Saint Mary's Hosts: Black Business Initiatives - 25 Years & Beyond

A screen capture from the event.

On April 20, the Sobey School of Business Community Revitalization & Prosperity Network launched a conversation series with the Nova Scotia-based Black Business Initiative (BBI), the longest serving Black business development initiative in Canada.

The first conversation, called Black Business Initiatives: 25 Years & Beyond, featured BBI CEO Dr. Rustum Southwell, Cynthia Dorrington, President of Vale & Associates Human Resource Management and Consulting Inc. and Dr. Harvi Millar, Professor of Operations Management at the Sobey School of Business.

The panellists spoke to Dr. Harjeet Bhabra, Dean of the Sobey School, about the history of Black-owned businesses in Nova Scotia and the work that remains to be done to remove barriers to success, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In his remarks, Dr. Southwell noted that Black-owned businesses have contributed over a billion dollars to the Nova Scotia economy in the 25 years since BBI was founded. Innovations by Black entrepreneurs in Nova Scotia include the world-class medical company BioMedica Diagnostics of Windsor (founded by Abdullah Kirumira) and SureShot Solutions of Lower Sackville, which provides highly specialized equipment for many of the world’s most successful coffee chains (founded by CEO Michael Duck).

Despite a long history of business success and over 200 years of African Nova Scotians in the province, Ms. Dorrington noted that due to systemic barriers, it can be difficult for Black entrepreneurs and small business owners to access necessary financing, coaching, advisory services and many of the other keys to business success. As a result, these businesses are often prevented from achieving their full potential. “To grow beyond a certain level, you must work on your business, not just in your business,” she said.

Black entrepreneurs are also often shut out of certain sectors, like aerospace and information technology, due to systemic barriers. Dorrington said we need to “think big… and provide mentorship and coaching to help business owners see the next big opportunities.”       

Dr. Harvi Millar presented recent research into how Black-owned businesses have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that surveyed businesses are facing challenges including cash flow, reductions in operating capacity, declining customer bases and temporary or permanent business closures.

The research shows that in addition to the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, Black business owners face barriers including racial bias, lack of scale, insufficient access to wealth and collateral, lack of peer-to-peer support networks and limited market access.

Dorrington noted that these barriers are often built into unfair and outdated systems that we must now work to redesign. “These systems didn't have all voices at the table when they were designed,” she said. “This is the time. If you're going to address it, you have to look at the system and really assess what is working and what is not. We must take the initiative and get rid of what isn't working.”

Dr. Southwell noted that “no Black person – no matter how wealthy or successful in business – hasn’t felt marginalized at some point in their life.”

To lift up Black businesses, Dorrington said we must acknowledge systemic racism as a first step. “We must come together to navigate. Until you face those barriers you don't see them. People who have navigated them in the past, we can put our heads together but speak with one voice.”

The next conversation, to be scheduled shortly, will explore Barriers to Doing Business for Black Entrepreneurs: Access to Capital Market. Visit the Community Revitalization & Prosperity Network to learn more.

Assessing global human progress with a new environmental twist

The International Development Studies program at Saint Mary’s is teaming up with the School of Social Sciences at Mahatma Gandhi University in India to co-host a virtual panel discussion on Monday.

The purpose of the April 19 event is to take a closer look at the 2020 Human Development Report, the 30th anniversary edition of the yearly report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Titled “The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene,” this latest version is quite different from its predecessors, introducing a new environmental lens to the report’s annual Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI typically tracks human progress in countries around the world by measuring such factors as a nation’s health, education and standards of living. For the 2020 report, the HDI also took the countries’ carbon dioxide emissions and material footprints into account. By adjusting the index to reflect planetary pressures, the report paints a sobering picture of humanity’s progress by making the wellbeing of both people and the planet central to the definition of human development.

“It’s a unique opportunity to have an international discussion,” says Dr. Gavin Fridell, SMU’s Canada Research Chair in International Development Studies and one of the panellists. “This report is quite different, and represents a massive turning point, so it’s worthy of us having a more serious discussion about it.” 

