workers, and the broader Canadian economy.

Project Description: Ancient Assyrians Online develops a web platform to present biographical information about ancient Assyrians (c. 911–612 BC), based on The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Helsinki, 1998–2011). The primary task of student RAs is to research and write up-to-date, engaging biographies of important Assyrians such as kings Ashurbanipal and Sennacherib and queen Sammu-ramat (the legendary Semiramis). Scholars will work with primary cuneiform sources in English translation, including digital text corpora, as well as secondary literature. Specialist expertise is not needed as full training will be given, though a background in history is desirable.

Project Description: The LSA is a multilingual, searchable database of scientific terminology, tracing the history of scientific translations and technological exchanges across Asia. Students from all disciplines with interests in digital humanities, history of science and technology, and the history and culture of any region of Asia (including Middle East) are welcome to apply. RAs will work as either web programmers or historical researchers. Programmers will gain experience working with multilingual datasets, developing the website’s search functionalities and user interfaces. Researchers will work with library and digital archives to discover primary source materials in Asian languages, as well as identifying, analyzing, and synthesizing relevant information from secondary sources. Students must have one of: 1) basic knowledge or programming experience with Python (Javascript also a plus); and/or 2) good reading knowledge of an Asian language.

Project Description: How does taste, as socio/cultural and physiological practice, order what we put into our mouths as food, drink, medicine, poison, taboo, etc.? How does taste operate in relationship to other senses, especially smell? Students will help prepare an edited book and conference “from the ground floor” through research in archival, museum, and digital resources. Student RAs will connect group/individual research to a multidisciplinary bibliography. RAs should have an interest in multidisciplinary modes of inquiry, including sensory studies, material culture, gender studies, semiotics, history and philosophy of science, and food studies. Prior experience in culinary/beverage practice is welcome. This project will offer training in multisensory interpretation, including in kitchen settings. 

Project Description: Due to geo-physical features and climatic conditions, southern Manitoba is prone to flooding. Over the past 70 years, an expansive physical infrastructure has been constructed to deal with flooding. For example, the Winnipeg Floodway was constructed to protect the City of Winnipeg against flooding, and at the time was the second largest excavation project in the world. However, while this infrastructure protects some communities, it results in increased flooding for others, including several First Nations communities. Student RAs will analyze news stories from the Winnipeg Free Press covering flooding and infrastructure development using research software (NVIVO). Students will receive training on the software and in principles of discourse analysis. Students in Geography, History, or Indigenous Studies are particularly encouraged to apply.

Project Description: John Galt (1779-1839) was a bestselling Scottish-born Romantic-era novelist and a key figure in early-nineteenth-century Canadian settlement. Student RAs will be involved in an international project to publish The Works of John Galt, a first-time multi-volume edition of his fiction. We will focus on Galt’s North American tales, which engage topics such as Indigenous-settler relations, emigration, and exploration. By assisting with annotations, fact-checking, and proofreading and working with Galt’s manuscripts and first editions, students will gain experience in scholarly editing and the publication process. Background in nineteenth-century literature and history is useful; the most important qualifications are accuracy, dedication, and enthusiasm.

Project Description: Education reform is largely taken-for-granted as a routine feature of school systems. Globally, we have witnessed the cyclical patterns of education reforms. The failure of a reform simply generates more reform, leading to widespread doubts about the efficacy of these reforms. The goal of this research is two-fold: 1) to understand the substantive foci of education reforms; and 2) to measure the impact of reforms. Student RAs will identify and code reforms from documents produced by international organizations. They will join a research team that consists of faculty and graduate students from the University of Toronto and Stanford University.

Project Description: This project provides a rare opportunity for hands-on research in Atwood’s archives at the Thomas Fisher Library. Sixty-three years ago, Atwood began studying literature as a UofT undergraduate. Today, she is arguably the world’s most influential living writer, the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Alias Grace, The Testaments, and many more. This project focuses on Atwood’s emergence as a professional writer. Together, we will explore how her first 5 novels and volumes of poetry evolved through drafts and editorial feedback, also analyzing her journalism, speeches, publicity documents, letters, and original research files. Student RAs will acquire archival skills and methodologies, a practical understanding of the publishing industry, and gain unprecedented access into the creative process of one of our greatest writers.

Project Description: Student researchers will work with Dr. White on three storytelling/orality community-based projects. The collections include the Gahsrq:nih: Waugh project, the Richard Hill collection of stories, and the Hewitt-Curtain collection. Student RAs will engage in indexing, categorization of the collections of stories, analysis for points of similarity and identifying alien/foreign conceptual frameworks that do not mirror Haudenosaunee values and epistemological frameworks. Some transcription work and annotated summarization of the stories may also be asked of the student RAs.

Project Description: This project explores frozen mammoths in the histories of colonialism, science, and the environment. For centuries, soft-tissue remains from extinct mammoths were extremely rare. Now they emerge from Arctic permafrost each summer, signaling the dramatic warming of the circumpolar north in an era of rapid climate change. Student RAs will help track and document the histories of these frozen mammoths, contributing to emerging understandings of how these specimens have shaped scientific understandings of the planet’s past, present, and future. They will gain hands-on experience in digital historical research and analysis and data and project management, and will contribute to visual and narrative digital artifacts on the project website.

Project Description: This project will gather a team of RAs and student programmers to investigate a forgotten history of when modern mapping became part of everyday life, from paper maps and pocket atlases to aerial photography, satellite imagery, drones, and GPS. Student RAs will develop cutting-edge methods in digital research and spatial analysis, recenter non-hegemonic voices in the archive, and contribute to the creation of a platform for humanities research and world heritage particularly in the Middle East, South Asia, and Europe. A previous team laid the foundations of a searchable engine (https://bit.ly/cisternwebsite) and experimented with a 3D research room (https://bit.ly/cisternvideo). Relevant skills and interests include: navigating large digital archives and databases; Turkish, French, or Arabic language skills; familiarity with Python, Git or 3D Software (Unity). Feel free to mention previous coursework in related fields.

Project Description: Universities are fertile ground for protest, from the 2012 student strikes against tuition increases in Quebec to the 2017 white supremacist march through the University of Virginia. This sociological study asks: how do university administrations manage campus protest? The broader goal is to understand how campus-based movements in the U.S. and Canada mobilized, spread, succeeded, and failed in the 2010s. Student RAs will use a customized online platform to conduct sociological coding of universities’ actions and discourse on protest, as reported in student newspaper articles. This project will appeal to students interested in developing their skills in conducting rigorous qualitative analysis and building a quantitative dataset. Required: strong performance in at least one social sciences course on research methods (sociology, political science, anthropology, or a related field such as history).

Project Description: Students are invited to participate in an interview and ethnographic study of disaster management professionals. Students will assist with data coding and analysis using NVivo 12 software, focusing on how disaster professionals are anticipating the many impacts of the human-induced climate crisis and related environmental risks. Familiarity with qualitative analysis software is valuable but training will be provided. Background in sociology, science and technology studies, and/or disaster studies is highly valuable.

Project Description: This project is the first to investigate the Northampton General Hospital Archives to explore the health experiences of children in Northampton, UK from 1744 to 1847, contributing unique longitudinal insights into the history of poverty, childhood, and social welfare. Student RAs will gain experience with archival research, including transcription, proofreading, and database management, as well as data analysis and interpretation. This project invites students with interests in medical history and/or anthropology of health to work with primary sources to explore children’s health (focus upon trauma, infectious disease) through time. Previous experience with paleography is an asset but is not required.

Project Description: In Toronto, urbanization hides the chemical infrastructures of settler colonialism on which the city is literally built. Together with co-facilitator Sophia Jaworski, using our dataset of 900 historical petrochemical storage and manufacturing sites in the old city centre, this project of the TWIG Research Kitchen will create a website with interactive map, data sharing tools, and critical contextual resources allowing visitors to grapple with the toxic legacies of colonialism in Tkoronto (Toronto). A great fit for students committed to feminist, anti-colonial, and environmental or data justice practices, and/or sociocultural anthropology or science and technology studies approaches to toxicity. Preferred skills: excel/data management, organization, and collaboration. Prior experience with archival research, GIS, StoryMaps welcome but not required.

