I wish to display art pieces from my collection of hand-painted, nature-themed work at this year’s conference. I am in my final semester with the faculty of Environmental Management at UNB where I have learned the technical details of botany that inform my pieces.

While my science degree has improved my visual art skills, I would not have found this outlet without the support of many communities. Firstly, family is the most prevalent community who encouraged me to practice drawing and bought me my first paints.

I always knew I wanted to express myself and the life I know through painting and my family who raised me in a rural community taught me to treasure nature’s beauty and was the gateway to this passion.

The naturalist community is active throughout the province with many collaborating organizations and their volunteer and job opportunities helped me to continue my life of learning and appreciation for studying nature.

During my time as a vendor at the Garrison Night Market last summer, I had joyous moments of sharing stories with locals and tourists who shared personal stories involving the plants or animals I had painted.

I volunteer at the Connell Memorial Herbarium where I have been fortunate to meet many creative and knowledgeable people who continue to prove to me that the life of a naturalist is one of science and art.

I express this in my work with technical accuracy depicting the beauty and wonder of our natural world which we must protect. I seek to educate and inspire all walks of life with my pieces and would love the opportunity to display them at this conference.

I am a self-taught painter and have learned about the environment from many people with different special interests as well as many books. I create using acrylic paints, pencil colours and ink pens, mostly on paper and I focus on plants native to the Wabanaki-Acadian Forest.

In 2024, The Needham Artist Collective (NAC) was officially formed with the goal of distributing guerilla zines around the Fredericton area.

My presentation highlights the work done by the collective, my work with them as a collaborator, and our aspiration to add to/ become more involved in Fredericton's art scene.

I will cover the history/origins of Movies in Your Head the zine produced by the NAC, as well as zines in general (i.e. how they have been used throughout time to conjure up community involvement/activism).

This presentation fits in with the theme of "learning through community: collaborative approaches to creating and knowing" as the NAC has created an opportunity for locals to have their art featured in the zine, receive constructive feedback on their work, and aid in the production of creating the zines.

Collaborating with the NAC also gives the opportunity to join the CHSR radio show version of Movies in Your Head which takes place every second Wednesday. The driving idea behind NAC is to make zines and media that are as accessible as possible to as many people as possible, both in the aspects contribution and distribution.

The NAC is largely comprised of UNB students and UNB graduates and would of course love to receive more work and ideas from more UNB attendees.

While necessary for the survival of our species, the over-prioritization of STEM disciplines has had severe harmful consequences for our society.

How exactly do we address those consequences and how can we go about dealing with those consequences?

Although modern treaty agreements have been identified as significant sites for reconciliation between the Canadian government and Indigenous peoples, Indigenous legal scholars and political scientists have explored how this reconciliatory potential is limited by Canadian governments reproducing settler colonialism through such agreements.

This research project examines the less-explored topic of specific practices Canadian provincial governments engage in to maintain access to Indigenous land through modern title agreements.

By conducting an analysis of the Government of New Brunswick's ongoing title claims negotiations with Mi'gmaq and Wolastoqiyik nations, this study identifies three mechanisms through which settler colonialism is reproduced through modern title agreements: provincial unwillingness to maintain relationships with First Nations in accordance with historic treaties, settler moves to limit economic gains and land expansion of First Nations, and discourse in legislative debates erasing First Nations’ histories and land rights.

Using discourse analysis and process tracing to survey Indigenous-settler relations in New Brunswick since the 1990s reveals how the provincial government has restricted First Nation sovereignty over land and resources through the cancellation of tax revenue sharing agreements, strained nation-to-nation relationships by ignoring First Nation governments, and obscured First Nation land rights in legislative statements, motions, and government memos which frame Indigenous title as an assault on private property.

Finally, by foregrounding Indigenous scholarship, this study considers the ways in which on one hand, provincial governments’ reconciliatory capacity may be irrevocably limited by their own settler logic, but on the other hand, may also be able to develop anti-colonial protocols for governance in good relation with First Nations.

Future research should consider the ways in which settler colonialism will continually be produced under progressive governments who make symbolic commitments to repairing relations while diminishing critical requirements to repatriate Indigenous land which reconciliation necessitates.

In this talk, I will address philosophical reflection (i.e., the consideration of the underlying conditions and reality of experience) as it has been generally understood in the history of Western civilization.

I maintain that while such reflection has oftentimes been dissociated from embodied practice, this need not and should not be the case going forward.

Toward this end, I will begin by demonstrating that the respective philosophies of Ancient Greek thinker Plato and modern French thinker René Descartes help lay the groundwork for today’s prevailing conception of philosophical reflection as a disembodied and thus abstract procedure.

However, by speaking to my first-person lived experience of farming and all that it entails, I will show that philosophical reflection is an embodied practice and that this practice, and not the disembodied kind, is better able to bring us closer to our bare experience of the world and to help us become more attentive toward it.

In closing, I will briefly touch on the kind of changes that these findings may call upon us to make with regard to how we understand education.

