Research

Three-Minute Thesis winner to represent SMU at Eastern Regional Competition

Samuel Sequeira

Congratulations to Samuel Sequeira, a first-year Master of Science student in Environmental Science, who won first place and the People’s Choice award in the annual Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) contest at Saint Mary’s last week. His presentation was titled “Jumping into danger: Mercury, fungus, and the frog crisis.”

Abigail Battson won second place for her thesis titled “Finding a needle in a haystack: Looking for indirect evidence of black holes in star clusters.”

Hosted by the Faculty of Graduate Studies, the 2025 3MT event saw 11 Saint Mary’s Master’s students and PhD candidates explain their thesis research projects in three minutes using just one static PowerPoint slide, no other props and no visual aids. A panel of judges chose the first and second place winners, while audience members voted for the People’s Choice Award.

Condensing a thesis—the result of months or even years of work—into three minutes is a unique challenge, and doing it effectively is an impressive feat. Competitors are challenged to condense and communicate their work while still making it accessible to a non-expert audience, with the clock ticking.

In his master’s thesis research, Samuel is studying wetlands contaminated with mercury and arsenic, specifically the effect this contamination has on amphibians. Nova Scotia has a rich history of gold mining dating back to the mid-1800s. The processes used to extract gold from its ore produced waste materials that contained mercury and arsenic. Due to the lack of regulations at the time, these waste materials, or tailings, were discarded in low-lying areas, including wetlands. These historic gold mine tailings are a risk to several organisms, including amphibians. Since they spend their lives on land and in water, amphibians are constantly being exposed to these contaminants, which they can absorb directly through their skin and their diet.

Along with supervisor Dr. Linda Campbell, Samuel and a team of student researchers are working to determine how much mercury and arsenic are accumulating in amphibians’ tissue, and its implications for their predators, including endangered species of birds, fish and turtles. 

This project will also focus on whether a highly infectious fungal pathogen, which has caused the extinction of several species of frogs worldwide, has made its way to Nova Scotia.

Samuel completed his undergraduate degree at Saint Mary’s and is now enrolled in the Master of Applied Science program. He will compete in the Eastern Regional 3MT Competition hosted by Memorial University in June.

The Three-Minute Thesis presentations covered a wide range of topics from the Faculties of Arts, Science, and the Sobey School of Business:  

  • Abigail Battson: Finding a needle in a haystack: Looking for indirect evidence of black holes in star clusters

  • Lily Binney: The structural complexity of old-growth Eastern Hemlock and Red Spruce forests in Nova Scotia

  • Gary Ernest: The interaction between leadership style and calling orientation in predicting burnout in academic vs. clinical physician leaders

  • Angelo George: Cosmic neighbourhoods: How environment shapes galaxies

  • Gabe Kipnis: Mapping and analyzing the local food network in the HRM

  • David Lewis: TRaP-ping Historic Mine Tailing Arsenic & Mercury

  • Sasha MacArthur: Beyond MRI: How SHG reveals the hidden story of collagen

  • Nichole Michaud-Kuszelewski": Price wars: An empirical investigation of competitive pricing

  • Megan O’Brien: Finding old-growth forest in Nova Scotia

  • Samuel Sequeira: Jumping into danger: Mercury, fungus, and the frog crisis

  • Alex Stokes: Exploring perceptions of citizenship and place in Prince Edward Island curriculum

From classroom to career: empowering responsible AI leaders

Looking in to a classroom with an instructor and students using laptops

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming higher education, not only reshaping how students learn in university classrooms but also driving innovative research across disciplines. At Saint Mary’s, our instructors are playing a pivotal role in bridging the gap between cutting-edge AI advancements and the broader business community by integrating AI tools into curriculum and community-based research projects.

Find out how Saint Mary’s is supporting students and the business community navigate the fast-paced world of AI.


Atlantic Canada AI Summit: May 1-3 at Saint Mary’s University

Atlantic Canada AI Summit logo

Organized by leading institutions, including Saint Mary’s University, Dalhousie University, the University of New Brunswick, Acadia University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and the University of Prince Edward Island, the Atlantic Canada AI Summit fosters collaboration across academia and industry in Atlantic Canada. 

The Summit will showcase cutting-edge AI research, facilitate industry-academia collaboration, and highlight exceptional AI talent in the region. It will feature three days of programming, including research presentations, workshops, a healthcare data competition and a youth AI pitch competition.

Youth AI Pitch Competition poster

The Youth AI Pitch Competition on May 3 invites youth ages 13-18 to use AI and creativity to improve the Children’s Emergency Department at the IWK hospital.

We are looking for AI-driven solutions to enhance the ER experience for kids and their families. Whether it’s making ER visits more fun, improving parent experience or advancing patient care, your ideas can make a difference!


Anubhav and Bryce pose behind a laptop. They stands in front of a colourful mural.