Project Description: This project will help quantify the price that British colonial relationships have imposed via trade policies. The results will have significant implications on the current debate around colonial history and trade diversion. Student RAs will develop a large detailed Canadian trade database covering the period from 1870 to 1919 that will be accessible to researchers. Participants should have an interest in Economic History and basic experience in quantitative analysis. RAs will be using excel macros to collect data and at least one of Stata, R or Python to conduct analysis. They will also be introduced to the Amazon Web Services research modules developed specifically for this project as a collaborative endeavor between UTM and AWS. https://financialpost.com/news/economy/kevin-carmichael-dont-fear-the-robots-people

Project Description: The project aims to study the linguistic contact between Italian and immigrant languages in some of the largest Italian cities (i.e., Milan, Florence, Rome, Naples, Palermo). Students will use Google Maps to select the urban areas with a high immigrant population and will then use Google Street View to analyse the words in foreign languages written on publicly visible street signs and shop windows. The data collected will be entered into a large database and analysed from a linguistic and semiotic perspective. Participating students should have a high level of linguistic competence in Italian and should be capable of conducting linguistic and sociolinguistic research. Students should also be able to use technology such as Google Maps and Excel for research purposes. 

Project Description: Digital Dostoevsky uses methodologies such as TEI encoding, machine reading, and natural language processing to help to answer questions about the deep structure of Dostoevsky’s novels, questions about speech, character, space, temporality, affect, and fictionality, among other areas. Student RAs will learn methods of text encoding, including TEI and XML, and use these methods to encode Dostoevsky novels in Russian in collaboration with a team of professors and graduate students. No prior knowledge of coding needed (training in digital methods will be provided), but advanced Russian is required (three years of university- level study, heritage, or native speaker fluency).

Project Description: This study aims at exploring the order of acquisition of four word-knowledge components (form-meaning link, morphology, collocations, and multiple meanings) in L2 French and Chinese. Student RAs will develop the activities that will be used in these two tests. For the French section, proficiency in French (advanced level/first language) is necessary. For the Chinese section, proficiency in Chinese (first language) is necessary, and additional proficiency in Spanish is highly desirable (Spanish knowledge will not be needed for French speakers, only for Chinese speakers). All RAs will be trained in developing word-knowledge activities for L2 students. 

Project Description: This project compares community experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic including access to vaccines, local government approaches to vaccine rollouts, and the role of community organizations in supporting access to vaccines among immigrant, Black, and racially visible populations in Canada, the UK, and France. Data collection is on-going and includes in-depth interviews with: i) community members; ii) municipal governments, public health boards, and Covid-19 advisory boards; iii) leaders from community organizations and community groups; and iv) health service providers. Student RAs will be involved in library research, data collection, analysis, and dissemination, and will receive training in social research methods.

Project Description: Play Together is a virtual platform we have developed to measure teamwork and leadership abilities and study group dynamics among individuals of different characteristics using virtual tasks and games. We are currently working on implementing field experiments with interested partners in Latin America. Student RAs will help us with a literature review on topics related to the project. They will also contribute the data analysis to implement the experiments and generate the code to study the performance indicators on the platform. Finally, they will help us to identify websites to run online experiments with the tools we have developed.

UT Scarborough SiR 2024

• Designing Data Drops about the Canada-US Border from Haven, the Asylum Lab - Supervisor: Prof. Alison Mountz (Department of Geography and Planning)

Project Description: Student RAs will analyze data about asylum seeking along the Canada-US border to inform public discourse. They will acquire skills in data management and analysis and story-telling for general publics.  RAs will learn about human migration, policies governing border crossings, and associated debates. They will explore creative ways to share this work with public audiences, including visualization, co-authorship of a short blog, and a podcast interview. The research will culminate in an exciting new data drop at the end of the month, to be promoted through social media, the blog, and podcast. Data management skills are helpful, but not essential. 

• Open-World Adventures: Publishing an Inventory of Critical Video Game Analysis - Supervisor: Prof. Sonja Nikkila (Department of English)

Project Description: Student RAs will continue work on the Inventory of Critical Video Game Analysis begun by the 2023 SiR team, with the goal of building this collaborative digital resource toward an official public launch. RAs will have the opportunity to research and write content, work on editing existing contributions, copyediting and formatting to style guidelines, and assessing other digital publishing concerns. The team will also have opportunities to explore future uses of the Inventory, including establishing and strengthening connections with other faculty teaching video games, determining how the Inventory could serve classroom goals, and brainstorming possible submission models that would allow for a “scholarly” publication that is both accessible and inclusive. 

UT St. George

• Examining the Narrative Lives of Road Infrastructures - Supervisor: Prof. Comfort Azubuko-Udah (Department of English / African Studies Centre)

Project Description: This project will curate materials around the social production of space in Nigerian transit infrastructure. What does it mean that the location of a tollgate or a pothole can be used as a landmark when giving directions for years after it has ceased to exist? What does this indicate about people's social relationship to transit infrastructure? Student RAs will work with various digital archives to curate materials, from policy documents, to creative, scholarly, and news publications. Experience with literary analysis and methodologies is not required but will be considered. This will appeal to students interested in African literatures and cultures, or urban and environmental humanities. 

• McLuhan on Drugs: Media Theory and 1960s Counterculture at the University of Toronto - Supervisor: Prof. Maria Cichosz (Literature and Creative Writing, Victoria College)

Project Description: The 1960s were a strange and exciting time on university campuses, where countercultural ideas about drugs and consciousness shaped new understandings of media and culture. This project gives student RAs the opportunity to work in campus archives (specifically the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and the John M. Kelly Library’s McLuhan Collection) to explore the connections between drugs, media theory, and countercultural ideas at UofT, culminating in a public-facing physical exhibition featuring both scholarly and artistic interpretations of our findings. Students with interests in critical theory, creative expression, and twentieth-century history and culture are especially welcome. Archival training will be provided; the most important qualifications are attention to detail, the ability to synthesize information, and an open mind.

• Knowing Black Atlantic Worlds - Supervisor: Prof. Kamari Maxine Clarke (Criminology & Sociolegal Studies)

Project Description: Black researchers face serious challenges in the production of new knowledge about Black Atlantic worlds because of the reality that European modes of knowledge production established racial hierarchies and Eurocentric ways of knowing and organizing knowledge in ways that excluded other forms of meaning-making. As a result of the historical erasure of Black knowledge and social thought there is a failure to document social practices, artifacts, and experiences of Black people. This has led to a misrecognition and devaluation of Black social thought. This project explores how foregrounding recovered epistemologies change what we know about Black lives in the twenty-first century, in Canada and throughout Black Atlantic worlds. The goal of Knowing Black Atlantic Worlds is to establish, in Canada, a new, transnational community-academic research collaboration.

• Just Main Streets: A Visual Study on Public Space Justice in Toronto - Supervisor: Prof. Roberto Damiani (Daniels Faculty of Architecture)

Project Description: How can urban densification support public space justice? This research project is a visual study of corridors designated for densification in Toronto. The study will analyze how streets foster or inhibit social interaction and cultural expression in neighbourhoods lacking access to active public space by combining observation methods like photography and interviews with formal analysis methods such as urban morphology and architectural typology. RAs will produce a report including drawing, image, and text-based analysis of selected streets. Experience and skills in one or more of public space analysis and urban, architectural, historical, and sociological research methods are highly desirable.

• Annoted Bibliography on Law Enforcement Use of Biometric Techniques and Technologies - Supervisor: Prof. Ron Deibert (Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy)

Project Description: Today law enforcement agencies around the world use biometric techniques and technologies to collect and process human characteristics like fingerprints, DNA, and iris scans. These approaches can have pronounced rights impacts. To explore this topic, student RAs and Citizen Lab researchers will identify, analyze, and summarize relevant media and research reports to add to an annotated bibliography on biometric surveillance. When published, this bibliography will be an important resource for experts, journalists, and members of impacted communities. As key collaborators, student RAs will be credited as co-authors. Students interested in technology and human rights are encouraged to apply.

• Measuring Immigration Policy Positions in Immigrant States - Supervisor: Prof. Michael Donnelly (Department of Political Science / Munk School)

Project Description: This project will develop a novel dataset of immigration policies in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand from 1945-present. It will do so by coding the immigration policies advocated within the election manifestos of all political parties competing in national elections during this period. RAs will be responsible for reading party manifestos, identifying sentences that refer to immigration and related policies, and categorizing those sentences by topic and valence. RAs will be trained in text coding and learn about immigration policy and its development. Proficiency in French is an asset but is not a requirement.

