Through the Student Engagement Fund, GPS is providing support and funding for twenty-one graduate-student-led initiatives from the faculties of Arts, Education, Law, and Music that aim to build connectivity and/or advance professional development. Congratulations to all our winners.
Write, Cite, and Shine: Academic Writing Essentials
Robin Sharma and Shubhangi Bhardwaj, Francisco Vargas Madriz, Dr. Chiaki Konishi, Educational and Counselling Psychology, Faculty of Education
Due to language and cultural differences, many international students face additional challenges adapting to North American academic environment, norms, and practices. These include ways and styles of writing, presenting, and accessing resources that assist academic progress. This project's main aim is to provide academic support tailored to the needs of international students at the Faculty of Education. Additionally, through two in-person workshops, this project will build a sense of community, encourage collaborations, and build the peer network among students in the faculty. The first workshop will guide students to writing in APA. The workshop will provide details on in-text citations, references from a range of sources (e.g., articles, blogs, chapters, online videos), patch writing, and plagiarism. The second workshop will introduce students to advanced digital tools to support academic tasks including reference management software and AI-based tools for finding relevant literature, writing, visualizing data, and creating charts. This project will be implemented under the ambit of the existing Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology - International Students’ Group (ECP-ISG). The ECP-ISG is the only international students’ group at the graduate level in McGill University.
The Climate Connect
Vanja Lugonjic, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, Faculty of Education
The Climate Connect is a reoccurring space that provides an avenue to address eco-anxiety, create community, and catalyze climate action. There is a strong focus of bringing together people from different disciplines and education levels, with the aim of highlighting individual experiences for collective progress. Each event primarily revolves around The Connect Deck: Climate Action, a bilingual educational tool with conversation prompts that are reflective and justice orientated. Along with the discussions, there can be speakers, an art session, or collaborative imagining. The collective knowledge gained from the different events will be published in Zine for Hope’s Dancing in the Hourglass.
Eating Popcorn like a Lawyer: Special Session on Slavery and the Law
Edward van Daalen and Mathilde Baril-Jannard, Faculty of Law
‘Eating Popcorn like a Lawyer’ is an ongoing seminar series that seeks to establish a continuous dialogue between the fields of law and film. With the Student Engagement Fund, we seek to open up the course ‘Slavery and the Law’ (taught by Prof. Adelle Blackett at the McGill Faculty of Law) to the broader graduate community through public screenings of three episodes of the acclaimed CBC documentary series Enslaved (2020). To each screening we invite Prof. Blackett as well as a prominent speaker whose work is related to the themes of the series and the course, including the Emmy awarded director of the series Ric Esther Bienstock, acclaimed poet and lawyer M. NourbeSe Philip, and Professor Michelle McKinley (University of Oregon).
L'art pour l'art? A Fine Arts Cultural Graduate Workshop
Leonie Maria Schmidt, Faculty of Law
This is a workshop series in a relaxed atmosphere to discover Montreal’s museums together, to discuss art and to learn about different perspectives and cultures. In times of polarization, filter bubbles, cultural conflicts and identity struggles in a globalized world, diverse human dialogue and conversation is key. The broader aim of this project is to foster a sustainable cross-disciplinary and culturally aware McGill graduate experience by using the means of fine arts in an enjoyable and welcoming atmosphere for everybody while also actively encouraging the expression of individual perspectives and opinions in a respectful dialogue. The proposed project addresses the need for current graduate students to take part in fulfilling and inspiring sociable leisure activities and to discover the world of Montreal's fine arts exhibitions while also (subliminally) practicing vital personal and socially relevant skills.
Creative Legal Research Workshop
Charles Lurquin and Rhona Goodarzi, Faculty of Law
The Creative Legal Research Workshop was born out of two specific challenges: the scarcity of opportunities for practical training on non-traditional approaches to legal research and, more broadly, the challenge of connecting with doctoral students in other faculties and year groups with invaluable insights and experience in this matter. As such, this project aims to bring together doctoral students in law and arts students conducting research on law and normativity for discussions on the themes of empirical legal research, transdisciplinary research, research ethics and positionality. As part of a day-long immersive experience, participants will be engaged in interactive sessions and invited to present their work on panels chaired by academic leaders in these fields.
Indigenous Threads Podcast
Luisa Castaneda Quintana and Giusto Amedeo Boccheni, Faculty of Law
Indigenous Threads is a podcast series that gathers Indigenous Peoples’ leaders, representatives, and experts from international organizations, NGOs, grassroots, and academia, to talk about urgent and significant issues that pertain to Indigenous Peoples today. The first Season, dedicated to “Indigenous Women and Climate Change” has seen 10 distinguished guests from the world’s seven socio-cultural regions, including two former UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues chairs, sharing stories about their work and their communities and reflecting on outstanding challenges and opportunities for Indigenous Peoples within their region and at a global level.
