Grad Chat - Queen's School Of Graduate Studies

Topic: “The Future of Work” Overview: I am interested in the future of work and the changing nature of work more specifically how employees are beginning to use artificial intelligence at work through interactions with chatbots (i.e. IBM Watson) and intelligent employee assistants (i.e. Alexa for Business, Google Home at work, etc.). What is the work of tomorrow shaping to be like?

Topic: Developing the Continuous Online Leaching Method for use in Bioaccessibility Risk Assessments Overview: When soil is contaminated, we must perform a risk assessment to determine the potential for hazard towards humans who may work, play, or live in contact with the soil. A common method for modeling this soil exposure is through a bioaccessibility study, which can be performed in-lab without the need for animal subjects. My work is on validating a continuous on-line leaching method. Conventional methods use a batch method of analysis, which can take hours to complete, but we have seen results with the online leaching method take as low as 30 minutes!

Topic: “Academic literacy in first year college (the necessary “language” for communicating successfully in college)” Overview: I’m researching the perceptions teachers and students have of academic literacy in the first-year of college.

Topic: “TEDx Annual Conference Overview: Grad students discuss what it means to do a TED talk

Topic: Understanding and Supporting the School Transitions of Military-Connected Adolescents Overview: The purpose of my two-phased sequential qualitative study is to (1) provide an in-depth, multi-perspective understanding of the school transition experiences of military-connected adolescents in Ontario, and (2) provide recommendations to inform policy and practice related to the school transition experiences of military-connected adolescents across Canada

Topic: “Handing Over The Keys: Intergenerational Legacies of Incarceration Policy in Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand.” Overview: I use critical policy analysis to unpack the legacies of incarceral policies in three countries, where generations of people within one family or community can be criminalized and experience institutionalization.

Overview: It's New Year's Eve but we are still on the air! Hear what is in store for grad studies in 2020

Overview: It's a special day, so with that comes a special edition of Grad Chat as we wrap up 2019.

Abbey Lee Hallett, Masters in Art Leadership. Overview: Abbey Lee talks about the Arts Leadership program and why it is important to train the next group of Arts Leaders who can lead the next generation of our country's arts and culture.

Topic: Valproic acid induced neural tube defects. Overview: Deviations in embryonic cell signaling induces birth defects such as neural tube defects seen in children born to mothers who are exposed to valproic acid during pregnancy.

Topic: Mythical Families in Mythical Cities: Small Family Norm in India, 1955-77. Overview: I trace the emergence of India's first advocacy campaign about the nuclear family. Through it, I analyze the nuclear family's rise in metropolitan India.  The project  studies urbanization patterns with an eye on contraceptive use amongst  families. 

Topic: Gender Performance in Children's Literature and Media in the Middle East. Overview: As a writer with an MA in film production, I have explored the child’s perspective in both fiction and screenplays. For the past year, I’ve been engaged with a body of fantasy fiction where the story is told through the eyes of an eleven-year-old girl living in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The heroine strives to reconcile certain systems and doctrines in her environment with what she sees in the magical worlds that she travels to. This work brings to my attention the need for a closer look at how Arab children’s identities are shaped by the storytelling that they consume, be it offered by close loved ones or the media machine. For more information on Maram's books and short films, check out her website at https://www.maram-taibah.com/

Topic: Treating hunger: medical expertise, nutritional science, and the development of technical food solutions. Overview: I looked at how, starting with World War II until contemporary times, hunger came to be predominantly seen as a medical object, and food relief was reconceptualized as medical treatment. The scientific community's research of hunger gave it a medical connotation that influenced the way hunger was managed: from the development of technically-engineered nutrition solutions that were guided by medical expertise to making hunger relief subjected to medical supervision. A medical framework reduces hunger to a biological problem, missing the socio-cultural experience and politico-economic roots of hunger. Further, it favors fast-acting, industrialized, expert-designed, and short-term nutritional solutions. This materialized in various products starting in the 1950s until current times. In viewing hunger through a medical prism, the broader structural causes of hunger and socio-cult

Topic: The role of medicine in investigating stigmata, the (re)appearance of Christ’s Holy Wounds on various bodies, in the context of Catholic canonization procedures. Overview: Stigmata are the focus of this research as they are constantly being interpreted and reinterpreted by various groups, going all the way back to St. Francis. I am focused on 20th century stigmatics, as their lives coincide with the rise of professionalized medical organizations, as well as significant global events related to religion, secularity, and secularism (e.g. WWI & WWII, the Cold War, Vatican II reforms, etc.). Despite popular tendencies to see Catholicism and scientific, empirical inquiry as oppositional, this project shows that clinical medicine and the Catholic hierarchy cooperate and overlap in investigative approaches and how they expect stigmatic-patients to present themselves to inquiry.

Topic: The role of medicine in investigating stigmata, the (re)appearance of Christ’s Holy Wounds on various bodies, in the context of Catholic canonization procedures. Overview: Stigmata are the focus of this research as they are constantly being interpreted and reinterpreted by various groups, going all the way back to St. Francis. I am focused on 20th century stigmatics, as their lives coincide with the rise of professionalized medical organizations, as well as significant global events related to religion, secularity, and secularism (e.g. WWI & WWII, the Cold War, Vatican II reforms, etc.). Despite popular tendencies to see Catholicism and scientific, empirical inquiry as oppositional, this project shows that clinical medicine and the Catholic hierarchy cooperate and overlap in investigative approaches and how they expect stigmatic-patients to present themselves to inquiry.

Topic: Teacher acculturation in the context of sojourning overseas. Overview: While overseas teaching can offer many capacity-increasing opportunities plus a chance to see the world, there are many complicating factors that deserve greater scrutiny. For one thing, teacher turnover is higher overseas and in some schools, the rate in which teachers break their contracts is concerning. Among many challenges facing new teachers, those who go overseas to teach must additionally confront culture shock—or acculturation—as well as policyscapes.

Topic: Halloween Special - Vampires and Garlic: the Science, Literature, and Folklore of Fending off Vampirism". Overview: Why does learning more about vampires and garlic matter?

Topic: Canadian history of gay and lesbian/queer parenting. Overview: My research looks at gay parenting from the 1970's to 2005, looking at custody cases in the 1970s where a parent's, often a mothers, sexuality was raised as a potential reason for withholding custody and ending with the ways in which a symbolic child and the presumed childlessness of queer couples was raised in the House of Commons debates on same sex marriage.

Topic: Disappearance narratives in contemporary global women's literature. Overview: My research seeks to identify the social and political uses of disappearance narratives by post-war women writers. Also Carmel speaks about her podcast hyacinthpodcast.com

Topic: Why come back to graduate studies now? Overview: After a successful career as a journalist for the CBC and then a member of various United Nations departments, Jeff has come back to do a PhD. This interview will discuss why some students start their graduate life a little later in their career.