Ways of Knowing looks to make sense of the world through conversations between Peter Wall Institute Director Kalina Christoff and visiting, as well as local, scholars and artists.
In this episode of the Peter Wall Institute's Ways of Knowing, 2021 Wall Scholar Annette Henry (Language and Literacy Education & the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, UBC) speaks with educator activist Shelley-Anne Vidal about her experiences as a Black woman growing up in and around Vancouver.To date, documentation of the experiences of contemporary African Canadians tends to focus for the most part, on Eastern Canada. British Columbia has its own richness in history, culture and intellectual traditions as well as challenges.As part of her work, Dr. Henry has interviewed a range of Black people who have contributed to civic participation in Metro Vancouver in an attempt to understand both the individual and the broader socio-historical context in which they live. Her interviews are not a “who's who” but rather an attempt at understanding the lives of everyday Black people who share a passion for equity, justice and a love for their black communities.
2021 Wall Scholars Tom Scholte (Theatre & Film), Khanh Dao Duc (Mathematics) and Hannah Wittman (Land & Food Systems) in conversation about a new collaboration that brings together data analysis and visualization from mathematics and the web-based LiteFarm app to help sustainable and diversified farmers around the world manage and keep track of their data more easily.
Wall Scholar Sheila Teves, a molecular biologist at the University of British Columbia, joins fellow 2020 Wall Scholar Jennifer Black to discuss how her background as a Filipina immigrant has influenced her scientific journey and her advocacy towards increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the sciences.
With near daily calls to build back better after the pandemic, what does this mean for a world in crisis and in particular what does it mean for education? 2020 Wall Scholar Dr. Michelle Stack speaks with Dr. Cilla Ross about what happens when we think beyond education as a public good and the possibilities of a cooperative university. Dr. Cilla Ross. is an educator and a sociologist of work and is an Honorary Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham. She co-authored the groundbreaking book on the possibilities of cooperatives in higher education Reclaiming the University for the Public Good: Experiments and Futures in Co-operative Higher Education.
In this episode, Wall Scholar Hoi Kong invites Jinpa Thupten and Jessica Main to explore the actual and potential adaptions of Buddhist practices and concepts for training in professional disciplines, including medicine and law. They also discuss how Buddhist communities adopt institutional structures and address concerns that would be familiar to legal scholars. Finally, they consider how the concept of justice—a central preoccupation of law—might be shaped by the idea of compassion—a central idea in Buddhism.
Mohammed Rafi Arefin, an urban geographer and 2021 Wall Scholar, joins 2020 Wall Scholars Y-Dang Troeung and M. V. Ramana to take us on a fascinating journey through the often overlooked topic of waste. Their conversation discusses the ethics of waste surveillance and pans out to view waste as a product of a much broader system of power, politics and inequality.Dr. Arefin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia researching and teaching on urban environmental politics. His current research on the historical development and contemporary politics of Cairo's solid waste and sewage systems has appeared in the journals Antipode, Progress in Human Geography, and the Annals of the American Association of Geographers.This episode was produced remotely with Drs. Arefin, Troeung, and Ramana recording from separate locations.
Dr. Carl Hansen, CEO of AbCellera Biologics, a technology company that discovered the world's first antibody therapy authorized to treat mild to moderate COVID-19 sits down with 2020 Wall Scholars Dr. Purang Abolmaesumi and Dr. Lara Boyd for a conversation about his unique career path and how he transitioned from academic to innovative corporate leader.Bio: Dr. Hansen works at the interface of engineering, biology and computation. He is the co-founder and CEO of AbCellera Biologics. His significant contributions to society are represented in 90 peer-reviewed manuscripts and abstracts, 75+ patent applications, eight commercial products, two of BC's fastest-growing biotechnology companies and nearly 300 new jobs in BC.
Welcome to the first episode of our second season of the Ways of Knowing podcast. In this episode Dr. Carla Nappi, a historian of the pre-modern world, joins 2020 Wall Scholar Dr. Carrie Jenkins to discuss what happens when academic scholarship and creative art practice collide, and the experience of collaborating across disciplinary and other boundaries.Dr. Nappi is Andrew Mellon Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, and her most recent book is Translating Early Modern China: Illegible Cities (OUP 2021). She and Dr. Jenkins are long-standing academic and artistic collaborators. Their co-authored book of poetry, Uninvited: Talking Back to Plato, was published in 2020 by McGill Queens University Press.
Y-Dang Troeung, an expert on critical refugee studies, joins Kalina Christoff to discuss what's missing from the global refugee narrative – and the more complicated history revealed through combining scholarship and personal experience. Dr. Troeung is a professor of English at UBC and a 2020 Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. Her book, Refugee Lifeworlds: Aphasia and the Afterlife of the Cold War in Cambodia, is forthcoming by Temple University Press.
