Tag Archives: University of Victoria

Rapid testing in Canada lagging behind

January 14, 2021|CTV News via UVic News

Although there are a number of researchers that are concerned about the effectiveness of self-administered rapid tests, there is still a push to distribute them to ensure Canada is staying on top of frequent testing.

“Health Canada has authorized the sale and importation of COVID-19 tests only for use by health care professionals or trained operators,” Health Canada wrote on its website. “However, we are open to reviewing all testing solutions. This includes approaches that use self-testing kits, to enable individuals with or without symptoms to assess and monitor their own infection status.”

Alexandre Brolo, a chemistry professor at the University of Victoria and acting chair of the department, told CTV News that he’s currently working with a team on the development of two rapid testing products. He reports that one will be an “at-home” test and should be commercialized in April if all goes well. The Copyright and Scholarly Communications Office encourages you to explore more of Dr. Brolo’s important work by visiting UVic’s institutional repository, UVicSpace.

Featured Thesis: Social-ecological change in Gwich’in territory

An M.A. thesis in the School of Environmental Studies, by Tracey Angela Proverbs

https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/11086

Abstract:

In the territory of the Gwich’in First Nation, in Canada’s Northwest Territories, environmental, sociocultural, and economic changes are affecting relationships between communities and the land and water. In this thesis, I used two research projects to explore the impacts of social-ecological change in Gwich’in territory by examining cumulative impacts in the cultural landscape, and determinants of access to fish and well-being. In the first part of my MA, I used spatial overlay analysis to quantify and map: 1) cultural feature intensity, 2) cumulative environmental disturbance, and 3) overlap between disturbances and cultural features. I also interviewed four regional cultural heritage experts, who contributed critical insights into representing Gwich’in cultural features. The first two analyses indicated that overlay methods can facilitate understandings of land use and cumulative impacts, illustrating Gwich’in territory as a cultural landscape encompassing widespread, dense cultural features and diffuse, lower intensity cumulative environmental impacts. The third analysis showed that overlaying cultural feature and disturbance data is a novel, straightforward step to better incorporating cultural impacts in cumulative impact assessments. Many of the changes I mapped are affecting fishing practices central to Gwich’in livelihoods. To better understand these changes, in the second part of my MA I explored the relationship between drivers of access to fish and well-being amidst social-ecological change, by interviewing 29 Gwich’in individuals. My interviews showed that socioeconomic and environmental barriers have decreased access to fish. However, access to fish remains critical and related to well-being, driven by various socioeconomic factors. Many of these factors are reflected in sharing networks and adaptive practices that are encompassed in ecological monitoring and land-based education. These factors may strengthen Gwich’in fishing livelihoods, and highlight the importance of programs like the Rat River Char Monitoring program, and land-based education like the Ganahghootr’onatan – Teetł’it Land Based Learning Project.

To read more, visit UVicSpace https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/11086

*UVic’s open access repository, UVicspace, makes worldwide knowledge mobilization possible. Through this platform, researchers at any institution have access to dissertations (and theses and graduate projects) published by our graduate students. This also makes works available to the interested layperson, who may be engaged in learning more about the research being done at UVic, with no paywall. UVic’s graduate students are doing valuable research every day – but sometimes it goes unsung. Our goal with this series is to shine a light on our students by featuring excellence, one achievement at a time.

The UVic LIbraries ePublishing Services Team

Narratives of Memory, Migration, and Xenophobia

December 17, 2019

Narratives of Memory, Migration, and Xenophobia in the European Union and Canada is the distinct culmination of an intensive cross-cultural academic endeavour that explores how memories of the past are intricately intertwined with present-day realities and future aspirations. The book is based on a range of experiences that stem from a summer field school focusing on landscapes of memory in Hungary, Germany, France, and Canada, in the context of migration and xenophobia. Contributors include Canadian and European academics; directors, researchers, and educators working at various European memorial sites; as well as graduate students from a wide range of disciplines. This cross-disciplinary investigation is based on a symposium as well as a series of concert performances in Europe and Canada highlighting the complex and multi-layered narratives of memory. The ultimate goal of this scholarly undertaking is to understand how agents of memory — including the music we listen to, the (his)stories that we tell, and the political and social actions that we engage in — create narratives of the past that allow us to make sense of ourselves in the present and to critically contest and challenge xenophobic and nationalistic renderings of political possibilities.

