2022 Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellowship Program recipients announced

May 6, 2022 by Sean McNeely - A&S News

A group of outstanding scholars will receive advanced training in their field of study through the support of the Faculty of Arts & Science’s Postdoctoral Fellowship program. Spanning a diverse range of subjects — from feminist experimental films in post-colonial Korea, to galaxies in the first billion years of the universe, to how electricity became a political issue in 18th-century France — 15 new postdoctoral fellows will build on their expertise and be supervised by leading Arts & Science faculty members.

Postdoctoral fellows make vitally important contributions to the culture of research excellence across disciplines in the Faculty of Arts & Science. “It is an absolute pleasure to welcome our newest cohort of junior scholars through the Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellowships program,” says Vince Tropepe, vice dean research. “Over the past six years, the program has attracted some of the most outstanding recent doctoral students in the world to work with our excellent faculty members across the Faculty of Arts & Science.” The trainees joining Arts & Science this year are coming from peer institutions around the world, among them the University of North Carolina, University of Cambridge, University of Zurich, Cornell University, Federal University of Pernambuco, McGill University, Western University, University of British Columbia, and Carnegie Mellon.

Established in 2016, the Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellowship program has supported 92 postdoctoral fellowships to date.

Here are the 2022 recipients:

  • Taiwo Bello, Department of History (Supervisor: Professor L.K. Bertram)
    Title: Beyond the war zone: Nigerian conflict, violent displacement and Biafran/Igbo Diaspora in Canada 1960-70
  • Travis Bost, Department of History and Caribbean Studies Program (Supervisor: Professor Melanie Newton)
    Title: Climate change futures; Plantation pasts: Planning for spatial justice and racial justice in the greater Caribbean
  • Isaiah Ellis, Department for the Study of Religion (Supervisor: Professor Pamela Klassen)
    Title: The Southern Gospel of Good Roads: Religion, Race, and Moral Infrastructures in the American South
  • Fraser Evans, Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics (Supervisor: Professor Joe Bovy)
    Area of specialization: hyper-velocity stars in the Milky Way
  • Celine Henne, Department of Philosophy (Supervisor: Professor Cheryl Misak)
    Area of specialization: developing a comprehensive pragmatist framework for conceptual engineering
  • Jeremy Lant, Department of Chemistry (Supervisor: Professor Aaron Wheeler)
    Area of specialization: in the development of screening assays for novel antigens
  • Lichen Liang, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (Supervisor: Professor Norman Murray)
    Title: The undetectable dusty galaxies in the first billion years of the universe
  • Xiaowen Liu, Department of Earth Sciences (Supervisor: Professor Russell Pysklywec)
    Title: Control of subduction zone morphology on western North America tectonics
  • Austin Lord, School of the Environment & Computer Science (Supervisor: Professor Robert Soden)
    Title: Whose Uncertainties Matter? The ethics of Himalayan climate knowledge production
  • Desiree Rochat, Department of History (Supervisor: Professor Sean Mills)
    Title: Community archiving as ethnography: historicizing the grassroots heritage activism of Black Canadians
  • Alana Sá Leitão Souza, Department for the Study of Religion (Supervisor: Professor Simon Coleman)
    Area of specialization: ethnographic, methodological and analytical comparison of Pentecostal activities in different parts of the world
  • Anthony Scott, Department of Political Science (Supervisor: Professor Matthew Walton)
    Title: The Buddhist Battlefield for the Future of Burma
  • Ji Eun Sung, Department of East Asian Studies (Supervisor: Professor Janet Poole)
    Title: Projecting reality: Feminist experimental film as a participatory art medium in post-colonial Korea
  • Keela Thomson, Department of Psychology (Supervisor: Professor Amy Finn)
    Area of specialization: the cognitive study of intelligence
  • Samantha Wesner, Department of History (Supervisor: Professor Paul Cohen)
    Area of specialization: late 18th-century electrical vitalism and democratic theory in the French Revolution