Joining him on the panel are Dr. Kate Ervine, also a faculty member in the IDS program at Saint Mary’s; Dr. Joseph Tharamangalam of the Sociology & Anthropology department at Mount St. Vincent University; and Dr. C.T. Aravindakumar, Pro-Vice Chancellor and faculty member in the School of Environmental Science, Mahatma Gandhi University. The panel’s moderator is Dr. Sabu Thomas, Vice Chancellor (President), Mahatma Gandhi University.

“The report is not very optimistic,” Fridell notes, adding the pandemic has also changed thinking around human development, further highlighting economic inequalities and environmental pressures.

“COVID-19 is teaching us a lot of things,” he says. “We have learned that in an emergency, we are capable of slowing down our economic growth … but who pays the price? And the report isn’t saying that we have to end economic growth, but constantly increasing economic growth is not compatible with the climate crisis.”

Each panellist will begin with a brief presentation, then the event will open up to a Q&A discussion. Similar conversations have been taking place around the world since the report’s release in December, but this is the first such public forum in the Maritime provinces. See the UNDP’s December 15 announcement for more details and perspectives about the 2020 report.

“While humanity has achieved incredible things, it is clear that we have taken our planet for granted,” Jayathma Wickramanayake, the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy Youth, said in the announcement. “Across the world young people have spoken up, recognizing that these actions put our collective future at risk. As the 2020 Human Development Report makes clear, we need to transform our relationship with the planet — to make energy and material consumption sustainable, and to ensure every young person is educated and empowered to appreciate the wonders that a healthy world can provide.”

Open to the public, the panel discussion begins at 10:30 am on Monday. See the event listing on the SMU Events Calendar for more information and the Zoom links. 

Bridget Brownlow receives Paul Harris Fellow Award

Bridget Brownlow

Saint Mary’s University’s Conflict Resolution Advisor and president of Peaceful Schools International, Bridget Brownlow, has received the Paul Harris Fellow Award from the Rotary Club of Halifax Harbourside.

The award, established in 1957, is given to a community member that has made an outstanding contribution to the community. Brownlow is being recognized for her notable service with Peaceful Schools International, teaching peaceful education to children from over 200 schools around the world.

The Paul Harris Fellow Award has been received by many household names, including: Mother Theresa, polio vaccine developer Jonas Salk, N.S. Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Robert Strang, and former Saint Mary’s President Colin Dodds.

Congratulations Bridget!

Convocation to be Celebrated Virtually in May

Spring Convocation will be virtual for the Class of 2021 and will be live-streamed on the Saint Mary’s University website and Facebook page on Friday, May 28, 2021 in three ceremonies:

• 10 a.m.  Sobey School of Business and Graduate Studies in Business

• 2 p.m.   Faculty of Science and Graduate Studies in Science

• 4 p.m.   Faculty of Arts and Graduate Studies in Arts

All times are listed in Atlantic Daylight Time (ADT).

A virtual convocation in May ensures the university’s continued adherence to public health requirements. While we are disappointed not to be in person and on campus, we know that the livestream of convocation reaches graduates, families and friends both locally and around the world. All members of the Saint Mary’s University community are invited to watch the convocation ceremonies at the times listed above.

“I am very proud of the graduates of May 2021,” says Dr. Robert Summerby-Murray, President and Vice-Chancellor of Saint Mary’s. “In announcing a virtual convocation for May, we are also acknowledging the resilience and continued commitment of all our graduates. We know from our earlier experience with virtual convocations that the ceremonies will be warm, vibrant and celebratory. We will do our very best to highlight your significant accomplishments as you complete your academic programs.” 

For more information related to convocation, visit www.smu.ca/graduation

Reflection and Resilience: Community Response to COVID-19

Members of the Saint Mary’s University community reflected on the past year during a webinar held on March 24, 2021. Building Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic was the fourth session of the virtual SMU in Action event series and featured Dr. Robert Summerby-Murray, Dr. Tony Charles, Crystal Witter BA’21 and Dr. Mohammad Rahaman.

