Congratulations to HUMA student Ece Çizmeci, whose research was just published in the journal Transpositions. You can find the article here: “Expanding Cinema: Becoming-Other with Post-Anthropocentric Ethics of Affect.”
Ece has also been selected to take part in the 2026 Lake Shift Writing Retreat at Queen’s University, which means that she will be spending part of July at the Queen’s University Biology Station (QUBS), Canada’s largest inland field station!
Congratulations, Ece!
Congratulations to HUMA PhD student Liao Zixuan, who has been awarded both the Jack M. Miller Excellence in Research Award and the Marilyn J. Rose Graduate Studies Fund!
The Jack M. Miller Excellence in Research Award is a scholarship is made annually to one full-time Master and one full-time Doctoral graduate student in each of the six academic faculties. The Marilyn J. Rose Graduate Studies Fund is an award made annually to a full-time entering or continuing graduate student at Brock University studying in the Faculty of Humanities.
You can see for yourself some of the output of Liao’s work by visiting the 2026 Juried Exhibition, which will feature two of Liao’s paintings (see above). The Juried Exhibition runs from January 27 to February 21 at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts in St. Catharines, Ontario.
Congratulations, Liao!
On Wednesday April 2, the PhD Interdisciplinary Humanities 7P01 first and second year students presented their capstone thesis project to the Brock community members. The event showcased the students hard work, dedication and expertise, effectively they were able to engage the community in the complexities of their projects through their clear and informative presentations.
Congratulations and appreciation goes out to the students for the success of this event, which highlighted the commitment that Brock HUMA has to fostering academic excellence! Great job everyone!
Teresa A. Galbraith
Thesis: Case study of the discursive production of whiteness, health, and heteronormativity through the anthropomorphization of Elsie the Borden Cow.
Supervisor: Lynn Arner
Email: [email protected]
Long Hoang Vu
Thesis: The Cultural Politics of Giftedness
Supervisor: Trevor Norris
Website: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2540-3223
Email: [email protected]
Philip Akoje
Thesis: Decoloniality, Masks, Masquerades, and Rhizomes
Supervisor: David Fancy
Website:https://brocku.academia.edu/PhilipAkoje
https://orcid.org/0009-0007-2566-4216;
Email: [email protected]
Laur Pilon
Thesis: Queer, Trans and Crip Abstractions: Painting as a Mode of Posthumanist Performativity
Supervisor: Christine Daigle
Website:http://www.laur-p.com
Email: [email protected]
Elizabeth Colantoni
Thesis: Cosimo “Il Vecchio” de’ Medici’s Politics-as-Performance
Supervisor: David Fancy
Email: [email protected]
Anna Roshni Jose
Thesis: Therapeutic Mnemotechnics: A Study on Cultural Memory in Select Palestinian Short Fiction in English
Supervisor: Susan Spearey
Email: [email protected]
Hani Hedayati
Thesis: Critical Discourse Analysis of Post-Colonial Ideologies and Their Re/Production in Migration Literature
Supervisor: Margot Francis
Email: [email protected]
The International TA Award is sponsored by Centre for Pedagogical and Faculty of Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs, and is presented annually to “an international graduate teaching assistant who demonstrates excellence and promise in the field of teaching.” This year HUMA is pleased to announce Anna Roshni Jose as the recipient of the 2025 International TA Award!
Since her start at Brock in 2023, Anna has completed many professional development opportunities which contributed to her growth as an educator. Through the sentiments of fellow TA’s, faculty, supervisors and former students Anna is able “to create an impactful learning space”, one that is an “engaging and inclusive learning environment” a true testament of Anna’s skills and dedication.
An award ceremony will take place on Tuesday April 8 at 10am at the Goodman Atrium, where Anna will be presented this prestigious award. Congratulations Anna for a such an accomplishment!
Join our celebration of excellence as our 1st and 2nd year students showcase their outstanding PhD capstone projects!
All are welcome to view the projects and to engage in discussion with the students.
Cairns Atrium, April 2nd, 1-3 pm
On Tuesday, September 3rd, HUMA faculty and students were on hand to welcome the new cohort. We are thrilled to have Elizabeth Colantoni, Philip Akoje, Kaitlin Grant, Hani Hedayati, and Laur Pilon join the program!
Back: Dr. Donna Szoke, Dr. Fiona Blaikie, Dr. Sarah Stang, Ece Cizmeci, Laur Pilon, Marley Liepert, Philip Akoje, Dr. Gregory Betts, Dr. Michael Ripmeester, John Heckman
Middle: Teresa Galbraith, Long Vu, Anna Roshni Jose, Alia Wazzan, Dr. Lissa Paul, Elizabeth Colantoni
Front Row: Herminia Morales-Newman, Dr. Nina Penner, Dr. Elizabeth Vlossak, Maya Karanouh, Zixuan Liao
We are happy to announce grants, awards and appointments from the HUMA faculty:
Congratulations to Julie Warkentin on her successful defence of her thesis on 28 September 2023!
Congratulations to Mitch Goldsmith on the successful defence of his doctoral dissertation! Terrific work. HUMA program faculty and staff are all delighted.
Below is the abstract for Mitch’s thesis: “The Unfinished Business of Anna Kingsford: Science, Enchantment, and Experiments on Animals”
The project takes seriously Dr Anna Kingsford’s (1846-1888) claim that vivisection is a type of sorcery and science, a type of occult or spiritual undertaking believing that the assertion, which gained currency during the 19th–century antivivisection movement and is now overlooked, is yet unfinished and therefore a potentially powerful figuration for current antivivisectionists. To that end, the dissertation provides a critical and intersectional reading of the 19th-century British and European antivivisection movement, the fin de siècle occult revival, and Kingsford’s role in each, often working to bring these worlds together. This historical analysis includes an examination of Victorian attitudes to the period’s changing understanding of gender, species, race, and science. Building on this historical foundation, the dissertation will provide a theoretical discussion of Kingsford’s contemporary resonances with emerging disciplines in the environmental and posthumanities, including critical animal studies, material feminism, feminist posthumanism, and science and technology studies. Many theorists in these fields are interested in reappraising the roles of affect, enchantment, mysticism, and wonder in ethical thinking and human-animal-environmental relations.
This project builds on these historical and theoretical insights by providing an “enchanted” analysis of the contemporary laboratory space, experiments on animals, and a reading of three case studies of ongoing animal experimentation paradigms (i.e., maternal deprivation, learned helplessness, and the organizational-activational hypothesis of homosexuality) which I argue lend themselves to a Kingsford-inspired analysis. Furthermore, this project articulates a novel “enchanted animal ethic” involving a feminist and neo-Spinozist articulation of human-animal and environmental ethics that makes space for mystical, non-secular modes of meaning-making, care-centered multispecies community building, and social and political movements. Finally, the project and an enchanted understanding of animal ethics will be useful to interdisciplinary scholars and advocates seeking a paradigm change in the sciences away from experiments on animals and towards a more humane and efficacious science as well as more egalitarian and meaningful relationships with animals and the more-than-human world.
Please find below the collective agreement with CUPE from September 2022 to September 2025:
CUPE Collective Agreement