• Archiving the Legacies of Cambodia's Genocide - Supervisor: Prof. Cindy Ewing (Department of History)

Project Description: How do genocidal regimes present themselves to the world? This project examines the role of diplomacy in the aftermath of Cambodia's genocide and its internationally managed reconstruction process by archiving the personal papers of Cambodia’s longest serving ambassador to the United Nations, Thiounn Prasith (1930-2023). Student RAs will work in never-before-seen private documents from Cambodia's genocidal and post-genocidal periods. This project will explore questions of historical memory, international relations, and archival cataloguing while developing a finding aid, scanning and boxing documents, and building a scholarly bibliography. Experience handling primary sources and interest in Southeast Asian history or International Relations are welcome. 

• Queer Italian-Canadian Artists: Ethnic Belonging and Cultural Production - Supervisor: Prof. Paolo Frascà (Department of Italian Studies)

Project Description: This project studies the intersection of queer and migrant experiences, with a focus on the cultural life of LGBTQ+ Italian-Canadians. The project is connected to a number of community initiatives (anthologies, documentaries, public events). Student RAs' two main tasks are: 1) collection of online interviews with queer Italian-Canadian artists (mostly writers); 2) expansion of digital humanities platform (www.qic-artists.com). In addition, students will carry out preliminary analysis, such as data coding and interview summaries. Training provided. Some experience in any of these preferred: LGBTQ+ or gender studies, Italian or modern languages, qualitative research, social justice. Some knowledge of the Italian language preferred but not necessary.

• Building a Platform for Group Study of Rosenzweig and Buber’s Bible Translation - Supervisor: Prof. Robert Gibbs (Department for the Study of Religion)

Project Description: What can be learned from glimpsing into the atelier of a defining biblical translation? And how did two 20th-century philosophers propose to read in tandem the canonical texts that shaped their influential dialogical philosophies? Student RAs will have the unique opportunity to explore such questions by helping to create a digital platform for transcribing, annotating, and scrutinizing a treasure trove of unpublished papers between Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig leading to their ground-breaking biblical translation. Students interested in digital humanities, in the Bible, in translation theory and especially those who have web developing skills working with either German and Hebrew and/or coding are welcome to help create a model for studying these unique materials.

• Exploring Women’s Roles in Underground Economies of Violence - Supervisor: Prof. María Méndez Gutiérrez (Department of Political Science)

Project Description: This project challenges common beliefs that violent underground economies are solely male domains by studying women’s participation in organized criminal violence. Focused on Central America, it investigates how gender, race, and class shape roles in covert economies of violence. Student RAs will curate and analyze a diverse array of sources, including scholarly literature, court documents, autobiographies, news articles, and films. The project offers a distinctive opportunity for students to delve into nuanced research and enhance their critical thinking skills. Fluency in Spanish is beneficial but not mandatory.

• Mapping Immigrant Stand-Up Jokes and Humour in Toronto and Environs - Supervisor: Prof. Izuu Nwankwo (Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies)

Project Description: This project will map live and online immigrant stand-up comedy in and around Toronto, particularly targeting humourists with recent immigration history from Africa and Asia. The overall purpose is to track personae, venues, thematic preoccupations, and other structural peculiarities. I will work together with student RAs to identify and categorize target comedians within the city. RAs will then work individually and in smaller groups to find and document source materials for the individuals, creating biographical and performance details data for the comedians. Students with interests in popular culture, especially literature, theatre and digital media performances are encouraged to apply.

• Performance Design Driven Theatrical Exploration of Canadian Housing Crisis, 1930-2030 - Supervisor: Prof. Snežana Pešić (Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies)

Project Description: Rooted in research on the history of Canadian housing and fashion, the project examines the relationship of Canadians with their living spaces through the lens of scenography (set, costume, and lighting design for the stage). The project's final goal is a public presentation of the theatre performance, The Living Boxes. Student RAs will create a comprehensive visual database for design conception, focusing on historical research of Canadian homes, interior lighting, and fashion from 1930 on. The research will include written and visual documentation and visits to a few Toronto homes established in the past 100 years.

• Humanness and AI - Supervisor: Prof. Matt Ratto (Faculty of Information)

Project Description: The power of AI systems is often described as their ability to produce 'human-like' creative outputs. Current debates focus on the potential impacts of AI on existing systems of trust, evaluation, and issues regarding potential bias. This project will engage students in researching how human characteristics and attributes serve as criteria of evaluation and operationalization for AI systems, the critical impacts of thinking about AI through the lens of humanness, and the creative possibilities that attend from a posthuman framing. Students will carry out a qualitative scoping review and coding process on articles about generative AI from a leading repository of computing literature, guided by key concepts drawn from literature in the posthumanities, including scholars such as Sylvia Wynter, Rosi Braidotti, Katherine Hayles, and others. No specialized technical expertise is required; training in NVivo coding software will be provided.

• Charting Virgil’s Renaissance Reception - Supervisor: Prof. Shaun Ross (Victoria College)

Project Description: Virgil’s Aeneid, though written in antiquity, was the single most influential poem in Medieval and Renaissance literary history. Poets such as Dante, Ariosto, Ercilla, Camões, Spenser, and Milton all used Virgil’s poem as a model, to imitate and to challenge, as they wrote their own vernacular epics. Student RAs will study this reception history by contributing to the creation of a digital edition of the Aeneid that charts how Dante and subsequent Renaissance-era poets responded to and reinterpreted Virgil’s Latin poem. Knowledge of any of the following languages will be highly beneficial: Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian.

• Unfree Labour in the Russian Empire - Supervisor: Prof. Alison Smith (Department of History)

Project Description: This project will explore the ways that different forms of unfree labor – primarily serfdom and slavery, but other kinds of bonded servitude, as well – existed throughout the Russian empire, with a particular concern for the role that unfree labor played in understandings of race. The research team will work to build a database of references to forms of freedom, bondage, and race in travel accounts of the Russian Empire. Reading fluency in languages other than English is an asset but not required.

• Margaret Atwood: The Dystopian Imagination - Supervisor: Prof. Ira Wells (Victoria College)

Project Description: Genetic engineering run amok. Environmental catastrophe. Theocratic totalitarianism. Over the last two decades, Margaret Atwood has prophesized dystopian visions of environmental and social calamity. This project provides a rare opportunity for hands-on, archival research into five of Atwood’s novels: Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, MaddAddam, The Heart Goes Last, and The Testaments. Together, we will trace how these novels evolved through drafts and editorial feedback, analyzing Atwood’s related letters, research files, and publicity strategy. RAs will acquire archival skills, a practical understanding of the international publishing industry, and gain unprecedented access into the creative process of one of our most celebrated writers. Students with enthusiasm and familiarity with Atwood (and one or more of these novels) are especially encouraged to apply.

• Civil Discourse: What’s The State, And What’s At Stake? - Supervisor: Prof. Randy Boyagoda (Department of English)

Project Description: What’s the state and what’s at stake when it comes to civil discourse, on and off campus? This research project seeks to study civil discourse concepts and practice specific to select nation-states, including Canada and the United States, among others, and the roles of universities in these countries as sites and sources for promoting, practicing, or disrupting civil discourse itself. The research will involve historical investigations into nation-specific civil discourse traditions and analyses of current situations where civil discourse and university life intersect. This project will appeal particularly to students with research skills associated with history, politics, and cultural analysis.

UT Mississauga

• Developing an Evidence-Based Support Program for First-Year Math Students and Their TAs - Supervisor: Prof. Margaret Karrass (Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy)

Project Description: This project aims to create a professional development program for Mathematics TAs. Research Assistants will be trained in qualitative research methodology and assist in developing evidence-based interview protocols that will then be administered to TAs. The objective is to investigate how TAs identify and remediate knowledge and skill gaps that impede first-year math students’ academic success. Together, we will conduct a literature review, develop and administer the interview protocol and analyze collected data. A desire to learn is required; a background in educational studies, psychology, math, or software development is a plus.

• Understanding the Impact of Long-Term Burial on Bone Preservation - A Pet Cemetery Studynderstanding the Impact of Long-Term Burial on Bone Preservation - A Pet Cemetery Study - Supervisor: Prof. Tracy Rogers (Department of Anthropology, UTM)

Project Description: After-death decomposition can vary depending on the environment. This project will evaluate factors affecting bone preservation in long-term animal burials to help estimate time since death in forensic cases. We will be excavating graves in a pet cemetery that must be moved. RAs will learn how to excavate and document a grave. We will be excavating 3-4 days each week. This is hard physical work that requires good health. Training, tools and transportation to and from the cemetery are provided. Upon removal of a pet, the student will clean and inventory the bones and score preservation.