Throughout history, women’s mental health has often been linked to their sexual health. This was especially common in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many women were diagnosed with hysteria, a difficult-to-define ailment that seemed to strictly affect women, these patients would present with any range of symptoms from headaches to hallucinations; nonetheless, each symptom was linked to a malady in the patient’s sexual organs.

Yet, there are no significant medical connections between ailments in a woman’s sexual organs and poor mental health. Still, overactive female sexual organs reportedly causing situations of drastically declining mental health in female populations has been disproven since the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

There were stark disparities in the treatment of women’s mental health and any disorders in their sexual organs. During the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, women’s mental health issues were utterly ignored, and while medicine did evolve within this period, there were no advancements being made in the sphere of women’s health.

Medical professionals were obsessed with discovering new treatments for diseases in men, while simultaneously ignoring the complexities of women’s health issues and attributing their ailments to a fictional disease, like hysteria.

By ignoring the true symptoms being shown by these women, male doctors were able to isolate and diagnose them with fictional diseases to further minimize and belittle women suffering from life-altering conditions like, anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia or even dangerous sexual diseases like syphilis.

In present day, the word “security” has become commonsensical. Although the term is essentially contested, there is a commonality between various theoretical approaches in which security is equated with safety.

As part of Dr. Suzanne Hindmarch’s Fall 2024 International Security in Theory and Practice course, students were tasked with creating a visual that depicted how they view security.

As a Mi’kmaq woman, I am especially inspired by the concept of Etuaptmumk, or Two-Eyed Seeing. I sought to create work that emphasizes the fundamental sectors of security whilst acknowledging how our perspectives shape who we are.

Ways of knowing are not unilateral, and I believe that walking together and using both settler and colonial eyes to see are vital parts in reconciling our nation and promoting a sense of security for all.

This presentation discusses how queer Muslims in diaspora navigate belonging at the intersections of sexuality, gender, Islam, and culture through narrative analysis of three memoirs: Life as a Unicorn: A Journey of Shame and Pride and Everything in Between by Amrou Al-Kadhi, Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H., and Among the Eunuchs: A Muslim Transgender Journey by Leyla Jagiella. Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of borderlands and Gül Çalışkan’s diasporicity, the analysis explores how intersectional identities challenge traditional notions of citizenship and belonging.

Borderlands, as spaces where cultural, racial, and social boundaries intersect, reveal the complexity of negotiating identity (Anzaldúa, [1987] 1999). Diasporicity, with its transnational and fluid approach, unsettles fixed identities and fosters a broader understanding of belonging (Çalışkan, 2022).

Based on findings, these frameworks illuminate how queer Muslims navigate intersectionality and the complex relationship between sexuality and Islam, disrupting dominant power structures in both Western and Islamic contexts.

Promise of Home is a community-based research project that began in 2019 with the goal of making Fredericton a more welcoming place for all immigrants.

Using a story-based approach, the project encouraged immigrants to share their experiences and perspectives on belonging and challenges they have faced while moving to Canada.

In the first two phases, narratives were collected from immigrant youth and families, highlighting their challenges and aspirations.

Phase 3 expanded this conversation to the broader community, bringing together diverse stakeholders to discuss hopes for a more inclusive Fredericton.

Through these discussions, five major themes emerged, identifying key issues that need to be addressed to better support newcomers. Now in its fourth phase, Promise of Home’s research assistants have been conducting a comprehensive policy mapping of organizations and government departments with newcomer initiatives in Fredericton.

This mapping began in September 2024 with the aim of analyzing all existing support initiatives, identifying gaps and overlaps. This presentation will report on our findings so far, highlighting key trends in policy mapping and offering insights into how Fredericton can improve its newcomer support systems to foster long-term belonging and integration.

The majority of sex trafficking in Canada is domestic, meaning that Canadians are most often being trafficked within Canada. Due to systemic inequalities and power dynamics, women and girls make up most sex trafficking victims.

According to Public Safety Canada, from 2009 to 2016, 95% of human trafficking victims were women and girls, 26% of whom were under the age of 18 (2019).

Considering this, my honours research project looks at the gaps in the policies, standards, and legislation that make children and youth in the child welfare system more susceptible to sex trafficking.

Following a literature review of models of care aiming at protecting and preventing sex trafficking of children and youth in child protection services, I am conducting a qualitative content analysis.I am analyzing the child protection policies, standards, and legislation from Manitoba and will present my preliminary findings.

The findings from Manitoba will be compared to the policies, standards, and legislation from New Brunswick in order to identify the gaps as well as the promising practices regarding the sex trafficking of children and youth in child protection services. Once gaps and promising practices are identified, recommendations for strategies and solutions will be made.

Archiving my journey in making a solo, high production radio program, Tuned In chronicles the day by day of an eager university student in the field.

From slide to slide, we will look at the first few steps in radio, the initial concept stages for Connor: le ciné-guide, the personal growth, and the on-radio techniques required for the job.

This project, in culmination of my expansive radio experience and with the Arts 3002 Internship course, is meant not only to document, but to offer context to what it takes to excellent in the audio listening space.