Anubhav Gupta and instructor Bryce Cross

Under the guidance of Sobey School of Business Lecturer Bryce Cross, who heavily incorporates large language models (LLMs) into his PhD research, Anubhav Gupta and his classmates are getting unique exposure to AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot.

“Professor Cross loves talking about his research, and he tries to integrate it with the concepts he’s teaching,” Gupta shared.

This approach has allowed students to engage with AI in practical ways, such as using ChatGPT to analyze mystery companies, prompting the model to match anonymous balance sheets to the correct industry. “It was an interesting experience to see how AI and LLMs work and their limitations. You can use it, but you can’t replace the knowledge you’re learning at university.”


Shelagh stands beside a podium with fall leaves behind her

Dr. Shelagh Crooks

With political turmoil, social divides, economic instability and the complexities of AI, the global landscape is full of challenges.

Philosophy teaches students how to think about concepts like fairness, autonomy and justice, skills that are increasingly important as we interact with AI-driven systems in the workplace. Understanding the societal impact of AI is not just a technical challenge—it’s a moral one.

“If we consume AI, we have to consume it with a critical eye,” says Saint Mary’s Philosophy professor Dr. Shelagh Crooks. “One of the things you learn in all philosophy classes is to be a skeptic…ask yourself, ‘Why should I accept this as truth?’ That is not something people do naturally.”


Through SMU’s Youth Business Analytics & AI Co-op Program, students earn a high school credit while spending several Fridays on campus, learning from the university’s faculty, student mentors and industry professionals. Organized by the Sobey School of Business, the program exposes students to university-level academics while building foundational skills in AI, machine learning, data analytics and visualization.

"I am learning about how AI is being used by businesses to visualize and interpret data,” said Peter Lutz, a grade eleven student at Charles P. Allen High School. “I am hoping to learn more about market trends and what generative AI is. I am new to this, and we are living in a time when AI is being revolutionized. I want to be able to utilize it."


Interested in working in the growing industry of business analytics and AI? The Saint Mary’s Masters of Business Analytics (MBAN) program equips students with cutting-edge expertise and practical knowledge, emphasizing the development, evaluation, refinement and implementation of AI-powered analytics solutions to transform data into actionable insights, driving business innovation and success.

Students are eligible for an 8-month paid internship, offering hands-on experience with AI-driven tools and methodologies, strengthening their expertise and establishing a solid foundation for a successful career in business analytics and AI.


Researchers using AI to solve real-world problems

Two men in blazers look to Pawan Lingras who expresses with his hands. Behind them is a large screen showing computer code.

Chris Mitchell and Shahriar Swapni of Citco with Dr. Pawan Lingras

The Office of Innovation and Community Engagement (OICE) facilitates research relationships between Saint Mary’s University and external partners, such as companies, government departments and community organizations. In their 2025 report, OICE highlights a number of completed and ongoing research projects which benefit from integrating AI systems.

Harnessing Data to Reduce Food Waste

Easy Platter, a meal-planning and personal chef service, partnered with Mathematics and Computing Science professor Dr. Yasushi Akiyama to design a framework to calculate ingredient costs, potential food waste and nutritional value for selected meal plans.

Virtual Guides Transform Tourist Experiences

Fundy Language Analytics Inc., which specializes in artificial intelligence and machine learning for language applications, partnered with Mathematics and Computer Science professor Dr. Somayeh Kafaie to use Large Language Models to enhance their virtual tour guide app, Strollopia.

A Partnership to Diversify Revenue and Reduce Risk

Citco, a global network of independent firms, partnered with Dr. Pawan Lingras, Director of the Master of Science in Computing and Data Analytics (CDA) Program and his team of graduate students. Together, they developed a document scraping application powered by generative AI to diversify their revenue streams within the fund administration sector.

AI-Powered Animation Enhancing Creativity One Frame at a Time

Moonshot Rights Inc., a Canada/UK-based animation company, partnered with Dr. Jason Rhinelander, an Associate Professor in the Division of Engineering and Head of Technology and Innovation at the David Sobey Retailing Centre. Together, they are pioneering a new approach to animation by accelerating the generation of Ultra-High-Definition (UHD) computer-generated frames.


Sharing AI insights with the business community and beyond

Arjun stands on stage behind a Saint Mary's University podium

Arjun Asokakumar speaks at the 2024 Responsible Leadership Day

Driving responsible leadership of AI

The Sobey School of Business brought together inspiring leaders and forward-thinking students for its sixth annual Responsible Leadership Day in November 2024: The Future of Responsible Work in an AI-Driven World. As artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent, the need for specialized knowledge remains high. Understanding how to judge the information AI provides you—and being able to evaluate its output critically—is key to using the technology responsibly.

The event included a thought-provoking keynote by Arjun Asokakumar, Director of Data Science at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), on how AI-driven automation may reshape job roles and skill requirements.