• The Self-Serve Makerspace: A Dialogical Exploration - Supervisor: Prof. Samar Sabie (Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology)

Project Description: Making can be a powerful practice for creating socio-material assemblages that reflect on and tinker with unjust systems. Yet, makerspaces seem globally to favour technical skills over critical engagements, and are often intimidating and inaccessible to many user groups. This project aims to redefine how we can approach making by shifting the focus from technical skills and crafty production to critical engagements through a self-serve makerspace that empowers individuals to tinker and intervene in societal structures. Following a dialogical approach that synthesizes insights from user interviews, speculative design practices, and humanities scholarship, RAs will develop theoretical and practical framings that seek to revolutionize the makerspace experience, making it more inclusive, accessible, and socially transformative. The Open Design Collaboraturium at UTM (a maker space in the making) will serve as a case study for the project.

• Accessibility and Audience in the Public Communication of Linguistics via Comics - Supervisor: Prof. Ai Taniguchi (Department of Language Studies)

Project Description: In this project, we will research ways to make the communication of linguistics more accessible, including Alt-Text for linguistics visuals (e.g., International Phonetic Alphabet symbols) and ways to communicate linguistics to an audience that may be resistant to the idea of linguistic diversity. Student RAs will research best linguistics communication practices via literature reviews and expert interviews and disseminate project findings via comics. An academic background in linguistics is useful but not required (training in linguistics can be provided). Students with a background in linguistics, visual arts (especially comics), disability studies, and/or science communication are encouraged to apply.

• Identifying What Expert Writers Summarize from the Research Sources They Cite - Supervisor: Prof. Jonathan Vroom (Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy)

Project Description: RAs will analyze a selection of research articles from a discipline of their choosing, in order to determine how the articles’ authors read the sources they cite—particularly research sources that follow the Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion (IMRD) format. In other words, RAs will look up each IMRD article that is cited in the articles they analyze, and determine what the authors summarized from those sources. The ultimate goal of the project is to inform reading-for-research pedagogies. No specialized qualifications are required, beyond having experience with reading and using empirical research articles from the sciences or social sciences. Training will be provided in the first week.

UT Online / International

• How Can We Connect to Climate Change through Artistic Media of Communications? - Supervisor: Prof. Tanzina Mohsin (Department of Physical & Environmental Sciences, UTSC)

Project Description: This research aims to explore the efficacy of artistic modes in communicating climate change, addressing the gap between Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and Western Knowledge (WK) using a "two-eyed seeing" approach. The students RAs will: 1) conduct a comparative analysis of diverse artistic media (e.g., visual and performing arts, film, digital arts, literature) to identify communication barriers; 2) develop strategies highlighting the pivotal roles of artistic media in climate change communication; and 3) analyze instances of harmonious interdisciplinary collaboration, assessing their impact on public perception. This pilot initiative will empower RAs to blend knowledge and methodologies from their disciplines for effective climate change communication, with outcomes influencing presentations and publications. Students with diverse background in arts and science are encouraged to apply, particularly those interested in history of climate science, indigenous knowledge, arts, media communication technology and other cross-cultural methodologies employed for artistic communications.

• Online Teaching Efficacy and Instructional Practices in Post-Secondary Education – A Canada-Wide Study - Supervisor: Prof. Julia Forgie (Victoria College)

Project Description: This study explores the range of self-efficacy beliefs that Canadian post-secondary instructors hold about their teaching practice. It seeks to investigate and compare instructors’ teaching efficacy across in-person and online teaching contexts and to explore curricular decisions as instructors plan and implement online instruction and learning. RAs with interests in post-secondary education and online teaching and mixed-methods research, including data collection, data coding and transcription, quantitative and qualitative data analysis, and the desire to contribute to applied educational research, are encouraged to apply. Training in data collection procedures and SPSS and NVivo data analyses software will be provided.

• Belongings: On the Virtues and Values of Theatre Training in Canada - Supervisor: Prof. Barry Freeman (Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies)

Project Description: This project invites RAs into Belongings, a national study of post-secondary theatre training in Canada, aimed at supporting transformative curricular change. RAs will receive training in qualitative research software, contribute to a mapping of theatre programs in universities and colleges across the country, and design and present a “micro-investigation” of their own using the project’s data set. Applicants should be interested in growing experience with qualitative research in the humanities. No prior knowledge is strictly necessary although some experience with drama or theatre will be considered an asset.

• Identifying and Coding National Education Reforms for the World Education Reform Database (1945-2021) - Supervisor: Prof. Rie Kijima (Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy)

Project Description: The World Education Reform Database (WERD) is the most comprehensive database of over 10,000 national education reforms between 1970-2021. The objective of this project is to extend the WERD by identifying and coding education reforms dating back to 1945. Student RAs will receive training on how to identify and code education reforms from doctoral students at Stanford University. Working with publications produced by international organizations, RAs will apply the coding scheme developed by the team to identify and code reforms. They will also participate in team-building exercises and fireside chats on topics such as public policy and education.

• Putting All Children on a Positive Trajectory in Mathematics Learning in the Preschool Years - Supervisor: Prof. Tracy Solomon (OISE)

Project Description: Getting young children off to a good start in math is essential for school readiness. A pilot study on the effectiveness of an innovative preschool math resource – developed in collaboration with JUMP Math – suggested the potential for positive impact. Using this data, RAs could contribute to literature review, analysis and write up of studies exploring e.g. the relation between early math, reading readiness and executive function, the relation between the quantity and quality of math experiences in preschool and early math development, and the relation between preschool teachers’ beliefs in neuromyths regarding math learning and young children’s math progress.

• CRISIS! Declassified Canadian Files from the Cold War’s Closest Calls - Supervisor: Prof. Timothy Sayle (Department of History)

Project Description: Participating RAs will be among the first scholars to work with a recently declassified collection of formerly Top Secret documents related to Canada and Cold War crises. Working as a team, students will take responsibility for a series of records, comb through the declassified files, and select and extract documents they find most useful for explaining their topic. They will arrange these diplomatic cables, memoranda to Cabinet, intelligence assessments, and polling data for online publication on our University of Toronto Libraries-hosted website “Canada Declassified.” The digital exhibits will allow other students and scholars to work with these newly declassified documents. RAs will have unique access to a previously secret part of Canadian history, learn about declassification, and gain digital humanities experience.

UT Scarborough SiR 2023

• The Scarborough Social Atlas Project - Supervisor: Prof. Ahmed Allahwala (Human Geography)

Project Description: Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite Cities Atlas Trilogy, the Scarborough Social Atlas combines scholarly research and mapping practices in the creation of a new social cartography of Scarborough. In this multi-disciplinary project, each student will serve as the academic lead of a mapping project and bring their disciplinary expertise to the collaborative. Possible topics include indigeneity, migration, food, music, queer culture, religion, architecture, green spaces and non-human species. End-of-program deliverables include a map for each project and a curatorial essay. Students will receive training in archival and database research, mapping, and narrative research. Students from all disciplinary backgrounds are encouraged to apply. 

• Deconstructing Hip-Hop Music's Politics - Supervisor: Prof Mark Campbell (Arts, Culture & Media)

Project Description: The goal of this interactive media project is to build an educational resource that allows users to engage hip-hop musical texts from multiple disciplinary perspectives. We will work to reveal and analyze the ways hip-hop culture’s creative practices, informed by the culture’s aesthetic foundations, are used, in order to create a multidisciplinary interactive educational resource. This project welcomes RAs with interests in hip-hop culture, historical research, diaspora studies, and de-colonizing movements. Skills in web design, GIS mapping, video editing, data visualization and programming are needed; proficiency in French, Spanish, Creole, Arabic, Tagalog, or Visaya are an asset, but not required. RAs on this project will develop a nuanced and sophisticated suite of research and project management skills. 

• How Can We Teach Effectively in Canadian Prison? - Supervisor: Prof. Philip Heron (Physical & Environmental Sciences)

Project Description: How can we connect with students who have low confidence, or negative perceptions of education? Think Like A Scientist is a specialist science course for people in prison, beginning in Canada in 2023. Successful applicants will help create a classroom dynamic that is relatable, accessible, and inclusive to all people. We are particularly interested in creating new course material on addiction, mental health, and better understanding neurodivergence. Our project needs fresh perspectives, and we believe the undergraduate students will bring new ideas to the table based on their lived experience. We encourage applications from diverse backgrounds.  