Editors

Dr. Helga K. Hallgrímsdóttir is an Associate Professor in Public Administration and a Research Associate in the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria. Her research interests are primarily in historical sociology, comparative political sociology with a focus on grassroots mobilization and social movements claimsmaking. She currently holds a SSHRC Insight grant as Principal Investigator on the link between austerity policies, economic downturn, and the rise of nationalism in Europe; and the principal investigator on a Jean Monnet Erasmus+ grant and SSHRC Connections grant on memory politics in Canada and Europe.

Dr. Helga Thorson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies at the University of Victoria. She is the Co- Director of the I-witness Field School, a 4- week course on Holocaust memorialization in Europe, which she ran for the first time in 2011. In addition, she is the co-founder of “The Future of Holocaust Memorialization: Confronting Racism, Antisemitism and Homophobia through Memory Work” research collective and one of the co-organizers of the group’s first conference at Central European University in Budapest in 2014, followed by a second international conference at the University of Victoria in 2015. Dr. Thorson has received numerous teaching awards including the Faculty of Humanities Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Victoria in 2012; the Excellence in Teaching for Experiential Learning Award at the University of Victoria in 2017; and most recently a 2019 3M National Teaching Award.

Free Download: https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/11314

Purchase a Copy: https://www.uvicbookstore.ca/general/browse/uvic+publications/9781550586503

From Family to Philosophy: Letter-Writers from the Pastons to Elizabeth Barrett Browning

December 16, 2019

A cultural change in the Renaissance freed talented European writers to compose letters rivaling the finest that survived from ancient Rome. This book traces the lives and outlooks of distinguished Britons as revealed in their correspondence. The subjects range from the fierce satirist Jonathan Swift to the long-lived, all-observing Horace Walpole and from the poet and freedom fighter Lord Byron to the tormented but brilliant Jane Carlyle. Accompanying the self-portraits these writers unwittingly create are their many sketches of their contemporaries. Moreover, the views they express on forms of government, feminism, literature, theology, religious toleration, and other topics serve to relate their lives to the progression from the Age of Reason through the Romantic period to the Victorian era.

Dr. Henry Summerfield was born in 1935 at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He has an M.A. from Oxford, where he studied at Exeter College, and an M.Litt. from the University of Durham. From 1962 to 1964, he taught at the M. S. University of Baroda, India, and from 1964 to 1966 at the University of Illinois. In 1966, he emigrated to Canada, and from that year until 2003 he taught at the University of Victoria. His special interests are eighteenth century British literature, twentieth century English poetry, and Bibliography. In addition to articles, he has published That Myriad-minded Man: A biography of George William Russell, “A.E,” (1867-1935); An Introductory Guide to The Anathemata and the Sleeping Lord Sequence of David Jones (1979); and A Guide to the Books of William Blake for Innocent and Experienced Readers (1998).

Free Download: https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/11348

Purchase a Copy: https://www.uvicbookstore.ca/general/browse/print+on+demand/9781550586473

Applying for an Open Education Resource Grant

Applying for an Open Educational Resource (OER) Grant

Thursday, May 2, 2019
12:00 – 1:00 PM

UVic Libraries – Digital Scholarship Commons (DSC)

Thinking about replacing expensive undergraduate texts or materials with open, freely accessible, and customizable alternatives? The 2019 UVSS Grad Class Executive, the LTSI, UVic Libraries, and University Systems has collaborated to offer a new Open Educational Resources (OER) grant to help instructors create or use OERs in their courses. Attend this info session for more information about OERs and how to apply. Application deadline is May 23, 2019.

Open Educational Resource (OER) Grant

Open Educational Resource (OER) Grant
Click on the title for the drop down to find the guidelines, application form, etc.

Interested in replacing expensive undergraduate texts or materials with open, freely accessible, and customizable alternatives? The 2019 UVSS Grad Class Executive, the LTSI, and UVic Libraries has collaborated to offer a new grant for adopting, adapting, or creating OERs.

What is an open educational resource?
Open educational resources (OER) are freely accessible, openly-licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, and research purposes.

The deadline for the OER Grant application is May 23, 2019.