Event poster

Demystifying AI for businesses

In March, Sobey School of Business professor Dr. Yigit Aydede hosted a half-day conference titled Beyond the Code: Demystifying AI. The event featured three engaging sessions designed to educate, demonstrate and inspire action around the transformative power of AI.

Sessions covered simplifying AI concepts for both technical and non-technical users, demonstrating AI in action to illustrate how the technology is applied to solve real-world challenges, and a practical discussion with key stakeholders on how small and medium-sized businesses can effectively leverage AI to drive growth, boost productivity, and achieve long-term success.


The Wonder Guard app shown on two mocked-up phone screens

SMU competition supports AI innovation in healthcare

The Arthur L. Irving Entrepreneurship Centre at Saint Mary’s hosted The Arena, an annual pitch competition, in March. More than 60 student entrepreneurs from across Canada participated.

The winning project was Wonder Guard—an AI-powered Catheter Bag Module, created by McMaster University PhD student Manak Bajaj. Wonder Guard is capable of detecting and predicting urinary tract infections (UTIS), integrating electrochemical biosensors for real-time detection, quantification, and prediction of UTIs. This allows immediate diagnostic feedback to users and health information systems for AI-driven clinical decisions.


A photo of Theresa wearing a red scarf is edited into a podcast screen with podcast logo beside it

Considering the impact of AI development

In fall 2024, Faculty of Arts professor Dr. Teresa Heffernan joined UofT Jackman Humanities Institute Humanities at Large podcast host Melissa Gismondi for a conversation about AI. They discuss topics like the public's perception, limitations, environmental impact, and AI’s relationship with fiction. They also touch on the need for regulation and ethical considerations in AI development.


Guidance for students and faculty

Students sit in a  lecture hall

The Patrick Power Library's Artificial Intelligence (AI) guide is designed to help students use AI responsibly and ethically in their academic work.

The Studio for Teaching & Learning has helpful guides and resources for instructors here: Generative AI in Higher Education. They also host learning events and share resources from other institutions, including an upcoming webinar series titled Mind the (Bias) Gap: Ethical AI for Inclusive Teaching, from May 28-30.

Engineering solutions: improving sustainability in additive manufacturing

Ghazaleh stands at a computer desk while Kevin sits facing the screen. They are in front of a colourful mural.

Ghazaleh Afrahi of Shifting Shap3s with OICE Director Kevin Buchan. Photo: Wiebke Schroeder

Dr. Adel Merabet, a Professor in the Division of Engineering at Saint Mary’s University, is driving innovation through his partnership with Shifting Shap3s, a clean tech startup company leading the way in additive manufacturing and sustainable plastic waste solutions.

Shifting Shap3s has developed FilamentPro™, a product that decentralizes the recycling of additive manufacturing plastic waste. By allowing users to transform waste into reusable filament, the company tackles two key challenges: reducing environmental impact and improving material efficiency. To enhance FilamentPro’s performance, Shifting Shap3s collaborated with Dr. Merabet, leveraging his expertise in heat distribution, automation, and energy efficiency.

Dr. Merabet and his postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Mohammadali Kiehbadroudinezhad, conducted comprehensive feasibility studies and simulations, addressing critical challenges like filament quality, energy consumption, and productivity. These findings informed significant improvements to FilamentPro and paved the way for the next phase of the project. Dr. Merabet now leads efforts to design and test an optimized version of the product, ready for real-world application and market launch.

“Our experience collaborating with Saint Mary’s University has been truly transformative,” said Ghazaleh Afrahi, Founder of Shifting Shap3s. “This partnership significantly advanced our product development journey and enhanced the diversity of our talent team. We look forward to continuing this collaboration to strengthen our impact in reducing plastic waste and preserving resources.”

Through his work with Shifting Shap3s, Dr. Merabet is not only advancing engineering innovation but also contributing to a more sustainable future in additive manufacturing and material efficiency. This partnership highlights the power of combining expertise, creativity, and shared commitment to addressing global environmental challenges.


The Office of Innovation and Community Engagement (OICE) at Saint Mary’s University facilitates research partnerships between the University and companies, government departments and community organizations. OICE is the initial point of contact for faculty members and external partners wishing to collaborate. The office assists with finding suitable expertise, contract development and advising on funding opportunities.

This project highlight is from the 2025 OICE Report, which features researchers from Saint Mary's University and their external partners.

Dr. Karly Kehoe receives King Charles III Coronation Medal

Saint Mary’s University is proud to announce that Dr. Karly Kehoe has received the King Charles III Coronation Medal. An internationally recognized advocate of science diplomacy, Dr. Kehoe is a professor of history and the university’s Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Communities.

Dr. Kehoe with Alain Gagnon, President of the Royal Society of Canada

The Royal Society of Canada (RSC) nominated her for the award, presenting it to her at a March 27 ceremony at its headquarters in Ottawa.