• Mapping Evictions in Ontario - Supervisor: Prof. Julie Mah (Human Geography)

Project Description: To better understand the prevalence and geography of evictions in Ontario, this project will involve the creation of a unique database. This database will form the foundation for future work that examines these research questions: Where are evictions occurring? Are they concentrated in gentrifying areas? Who is evicting more? All of these questions carry important policy implications. Student RAs will help with inputting and cleaning the eviction filings database in preparation for mapping and linking to other datasets. Students should be familiar with Microsoft Excel, though RAs will receive training on creating Excel pivot tables, data manipulation, and geocoding. 

• Playing with Stories: Developing a Critical Encyclopedia of Video Game Narratives - Supervisor Prof. Sonja Nikkila (English)

Project Description: Student RAs will develop a critical encyclopedia for video game narrative studies: we will lay the groundwork for a digital, collaborative, and evolving resource that offers definitional entries as well as sample critical analyses and discussions of exemplar games. We will begin by absorbing foundational information on video game analysis––narrative lenses, categories, vocabularies, etc.––and plot a framework for the encyclopedia, including an outline of topics and proposed organization. We will explore a range of research resources (from the library to “the internet” to the games themselves) in order to extract and synthesize information for entries. 

• Media Messages and Reporting on Race: Differences in Discourse - Supervisor: Prof. Hadiya Roderique (Arts, Culture & Media)

Project Description: Canadian media uses often negative narratives that carry powerful, coded messages about particular groups in society. There is evidence that the work of BIPOC reporters provides counter-discourses to these narratives through more nuanced portrayals of topics related to race. This project seeks to examine how white and BIPOC journalists report on race differently. Each researcher will be assigned a case study, collect reporting on these cases, and use critical discourse analysis and content analysis to analyse differences in reporting. This project appeals to students interested in Journalism, Media, Communications, Black and Indigenous Studies, and Cultural Studies. Previous experience or exposure to critical discourse analysis is an asset, but training will be provided. 

UT St. George

• Storying Domestic and Piped Water in Nigerian Literature - Supervisor: Prof. Comfort Azubuko-Udah (English)

Project Description: This project tunes into a relatively unspectacular form of water to ask: why is such a ubiquitous aspect of everyday life so largely absent from African realist fiction? And, what narrative roles can it play in contemporary African stories? Student RAs and I will work together to identify and select useful materials including scholarly publications, stories, and other representational media that deals with, or may mention, domestic water in Nigeria. RAs will then provide detailed notes and coded annotations on the materials they have read. This project will appeal to students interested in African literatures and cultures, and urban humanities. 

• Feminist and Queer Poetics, Data Visualization, and Creative Engagements with Special Collections - Supervisor: Clair Battershill (iSchool, English)

Project Description: This project proposes a reconceptualization of literary and historical special collections using the methods of queer and feminist poetic analysis, visual art, poetics, and creative data visualization. Students participating in this SiR will engage in direct work with U of T special collections (including the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and the Massey College Library in particular). Students with expertise in computer science, specifically data visualization; visual studies and/or graphic design; creative expression; and/or feminist/queer methods will be most welcome.  

• Higher Education for Sustainable Development: Tracking University Commitments Worldwide -  Supervisor: Prof. Elizabeth Buckner (OISE)

Project Description:  Sustainable development is one of our most pressing global challenges, and universities around the world have committed to supporting the Sustainable Development Goals. This project is building a unique dataset on how over 17,000 universities worldwide incorporate sustainable development into their missions, teaching, research and operations. Student researchers will collect data from official documents, social media, and public websites. Example indicators will include whether sustainable development is included in the universities’ mission statements and whether the university has a Sustainability Policy or dedicated office. Reading fluency in languages other than English is an asset but not required.  

• Innovation in the Depth of Empire: Toward a Black Atlantic Theory of Absence - Supervisors: Prof. Kamari Clarke (Criminology, Diaspora and Transnational Studies)

Project Description: In a field where absence seems to dominate Black cultural, social and political life, this project advances a theory of presence in the Black Atlantic world, and explores the possibility of excavating new social archives in rendering transparent forms of social life. We will create an online collaborative database on Black Trans-Atlantic cultural artifacts, including proverbs, stories, jokes, stories of disappearances, and new forms of memorialisation. This project involves documenting social practices that are often dismissed as unintelligible, irrelevant or unknowable in the Black Atlantic world but will be central to making sense of the innovative possibilities that characterise contemporary Black social life. This project might appeal to students interested in Black, Caribbean and African Studies, History, and more. Proficiency in a Caribbean or African language will be considered but not necessary. 

• Building automatic speech tools in low-resource languages - Supervisor: Prof. Ewan Dunbar (French)

Project Description: Automatic speech tools (speech recognition, speech synthesis) have a big problem with “low-resource languages”: languages which, unlike English, Mandarin, etc., lack the massive data sets usually needed. They represent the majority of the world’s languages, including many languages spoken in Canada (e.g., Cantonese, Anishnaabemowin, Acadian French, Gaelic). Recent "self-supervised" machine learning shows promise in reducing the data needed to build speech tools. Students will work in a multidisciplinary team (linguists, engineers) assessing how these techniques perform on a language relevant to the Canadian context, including developing a speech corpus. A solid linguistics background is necessary; programming experience is not. 

• European Refugee Musicians in Canada, 1937-1950 - Supervisor: Prof. Robin Elliott (Music)

Project Description: Despite the restrictive immigration policies of the time, during the World War II era and its immediate aftermath roughly 100 musicians, most of them Jewish, fled from Nazi-occupied Europe and found safe haven in Canada. Exploring a wide range of primary and secondary source materials, this project will create an online biographical dictionary to shed light on these musicians and their contributions to the postwar cultural life of Canada. Student RAs will develop skills in academic writing, using archival materials, website development, and twentieth-century history; knowledge of music would be an asset but is not a requirement.  

• Editing John Galt's Short Stories: Romantic, Transatlantic, Global, and Gothic - Supervisor: Prof. Angela Esterhammer (English, Victoria College)

Project Description: John Galt (1779-1839) was a bestselling British Romantic novelist and a key figure in nineteenth-century Canadian settlement. Student RAs will be involved in a large international project to publish the Works of John Galt. In 2023 we will focus especially on Galt’s short fiction, which spans themes of travel, fantasy, and gothic, and settings from Upper Canada to Asia. By researching annotations, fact-checking, proofreading, and working with Galt’s manuscripts and first editions, students will gain experience in scholarly editing and the publication process. Background in nineteenth-century literature and history is useful; the most important qualifications are accuracy and enthusiasm.

• Liberating the Land: Campus Foodscapes in the GTA - Supervisors: Profs. Eva-Lynn Jagoe (Spanish and Comparative Literature); Michael Klassens (School of the Environment); Nicole Spiegelaar (School of the Environment)

Project Description: This project aims to create a network between garden/farm projects at UT’s three campuses and campuses across the GTA. In addition to planting seeds and growing food in a new garden at Innis College, students will conduct a literature review on campus urban growing spaces, and engage in experiential research with GTA campuses. Students will produce the first Campus Urban Agriculture guide in Canada, which will include practical techniques and strategies for growing food in urban settings with student populations. The guide will incorporate guidance on how to work strategically with facilities and administration within an academic institution. 

• Historicizing 'Sustainable' Development: Everyday stories of people and nature in Central America - Supervisor: Prof. Sharlene Mollett (Human Geography)

Project Description: Historicizing ‘Sustainable’ Development investigates, across time and space, the multiple ways in which Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples in Central America are represented as “obstacles” to, and their environments as places in need of sustainable development. Student RAs will conduct interdisciplinary and historical data collection to curate everyday stories of people and nature from diverse materials such as, Latin American/Caribbean historiographies, photographs, novels, newspapers, travel literature, and laws relevant to colonial and postcolonial land development. Students with interests in History, Latin American/Caribbean Studies, Geography, Black and Indigenous Studies; Environmental Humanities, and/or women and gender studies are especially encouraged to apply. 

• Margaret Atwood: The Major Novels - Supervisor: Prof. Ira Wells (Victoria College)

Project Description: This project provides a rare opportunity for hands-on research in Atwood’s archives at the Thomas Fisher Library, focussing on the major novels (The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, and The Blind Assassin) published between 1985 and 2000. Together, we will trace how these novels evolved through drafts and editorial feedback, analyzing Atwood’s related journalism, speeches, publicity documents, letters, and original research files. Student RAs will acquire archival skills and methodologies, a practical understanding of how the publishing industry works, and gain unprecedented access into the creative process of one of our greatest writers. Students with enthusiasm and familiarity with Atwood (and any of the novels under investigation) are especially welcome to apply.  