Panellists brought their unique perspective to the challenges, opportunities and resilience in communities during the past year. Dr. Tony Charles, who also holds the position of director of the Community Conservation Network, shared the 2020 Report on Nova Scotian Communities & COVID-19: Challenges & Resilience, a study conducted with the help of Saint Mary’s colleagues and students. The report looks at how communities and individuals responded to the pandemic as a measure of resilience, as well as the social and economic impacts that the pandemic had on communities. While communities reported challenges in employment, tourism and education, they also shared inspiring stories of leadership and community action. “It’s amazing what can be done by individuals and by working together collectively,” says Charles.

Saint Mary’s President Dr. Summerby-Murray found many parallels between the Nova Scotia report and how the Saint Mary’s community responded; praising technicians, faculty, staff and students for adapting quickly to new learning management systems and pedagogical innovation while understanding the challenges faced. Other highlights from the past year included the Saint Mary’s University Entrepreneurship Centre’s swift response to supporting entrepreneurs and businesses in Atlantic Canada, donor support to the COVID-19 Emergency Student Relief Fund and the investment in digital transformation of the teaching and learning environment. He credits the past year as an opportunity to learn innovative approaches to teaching, research and community engagement.

“Challenging, yet transformational”

From the student perspective, recent graduate Crystal Witter shared her experience as an international student leader and entrepreneur who navigated the pandemic and graduated as valedictorian in January 2021. While completing her degree, Crystal had to travel home to Jamaica and was forced to close her business, Ilash Icons HFX, due to COVID-19. She admits her final year was a difficult one both mentally and financially. She discussed the added challenges for international students navigating travel restrictions, quarantine measures, and delayed work permits, but credited the Saint Mary’s community for their willingness to help. Receiving a COVID-19 Student Emergency bursary, along with other scholarships, relieved the financial burden due to loss of income, and having caring professors who provided accommodations allowed her to complete her course load and cross the virtual graduation stage. Crystal has since joined the Saint Mary’s University Entrepreneurship Centre team has a Project Manager for the SMU Community Hackathon, which looks at tech solutions to address human trafficking in Nova Scotia. When reflecting on the past year, she says “I couldn’t be resilient without help of my professors, friends and family. It’s not an individual journey.”

Dr. Mohammad Rahaman, Associate Dean of Strategic Partnership & Community Engagement for the Sobey School of Business, moderated the panel’s Q&A period and shared insight on the Sobey Prosperity Network & Community Revitalization Project. In response to COVID-19’s impact on the business community, the Sobey School gathered a network of faculty, industry experts and alumni to offer webinars, discussions and business coaching. Later this year, the Prosperity Network will release a report to the community outlining the lessons learned to help inform policy makers in Atlantic Canada.

Watch a recording of the session

SMU archaeologist brings history into focus with LiDAR and 3D tech

Dr. Jonathan Fowler is bringing Nova Scotia’s historic settlements into sharper focus, using advanced digital tools to combine archival maps with landscape data in his research and teaching at Saint Mary’s.

“This is about as close as you can get to time travel without a DeLorean,” says the associate professor of archaeology. Instead of going Back to the Future, the texture mapping technology offers a fresh approach to viewing the past, showing in stunning detail how our farmlands and fortresses looked hundreds of years ago.

In a current project, Fowler shows how Fort Anne National Historic Site would have looked in 1706, combining a centuries-old military map with a 3D terrain model created from current aerial Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data. 

“Airborne LiDAR has become a powerful tool for archaeologists to tell the stories about our heritage while also providing historical information for us to study and interpret,” says Fowler, who teaches in the Department of Anthropology.  

LiDAR technology has been around for decades, but the provincial government’s open data model is enabling an explosion of new research in many disciplines. Free LiDAR data is now available for much of Nova Scotia through GeoNOVA’s DataLocator Elevation Explorer portal. Aircraft mounted with LiDAR transmitters and receivers fly over landscapes across the province, emitting pulses of light energy. This provides detailed data about the ground surface, and archaeologists can filter out trees and other high vegetation to see a bare surface model.