“I am grateful to have received the King Charles III Coronation Medal from The Royal Society of Canada,” says Kehoe. “As academics, our role must be to work as hard as we can to make our societies better, smarter and more inclusive. It's been my privilege to work with these inspiring people to activate change.”

The medal honours individuals who have made a significant contribution to Canada or to a particular province, territory, region of, or community in, Canada, or attained an outstanding achievement abroad that brings credit to Canada.

The Royal Society of Canada nominated 30 individuals who have made significant contributions to its mission over the past 25 years. Other medal recipients included Chad Gaffield, Constance Backhouse and Julia Wright.    

Kehoe is a past president of the Royal Society of Canada’s (RSC) College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists (2020-2022) and is the founder and lead of RSC’s At-Risk and Displaced Academics and Artists (ARDAA) program. This program emerged out of her extensive work to support academic researchers whose work has been disrupted by war, conflict and threats of violence. In addition to ARDAA, she co-founded the At-Risk and Academic Refugee Membership programme (Young Academy of Scotland) and the At-Risk Scholar Initiative (Global Young Academy).

Also a Fellow of the International Science Council (ISC), Kehoe is a member of its Freedom and Responsibility in Science Standing Committee. She currently chairs the RSC’s Sustainable Migration statement committee for the S7 (science academies of the G7).

Research publication award

Kehoe also recently received the Peter M. Toner Research Publication Award, for her monograph Empire and Emancipation: Scottish and Irish Catholics at the Atlantic Fringe, 1780-1850 (University of Toronto Press, 2022). Administered by the University of New Brunswick, this award supports the publication of scholarly works in Irish Canadian history by scholars worldwide.

“It was wonderful to receive this news – and completely unexpected. It’s nice when really hard research work gets recognized like this,” says Kehoe.

Kehoe is the academic lead and board chairperson for the Gorsebrook Research Institute for Atlantic Canada Studies, based at Saint Mary’s. Through her own research, Kehoe explores settler colonialism and how religious minority migrants acquired and exercised colonial privilege in the north Atlantic world between c. 1750 and c. 1850. Underpinning this research is the pioneering work she has been doing since 2010 on the complex links between Catholic colonialism in the Caribbean and what would become Atlantic Canada.

Kehoe is the convenor of the Scottish Historical Review Trust and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She co-edits the Histories of the Scottish Atlantic book series with Edinburgh University Press. Recent publications include The Scottish Highlands and the Atlantic World: Social Networks and Identities (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), co-edited with Annie Tindley and Chris Dalglish. She is a collaborator on the current SSHRC-UKRI funded research project “One People, Two Places,” looking at historic linkages between Cape Breton Island and Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Coronation medal background 

The King Charles III Coronation Medal was established to mark the 2023 Coronation of His Majesty King Charles III. It will be awarded to 30,000 individuals across Canada, including 4,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). The medal program is administered by the Office of the Secretary to the Governor General, with nominations provided by a list of partner organizations.

Related:

Event to examine the role of Acadian soldiers in the First World War

Greyscale photo of a group of soliders on a field

165e Batailon Acadian, 1916

The Gorsebrook Research Institute (GRI) for Atlantic Canada Studies is pleased to welcome Dr. Gregory Kennedy for a public presentation on April 3 at Saint Mary’s University.

Book cover for Lost in the Crowd by Gregory M.W. Kennedy

Lost in the Crowd: Acadian Soldiers of Canada’s First World War

  • POSTPONED: Date to be announced

Dr. Kennedy is a leading historian from Brandon University. The presentation will focus on his recent award-winning book about Acadian participation in the First World War, Lost in the Crowd: Acadian Soldiers of Canada's First World War (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024).

The event will follow an interview format with Q&A to follow. Dr. Kennedy will be in discussion with Stefanie Slaunwhite BA’14 MA’17, PhD candidate in History at the University of New Brunswick and graduate of the Master of Arts in Atlantic Canada Studies program at Saint Mary's University.

Gregory is a white man with short hair and a red and grey beard.

Dr. Gregory M. W. Kennedy is Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Brandon University. A historian of early Canada and particularly of New France and the French Atlantic World, Kennedy has published two monographs and numerous scholarly articles and book chapters. His first book, Something of a Peasant Paradise? Comparing Rural Societies in Acadie and the Loudunais, 1604-1755 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014), was awarded the Canadian Historical Association’s Clio prize for the best scholarly book on Atlantic Canadian history and is also available in French with Septentrion (2021).

His second book is Lost in the Crowd: Acadian Soldiers of Canada's First World War (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024). It was recently named winner of the New Brunswick Scholarly Book Award by the Journal of New Brunswick Studies/Revue d’études sur le Nouveau-Brunswick.