• Instruments of Empire: The Forgotten History of Modern Mapping in the Middle East and the World - Supervisor: Prof. Adrien Zakar (Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, IHPST)

Project Description: This project investigates the forgotten history of modern mapping’s integration into everyday life – from paper maps and pocket atlases to satellite imagery, drones, and GPS. Participants will develop cutting-edge methods in digital research and spatial analysis, recenter non-hegemonic voices in the archive, and contribute to the creation of a platform for humanities research, 2/3D games, and heritage curation particularly in the Middle East, South Asia, and Europe. Relevant skills include navigating large digital archives and databases, Turkish, Armenian, Greek, Syriac, Arabic or French language skills, familiarity with Python, Git, and 3D Software (Rhino and/or Unity). Feel free to mention previous coursework and experience in related fields. 

UT Mississauga

• Impoverished Aesthetics: Marginality in Latin literature and Contemporary Art -  Supervisor: Prof. Lorenza Bennardo (Classics)

Project Description: The Impoverished Aesthetics project investigates marginal states of being (abjection, illness, deprivation, etc.) in ancient Latin literature. Can such states contribute to the audience’s artistic pleasure? Can they grant us insight into subaltern social identities (e.g. marginal intellectual voices; the poor, defeated, and destitute; women)? Can the exploration of marginality in Latin literature enrich our understanding of contemporary artistic experiences? Student RAs will compare instances of ‘impoverished aesthetics’ in ancient and contemporary literature and art (e.g. domestic violence in Seneca and David Lynch; the positioning of female subjectivity in Ovid and Margaret Atwood) and share their findings through a series of blog posts.  

• Not A Fishing Tale: Learning about Sustainability from Historical Indigenous Fishing Practices - Supervisor: Prof. Alicia Hawkins (Anthropology)

Project Description: Food security, climate change, and Indigenous rights intersect in the domain of harvesting and management of wild species, including fish. Recent unsustainable fishing practices have led to the collapse of fisheries, but before European colonization sustainable fishing practices supported flourishing Indigenous communities in Ontario. Archaeology provides an avenue for exploration of this sustainable practice. This project delves into fishing practices by the Wendat in southern Ontario, and uses historical documents, geographic information systems, analysis of archaeological artifacts and linguistics to supplement earlier findings from identification of fish bones. Reading knowledge of French is preferred; training in GIS will be provided. 

• Investigating Ancient Technologies via Hands-on Replication, Experiment, Ethnographic & Textual Accounts - Supervisor: Prof. Heather Miller (Anthropology)

Project Description: Necessity is seldom the mother of invention. Through diverse research projects related to archaeological investigations of technologies, SiR scholars will gain new views of human innovations and traditions as related not only to functional needs, but also social relations, economic situations, and religious and cultural belief systems. Projects chosen will depend on scholars’ backgrounds, including work with recent ethnographic objects from Papua New Guinea (looped string bags, arrows, grass skirts, musical instruments); analysis of copper casting debris from the Bronze Age city of Harappa; and creating replica tools for other research projects (from stone drills to rat-tooth wood carving tools). 

• Chinese International Students' Embodied Transnational Identity Negotiation and Raciolinguistic Experiences - Supervisor: Zhaozhe Wang (OISE)

Project Description: This project investigates Chinese international students’ transnational identity negotiation embodied in everyday literacy practices and raciolinguistic experiences in higher education during a time characterized by heightened geopolitical tension between China and North America and COVID-19-induced anti-Asian racism. Student scholars will gain hands-on research training and experience in reviewing and synthesizing relevant scholarship, understanding research ethics, developing interview protocols for qualitative research, and recruiting participants. No previous qualitative research experience is required. Student scholars with interest in case study design, Chinese international student experience, literacy and writing studies are encouraged to participate. 

• Evaluating the Impact of Storytelling in Computer Science Education: A Qualitative Analysis - Supervisor: Profs. Tingting Zhu (Geography, Geomatics and Environment), Andrew Petersen (Mathematical & Computational Sciences)

Project Description: This project will study the advantages and disadvantages of digital storytelling videos compared to traditional lectures. Student RAs will analyze student responses to a survey. The results can be used by educators to improve digital storytelling design and create a framework for educational digital storytelling resources. We intend to publish the results as part of a larger project, Reimagining Computer Science Education through Digital Storytelling with Tangible Objects. 
 
Student RAs will: 

• Prepare, organize, analyze, and interpret qualitative data; 
• Code qualitative data in NVivo using grounded theory approach; and 
• Describe the themes and develop a codebook. 

Training in qualitative research methods, NVivo, research ethics, and data analysis will be provided. Prior computer science knowledge is not required. 

ONLINE

• The Practice of Perspective in Du Cerceau's Works at the British Museum - Supervisor: Prof. Georges Farhat (Architecture)

Project Description: This UK-based, online-only project explores perspective in French architect Du Cerceau’s (1511-1585) works. It studies his British Museum drawings and etchings of buildings and gardens, as well as two 1600s Bodleian Library English manuscript translations of his 1576 treatise on perspective. RAs will assist in (a) reconstructing perspective schemes and (b) transcribing and tabulating translations. Required skills are: Either (1) digital drawing and perspective techniques; Or (2) English paleography (ideally with some knowledge of French). Scholars will learn how to articulate methods and findings regarding drawing practices and technical literature. Your work will inform presentations and publications. 

• Exploring Online Teaching Efficacy and Instructional Practices in the Post-Secondary Context - Supervisor: Prof. Julia Forgie (Victoria College)

Project Description: This study explores the range of self-efficacy beliefs that Canadian post-secondary instructors hold about their teaching practice. It seeks to investigate and compare instructors’ teaching efficacy across in-person and online teaching contexts and to explore curricular decisions as instructors plan and implement online/hybrid learning. Scholars with interest in post-secondary education and online teaching and mixed-methods research, including participant recruitment, data collection (administering online surveys, involvement in interviewing participants), data entry and coding, data analysis and the development of a literature review, are encouraged to apply. Training in data collection procedures and SPSS and NVivo data analysis software will be provided. 

• Identifying and Coding National Education Reforms for the World Education Reform Database (1945-2021) - Supervisor: Prof. Rie Kijima (Munk School)

Project Description: The World Education Reform Database (WERD) is the most comprehensive database of over 10,000 national education reforms between 1970-2021. The objective of this program is to extend the WERD by identifying and coding education reforms dating back to 1945. Student RAs will receive training on how to identify and code education reforms from doctoral students at Stanford University. Working with publications produced by international organizations, the RAs will apply the coding scheme developed by the team to identify and code reforms. They will also participate in team building exercises and fireside chats on topics such as public policy and education. 

• Foreign-Origin Words in Turkish: An Experimental Investigation of Speakers' Mental Lexicons - Supervisor: Prof. Gözde Mercan (Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations)

Project Description: The Turkish language has several foreign-origin words, particularly from Arabic, Persian, and French. This project seeks to understand whether adult Turkish speakers of different age groups show different linguistic behaviour regarding these foreign-origin words and their Turkish alternatives. It adopts an experimental psycholinguistic perspective, employing a web-based “lexical priming” task. Student RAs will receive training and gain hands-on experience at all stages of psycholinguistic experimentation. Students interested in Turkish, linguistics, and digital humanities are encouraged to apply. Some knowledge of Turkish and/or other Turkic languages is desirable but not required. Familiarity with Arabic, Persian, and/or French is also an asset. 

• Constructing Biographies of Digital Humanities Data Sets - Supervisor: Prof. Seamus Ross (iSchool)

Project Description: Data sets and databases play a significant role in humanities scholarship. How these data sets came to be created, maintained, and used, and their impact on humanities scholarship, has been the subject of limited study. This project is a preliminary effort to construct biographies of some of these databases and understand their role in transforming humanities scholarship. Student RAs will construct biographies of digital humanities databases. This project is particularly suited for students in the humanities with an interest in how digital technologies are reshaping humanities scholarship. The project will begin with an introduction to the field and end with a workshop where students will present the results of their scholarship.  

