Grad Chat - Queen's School of Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs

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

Topic:  Gender Performance in Children's Literature and Media in the Middle East. Overview:  As a writer with an MA in film production, I have explored the child’s perspective in both fiction and screenplays. For the past year, I’ve been engaged with a body of fantasy fiction where the story is told through the eyes of an eleven-year-old girl living in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The heroine s...

Topic:  Treating hunger: medical expertise, nutritional science, and the development of technical food solutions. Overview:  I looked at how, starting with World War II until contemporary times, hunger came to be predominantly seen as a medical object, and food relief was reconceptualized as medical treatment. The scientific community's research of hunger gave it a medical connotation th...

Topic: The role of medicine in investigating stigmata, the (re)appearance of Christ’s Holy Wounds on various bodies, in the context of Catholic canonization procedures. Overview: Stigmata are the focus of this research as they are constantly being interpreted and reinterpreted by various groups, going all the way back to St. Francis. I am focused on 20th century stigmatics, as their lives coincide...

Topic:  The role of medicine in investigating stigmata, the (re)appearance of Christ’s Holy Wounds on various bodies, in the context of Catholic canonization procedures. Overview:  Stigmata are the focus of this research as they are constantly being interpreted and reinterpreted by various groups, going all the way back to St. Francis. I am focused on 20th century stigmatics, as their li...

Topic:  Teacher acculturation in the context of sojourning overseas. Overview:  While overseas teaching can offer many capacity-increasing opportunities plus a chance to see the world, there are many complicating factors that deserve greater scrutiny. For one thing, teacher turnover is higher overseas and in some schools, the rate in which teachers break their contracts is concerning. Am...

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

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

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

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

Topic:  Chronic pain management in primary health care Overview:  The overarching purpose of my thesis is to understand social contributors to chronic pain as well as experiences, barriers, and facilitators to inter-professional chronic pain management in primary health care.

Topic:  The feminist IMPLICATIONS OF maternal and infant health promotion in turkey through the current FAMILY medicine model’s pregnancy-monitoring mandate. Overview:  In my PhD research, I examined the implications of a Turkish health policy that has a national level mandate to register pregnant women from a feminist perspective. The documented objective of this program and its pregnan...

Topic:  Access to primary health care during the military to civilian transition. Overview:  My research is focused on how do Canadian Veterans experience the transition from the Canadian Forces Health Services to provincial primary care during military to civilian transition and how do provincial interdisciplinary primary care teams provide service to Veterans.

Topic:  Rainbow Reflections: Body Image Comics for Queer Men Overview:  Stephanie and her collaborators have put together a comic book anthology. This is an exciting way to explore the consequences of body dissatisfaction to the health of queer men and to highlight the resilience that queer men experience against body dissatisfaction. A launch of the comic books is coming soon to Kingsto...

Overview:  Sue and Paulina discuss the "Stage 1 Cultural Resource Recording Project: Under the St. Paul’s Church Hall, Lower Burial Ground in Kingston" and how you can also get involved. See the  Kingston Lower Burial Ground website  for more details and how to volunteer.

Russell Turner , MSc student in Biology, supervised by Dr Vicki Frieisen. Research topic - Population genomics of an Arctic seabird, the majestic Common Eider sea duck! Christina Braybrook  , MSc student in Geography, supervised by Dr Neal Scott and Dr Paul Treitz. Research topic - Modelling growing season net CO2 exchange for High Arctic mesic tundra using high resolution remote sensing data...

Research:   The history of the UK charity the Pilgrim Trust from 1930-1960 and its efforts to come to the "rescue of the things that mattered in our country" as a self-defined "salvage corps". Overview:  Talking on both Kayla's Master's experience as well as her role now with University Relations and how her graduate experience helped her with this job.

Lila Colston-Nepali  , MSc student in Biology, supervised by Dr Vicki Frieisen. Research topic - Using genomic tools to answer conservation questions in an arctic seabird, the Northern Fulmar Jacqueline Hung  , PhD student in Geography, supervised by Dr Neal Scott and Dr Paul Treitz. Research topic - Seasonal controls on terrestrial carbon and nutrient cycling in the Canadian High Arctic...

Greg Robson  , MSc student in Geography, supervised by Dr Paul Treitz and Dr Scott Lamoureux. Research topic - Risk assessment of permafrost disturbances via differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar (DinSAR) Dana Stephenson  , MSc student in Geography, supervised by Dr Laura Thomson. Research topic - Glaciology, glacier dynamics. Overview:  An introduction to the Northe...

Topic:  Quantifying ecosystem services to enhance the use of Natural Heritage Systems to respond to climate change. Overview:  My research is focused on developing better responses to climate change within the context of land use planning. I am exploring the potential of Ontario’s Natural Heritage System (NHS) planning approach to facilitate this.

Topic:  Constructing holiness and unholiness through writing and reflection of authorial motivations in Christian literary works produced in medieval Byzantium. Overview:  For the successful completion of this project, examining the authorial role in composing hagiographical literature and possible motivations behind hagiographers for promoting the cult of saints is paramount. Medieval B...

Topic:  Influence of an English public examination on classroom teaching and learning: A washback study. Overview:  My research investigates the washback effect of the biggest secondary public English examination in Bangladesh on classroom instruction. The results of the exam work as the gatekeeper to higher studies, better career as well as better financial prospects.

Topic:  Exploring the place of spirituality in Canadian health promotion. Overview:  Advocating a holistic approach, health promotion examines many aspects of health and well-being, including physical, mental, sexual, community, social and ecological health. Despite this holism, there is a noticeable absence of discussion surrounding spirituality and spiritual health. For this thesis pro...

Topic:  The role of diet in gastrointestinal disorders on gut health. Overview:  Our research investigates the role of dietary modification and its effect on gut health including the microbiota, metabolomics and symptom profiles. Want to help out with the research?   Caroline and Sean are looking for volunteers to help with two studies and need some people to act as controls and als...

Topic:  Postprandial zinc isotopic effect in human serum. Overview:  My research will help ensure the best representative sample is taken in future studies investigating the potential of zinc isotopes as biological markers of disease like breast cancer and Alzheimer’s.