Dr. Kennedy also co-edited a collection of essays in French entitled Repenser l’Acadie dans le monde: Études comparées, études transnationales, forthcoming in May from McGill-Queen’s University Press, as part of its Rethinking Canada in the World series. A second collection of essays in English, Military Service and Society in Atlantic Canada Communities, is in progress. His current research focuses on mobility, migration, and military service in French Canada, contributing to an SSHRC-funded partnership project, “Trois siècles de migrations francophones en Amérique du Nord”.

All are welcome to attend this event in person or online. Bookmark Halifax will be on site with copies of Dr. Kennedy’s books.

GRI Lecture Series 2025

Dr. Kennedy’s event falls amid a series of spring presentations as the Gorsebrook Research Institute continues its GRI Lecture Series 2025. On March 14, the lecture series launched with "Fogs Love This Shore: Living with Fog in Atlantic Canada," with Dr. Sara Spike of the Department of History at Dalhousie University. On March 28, SMU History alumnus Alex Myrick MA’21 presented “The Meyerian Diaspora and Nova Scotian Psychiatric Reforms, 1913-1970.

Coming up on Friday, April 11: "Cousins of the Empire: Nova Scotia and Bengal, 1756-1867," with Dr. Madhuparna Gupta, Instructor, SMU Department of Political Science and Global Development Studies. Noon to 2 p.m. in McNally North room 219 and online.


The Gorsebrook Research Institute (GRI) for Atlantic Canada Studies at Saint Mary’s University is a regional hub for research and collaborative scholarship in Atlantic Canada. Its Atlantic Canada recognizes First Nation communities and their land sovereignty, the ethnic and cultural diversity of those who were settled as part of forced immigration and colonization, and those who are here by their own choice and agency. Its mandate is to provide an interdisciplinary research environment that facilitates exchanges and partnerships among researchers at Saint Mary’s University and affiliates from many different fields who can come together to improve understandings of Atlantic Canada. Learn more on the GRI website.

Saint Mary's University appoints Dr. Shannon Dea as Provost & Vice-President, Academic and Research

Dr. Shannon Dea

Saint Mary's University is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Shannon Dea as the university's first Provost & Vice-President, Academic and Research (PVPAR). Dr. Dea will assume her new role on July 1, 2025, bringing a wealth of experience and a distinguished career in academia.

Dr. Dea joins Saint Mary's University from the University of Regina, where she has served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts since 2020. In this role, she has been an academic leader for a faculty comprising 13 departments, 43 program options, and over 2,600 students.

Dr. Dea's academic journey includes a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Western University, an M.A. in Philosophy from Queen’s University and a B.A. in Philosophy and Russian from the University of Waterloo. Her scholarly work spans a wide range of topics, including academic freedom, harm reduction and feminist philosophy. She is the author of many articles and book chapters. Her book, Beyond the Binary: Thinking about Sex and Gender, now in its second edition, has been widely acclaimed for its insightful analysis and thought-provoking perspectives.

In addition to her academic achievements, Dr. Dea has held numerous leadership positions, including Vice-President of the Board of Trustees at the MacKenzie Art Gallery and Chair of the Western Canadian Deans of Arts, Science, and Indigenous Studies. Her commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion is evident in her work, particularly in her efforts to Indigenize academic spaces and promote social justice.

Dr. Dea's appointment marks a significant milestone for Saint Mary's University as she becomes the first person to hold the newly created position of PVPAR. In this role, she will oversee the university's academic and research activities, working closely with faculty, staff, and students to enhance the university's academic excellence and research impact. The Provost and Vice-President, Academic & Research also plays a crucial role in the university budget by overseeing the allocation of resources to support academic priorities and ensuring effective management of the budget process.

"We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Shannon Dea to Saint Mary's University," said Dr. Robert Summerby-Murray, President and Vice-Chancellor of Saint Mary's University. "Her extensive experience, visionary leadership and deep commitment to academic excellence and social justice make her the ideal person to lead our academic and research initiatives. We look forward to the many contributions she will make to our university community."

Dr. Dea expressed her enthusiasm for joining Saint Mary's University, stating, "I am honoured to be appointed as the first Provost & Vice-President, Academic and Research at Saint Mary's University. I look forward to working with SMU’s amazing faculty, staff, and students to advance the university's mission and to foster a dynamic, equitable and inclusive academic environment."

2025 Research Expo highlights

More than 200 attendees came to the annual Research Expo on Friday, March 7. Each year, this event brings talented Saint Mary’s researchers from the faculties of Science, Arts, and the Sobey School of Business together to share their academic achievements and projects. The Research Expo showcases work from faculty members, research centres, institutes, and graduate students, drawing interest from community members and partners.

The event is hosted by the Office of Innovation and Community Engagement (OICE) within the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research. The OICE facilitates research collaborations between faculty members and external partners (including companies, government, and not-for-profits).  