• Measuring Social Skills and Group Dynamics with Virtual Games - Supervisor: Prof. Román Andrés Zárate (Economics)

Project Description: Play Together is a virtual platform we have developed to measure teamwork and leadership abilities and study group dynamics among individuals of different characteristics using virtual tasks and games. We are currently working on implementing field experiments with interested partners in Latin America. Student RAs will help with a literature review on related topics to the project; contribute to the project with the data analysis to implement the experiments and generate the code to study the performance indicators on the platform; and help us to identify websites to run online experiments with the tools we have developed. 

UT Scarborough SiR 2022

• Improving Reading Curricula by Developing an Explicit Theory of Reading Instruction – Supervisor: Prof. Blair Armstrong

  Project Description: There is broad consensus that an early step for pre-literate children is learning that particular patterns of visual symbols (letters) map onto particular sounds; this is referred to as phonics instruction. However, phonics programs disagree on exactly which rules to teach. Student RAs will work as a team to examine what is taught in several popular phonics programs. Different students will take the lead on different parts of a phonics program, but we will work collectively and meet regularly to discuss challenges and standardize our examination methods. Background in linguistics, psycholinguistics, education, and or computational linguistics would be an asset; we will try to tailor the work based on each student’s strengths and interests.

• Early Modern Canadian Newspapers Online (1752-1810) – Supervisor: Prof. Sébastien Drouin

  Project Description: This project is dedicated to Canada’s first newspapers. Printed in the second half of the eighteenth century in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI, Québec and Ontario, these newspapers are extremely hard to find. The goal of this project is to provide a database giving access, for the first time, to electronic editions of these newspapers. Each newspaper will be given a bio-bibliographical introduction providing extensive information on the context of publication, the printers, and our first journalists. Since these documents are searchable, we will also investigate the content of these newspapers especially in the context of decolonization. Students with interests in Early Modern history, Canadian history, book history, as well as students in computer sciences are encouraged to apply. This is a bilingual project: students with a near-native level in French are especially welcome.

• New Canadians, New Tories? Understanding Conservative Party Voting Among Immigrants in Toronto – Supervisor: Prof. Emine Fidan Elcioglu

  Project Description: Why do visible-minority immigrants vote for right-wing parties, even when these parties adopt platforms that appear racist and anti-immigrant? Student RAs will recruit subjects and conduct interviews with foreign-born Canadians who have voted or seriously considered voting for the Conservative party and other right-wing parties in Canadian elections. RAs will also be tasked with compiling social media posts (e.g., TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) that have been produced by right-wing parties and associations for new Canadians. Experience in conducting interviews and/or critically analyzing social media posts is an asset, but not a prerequisite. Training will be provided in qualitative research work. Students who are new Canadians, who come from immigrant households, and/or who are embedded in immigrant communities in the GTA are especially encouraged to apply. Likewise, familiarity with Tagalog, Cantonese, Mandarin, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Somali, Amharic, Hausa, or Jamaican Patois is an asset, but not required.

• Participation and Belonging: The Future of Leisure Time Music-Making and Sports in Canada – Supervisor: Prof. Roger Mantie

  Project Description: This project seeks student RAs interested in the well-being aspects of leisure-time music and sports participation. We will be working on four interrelated projects: (1) a web ethnography to identify key stakeholders; (2) direct contact with leading organizations involved with education and promotion of music-making and sports; (3) a scoping review of development opportunities, motivational factors, and attitudes related to leisure-time music and sports participation; and (4) development of an Airtable database of key resources. Members of the team may also collaborate with a similar student research team at the University of Sheffield to generate cross-national comparisons on leisure-time organizations and opportunities.

• Tricks Confidence Schemes and the Basis of Social Trust – Supervisor: Prof. Neil ten Kortenaar

  Project Description: This project will study the tricks played by tricksters, characters in stories who can read minds and manipulate others for their own ends, across cultures and across time, but with a particular focus on collections of precolonial African oral tales, postcolonial African literature, and North American literature. Examining how tricksters win trust will reveal the nature of the trust that is the basis for collective life in different societies. Examining how trust is abused in trickster stories will reveal the attitudes of storytellers, novelists, dramatists, and their audiences toward the basis of social trust. Student RAs will collect trickster tales, films, and contemporary novels and examine them to ask: How does the trick work? What does the trickster assume about other people? What aspect of ordinary interactions does the trick take advantage of? When is the trickster admired and when is he feared and denounced? 

UT St George V-SiR 2021

• UTSG-01 - The Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP)

  Supervisor: Prof. Claire Battershill

  Project Description: The publishing industry plays an important role in shaping cultural discourse. Publishers can be gatekeepers as well as agents of change, capable of challenging or reaffirming dominant narratives and inequalities and supporting activist and revolutionary currents of thought. The Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP) http://www.modernistarchives.com/ is an open-access critical digital archive that transforms public access to twentieth-century publishers’ records and special collections. For this SiR project, selected student RAs will be working to integrate the University of Toronto’s relevant library and archive collections more fully into the resource and to select and prioritize new publishers whose bodies of works should be included.

• UTSG-02 - Tracing Legacies: Afro-Asian Transnationalism during Third World Decolonization and the Cold War

  Supervisor: Prof. Chandni Desai

  Project Description: Tracing Legacies investigates the cultural and political networks of Afro-Arab transnational solidarity, through an examination of anti-colonial cultural production and relationships forged between artists and political figures across the Global South during the Decolonization and Cold War period. Student RAs will perform archival research on Afro-Asian writings and other cultural works. Scholars will code and analyze historical documents, photographs, conference proceedings, and witness oral history interviews conducted with cultural figures. The project appeals to students interested in Middle Eastern Studies, Black and Indigenous Studies, History, Social Movements and Cultural Studies. Proficiency in Arabic will be considered, but not necessary.

• UTSG-03 - Blasphemy and Sacrilege in Enlightenment Literature

  Supervisor: Prof. Simon Dickie

  Project Description: In his time, the London bookseller William Hone (1780-1842) was notorious for his collection of blasphemous books and prints. Working with library databases and a newly discovered auction catalogue (1827), we will reconstruct Hone’s library and discover much about the force and variety of early modern blasphemy. We will read mock-sermons, burlesques of the Book of Common Prayer, comic novels about clerical impostors, letters from Satan to English bishops, and much more. Student RAs should have an established interest in historical or literary research and some exposure to the Christian tradition and/or history of religion. Prior coursework in English or History is an asset, but not a necessity. Full training in databases and book history sources will be provided.

• UTSG-04 - Taking it Lying Down

  Supervisor: Prof. Sarah Dowling

  Project Description: This project compares four novels narrated from a lying-down position: Gail Scott’s Canadian classic Heroine, Argentinian writer Luisa Valenzuela’s Realidad nacional desde la cama, American novelist Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and Nishnaabeg writer and theorist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies. Student researchers will analyze how the novels use their supine protagonists to pose questions about political engagement and narrative structure, and will work in teams to compile a critical bibliography for each. Background in literary studies is essential; coursework in gender and sexuality studies and proficiency in Spanish or Anishinaabemowin are welcome.

• UTSG-05 - A Stern Test of Artistry: Editing Charles Whibley

  Supervisors: Profs. Andrew DuBois and Ira Wells

  Project Description: This project provides students with the opportunity to contribute to the first critical edition of the essays of Charles Whibley (1859-1930). Whibley was a towering figure of early twentieth-century British literary culture, a “polemical dragon” responsible for “the best sustained piece of literary journalism” of his age, according to T.S. Eliot. Student RAs will help select and edit Whibley’s essays, conduct research on historical and cultural contexts, and produce explanatory annotations. They will acquire an applied understanding of the principles of scholarly editing, including training in the platforms and technical skills necessary to contribute to scholarly editions. Students interested in British literary history and culture and the practice of editing are especially encouraged to apply.

• UTSG-06 - “Extensive Play” and the Other Beginning of an Indigenous Himalayan Literature

  Supervisor: Prof. Christoph Emmrich

  Project Description: In 1914 a lone Buddhist priest broke with the tradition of preserving one of his forefathers’ most revered scriptures, the Lalitavistara or “The [Buddha’s] Extensive Play,” in Sanskrit and transcreated it in Newar, in an act that was both the recovery of his ancient indigenous heritage as well as the beginning of modern Newar literature. Our project will prepare the grounds for the first commented edition and translation of Niṣṭhānanda’s text by creating a concordance of the Newar translation and its Sanskrit namesake. Student RAs will receive training in the visual and phonetic representation of Newar in Devanagari and Roman scripts and in the digital methodologies necessary for identifying and tagging parallel passages, so that they may collaboratively produce the first ever bilingual synopsis of this foundational text. Some previous knowledge of the script and languages involved is desirable but not required.