Throughout the PowerPoint presentation, there will be reference pictures, audio clips, with the added in-person commentary. Each broadcast is accessible via the C-média Internet player: My most recent episode, reviewing the French animated picture, J’ai perdu mon corps by Jérémy Clapin.

The Seabound Coast is a suite of poems about different facets of life on the east coast of Canada. These poems include a farewell to Pictou County, N.S., a walk through a graveyard, a letter to Kurt Vonnegut, a vestigial villanelle, the sensation of accidentally walking through a spiderweb, and something lost.

The Seabound Coast speaks to the struggle to make sense of our contemporary world in the context of the East Coast. History, nature, and community-based forms of knowledge are all central themes in these poems, in addition to the fallibility and subjectivity of memory.

Courtney Buder is a first-year English student at the University of New Brunswick. She holds a Foundation Visual Arts certificate from the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, and has creative work forthcoming in Room Magazine, the Queen’s Quarterly and Geist Magazine.

Anthropologist Sam Winter presents 4 books written entirely on campus during the terms of Fall 2024 and Winter 2025. Totaling a rounded 150,000 words and a precise 80 chapters.

The first half of the presentation explains the literary decorum of Libra Castle using 16 different definitions provided by the Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms (1977 J.A. Cuddon).

The second half of the presentation summarizes the features and plot of the 4 books. Each book has an in-house cover design.

I began this project by analyzing the work of two contemporary artists I deeply admire: Yukiko Noritake, an illustrator, and Hulda Guzmán, a Dominican Republic-based painter.

I was particularly inspired by Guzmán’s series Be Kind to Your Demons, which explores the inner struggles we all face and how we often fear coexisting with them. Guzmán believes that instead of resisting these inner demons, we should learn to embrace and understand them.

Reflecting on my own experiences, I have realized that negative thoughts can be harmful, primarily to ourselves, and this, in turn, affects those around us. We cannot build strong communities if we fail to treat ourselves with kindness and respect. As an artist, I firmly believe that respect, both for ourselves and others, is fundamental to fostering meaningful connections.

In my painting, I visually represent the internal conflict between positive thoughts and negative emotions. However, there is a hidden message in the painting: the darker side of the subject, a woman, holds something in her right hand. If you closely examine the right side of the painting, you will find it. This explores the power of a destructive thought, word, or action that could ultimately harm our positive selves.

In the theme of collaborative learning, this paper aims to find the existence of queerness in nature to deconstruct the ecological and heteronormative binaries of the early modern period, effectively creating space for queer identities to exist within literature.

The fruitful landscape of Willaim Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis” and the lush imagery of Richard Barnfield’s “Sonnet 17” both allude to and explore the homoerotic tensions between the goddess Venus and mortal Adonis; however, neither pastoral poem includes categorical homosexual acts, that is, sex between same-sex characters.

Instead, these poems use homoerotic desire and natural imagery to queer the poetry. The poems place the two central characters as defying their gendered eroticism, the female Venus becoming the hunter and Adonis the hunted, encouraging a queer and dualistic perspective of the pastoral poem.

Although explicit homosexuality is not necessarily displayed in the poems, queer ecology - a form of examining dualistic perspectives with regards to nature -  is ever-present, represented through a system of binary oppositions such as man/woman, natural/unnatural, and hunter/hunted.

The queer ecology has therefore queered the texts, forcing readers to question what ‘The Natural’, both environmentally and socially, is and how it is represented.

Queerness, ecology, and eroticism blend and blur in these poems as Venus and Adonis subvert heteronormative ideologies; ultimately, through exploring queer erotics, environmental sensuality, and atypical animality Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis” and Barnfield’s “Sonnet 17” destabilize the binary idea of what is ‘natural’, creating an environment where queer bodies may exist.

In this presentation, I will share a portion of my larger undergraduate thesis entitled Transgressive Relations: Sexuality, Gender, and the Gothic in Marina Yuszczuk’s Thirst and Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories.

The thesis as a whole is a comparative literature analysis of these two texts, which are of Argentinian and African-America/Indigenous authorship respectively, to illuminate common themes in queer women’s vampire literature across cultures.

For the purposes of this conference, I will select a chapter of my analysis to present, focusing on the role of gender in these two novels and how the vampire’s transgressive nature presents liberatory alternative ways of living for the female characters within.

I will begin with a short introduction featuring important cultural context and information on the two primary authors to situate them within their culture and the literary world as a whole. I will then move on to a brief discussion of my theoretical frameworks for the project, touching on a few of the important theorists who shape my argument including Carmen Serrano, Nina Auerbach, and Paulina Palmer.

I will keep these two contextual sections relatively broad to account for the varied knowledge base within the audience and ensure that the presentation remains engaging for those with or without experience in literary/cultural studies.

Once I have established the basic grounds, I will argue that the female vampire’s transgression of societal norms creates space for both authors to imagine alternative futures, where their female characters are able to escape the gender norms that constrain them and gain agency.