Events like Research Expo are key to building partnerships across university departments and with external partners. This year the pitch presentation series included presentations from faculty with a focus on environmental sustainability. The presenters at the 2025 Research Expo included:  

  • Dr. Erin Adlakha, Department of Geology 

  • Dr. Christa Brosseau, Department of Chemistry 

  • Dr. Kate Ervine, Department of Political Science and Global Development Studies 

  • David Lewis, PhD Candidate, Department of Environmental Sciences 

  • Dr. Colleen Barber, Department of Biology 

  • Dr. Todd Ventura, Department of Geology 

A special kudos goes to Paula Walker, Financial Services, Planning & Analysis, who received the  Staff Research Recognition Award! Established in 2010, this award acknowledges a staff member who has provided exceptional research support for faculty throughout the Saint Mary’s academic community.

To learn more and for a copy of the event agenda, visit https://www.smu.ca/research/research-expo.html

 

Faculty of Arts launches second annual Research Bulletin

Words 'Faculty of Arts: Excellence in research. Meaningful community impact.' overlaid on numerous book and report covers.

The Faculty of Arts is pleased to share its second annual Research Bulletin, a compilation of research activity across its 11 departments, interdisciplinary programs and affiliated research centres.

The Faculty of Arts Research Bulletin 2023-2024 is available on the Publications page of the Faculty of Arts website for viewing online and downloading as a PDF. The 57-page digital report provides a snapshot of research highlights throughout the academic year dating from September 1, 2023, through August 31, 2024.

The annual publication offers an inspiring look at "the enormous range and vitality of the research and scholarship being carried out across the Faculty of Arts at Saint Mary’s," says Dr. Sara Malton, Associate Dean of Arts (Research and Faculty Support).

"We see documented here the extensive reach, scope and impact of faculty output, whether through monographs and articles, creative works and invited talks, independent work or collaborations – both locally and across the globe,” says Malton.

“This is a testament to the energy and originality of the work being carried out by our faculty and expresses a willingness to boldly and energetically carry out that work in a manner that can, in turn, inspire our students to confront with thoughtfulness and rigour some of the most challenging issues of our times."

Scholars in the Faculty of Arts pursue innovative and impactful research and teaching across the humanities and social sciences. Their work investigates critical and creative links between human existence, our communities and the world around us. Our students learn alongside our researchers on the front lines of knowledge creation, from assisting coastal communities with the protection of their shorelines to developing policies to reduce gender-based violence in migration contexts.  

The second edition of the Research Bulletin added several new content features to celebrate faculty milestones and undergraduate and graduate student research highlights. The next edition will cover research activity from September 1, 2024, to August 31, 2025.   

Arts faculty members publish and present regularly on a wide array of research topics. For ongoing Arts news, events and research updates, follow the Faculty of Arts on Instagram at @smuarts, on Facebook at @SMUArts and on X at @SMArts_SMU.

Saint Mary's astronomers study swarms of black holes hiding in the Milky Way’s densest star clusters

Dr. Vincent Hénault-Brunet and Nolan Dickson MSc’22

Less than a decade ago, gravitational waves originating from two black holes merging in a distant galaxy were observed for the first time. Since then, the number of such detections has steadily increased, and much effort has been devoted to understanding the astrophysical origin of these cataclysmic events that send ripples through space-time. 

Two recent studies, spearheaded by Saint Mary’s researchers, shed new light on this topic by probing the populations of black holes hiding in the globular star clusters surrounding our Milky Way galaxy. The work was led by SMU graduate students Nolan Dickson and Peter Smith under the supervision of Dr. Vincent Hénault-Brunet and done in collaboration with researchers in Spain and Australia. 

Globular star clusters are promising cradles for black holes to form, remain close to one another, and sometimes gravitationally capture each other. This can produce tight binary systems in which the two black holes spiral down to merge, emitting gravitational waves in the process. These clusters are extremely compact and can contain up to a million stars that interact through gravity. Shortly after they formed 10 to 12 billion years ago, their short-lived massive stars died and left behind black holes. But until recently, it was thought that globular clusters could not hold on to their black holes. Recent theoretical work and simulations have suggested otherwise. While some black holes may experience strong enough natal kicks to eject themselves from their host cluster promptly, and others also escape after energetic “slingshot” interactions with other black holes, it doesn’t seem to deplete the black hole population of most clusters completely.  

In their study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), Nolan Dickson MSc’22, PhD candidate and Durland Scholar, and collaborators put these ideas on firmer ground. By carefully comparing the observed spatial distribution and motions of stars in a sample of globular clusters with detailed dynamical models, they were able to infer the presence of up to a few hundred black holes near the centre of many clusters. These black holes typically amount to less than 1% of the cluster mass in these systems, which is small but still has important ramifications.