• UTSG-07 - The Works of John Galt: Archives to Critical Edition

  Supervisor: Prof. Angela Esterhammer

  Project Description: The Works of John Galt is a multi-volume critical edition of fiction and journalism by the Scottish writer John Galt (1779-1839), a popular novelist who was also a key figure in early-nineteenth-century Canadian settlement. Student RAs will gain experience with several stages of the scholarly-editing and publication process. Working with original print editions and manuscripts of Galt’s works, they will assist with transcription, proofreading, and typesetting of camera-ready copy. Scholars will do original research on the historical and cultural contexts and the publication history of Galt’s geographically diverse short stories in order to help prepare annotations and appendices.

• UTSG-08 - Teachers’ Efficacy for Online/Distance Teaching during the Covid-19 Crisis

  Supervisor: Prof. Julia Forgie

  Project Description: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many K-12 teachers worldwide are now teaching in an online/distance context. This project seeks to assess teachers’ feelings of efficacy in classroom management, instructional strategies, student engagement, and technology use now that they are teaching in an online/distance format. This study will also examine how teachers’ efficacy beliefs when teaching via an online/distance mode compare to their efficacy beliefs when teaching in a traditional, in-person mode. This mixed-methods project invites students with specific interests in teaching efficacy and school pedagogy to engage in data collection, data analysis, literature review and contributing to the writing of manuscripts.

• UTSG-09 - The Black Androids: Recovering Lost Histories

  Supervisor: Prof. Edward Jones-Imhotep

  Project Description: This project explores the complex histories of the “black androids” — a series of racialized mechanical humans, created between the mid-18th century and the late 20th-century, that form part of the intersecting histories of slavery, automation, rebellion, science fiction, and artificial intelligence. Students RAs will work to identify and digitally document these automata as contributions to both modern history of technology and to Black history and culture. Scholars will develop: a sophisticated suite of research skills; experience in project management; and a set of co-authored digital artifacts that will form international resources for future research.

• UTSG-11 - When Our Speech Carries Two Worlds: Ethnic Orientation in Heritage Language Research

  Supervisors: Profs. Anabela Rato and Naomi Nagy

  Project Description: In the context of Toronto’s heritage languages (HLs), we ask, “What constrains properties that speakers transfer more easily from one language to another?” and “What role does ethnic orientation play?” We focus on Heritage Portuguese, Italian and Tagalog: applicants must speak one of these languages as we count on their expertise. Student RAs will learn about Toronto’s history of immigration, review and discuss HL studies, theories of bilingual speech acquisition, language variation and language contact. Scholars will gain hands-on research training and experience in recruiting participants, conducting speech experiments and sociolinguistic interviews, and exploring data analysis and interpretation.

• UTSG-12 - Charting Virgil’s Renaissance Reception

  Supervisor: Prof. Shaun Ross

  Project Description: Virgil’s Aeneid, though written in antiquity, was the single most influential poem in Medieval and Renaissance literary history. Poets such as Dante, Ariosto, Ercilla, Camões, Spenser, and Milton all used Virgil’s poem as a model, to imitate and to challenge, as they wrote their own vernacular epics. Participants will study this reception history by contributing to the creation of a digital edition of the Aeneid that charts how Dante and subsequent Renaissance-era poets responded to and reinterpreted Virgil’s Latin poem. Knowledge of any of the following languages will be highly beneficial: Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian.

• UTSG-13 - The Birth of the Modern Detective Story, 1890-1920

  Supervisors: Profs. Simon Stern and Adam Hammond

  Project Description: This project uses digital methods to study detective stories published in magazines between 1890 and 1920. We will code stories according to features such as: the gender of the author, detective, and culprit; the detective’s role as an amateur, private investigator, or police officer; the types of clues and the timing of their presentation; and the types of crimes or quasi-crimes (e.g., murder and theft, as against immoral but not criminal acts). Students will identify these features in a specially designed software interface. No previous coding experiencing is required; training in the relevant coding techniques will be provided.

• UTSG-14 - Six Nations of Grand River Community History Project

  Supervisors: Profs. Kevin White and Susan Hill

  Project Description: Students RAs will conduct transcriptions for a community-based research project with Deyohaha:ge Indigenous Knowledge Centre: a repository of Haudenosaunee Knowledge recorded in textual documents as well as a research centre focused on perpetuating and celebrating Haudenosaunee Knowledge. This collaborative research project is organized by a number of Haudenosaunee scholars and explores the historic impacts of Cayuga Chief Levi General (Deskaheh title). General was the first Indigenous leader who attempted to address the League of Nations; he sought international review of Canada’s actions against the sovereignty of the Grand River Haudenosaunee. Your work will be acknowledged in reports and publications.

• UTSG-15 - The Logic, Function, and Contexts of Ancient Greek Titles

  Supervisor: Prof. Kenneth Yu

  Project Description: How did ancient Greek writers—poets, philosophers, and scientists—name their works? This project investigates ancient Greek practices of entitling texts to uncover how book titles were created, transmitted, and conceptualized in antiquity, the relations between ancient titles and the texts they designate, and the dynamics of ancient Greek reading practices. Participants will gather, organize, and interpret vast data sets related to Greek literary history, and help create the first online database for extant ancient Greek titles. Our project will be conducted online, though there may be opportunities to examine Greek manuscripts at Robarts if circumstances permit. Knowledge of beginning Greek will be an asset.

UT Mississauga V-SiR 2021

• UTM-01 - Preserving Toronto’s Foodways

  Supervisor: Prof. Teresa Lobalsamo

  Project Description: This project emphasizes an experiential, digital humanities approach to Diaspora and Food Studies and, in particular, to the study of Italian culture and gastronomy. The project will be a digital map-catalogue of artifacts that answer the following questions about the GTA’s changing food landscape: 1) What and where are the oldest Italian food-related businesses in the GTA? 2) What does the GTA’s Italian food landscape look like today? Student RAs will interview business owners and/or chefs, record descriptions and bibliographic entries, collect relevant artifacts (menus, recipes, advertisements) from past and existing establishments. To archive (digitize) those collected materials, RAs will learn to utilize appropriate digital platforms (Omeka and Google Maps). Knowledge of Diaspora and Food Studies, of beginner Italian, and/or familiarity with digital platforms are useful, but they are not required.

• UTM-02 - Press, Celebrity and Gender in Québec (1930-1970)

  Supervisor: Prof. Adrien Rannaud

  Project Description: This SSHRC-funded research describes the history of celebrity in Québec between 1930 and 1970, examining celebrity culture as a complex relationship between texts and images, periodicals, producers and audiences. We will focus on the relationship between celebrity culture and women’s cultural practices by collecting and analyzing data on large corpuses (chronicles, newspapers, magazines). Student RAs will receive all necessary training in data collection and qualitative analysis in literary and cultural history. Proficiency in French (intermediate or advanced level) is necessary. Students with interest in French Studies, Literature and Drama, Cinema, Media, Historical or Cultural Studies are especially encouraged to apply.

• UTM-03 - 3K-LVT: The Validation of the First Listening Vocabulary Test in Spanish

  Supervisor: Prof. Pablo Robles-Garcia

  Project Description: This study aims at validating a listening vocabulary test in Spanish. Student RAs will (1) create a schedule for students to sign up for the test, (2) contact students with detailed information about the test procedures, (3) administer and proctor the test through Zoom, and (4) conduct a series of one-on-one interviews with some examinees. Knowledge of Spanish for these RAs is highly desirable. Another RA (no knowledge of Spanish needed) will design R scripts and carry out quantitative statistical analyses based on the Rasch model (Item Response Theory). All RAs will receive training in data collection.

• UTM-04 - Building monuments, bonding communities: urbanization and social transformation in ancient China

  Supervisor: Prof. Liye Xie

  Project Description: This project examines the late Neolithic and early Shang urban sites to understand how urban construction facilitated social transformation at the dawn of China’s dynastic history. Student RAs will receive training as they participate in (1) literature research on theories, methods, and data; (2) GIS aggregation and analysis of published settlement data; (3) estimating construction costs, public places’ capacities, and numbers of urban inhabitants; and (4) preparing materials for presentation and publication. RAs from relevant disciplines such as archaeology, GIS, sociology, political science, architecture, and city studies are invited to apply. Reading knowledge of Mandarin is not required, but will be very helpful for certain data-related tasks.