I will conclude with a brief discussion of how this argument fits into the larger scheme of the project and offer brief comments on the work that is still to come on the thesis at large.

Content warning: This presentation discusses child sexual abuse. This discussion is included to illustrate the topic material.

This study examines the economic and societal impact of the production of Japanese animated child pornography, known as hentai, from a feminist political economy perspective.

Due to the lack of available data on hentai’s share of the total anime industry revenue, its precise economic contribution remains unclear.

However, the broader anime industry, which has faced scholarly criticism for its portrayal of underage girls as sex symbols, generated over US$21.36 billion in 2023, making a 14% increase from the previous year.

This accounted for 0.5% of Japan’s GDP that year, and projections indicate that since the Japanese government sponsors this industry, the anime market will generate US$97.3 billion by the end of 2036.

Driven by global demand, hentai has become the most searched genre on a major pornographic website, surpassing Netflix in user engagement with 2.7 billion visits in November 2022 alone.

Japan’s lack of regulations on animated child pornography has enabled the industry’s expansion, allowing the industry to profit massively at the expense of women and girls’ well-being.

The study shows that the spread of hentai consumption has been highly correlated with a recent massive increase in child sexual offenses in Japan. Moreover, individuals who experience child sexual abuse in Japan are 8.32 times more likely to commit suicide.

The United Nations, along with other global organisations, have urged the Japanese government to impose legal restrictions on hentai. However, for economic growth through anime, including hentai, the government seeks to leverage intellectual property as part of its soft-power initiative known as the Cool Japan initiative.

The study also finds that international media pressure advocating for stricter regulations on hentai has been moderately effective. The study argues that profit maximisation alone should not be the ultimate goal, as some industries such as hentai are harmful to women and girls’ well-being.

Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) is a broad-spectrum disorder characterized by motor, sensory, or cognitive symptoms that cannot be explained by another recognized disorder, previously known as ‘conversion disorder’.

Despite being referred to as a ‘rare’ condition, FND is diagnosed at similar rates at MS and Parkinson’s - with women making up over 70% of patients. This gender disparity raises questions about the gendered nature of the diagnosis, as it is used to categorize women’s distress.

By analyzing 5 narrative interviews from North American women who disagree with their FND diagnosis, recruited from online FND support groups, I answer the following question: how are the health narratives of women on online FND support groups shaped by epistemic injustice?

Preliminary results describe participants’ frustration with biomedicine, preference for natural methods, the importance of a support system, and barriers of communication with care providers. Rather than solidifying biomedical expertise, an FND diagnosis may further entrench women’s distrust of a system they feel overlooks their distress.

By examining narratives of women who navigate these challenges, the study will shed light on the intersection of gender, medical authority, and patient autonomy. Findings have the potential to inform both clinical care and patient advocacy, highlighting the need for greater sensitivity to gender bias in biomedicine.

In early 20th century, Portugal was plagued with a high rate of tuberculosis, driven by rapid urbanization, poor public health measures, and densely populated areas.

This study will consider TB related deaths among 506 individuals from the Coimbra Identified Skeletal Collection (1904 – 1936), currently curated at the University of Coimbra in Coimbra, Portugal. Specifically, social factors, such as location of birth and occupation, may have caused individuals to be more at risk of contracting TB.

It is expected that individuals born and raised in urban environments (i.e., overcrowded living conditions, poor sanitation, and poor ventilation) will have higher rates of TB. Individuals working blue collar jobs (i.e., lower socioeconomic status) are expected to present higher rates of TB when compared against white collar jobs (i.e., higher socioeconomic status).

Also, this study will consider sex-specific genetic resistance to TB by examining the number of TB related deaths between females and males across age groups. Females are expected to have a greater resistance to TB due to sex-related differences in immune system response and hormone levels.

This study is significant because it will identify historic social and genetic risk factors relating to tuberculosis deaths in 20th century Portugal and how modern trends today.

Between the 1700-1800s, London, England was marked by rapid urbanization in response to the Industrial Revolution, creating an environment ideal for the spread of infectious diseases, including smallpox.

Spreading predominantly through respiratory droplets as well as contact with open sores, contaminated materials, and surfaces, smallpox flourished in London where shared living quarters, poor ventilation, and inadequate sanitation allowed for continuous exposure.

Concurrently, the era's industrialization also spurred the invention and introduction of varying public health measures against smallpox including variolation and vaccination to combat mass casualty epidemics.

The St. Brides Cemetery (1770-1849), located on Fleet Street with an additional lower cemetery on Farringdon Street, was excavated in the beginning of the 1990’s by the Museum of London Archaeological Services, due to extensive damage to the church, recovering thousands of archaeological human skeletal remains who were part of London's expanding population, typically of low socioeconomic status.

This study will investigate the prevalence of smallpox deaths within a subset of internments from the St. Brides Skeletal Collection that includes 3,870 females. In general, this study will identify smallpox epidemiological patterns in relation to urbanization and the implementation of public health measures.