“Although we don’t see the black holes directly, they have a subtle but noticeable effect on the visible stars, effectively injecting energy into the rest of the cluster,” says Dickson. “Other research groups around the world have reached similar conclusions, but our study is the first one that simultaneously compares models to such a wide range of observations coming from different telescopes on the ground and in space. Our models are also very fast to compute, so we can easily explore a very large number of configurations with clusters containing varying amounts of black holes and make sure we identify the models that best match all of these rich datasets.” 

Peter Smith MSc’24

In a second study recently published in The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ), Peter Smith MSc’24, now a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, took this method one step further by using exotic astrophysical accelerometers. In addition to analyzing the positions and motions of stars in globular clusters, he also considered the precise timing of “millisecond pulsars”.

Pulsars are like cosmic lighthouses, rapidly rotating compact stellar remnants that emit beams of radiation out of their magnetic poles. When the beams periodically align with Earth (once per rotation, every 0.001 seconds or so for a millisecond pulsar!), pulses of energy can be detected. This makes them very precise and stable clocks. As pulsars move inside a globular cluster and are accelerated by all the stars and black holes, the measured time intervals between pulses change slightly.

“This allows us to use them as powerful probes of the dark mass inside globular clusters, in particular black holes. It’s especially helpful when not much is known about the motions of the stars, which can be difficult to measure in distant clusters obscured by interstellar dust”, comments Smith. Using this method, he and collaborators provided much improved constraints on the black hole content of two clusters that had been the subject of constant debate in the scientific community. “And things will only get better in the future, as the next generation of radio telescopes is expected to dramatically increase the number of detected pulsars in globular clusters,” Smith adds. 

These findings offer new insight and further evidence that globular star clusters can keep hold of a significant number of black holes. “It’s an exciting time to be working in this field. Following the detection of gravitational waves from black hole mergers, the study of globular clusters has experienced a renaissance”, says Dr. Vincent Hénault-Brunet. “But there is still a lot that we don’t understand. We are already working on how we can use our recent results to explore the physics of black hole formation and the birth conditions of globular clusters during the earliest stages of galaxy formation in the early universe.” 

Read more: 
 
 

By Dr. Vincent Hénault-Brunet

Master's theses round-up: African Heritage Month

Exploring themes of Black and African heritage, identity and justice

February is African Heritage Month, a time to recognize and celebrate the histories, cultures, and contributions of people of Black and African descent. To mark this month, the Patrick Power Library is highlighting the work of Saint Mary’s graduate students whose research explores themes related to Black and African heritage, history, identity and social justice.

A Master’s thesis represents years of dedication, inquiry and original scholarship, and we’re excited to showcase these contributions to academic knowledge. This collection of graduate student theses offers valuable insights into a diverse range of subjects studied by Saint Mary’s students. More student theses can be discovered in the University Archives’ online Institutional Repository.

Read on to discover the work of our student scholars!


"Entering the workforce in Halifax: Strategies and coping mechanisms among the African migrant community"
by Priscilla Armah, Master of Arts in Geography, 2021

This study examines the job market experiences of Sub-Saharan African migrants in Halifax, using Bourdieu’s habitus and Labour Market Segmentation theory. It explores strategies, barriers like racism and systemic discrimination, and coping mechanisms, highlighting how interconnected individual, group and systemic factors shape labour market integration.


"Forced/coerced sterilization of HIV-positive women in the Southern African region in the context of reproductive justice and intersectional gender-based violence"
by Ogechukwu Chinenye Chukwudozie, Master of Arts in Women and Gender Studies, 2024

This study examines the forced sterilization of HIV-positive women through the lenses of reproductive justice, the intersectionality framework and feminist content analysis, highlighting how poverty, age, education and racism increase vulnerability. The author amplifies victims' voices and expands intersectional scholarship in Africa, emphasizing overlooked factors in the oppression of HIV-positive women.


"Whose revolution is televised?: Young African Nova Scotian women respond to sexual politics in hip hop culture & everyday life"
by Alecia Green, Master of Arts in the Joint Women’s Studies Programme, 2007

This qualitative study explores how young African Nova Scotian women interpret Black female body representations in hip-hop videos. Using a Black socio-feminist lens, interviews with university students reveal critical media literacy, counter-hegemonic views shaped by academics, divinity, and community, and a belief that Black female beauty comes from within.


"Presence and perseverance: Blacks in Hants County, Nova Scotia, 1871-1914"
by David Wayne States, Masters of Arts in Atlantic Canada Studies, 2002

In the early 19th century, Black refugees from the U.S. settled in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, facing harsh conditions and discrimination. This thesis traces the efforts of Black families in Hants County to adapt to these circumstances and improve conditions for their offspring's future success. States argues the agency shown by these people would result in the generations following them achieving a level of competency not thought attainable by the immigrant generation.