The podcast, available on Spotify and all major podcast platforms, builds upon the successful webinar series “Dialogues on Indigenous Peoples' Territories: Stories of Resilience,” organized in collaboration with the Center for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism and McGill's Indigenous Law Association Droit Autochthone (ILADA).
Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0XVWwSHAldx3Wcv0rhAWKv
Website: https://www.mcgill.ca/humanrights/research/indigenous-human-rights-initi....
African Air and Space Legal Research Project
Arnold Agaba, Faculty of Law
The African Air and Space Law Research Project is a ground-breaking initiative aimed at promoting the study and development of air and space law created by and for Africa. Legal research focusing on the comprehensive framework of law governing Africa’s aerospace sector has not corresponded to the rapid growth of the aerospace industry on the continent. Instead, legal research is generally framed within the context of Europe and North America. The project seeks to address this challenge by providing a platform for leading legal experts to fill the void with research on Africa’s air and space law. The project will bring together Afrocentric researchers through workshops, webinars, and writing labs to analyse and share knowledge on various aspects of Africa’s air and space law, including regulatory frameworks, safety and security, environmental concerns, and commercial aspects. Students and indeed the wider academic body interested in law, business and development of the global south shall benefit from new perspectives, insights and analysis shared thereby enriching their understanding of aspects concerning use and development of aerospace technology in the world.
Women’s health taking the stage: Raising awareness of women’s health in music performance
Theodora Nestorova, Faculty of Music
Women's health in music performance often faces stigma and has been overlooked in music education and medicine. This event marks the first of its kind, addressing the specific needs of women musicians and responding to the growing demand for evidence-based information on women's health. Featuring guests from both performance and healthcare domains, this cross-disciplinary panel discussion series will delve into various physical aspects associated with women’s health, including menstruation, menopause, pregnancy, and post-partum experiences. Our goal is to challenge prevailing notions that being a woman is a risk factor for injury and mental health issues in musicians, fostering awareness among healthcare and music professionals.
Bridging the Gap: Innovative Technologies for Music Education Workshop
Alberto Acquilino and Theodora Nestorova, Ziyue Piao, Faculty of Music
The Tech-Enhanced Music Education Symposium (TEMES) is an initiative designed to explore the intersection of technology and music education, aiming to enhance the learning experience and wellbeing of musicians. The event brings together a diverse group of participants, including researchers, music educators, and technology experts, to engage in a comprehensive discussion on the incorporation of technology in music learning processes. At the core of TEMES is the ambition to foster a collaborative environment where ideas and best practices can be exchanged. The symposium addresses a variety of topics, from the application of music technology and performance studies to the psychological aspects of music education, emphasizing the potential of technology to support education, performance, and the overall wellbeing of musicians. TEMES features a dynamic program, including a keynote presentation by professor Eran Egozy, director of the Music Technology Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The event also showcases in-person demonstrations of cutting-edge projects by students and faculty, spanning a wide range of subjects such as pedagogical tools for instrumental technique improvement, haptics in music education, and innovative approaches to learning music theory and performance.
Reorienting the Sublime: Art History and Communication Studies Graduate Symposium
Marcus Prasad and Sofia Di Gironimo, Art History and Communication Studies, Faculty of Arts
The Art History and Communication Studies Graduate Symposium seeks to provide graduate students with an opportunity present their research alongside other graduate students and scholars within the field from different universities. Unified by this year’s theme of “Reorienting the Sublime,” the symposium aims to foster collaborative knowledge production and interdisciplinary engagement at the student level by connecting representatives from various related departments and universities.
Création de la troupe de théâtre du DLTC
Ophélie Proulx-Giraldeau, Département des littératures de langue française de traduction et de création, Faculty of Arts
La Page blanche est une troupe de théâtre étudiante affiliée au Département des littératures de langue française, de traduction et de création (DLTC) de l’Université McGill. L’idée de la troupe est née d’une initiative d’Ophélie Proulx-Giraldeau, étudiante au doctorat du DLTC et grande amoureuse de théâtre. Arrivée à McGill en pleine pandémie, Ophélie a constaté que si McGill possédait une longue tradition de théâtre anglophone, le théâtre francophone, lui, avait quelque peu déserté l’université. Elle a donc décidé de mener ce projet de l’avant en créant une troupe de théâtre qui permettrait à d’autres amoureux et amoureuses de la scène de renouer avec cette passion qui les habite et, surtout, redonnerait un espace de jeu à la communauté francophone mcgilloise. Cette année, la Page blanche est constituée d’une équipe de huit étudiants et étudiantes. Au jeu, il s’agit de Juliette Rolland-Apergis, d’Erica Jomphe, d’Olivier Turcotte, de Seia Décamps, de Florence Lavoie et d’Ophélie Proulx-Giraldeau. Au décors, costumes et accessoires il s’agit de Marie Chartrand-Caulet et d’Elizabeth Beauclair. Pour sa toute première production, la troupe présentera La cantatrice chauve d’Eugène Ionesco au Maurice Hall le 21 et 22 mars 2024 (plus de détails à venir).