Specifically, this study will illustrate mortality trends and health patterns of women living and working in industrial London who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

This study is significant because it will explore the intersection of smallpox disease patterns and early medical interventions, ultimately contributing to our broader understanding of smallpox in industrial London and the disease’s impact on public health, urban development, and gender and social inequality.

Sensitive Content Warning* Intimate partner violence, Intersectionality framework, Qualitative, Semi-structured interviews, Police reporting, Barriers to reporting.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is an increasingly significant topic of research, with ongoing studies focused on its causes, consequences, and contributing factors due to the high number of individuals affected.

Where intimate partner violence primarily impacts women, it is essential to examine the factors that contribute to their vulnerability and reasons for choosing to report/not report their victimization. By taking a qualitative approach, one can understand individual situations that collate into a larger diaspora of experiences that follow similar patterns.

Through conducting semi-structured interviews with young female survivors, this study aims to understand the individual experiences when reporting and the barriers that may limit their options to do so.

Comparing these interviews to larger existing studies provides a more generalized approach that applies to a larger population. Through this comparative analysis, the study can highlight recurring themes, such as societal stigma, fear of retaliation, lack of support from family and friends, and inadequate responses from law enforcement.

Integrating these personal testimonies with similar available data can shed light on the systemic issues that perpetuate intimate partner violence and hinder effective reporting.

The life and death of King Edward II has been the focus of many historical and literary works since the fourteenth century. His reign was plagued with rumors surrounding his choice in favorites and style of governance, which has left a wide variety of texts for generations of writers to make their own assumptions about.

Whether it be a Lancastrian supporter denouncing a King who was supposedly prone to sodomy, a proponent of the theater battling against Puritan values, or a sexologist studying sexual inversion, the reign of Edward II has continuously been used as political propaganda and applied to various contemporary issues as a sort of cautionary tale.

However, as generations of intellects have dissected and warped the realities of his reign, it has become nearly impossible to tease out who Edward II was.

The purpose of this research is not to understand the life of an individual who has been dead for over six hundred years, rather it aims to peel back some of the distortions and contextualize them within their respective time periods, thus exploring how falsities can seep into public memory and academia.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century through the early twentieth century department stores became a symbol of a new consumer culture in Britian. The department store came to symbolize modern consumer culture, the democratization of shopping, and the connection between women and shopping as a feminine activity.

Department stores “were highly visible, through their architectural presence and their ostentatious publicity” leading to them becoming symbols of modernity through “design, in sales methods, in the application of new technology.”

As symbols of modernity, department stores came to represent big capital, the democratization of fashion and more broadly the democratization of consumerism, as well as being sites of imperialism through the offering of ‘exotic’ goods.

Department stores became gendered spaces: for bourgeois women they became sites of pleasure, whereas for middle and working-class women, they offered cheap goods and discounts that allowed them to participate in fashion and offered employment as shop girls.

Department stores also offered women the opportunity to participate as imperial subjects through their offering of ‘oriental’ goods. These stores became intrinsically tied to gender, coming to be viewed as feminine spaces that functioned in part as an emancipatory force by bringing women into the public sphere, to a limited degree, while still enforcing strict gender roles and ideals of women belonging in the domestic sphere.

This essay examines department stores as a means for women to enter the public sphere, as sites of pleasure for bourgeois women, and as sites for women to participate in empire through the purchase of “oriental” goods.

Geoffrey Crossick and Serge Jaumain, “The world of the department store: distribution, culture and social change,” in Cathedrals of Consumption: The European Department Store, 1850-1939, ed. Geoffrey Crossick and Serge Jaumain, (Ashgate Publishing, 1999), 7-8.

This presentation explores the use of music as a method for presenting social science research. The journal article has long been the standard form for publishing scholarly work, but other media have their own strengths.

The presentation uses a multimodal research project on mid-century independent loggers as a case study for translating academic work into folk song.

Next, it reviews comparable processes in existing fields, notably ethnographic vignettes used in cultural anthropology.

Finally, it looks ahead to the potential applications of a multimodal approach in presenting research to resonate more deeply with both academic audiences and the general public, thus adding community outreach to the social sciences.

Play is not just about having fun; it serves crucial purposes in child development. While classical theories suggest that play helps children release excess energy and rehearse adult roles, modern psychological perspectives provide a more nuanced understanding of its impact.

Although there doesn't seem to be a right or wrong way for kids to play, there are undoubtedly ways to make the most of the toys, craft materials, natural elements like sand and rocks, and other materials available that can enhance and diversify the play experience.

This is supported by literature on the importance of play in early childhood which suggests that play serves as a catalyst for emotional, social, cognitive, and physical growth. For children with adverse childhood experiences, play can serve as a means to healthy coping and comprehension of their emotions.

Through this research, I aim to understand the profound significance of play in early childhood in the context of trauma-informed care for children impacted by domestic violence.

Artistic expression can be a powerful medium for communication, self-discovery, and affective development, particularly for children with autism.

This presentation will examine my internship period at Autism Connections, during which I developed and implemented an arts and crafts initiative tailored for the specific needs of children with autism.