"The experiences and challenges of Black entrepreneurs in Halifax, Nova Scotia"
by Gabriel Nimoh, Master of Arts in Geography, 2022

Using the mixed embeddedness model and intersectionality theoretical framework, this study explores the experiences, motivations, barriers and coping strategies of Black entrepreneurs in Halifax. Findings highlight market opportunities, financial constraints, racial discrimination, and the role of mindset and social support in overcoming challenges. This study seeks to assist policymakers and practitioners in developing informed decisions that promote inclusion in the Canadian business environment.


"In vivo facial tissue depth measurements of African Nova Scotian children for 3-D forensic facial reconstruction"
by Meaghan Alexandria Huculak, Master of Science in Applied Science, 2021

Partnering with the African Nova Scotian community, this student researcher collaboratively created the first African Canadian facial tissue depth database for identifying missing children. Using ultrasound technology on 54 participants (ages 3–18) showed age, sex, and nutrition contributed to tissue depth. This student’s thesis discusses the application of the findings in multiple forensic contexts.


"Performing diversity: Black bodies in Atlantic Canadian post-secondary institutions"
by Itai Ashley Kuwodza, Master of Arts in Atlantic Canadian Studies, 2024

Kuwodza argues that the Black student experience in Atlantic Canada is explicitly limited by racist practices. The thesis traces the historical roots of exploitation and analyzes how colonial legacies, racial biases and economic disparities have contributed to the marginalization of Black individuals in Atlantic Canadian education and sport.


"Where are the black female faculty?: Employment equity policy failures and the overrepresentation of whiteness"
by Isalean Phillip, Master of Arts in Women & Gender Studies, 2018

Philip’s thesis critiques employment equity and diversity practices at two Atlantic Canadian universities, using intersectionality and critical race feminism as theoretical frameworks. Through critical race feminist discourse analysis and interviews with Black women scholars, Philips analyzes the persistence of systemic racism and sexism, highlighting how the institutionalization of liberal feminist equity policies, diversity discourses and white patriarchal hegemony all sustain institutional practices of racialized gendered omission, erasure and misrepresentation.

Saint Mary’s named top undergraduate research university in Nova Scotia

SMU also led the Canadian undergrad universities rankings for research income growth in the Canada’s Top 50 Research Universities 2024 report

Saint Mary’s University is a leader in the region in obtaining external research funding, according to a Research Infosource Inc. report ranking Canada’s Top 50 Research Universities

In the annual report released at the end of 2024, Saint Mary’s rose five spots in the Research Income category to 11th place on the undergraduate university rankings, maintaining its position as the highest-ranked undergraduate institution in Nova Scotia. The university also rose three spots to 42nd place on the overall top 50 list, the highest overall ranking Saint Mary’s has received.

Saint Mary’s also rose five spots to claim the top ranking of all Canadian universities in the undergraduate tier for the Research Income Growth category, showing an impressive 34.4 per cent increase to give a total of $16.29 million in external research funding in 2023. Faculty funding averages $63,200, and funding for graduate students is $21,500 per student.

“We are pleased to see Saint Mary’s once again move up in Canada’s top 50 research universities rankings, taking the university to its highest ever national ranking of external research funding,” says Dr. Adam J. Sarty, Associate Vice-President, Research and Dean, Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research. “It’s thanks to our strong calibre and commitment of Saint Mary’s professors, who are leaders in their fields and able to attract substantial external funding to support their vital work, a good portion of which has direct connections and impact for our community.”

As a research institution, this work continues to be a priority and is a driving force behind the university’s success. The national top rank for year-over-year improvement in the university’s funding underlines the continuing commitment of our professors to seek and secure funding to support their work, and notably, a great many undergraduate and graduate students who are keys to the research success of Saint Mary’s University, explains Dr. Sarty.

“Faculty members at Saint Mary’s have earned federal, provincial and international funding for their work, and we also ensure that this next generation of researchers has a chance to explore research in their fields,” said Dr. Sarty. “Our summer research programs are open to all students across campus after their first year of undergraduate studies, allowing them to work alongside professors and gain invaluable experience that they use in their studies at Saint Mary’s and beyond.”

Learn more:

SMU research supports right whale conservation

An aerial view of two right whales. Photo credited to the CLearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute

Credit: Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute, taken under NOAA permit #26919

Tim wears a blue tshirt with a logo for Saint Mary's and the Canadian Whale Institute

Dr. Timothy Frasier

Saint Mary’s biology professor, Dr. Timothy Frasier, is the principal investigator of a research team that is working to update a DNA database of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. CBC reports that the researchers have received funding through a contract with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which will allow the team to reanalyse the current DNA samples and expand to hundreds of more regions. The DNA samples collected help to identify individual right whales.

The funding contract includes an annual payment of up to $33,960 and can be extended each year from March 2025 to 2028. "It's a big jump," said Frasier in an interview with CBC. "Not only is that going to give us a higher resolution [of the genome], but the technology is going to make that much more efficient and less error-prone."

Learn more about the research and conservation efforts at CBC.ca.
Reported by CBC News and written by Giuliana Grillo de Lambarri.