Media releases

• Brock experts available to discuss sustainability research as Earth Day nears

  Tuesday, April 18, 2023 | By Brock University

  EXPERT ADVISORY: 18 April 2023 – R0031

  As Earth Day approaches on Saturday, April 22, Brock University researchers whose work explores climate change, sustainability and the environment through different disciplines are available to share their expertise.

  Associate Professor of Engineering Amir Mofidi’s research promotes sustainability in construction, including both new and existing structures. His work looks at extending the life of buildings, reducing carbon emissions linked to use of concrete and steel in new builds, and using engineered bamboo-based structural material as a highly renewable option for the future.

  Research by Brad Millington, Associate Professor of Sport Management, examines the connections between sport and environmental sustainability. His work has focused on topics such as sport’s environmental impacts and corporate environmentalism in the sport industry, including the golf industry’s attempt to ‘green’ the sport and address environmental concerns.

  The work of Professor of Biology Liette Vasseur, who is also UNESCO Chair on Community Sustainability: From Local to Global, connects issues such as community-based ecosystem management, climate change adaptation and resilience, sustainable agriculture and rural communities. She is also available to speak to climate literacy and action, and biodiversity through conservation and restoration.

  Through his research, Garrett Hutson, Associate Professor of Recreation and Leisure Studies, explores the social-ecological significance of outdoor experiences to the study of sustainability and society by examining the ways outdoor programs help people form relationships to nature. His recent work looks at drivers of pro-environmental intentions in outdoor programs, such as coming face-to-face with environmental change due to a warming climate.

  Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Jim Willwerth studies how environmental conditions impact overwintering and cold hardiness physiology of grapevines. The Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute Researcher and his team are evaluating grapevine material and new ways to mitigate climate change effects.

  Assistant Professor of Physics Jasneet Kaur, who is cross-appointed to Brock’s Yousef Haj-Ahmad Department of Engineering, specializes in sustainable nanoengineered materials for clean energy technologies. Her work focuses on the design, synthesis, engineering and characterization of these materials and their applications in clean energy storage and conversion devices, smart coatings and water treatment technologies.

  Brock University Associate Professor of Engineering Amir Mofidi, Associate Professor of Sport Management Brad Millington, Professor of Biology Liette Vasseur, Associate Professor of Recreation and Leisure Studies Garrett Hutson, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Jim Willwerth and Assistant Professor of Physics Jasneet Kaur are available for media interviews on these topic.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews: 

  * Doug Hunt, Communications and Media Relations Specialist, Brock University dhunt2@brocku.ca or 905-941-6209

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  Categories: Media releases

• Brock project aims to remember historic Black community in Niagara-on-the-Lake

  Friday, April 14, 2023 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 14 April 2023 – R0030

  Through a collaborative Brock project, work is underway to share the lived experiences and community contributions of African descendants in Niagara-on-the-Lake and across the Niagara region.

  Brock University Professor Lissa Paul, artist Quentin VerCetty and PhD candidate Hyacinth Campbell have been working to memorialize those buried in Niagara-on-the-Lake’s historic Niagara Baptist Church Burial Ground and to restore the memory of Niagara’s African diaspora community to the landscape.

  The project, “Memorializing the people of the fugitive slave ads: Barbados and Niagara,” has been underway since 2020 and includes a website and proposal for a physical memorial at the Mississauga Street burial ground, where the former Niagara Baptist Church, formed in 1930, once stood.

  “This is about recovering the lived experiences of the African diasporic community and people of African descent in Niagara as well as their contributions to the community,” Paul says.

  The research reflects the experiences of many individuals who arrived in Niagara through the Underground Railroad.

  “Instead of depicting them as people needing help, we are focusing on sharing their story as creative, independent, courageous, resilient and imaginative people who built lives for themselves under consistently oppressive conditions.”

  The project comes out of Paul’s more than decade-long work on fugitive slave ads and her collaboration with the Barbados Archives to digitize the Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette newspapers under the British Library Endangered Programme Grant and as part of the Digital Library of the Caribbean.

  The ongoing initiative has led to the creation of the Memorials to People in Fugitive Ads website, designed by Campbell, which includes first-person testimonials, published by Benjamin Drew in 1856, of those who came to Niagara to escape slavery.

  “The stories about their enslavement are mostly omitted from the general narrative in the colonial archives; their voices on the institution and their enslavement muted,” says Campbell.

  “Sharing these first-person testimonials of freedom seekers is part of the efforts of this project to give visibility to their stories,” she says. “Our knowledge of the terrors of enslavement is partly gained from our understanding of the everyday lives of the enslaved.”

  VerCetty, a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist, sculptor and activist, joined the project to develop a vision for the memorial to those who lived, worked and died in Niagara. He previously created a statue of Joshua Glover in Toronto, and has been commissioned to complete a statue of Lincoln Alexander.

  In addition to her work on the project, Paul is also on the executive committee of Friends of the Forgotten, a group working with Niagara-on-the-Lake town council to address the historic erasure of Niagara’s Black community.

  Just as other historic moments and communities have been marked by statues, cenotaph and clock towers, the African diasporic community needs to be represented in the landscape, Paul says.

  “We do decolonization by recovering their stories from their testimonies and the fugitive slave ads and making their presence visible in the landscape,” she says.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Doug Hunt, Communications and Media Relations Specialist, Brock University dhunt2@brocku.ca or 905-941-6209

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  Categories: Media releases