I will examine the structure and methods of the program, key findings on engagement and self-expression, and the challenges and adaptations involved.

Additionally, I will reflect on the personal and professional growth that came from this experience, highlighting the broader implications of creative interventions in autism support.

I am Elizabeth Hamilton, a second-year transfer student in the B.CYS at Mount Saint Vincent University. I have been employed at Leeds Street Childcare Center for over a year, but my experience with children dates back to 2014 in various roles.

I have served as an EPA (Educational Program Assistant) within the HRCE (Halifax Regional Center for Education) and operated my afterschool and summer care program from home for many years.

At Leeds, I was introduced to the Pyramid Model through an eighteen-hour Professional Development Module. I created this website to provide educators with an honest and open perspective on the Pyramid Model, share insights from fellow educators, and document my journey toward fidelity.

The project I wish to present is a website that shows the raw honesty of what it is like working in the Early Childhood Education field and how the pyramid model has changed my classroom. Through the elements of interviews with educators, literature reviews, and reflection on my own experiences through trying to reach fidelity, I plan to create a space for educators who, like me, were new to the Pyramid Model to come and feel safe to express their goals, fears, and successes.

Using research on the attitudes and practices of educators, I was able to see that educators in Quebec noticed an improved ability to use Pyramid Model Practices through the process of training and being coached, which resulted in better classroom management and social-emotional skills in the children in their classrooms (Rothstein & Rivard, 2023).

This was something I could relate to the responses I received from my interview process and the things I noticed in my practices. Through other research, I could see the value that the Pyramid Framework had on the children in the classroom and its ability to support those at risk of expulsion due to challenging behaviors. As explained by Vinh et al. (2016), educators following this framework noticed an increase in the program's functioning and a decrease in the behaviors being experienced.

This comes from how pro-social behaviors are taught through the Pyramid Framework. I explain the importance of depositing the children's emotional piggy bank and discuss with other educators what the pyramid model means to them and how it has affected their practices and classrooms. I also share my story through this website to let other educators know they are not alone in their struggles and that, as a community and with the pyramid model framework, we can create better learning environments and feel better about the work we do each day.

The distractor devaluation effect reflects the finding that we give more positive emotional evaluations to previously attended stimuli, and more negative emotional evaluations to previously ignored stimuli.

This effect has been widely examined with visual stimuli (e.g., colourful abstract patterns and faces). However, to date, there is no published research regarding whether the effect extends to the auditory domain. To test this possibility, we are using a selective attention task with complex auditory stimuli (e.g., words and nonwords).

Undergraduate psychology students took part in a dichotic listening task, in which they heard a word presented to one ear (e.g., polar) while a nonword (e.g., lanchy) was presented concurrently to the other ear. In separate blocks, participants responded to target words or target nonwords (counterbalanced across participants).

Participants were asked to indicate to which ear they heard a target sound (e.g., the word). After each localization response, participants were presented with either the target on half of trials or the distractor on the remaining half of trials.

Participants rated the item presented regarding how ‘cheery’ they felt it was on a scale from 1 to 4. We expect that target stimuli will be rated as more cheery than distractor stimuli, such that the distractor devaluation effect will be observed and extends to the auditory domain. This would suggest that this effect generalizes to other sensory modalities.

As people age, changes in sleep patterns and quality are common, including increased nocturnal awakenings, reduced slow-wave (restorative) sleep, and shortened sleep durations. These changes in sleep, in turn, can impact cognitive processing in older adults, including reduced executive functioning (i.e., higher-order cognitive processes, such as attention, inhibition, and working memory, that regulate thinking and behaviour).

Indeed, reduced sleep quality is considered a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease (i.e., the most common form of dementia/major neurocognitive disorder), particularly its pre-clinical stage, mild cognitive impairment (MCI). MCI is characterized by non-debilitating declines on executive functioning, which can serve as an early indicator of future cognitive decline.

The current research explored the relationship between cognitive aging (healthy vs. MCI), executive functioning, and sleep quality in older adults, with the goal of better understanding how these factors interact and contribute to cognitive health.

Participants were 30 native English-speaking adults (aged 60-80 years) from New Brunswick. To assess their cognitive profile (healthy vs. probable MCI), participants completed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA).

As well, participants completed behavioural executive functioning measures (e.g., Wisconsin Card Sorting Task) and the shortened Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). We hypothesized that poorer sleep quality would be associated with reduced executive functioning, especially among the probable MCI sample.

Our preliminary results support this hypothesis. Ultimately, our findings will advance our understanding of the cognitive aging process, and potentially inform strategies centred on maintaining cognitive health in older adult populations.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a chronic neurodevelopmental disorder that affects 5%-9% of school-age children and 3%-5% of adults (Centre for ADHD Awareness Canada, 2025). ADHD is characterized by a persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity, often accompanied by executive dysfunction (Centre for ADHD Awareness Canada, 2025; DSM-5, 2013).

While it is also known that ADHD is associated with difficulties with reading, this area remains relatively unexamined, and few studies have employed naturalistic methods, such as eye-tracking, to examine reading performance in ADHD.