Cuisiner Québec/Cooking Québec
Cian Dinan, History and Classical Studies, Faculty of Arts
What ingredients and techniques have cooks used in Québec throughout its history? What communal roles does food play across Québec’s diverse communities? And how do innovations in Québécois cuisine, from Michelin-starred restaurants to home kitchens, build on these traditions? The Cuisiner Québec project will explore these questions from the kitchen itself—through a series of welcoming, hands-on cooking workshops.
Our project brings graduate organizers together with experts from McGill’s School of Human Nutrition to study, envision, and recreate recipes that illustrate Québec’s rich cuisine. From the thousands of historic recipes in McGill Library’s menu and cookbook collections to the vibrant gastronomy of today’s Montréal, our vision is to explore the deep traditions of Québécois food, and discover what those traditions mean for cooks today.
Minority Speaks: A Concept and Methodology Workshop
Sumaira Nawaz, Institute of Islamic Studies, Faculty of Arts, and Fawaz Abdul Salam, School of Religious Studies, Faculty of Arts
This workshop is aimed at expanding contemporary and historical perspective around the capacious category of “minority,” be it legal, gendered, religious, ethnic, or linguistic. Minority groups and their struggles to strengthen their role, recognition, and rights in public life have been at the center of democratic movements in modern societies. Unfortunately, there is very little space for varying minority groups to come together, cooperate, and learn from each other's layered yet often similar experiences of social exclusion and discrimination. The same applies to the scholarly community, where on-going research on minority literatures rarely comes into dialogue with legal discourses on minority rights, or intellectual histories of the term as it developed and transformed in postcolonial societies.
PRAXIS
Jay Ritchie and Marie Trotter, English, Faculty of Arts
PRAXIS is a social knowledge and resource-sharing hub designed to foster intellectual exchange and strengthen community bonds between graduate students in English, Art History, and Communications. Every Wednesday from 10am to 12pm the Graduate Student Lounge in Arts B22 becomes a place to meet, co-work, and exchange ideas, with the English Graduate Students’ Association providing complementary coffee from Humble Lion on a BYOM basis (“Bring Your Own Mug”). Additionally, once per month there is a guest speaker who leads attendees in a professional development workshop. These guest speakers are faculty members who share hard and soft skills necessary for the academic job market and professorial careers, in a laid-back, collegial setting.
Making media!
Malcolm Sanger and Emma Blackett, Art History and Communication Studies, Faculty of Arts
“Making media!” hosts workshops that aim to help humanities and social sciences graduate students add creativity to their practices of critique. With the help of facilitators, our project aims at a small rectification of the gap between, or re-attachment of, critique and creativity by giving students the chance to engage in making media objects. Explicitly exploring these boundaries, participants might engage in experimental translation, sculpture making, montage poetry, and other artistic practices with Montréal-based scholars and artists. A non-competitive, collaborative environment is the goal. We do not mean to reject critique or repeat the need for “alternatives,” “speculations,” and “futures” but rather to experiment with blurring the boundaries between criticism and creativity, and having fun, hence the exclamation mark!
McGill Anthropology Citational Practices and Politics Workshop
Cynthia Lazzaroni and Bobi Steel, Anthropology, Faculty of Arts
McGill Anthropology Graduate Students Association (AGSA) is hosting a transdisciplinary workshop on methods for diversifying literature reviews and bibliographic citations. This free-to-attend and open-to-all workshop will feature a roundtable panel of experts who will guide participants in the best ways to actively seek out and engage with research sources outside of Eurocentric literature, how to make sure that these sources are included in research with proper contextual placing, and how to ensure that research is not appropriating ideas from different sources or knowledge streams without giving due credit. The workshop will highlight voices in research that have been historically underrepresented and address potential biases in peer-review processes for publishing and grant applications, as well as how researchers or those interested in research can avoid these pitfalls or call them out when they are witnessed.