To process LiDAR data, Fowler’s go-to is the Surfer surface mapping platform from Golden Software of Golden, Colorado. He has been using it for years to visualize geophysical survey data, and more recently to collate and analyze LiDAR data with old maps. The technology “essentially drapes historical maps over digital 3D models, creating a vivid visualization of the former landscape,” he explains.  

For his Fort Anne images, Fowler used high-resolution scans of historic maps of the fortress: a 1706 military map from France’s National Archives, and a 1753 map from the Library of Congress, showing the site under British rule. He put them through a georeferencing process in a Geographical Information System (GIS) program, then used LiDAR data to create a ‘bare Earth’ 3D surface model of the area’s current topography, minus vegetation and buildings. Combining them in Surfer created a 3D map revealing the original layout of buildings within the fort’s ramparts and beyond.   

“Interestingly, most of the fort’s buildings no longer exist, but some structures still stand today in [the town of] Annapolis Royal and are among the oldest buildings in Canada,” says Fowler.

Fowler hopes to unearth new information about Fort Anne and its surroundings. As he has in Grand Pré and other projects, he can use the new 3D imagery as a guide to return with Ground Penetrating Radar to further investigate what remains hidden beneath the surface.

“Dr. Fowler’s research demonstrates the value of visualizing and modeling multiple diverse data sets to gain deeper scientific insights,” adds Blakelee Mills, CEO of Golden Software.

In another study of the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site, Fowler used a map dating back to 1745, after the New England siege. Though Parks Canada rebuilt much of the town’s outer wall during the 20th century, LiDAR data shows evidence of the craters left when the British military attempted to demolish the site in the mid-1700s.

Aside from its research benefits, fun, and aesthetic value, this approach to historical mapping holds great potential for explaining landscape histories with vivid visualizations.

“Rather than asking someone to imagine a past environment, we can digitally render it in 3D, resulting in a much more immersive experience of the past,” says Fowler.

“As a teacher of history, archaeology, and heritage resource management and interpretation, I am thrilled that these tools are becoming more affordable and user friendly. We are presently integrating them into several of our archaeology courses, including Archaeological Remote Sensing, Landscape Archaeology, and Cultural Resource Management Archaeology.”

For more details on the Fort Anne project, read Dr. Fowler’s articles on LinkedIn and Facebook. Follow his updates on Twitter at @ArchInAcadie.  

Entrepreneurship student wins Frank H. Sobey Award

The Sobey School of Business is thrilled to announce Morgan Baker-Tucker, a fourth year Entrepreneurship student, has won a Frank H. Sobey Award for Excellence in Business Studies. Morgan is one of nine business students from Atlantic Canadian universities who have been named recipients of the generous $30,000 awards. 

The winners of the Frank H. Sobey Award for Excellence in Business Studies were chosen from 32 exceptional nominations provided by the Deans of their respective business schools, based on their entrepreneurship, supporting the communities in which they live and work, their employment experience and academic excellence.

Morgan exhibits the entrepreneurial spirit of Atlantic Canada, saying her career aspiration is to run her own non-profit, ideally here on the East Coast. She says that winning the Frank H. Sobey Award has also allowed her to consider going to grad school, an opportunity she wouldn’t have previously thought possible.

Research Expo showcases the exceptional talent of Saint Mary’s researchers

A screenshot from this year’s virtual expo.

Sixteen talented researchers from Science, Arts and the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s University gathered to share their research on March 5, 2021.

Each year Research Expo offers a wide range of topics, and this year’s event —held virtually for the first time—was no exception. Open to both the Saint Mary’s community and the public, Expo had more than 170 registered participants.

Panelists were asked to condense their research—sometimes months or even years in the making—into a three-minute presentation, in the same format as the 3-Minute Thesis competition our graduate students participate in.

The wide range of topics showcases the breadth of research expertise at Saint Mary’s. Professors spoke about their work on measuring dark matter, ultra-fast laser scanning microscopes, the psychology behind video interviews in hiring practices, and Colombian post-traumatic literature. 

Kevin Buchan, Director of the Office of Innovation and Community Engagement (OICE), facilitated a question-and-answer period after each presentation session, providing an opportunity for panelists to offer more detailed explanations of their work.