To address this gap in the literature, we investigated the eye-movement reading behaviour of native English-speaking school-age children (8-11 years) and young adults (19-35 years) with ADHD, in comparison to matched typically developing control groups. Using a naturalistic eye-tracking reading task (4 short stories; ~100 words each), we hypothesized that participants with ADHD (regardless of age group) will exhibit more effortful eye movement reading behaviour compared to matched controls (e.g., more/longer fixations, more regressions).

Additionally, we expected to observe developmental differences, with reductions in effortful eye movement reading behaviour in the child vs. adult ADHD group. Ultimately, this study aims to enhance our understanding of ADHD-related reading difficulties and may contribute to the development of resources aimed at improving the reading performance of both children and adults with ADHD.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative autoimmune disorder that causes damage to the central nervous system’s myelin sheaths—a substance responsible for protecting nerve fibres. This disruption impairs the transmission of electrical signals between the brain and body, leading to a variety of symptoms, including muscle weakness, numbness, and mobility issues.

Although the physical symptoms of MS are well-established, relatively little research has focused on its neurocognitive impact. Studies suggest that cognitive impairment in people with MS may manifest as difficulties with attention, memory, and processing speed.

However, one area that has received very little investigation is language processing, especially reading. Considering that people are often first diagnosed with MS when they are of working age, the severity of language impairment (and cognitive impairment more generally) may be a serious barrier to career success and life satisfaction.

As approximately 100,000 Canadians are currently living with MS, developing a better understanding of how their reading and reading-related cognitive functions are affected is crucial. The current study employs eye-tracking methods to investigate eye movement reading behaviour for naturalistic texts (~250 words each) in people with MS, as well as non-linguistic eye movement behaviour by means of an anti-saccade task (a measure of inhibition and working memory).

The sample includes native English-speaking adults (aged 19-55) with relapse-remitting MS (a subtype of MS characterized by relapsing attacks of symptoms interspersed with periods of full recovery) and healthy matched controls. We predict that participants with MS will exhibit more effortful eye movement reading behaviour (e.g., longer fixations, longer reading times), as well as reduced performance on the anti-saccade task (e.g., increased error rates).

Findings from this research may provide valuable insights into how MS impacts higher-order neurocognitive functions, particularly reading and oculomotor control. By identifying specific deficits in reading behaviour and non-linguistic executive functioning, the study may contribute to the development of more targeted diagnostic tools and therapeutic interventions for individuals with MS, potentially improving their cognitive and functional outcomes.

Academics believe that the concept of degrowth offers a viable solution to the global climate crisis and the need for sustainable and equitable development. Degrowth in the Global North refers to reducing material and energy use to live within ecological limits while prioritizing human well-being and a more equitable distribution of resources.

While these ideas sound good in theory, the capitalist model of development, under which the Global North operates, seeks to perpetually maximize profits, making it fundamentally incompatible with degrowth.

Cuba is largely isolated from global capitalism as a result of the US blockade. Although these restrictions have caused significant economic challenges, Cuba's achievements in health, education, and social services, along with its low greenhouse gas emissions and efforts toward food sovereignty, offer a valuable example for the Global South.

While countries in the Global South shouldn’t downscale production and consumption, they should avoid adopting a uniform development model, especially one centered on exporting cheap commodities to wealthier nations. Instead, a degrowth approach in the Global South could follow Cuba’s example by resisting economic and cultural dependence on the Global North and rejecting the capitalist model of perpetual growth.

In recent years, cities have become the core of global climate change mitigation and adaptation and, due to this, are being heralded for creating some of the most promising climate solutions.

However, in recent years, political scientists and geographers have raised concerns that implementing new policy arenas focused on climate planning can sometimes ignore or exacerbate issues of climate justice in cities.

While these questions on inequity have been postulated, few works have been dedicated to an in-depth comparison of the different approaches to and articulations of climate justice in urban climate plans between cities in similar political environments.

Two of the sizable gaps in the literature are a lack of in-depth comparative analysis of climate justice in major Canadian cities and a lack of meaningful implementation of climate justice principles in comparative analysis.

This research aims to fill these gaps in the literature by providing a qualitative analysis of climate justice approaches and articulations in Vancouver and Montreal’s climate action plans based on the two predominant forms of climate justice outlined in the literature: distributive and procedural justice.

In doing so, this research answers two interconnected questions: How are climate justice concepts approached and articulated in climate action plans in Vancouver and Montreal? And why are some cities more likely to introduce comprehensive environmental justice than others?

This thesis finds that Vancouver’s higher engagement with climate justice principles is based on the city’s more extended history of vulnerability and its higher prioritization of community engagement and reconciliation.

After their establishment in 1945 within the American zone of occupation, Jewish Displaced Persons (DP) camps became a setting for a Jewish cultural revival.

This can be seen through the establishment of education systems, a baby boom, and most notably a special type of knowledge creation: documentation efforts through historical commissions.