McGill’s Action Plan to Address Anti-Black Racism 2020-2025 and McGill’s EDI Strategic Plan 2020-2025 both highlight the importance of creating and maintaining a diverse and welcoming educational institution for students from any background and how one of the critical steps toward this is ensuring that a diverse array of researchers, research and teaching is represented on campus. This workshop will raise awareness of why citational practices and the choices to include (or exclude) certain texts from research bibliographies in research contexts matter and require often overlooked ways to improve diversity in research.
Practices of Resistance in Times of Crisis
Roberto Viviani and Cristina Carnemolla, Timothy Jason Ostrom, Languages, Literature and Cultures, Faculty of Arts
Practices of Resistance in Times of Crisis is a series of events and workshops, which seeks to bring students and scholars of the humanities together with the wider community to engage in a mutually beneficial dialogue on shared problems, interests, strategies, and solutions. Our workshops aim to create spaces of dialogue to overcome the false opposition between theory and practice. Universities themselves are profoundly impacted by the political, economic, and cultural dilemmas of the day. Cultural producers and community organizers, for their part, are equally engaged in theoretical discussions and reaching even wider audiences, even if their platforms are often different. Now more than ever, it is important to contemplate the common ground between scholars, activists, and cultural producers. For this reason, our workshops aim to create an environment which fosters an exchange between graduate students, faculty members, and members of the broader community, both in Montreal and internationally.
Links between information studies and history: reflection and practice around Catherine LeGrand Papers.
Maria Osorio Oliveros, School of Information Studies, Faculty of Arts, and Martin Giraldo-Hoyos, History and Classical Studies, Faculty of Arts
This project seeks to actively engage and gather students from the departments of History, Hispanic Studies, and Information Studies – with a particular interest in archive studies - through the development of two workshop series based on the practical exploration and theoretical reflection of Dr. Catherine LeGrand’s personal research papers. Dr. LeGrand stands as a prominent figure in Colombian and Latin American history - as a professor of Latin American history in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill for almost 30 years, not only has she imparted her knowledge to undergraduate and graduate students, but she has also profoundly influenced the careers of several McGill graduate students of history and beyond. Organized by Martin Giraldo-Hoyos, a PhD candidate in History, and Maria E. Osorio Oliveros, an MA candidate in Information Studies, Links between information studies and history is a twofold project. While this project aims to preserve and value Dr. LeGrand’s pioneering research through her collected documentation, it also intends to foster conversations and partnerships between students from the fields of history and information studies by embracing an approach of a “hands-on” experience in archival skills and the historian’s methodologies on historical research.
28th Annual McGill English Graduate Conference
Georgiana De Rham and Taylor Rouselle, Charlotte Frank, Emily McConkey, English, Faculty of Arts
The McGill English Graduate Conference is a longstanding department tradition, hosted annually by the English Graduate Students’ Association (EGSA). The theme for this year’s conference is Metamorphosis. Evoking change, transformation, and development across experiences and disciplines, this theme invites scholars of all academic fields to engage with this capacious topic. The McGill English Graduate Conference offers students the opportunity to participate in an academic conference and achieve an essential milestone in their studies, critical to their academic and professional development. The Conference provides an opportunity for students to present their research, share ideas, and engage with fellow students and professors. It is an excellent opportunity to develop ideas amongst lively and engaging discussion scholarly discussion. We look forward to hosting Dr. Julia Freeman (Bieler School of Environment) as a keynote speaker, with a second keynote talk by Dr. Maggie Kilgour (McGill University).
South Asian Religions Reading Group
Swati Swati and Katie Chandler, School of Religious Studies, Faculty of Arts
The South Asian Religions Reading Group brings together a community of graduate students whose research is concerned with South Asian religious phenomena. We focus on reading, presenting, and discussing recent academic publications, debates, and trends regarding South Asia religions. We are addressing the much-needed requirements of graduate students who actively research, teach, and publish on these topics. In addition to cultivating a community and developing academic skills, our interdisciplinary collaboration fosters an environment catering to the needs of graduate students in enhancing teaching skills, such as practical methods to implement Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) initiatives and decolonial pedagogy. Scan the QR code on our poster to stay updated about our activities.
The Unseen, Unspoken, and Unheard – McGill Graduate Student Symposium
Emma Jiarong Wang and Ziwei Jiang, Xin Li, Gaëlle Boscals de Réals, East Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts
A gap persists among graduate students at McGill in Art History, East Asian Studies, Gender, Sociology, History, Religious Studies, and other departments. This symposium aspires to facilitate interdisciplinary conversations. Under the theme 'The Unseen, Unspoken, and Unheard,' this event encourages students to interpret, for example, hidden histories affected by epistemological or colonial violence, gatekeepers of knowledge production, new forms of visuality brought about by micro-technology, and new imaginings of radical social politics.
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