Events like Research Expo are key to building partnerships across different departments within the university as well as external partnerships. OICE is looking forward to continuing to highlight the excellent research happening here at Saint Mary’s University.

The Office of Innovation and Community Engagement (OICE) at Saint Mary’s facilitates research relationships between faculty members and government departments, private companies, industrial associations and international agencies. To learn more about the Research Expo and the Office of Innovation and Community Engagement, click here.

An evening across the ocean with Doireann Ní Ghríofa

William Wordsworth defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility …” On March 4, the Irish Studies program welcomed acclaimed Irish writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa as guest speaker for its annual D’Arcy McGee Lecture, showing that Wordsworth is not alone in seeing poetry as a matter of feelings and inspiration. 

Ní Ghríofa is a poet and essayist who writes in both Irish and English. Her prose bestseller A Ghost in the Throat, an inventive hybrid of essay and fiction, was crowned Book of the Year at the 2020 Irish Book Awards. She also has six award-winning poetry collections, the most recent of which is Lies (an Irish Times Book of the Year and Irish Independent Book of 2018). 

“To give a lecture like this isn’t something that I’m used to at all,” Ní Ghríofa confessed at the outset of the virtual public lecture, which drew over 100 people. “I’ve no academic expertise that would qualify me to do so, well beyond what I’ve taught myself in quite a muddled way. I’m just a person who has slowly, over many years and with many missteps, taught themselves to become a writer.”

Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Ní Ghríofa added that she came to writing comparatively late in life: “I held a passion for reading, though, much earlier – I was a very bookish child, the kid who wants to bring home more books from the library than my arms could ever carry – but I only began to write in my late twenties, and I’ve never shaken off my astonishment at the fact that a life can take a drastic turn like that, that we can suddenly become absorbed in a new devotion, that feels like it comes upon us totally unexpectedly, and we find that it has changed everything.” 

Through her poetry, Ní Ghríofa explores the journeys of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. In her talk, she revealed how grief and motherhood sparked her way into poetry: “For a long time, I struggled to speak of that grief, but poetry allowed me a way to speak of the pain and longing and the loss that I felt, even after my subsequent children were born, for that first lost pregnancy,” Ní Ghríofa said before reciting a selection from “Sólás” in the book Lies, her collection of poems with a refreshing yet crafty presentation in both tongues.

“This poem grew from the moment I learned that in Irish folklore, the souls of miscarried and stillborn infants were believed to return as little birds – sedge-warblers – to comfort their mothers with birdsong,” she added. 

The poet also explained why her lecture focused on these interconnections between grief and literature. “My younger sister Éibhleann died very recently,” she said. “It’s such a painful loss, and something I can’t really bring myself to speak about very much. It’s a particularly lonely time to lose a family member, with the pandemic, when we’re are deprived of the company and comfort of others. But my writing practice has helped me through these difficult days and kept my head above water, if only barely some days, by connecting again with how grief has been such a deep source of my work.”

After thanking her audience in both Irish and English, Ní Ghríofa reminded us that reading and writing poetry is good for healing and transformation: “[Poetry] has never failed to bring me comfort, even now, as we persevere through such dark, uncertain times.”

Saint Mary’s researcher looks at teaching spelling and reading in a new way

Saint Mary’s University psychology department professor Dr. Nicole Conrad.

A researcher at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax is studying a fundamental skill in education: learning to read.

Dr. Nicole Conrad, a cognitive psychologist and professor in the Psychology department, has received a prestigious federal research grant to pursue how spelling facilitates the development of reading skills in elementary school children.

A $92,000 Insight Grant from the federal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) agency will allow her to pursue a research project titled “Spelling matters, too! The role of spelling practice on the development of reading skill.”

Conrad’s project involves research in elementary schools focusing on how memory is involved in the process of reading. This research will continue virtually with families around Nova Scotia, with COVID-19 safety precautions in mind.

“I am looking at how spelling and reading develop, interact, and help or facilitate each other,” says Conrad. “This is the first of a longitudinal study, tracking their relation over a period.”

“When I talk about what kids are learning when spelling, it is about how they are putting that information into memory, storing it, and accessing it at a later time when they are reading.”