Most DP camps, including those in Germany, Austria, and Italy, had at least a modest version of these documentation efforts, but there were also historical commissions made in a more institutional sense including the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC) in France, and the Central Jewish Historical Commission (ŻIH) in Poland.

These institutional structures not only facilitated the efforts of smaller commissions, which fell under their domains, but also initiated the first attempts to write professional histories of the Holocaust. Investigations into Jewish historical commissions also serve as a way to evaluate the conditions they fostered for the broad source base they created, and by extension, allows for evaluation of the source base itself.

Additionally, studies of the historical commissions are also crucial to the understanding of the position of the Jewish population in the immediate post-war period. Documentation served to create a community-based archive, but it also provided a way to mourn, seek justice, and rebuild.

Finally, historical commissions also speak to Jewish nationalism, which then sees the work of the commissions not only as developing an archive of the Holocaust, but also more broadly of the Jewish nation.

This work explores how historical recreation can deepen our understanding of early modern history. The project centers on three experiences of historical recreation by the author: the making of a 1670 marmalade recipe from Hannah Woolley’s The Queen-Like Closet or, Rich cabinet stored with all manner of rare receipts for preserving, candying & cookery; knitting a mitten from a reconstructed pattern by James Alexander based on a mitten recovered from the 1845 Franklin Expedition; and illustrating and constructing an altered version of the 1702 Dutch anatomical flapbook

A Survey of the Microcosme, or, The Anatomy of the Bodies of Man and Woman by Johannes Remmelin. It asks questions about what it means to be an active participant in the study of history, and both the limits to historical recreation and how these challenges can be informative.

Fundamentally, this project ensures that it anchors each of these three examples of historical recreation in their context, while exploring how hands-on research adds to an academic understanding of processes, knowledge, and the physical experience of being an early modern individual.

Il est nécessaire de prôner chaque culture et d’encourager l’expression créative en milieu communautaire. Le domaine artistique dans sa pluralité offre plusieurs outils de revendication identitaire et de création libre. La danse qui est une forme de communication non verbale parvient à réunir des personnes venant de divers horizons et de favoriser la confiance en soi.

Melting Pot est un projet de danses africaines qui allie parfaitement diversité et authenticité. Les « dance purposes » s'articulent autour de deux éléments principaux : l'expression du for intérieur et la narration d'histoires au moyen de pas de danse. Pour la réalisation de ce projet, l'aspect théorique de la danse est mis en avant. Les apprenants/participants peuvent développer ou parfaire leur technique grâce à un suivi et des conseils adaptés à chaque personne.

Il y a plusieurs sous-projets qui émanent de Melting Pot. Aimer jusqu’à en Danser est l'un d'entre eux. Généralement présenté au mois de février, AJD permet d’exprimer avec des pas de danse, l’amour et la passion pour la danse, mais aussi l’amour fusionnel qui lie certaines personnes. La deuxième édition aura lieu en février 2025.

Loin des yeux mais près du cœur est un autre sous-projet qui rejoint aussi l’un des thèmes principaux qui est de raconter des histoires à travers des pas de danse. Au moyen de ce sous-projet, l’on veut créer une immersion totale des téléspectateurs dans le quotidien des Ivoiriens (peuple vivant en Côte d’Ivoire).

Depuis le choix des chansons jusqu’au montage des chorégraphies, tous les détails raconteront des anecdotes et des histoires propres à la diversité culturelle de la Côte d'Ivoire. Les représentations suivront majoritairement le format de comédie musicale. Melting Pot 1 et 2 sont également des sous-projets qui ont respectivement été présentés en août 2022 et en février 2023.

Ces deux représentations ont traduit le brassage interculturel et la richesse musicale de plusieurs pays africains. L’Afrique du Sud, le Nigéria, le Ghana, la Côte d’Ivoire ont été représentés à travers des chansons populaires et des chorégraphiques symboliques.

This semester's first year French Language and Literature course has been doing a study on the novel Kuessipan by Naomi Fontaine. This novel does not follow a traditional format, but instead uses fragments of poetry and prose to capture “snapshots” of the story and context surrounding it.

Rather than relying on literal descriptions of the events and setting, Fontaine creates a vivid and emotional environment through pieces ranging from several pages to just one paragraph long.

Together, these pieces give the reader an understanding of the events of the novel, as well as the community in which it's set, the sense of identity tied to life on an Indigenous reserve, and the emotions and headspace that the narrator has regarding various elements of the story.

The idea is that a story does not have to be told from beginning to end, but can be fully, or even more impactfully, represented through a series of written “images.” Our work compares this form of storytelling to the Photovoice method, which uses photographs gathered by a large group or community of people to represent an idea or concept.

The idea is that these photos can provide a more insightful, personal, or unique perspective on the topic than potential written work. Our work will use the Photovoice method to gather thoughts and ideas on the same ideas of community and cultural identity as represented through the poetic fragments of Kuessipan.

A French-language poem written on the subject of the sustainable advantages of community. Emphasis on the harm of individualism to the general population as well as the benefit it provides to those who seek to take advantage of consumerism. Examples used from university community and attention paid to privilege.