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) awarded Dr. Nicole Conrad of Saint Mary’s University a $92,000 Insight Grant to continue her research that’s essential to the betterment of instructional practices for Canadian teachers..

Conrad’s undergraduate students play an integral role in this research, administering reading and spelling tests to elementary school children—while practicing vital research techniques themselves.

In one study the researchers first teach words with specific orthographic or letter patterns to early readers. After a period of time, they retest the children to study the effect of learning the patterns of letters — ick, ing, for example — on their word reading and reading comprehension.

 “Decoding words is critical,” says Conrad. “Our written language represents our oral language, so at an early age children must learn how reading and spelling map together.”

She notes English is one of the most challenging languages to master.

“It is very inconsistent in terms of the mappings between the letters and sounds. We have letters that make more than one sound, and we have sounds represented by more than one letter. We want to determine how spelling might aid with learning these mappings,” she says. “I usually start working with kids in Grade 2, and by that point there are kids who understand that they are not strong readers. When they struggle to read it harms their self-confidence, which is heartbreaking to see.”

SSHRC is a federal research funding agency that promotes and supports post-secondary based research and training in social sciences and the humanities. The Canadian agency recognized Conrad as an established national leader in research devoted to understanding reading.

Conrad’s research looks at the underlying mechanisms of how children learn to read, with an ultimate goal of creating best practices for Canadian teachers through greater understanding of how children learn language.

“There is vast variability in teaching our kids to read,” says Conrad. “A public inquiry by the Ontario Human Rights Commission is currently underway, examining whether teaching practices in Ontario are based on what science says works.”

Along with her students, Conrad eagerly awaits the results of this public inquiry, expected this spring.

“My students and I will then evaluate the implications of these results on instructional methods used in Nova Scotia and incorporate these findings into our research.

Going beyond the laboratory and getting first-hand research experience in schools is exciting and empowering — bringing everything into perspective.

“I love being able to hire students through multiple programs offered at Saint Mary’s, allowing them to mix their course work with experiential learning and original research,” says Conrad.

Psychology graduates studying under Conrad have pursued their dream careers in clinical psychology, education, school psychology, and speech-language pathology, to name a few.

Conrad says her inspiration to be a professor stems from a love of teaching students to be productive, well-respected citizens. But the “a-ha!” moment for this passion came later in life.

Dr. Nicole Conrad’s son is the inspiration for the current research on the spelling-reading connection.

“My young son makes my research come alive. It is magical when I watch him read. He puts into perspective everything I learned and shows me what I do is real,” she says. “I always wanted a career that made me excited to get up in the morning, and I have met those expectations at Saint Mary’s.”

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This story first appeared in The Chronicle-Herald.

Dr. Sara Malton researching hunger and fasting in the Victorian era

Current cultural dialogues about womanhood and agency are popular topics of inquiry in today’s social science research, yet society’s apparent need to contain the female body has been a poignant issue for centuries. Dr. Sara Malton has been researching the representation of women’s bodies – and women’s physical and psychological health – by revisiting understandings of fasting, starvation and selfhood in 19th-century literature and culture.

Dr. Sara Malton

“This research could help us approach with greater care our thinking about women’s relationships with their bodies and questions of agency and help us critically consider the ways that we tend to pathologize everything,” says Dr. Malton, a Professor in the Department of English Language & Literature.

Malton’s current research focuses on representation of the “fasting girl,” which she describes in her research abstract as “a phenomenon which became the focus of much scrutiny in British, European, and Anglo-American medicine and the popular press, as well as nineteenth-century literature. Fasting girls were frequently purported to survive on nothing but the Eucharist and sips of water often for weeks, months, or sometimes even years. On the one hand, such young women evoked a pattern of behavior that recalled that of earlier miraculous saints, such as Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-80), who was renowned for what was then termed anorexia mirabilis. Yet into the latter decades of the nineteenth century, doctors largely discredited the entire notion of anorexia mirabilis.”

Last summer, Malton received a federal SSHRC Insight Development Grant for her project, entitled “Wondrous Hunger: Salvation, Starvation and the Nineteenth-Century 'Fasting Girl.'” Further investigation on the subject has led her to the Welsh girl Sarah Jacob, a figure who has been addressed by authors ranging from Charles Dickens to Emma Donoghue in her recent historical novel, The Wonder [2016]. Cases such as Jacob’s “were at the nexus of this transition from the perception of self-imposed starvation as redemptive sacrifice to a pathologized illness, anorexia nervosa, which was defined in 1873,” says Malton in her abstract.

With “intermittent fasting” becoming popular again as a weight loss strategy, Malton hopes her research will contribute to current discussions on gender, agency and the body, as well as tensions that remain between medical practice and religious belief.  

“There has been a battle of authority between religion and science, and during the Victorian era there was a desire to pathologize and reclassify. Prior to the late 19th century, there was no specific medical pathology for anorexia. So, who controls these women’s stories? After their deaths we have trial records and medical records, but no records from the women,” Malton explains.

“In a time when we are so polarized in our discussions, I think that it is now useful to add nuance to historical issues where religious discourse relates to scientific discourse,” she adds.

In much of her research, Malton explores the intersections of fiction, finance, technology and law, as well as consumer and commodity culture. Her publications include the book, Forgery in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture: Fictions of Finance from Dickens to Wilde (Palgrave-Macmillan 2009).

She is the current Secretary and a past Trustee of The Dickens Society, and hosted the international 20th Annual Dickens Society Symposium at Saint Mary’s in 2015. A few months ago, Chicago's Remy Bumppo Theatre Company invited her to present Between the Lines: The Chimes, a pre-show lecture for its virtual performance of the 1844 Christmas story by Dickens.

Learn more about Malton’s work at saramalton.com and follow her on Twitter at @saramalton.

SMU receives federal funding for major new chemistry centre collaboration

This week a major $518-million funding initiative from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) was announced by the federal government, giving support to 102 projects at 35 post-secondary institutions across Canada.

Saint Mary’s is proud to be a collaborating partner on a project at Memorial University in Newfoundland. The new ACESCentre: Atlantic Canada Environmental and Sustainable Chemistry Centre was granted $6.7 million in federal CFI funding; Saint Mary’s will see approximately $485,000 of the total. The total value of the project with funding from other organizations will be $16.9 million.

This new world-class research centre will address challenges related to the environment. Many faculty members across campus, including those in Chemistry, Geology, Biology and Environmental Science will benefit from this investment.

At Saint Mary’s the funding will provide the installation of three new instruments for the Centre for Environmental Analysis and Remediation (CEAR) lab, which will serve the university and the greater community for the next two decades.

These significant investments in science and technology will provide our team with the ability to build on a history of collaborative research excellence, with a focus on sustainable chemistry and materials,” says Dr. Christa Brosseau, Chemistry researcher at Saint Mary’s and co-applicant on the project.

“We are grateful to be able to share this knowledge with the next generation of scientists, and with this strengthening of our Centre for Environmental Analysis and Remediation, we look forward to highlighting Atlantic Canada's abilities and goals on an international stage,” says Dr. Brosseau.

“Researchers at Memorial University and Saint Mary’s will collaborate to “address, study and solve problems related to several key, interrelated areas of environmental and economic importance pertaining to sustainable resource development and environmental knowledge in Atlantic Canada,” reads the project proposal.

“The tools requested will provide chemists, ocean scientists, biochemists, and engineers access to world-class instrumentation for characterization of molecules and materials for both sustainable resource processing and product development, and environmental understanding and monitoring.” 

About the Canada Foundation for Innovation

For more than 20 years, the CFI has been giving researchers the tools they need to think big and innovate. Fostering a robust innovation system in Canada translates into jobs and new enterprises, better health, cleaner environments and, ultimately, vibrant communities. By investing in state-of-the-art facilities and equipment in Canada’s universities, colleges, research hospitals and non-profit research institutions, the CFI also helps to attract and retain the world’s top talent, to train the next generation of researchers and to support world-class research that strengthens the economy and improves the quality of life for all Canadians.