Jennifer Black, an expert on food systems, joins Kalina Christoff to discuss the role of food in creating connections and communities, the surprising impact of school lunch programs and how the pandemic has affected food security and mental health in Canada. Dr. Black is an Associate Professor of Food, Nutrition and Health in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at UBC and a 2020 Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute. Her research looks at the complex social and contextual factors that shape our attitudes and behaviours around food and eating.For more information on this and other episodes, visit https://pwias.ubc.ca/news/podcasts
Paul Keown, a specialist in immunology and transplantation, joins Kalina Christoff to discuss the many ways our immune systems contribute to our health -- from allergies and the effects of aging to our response to organ transplants and auto-immune diseases. Paul Keown is a Professor in UBC’s Department of Medicine, a practicing physician at Vancouver General Hospital and has served as Executive Director of the BC Transplantation Program and President of the Canadian Transplantation Society.
Diane Srivastava, an expert in ecology, joins Kalina Christoff to discuss food webs and what they can teach us about ecology, climate change, and tipping points in complex systems dynamics.
In this episode, Kalina Christoff is joined by Cole Burton, an expert on wildlife conservation who studies 'charismatic megafauna' – large-bodied terrestrial mammals, such as caribou, wolves, and lions. We humans love displaying those animals on our coins, calendars and stamps, but we are not very good at living alongside them. Prof. Burton discusses the evolving narrative around conservation: from the currently dominant approach of the protective isolation of wildlife, to the potential for closer human-animal coexistence. He shares his thoughts on the complex relationship between human activity and conservation, touching on topics such as overpopulation, overconsumption, COVID-19, and whether conservation is compatible with ideologies of limitless economic growth.Listen to this episode to learn about the opportunities and challenges we face in our coexistence with wildlife, and the importance of working with local communities to create solutions that work for all of us — including the animals that we love, but are simultaneously driving toward extinction.For more information on this and other episodes, visit https://pwias.ubc.ca/news/podcasts
In this episode, Kalina Christoff is joined by sustainable building technology expert Joseph Dahmen to discuss how architecture shapes our health and society, and how our building codes and architectural practices can be improved by making them more akin to the much more adaptable and often much more successful biological codes that natural phenomena such as the COVID-19 virus exhibit. The conversation focuses around an essay recently co-authored by Dahmen and Robert Kleyn, a Vancouver architect and artist. Their essay is titled Building Code, Viral Code: Flexible Models for Architecture and is being submitted for publication in Log 50, a thematic issue exploring the models that architecture produces and the behaviors they elicit and project, published by Anyone Corporation.Joseph Dahmen is a Professor at UBC’s School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture and a 2017 Wall Scholar. His research focuses on creating a more sustainable future in architecture and provides pathways for emergent materials derived from regionally specific biological and geological processes to enter architectural practice.For more information on this and other episodes, visit https://pwias.ubc.ca/news/podcasts
Kalina Christoff and forest ecology expert Suzanne Simard discuss how trees communicate to each other through a sophisticated fungal network of underground connectivity. Simard shares how she arrived at the idea to start testing if trees communicate to each other and how she has turned her passion into her life's work. Listen in as Simard explains the complexity of the hidden world under our feet and what we can learn from the forests around us.Suzanne Simard is a Professor at the UBC Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences and the leader of The Mother Tree Project. She can be heard giving talks for TED and Radiolab.For more information on this and other episodes, visit https://pwias.ubc.ca/news/podcasts
Our guests for this episode are Candis Callison and Mary Lynn Young, professors at UBC's School of Journalism, Writing and Media. Callison is also a faculty member at UBC’s Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. Both are former journalists and the co-authors of the recently published book Reckoning: Journalism's Limits and Possibilities.In this episode, Candis Callison and Mary Lynn Young join Kalina Christoff to discuss the practice of journalism and its role in society. For more information on this and other episodes, visit https://pwias.ubc.ca/news/podcasts
Our guest for this episode is Steven Reynolds, a Critical Care Physician at the Royal Columbian Hospital. Reynolds is also a faculty member at the Department of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology at Simon Fraser University, and a Clinical Professor at UBC’s Critical Care Medicine Program.In this episode, Kalina Christoff and Steven Reynolds discuss the challenges and uncertainties of treating patients during this current pandemic. Reynolds shares how his team is working towards weaning seriously ill COVID-19 patients off mechanical ventilators and what this means for the future of medicine.For more information on this and other episodes, visit https://pwias.ubc.ca/news/podcasts
Our guest for this episode is Lisa Sundstrom, a Professor of Political Science at UBC. Sundstrom is also an associate of the Peter Wall Institute, and an expert on comparatives politics with a focus on Russia and the former Soviet Union as well as Central and Eastern Europe.In this episode, Kalina Christoff and Lisa Sundstrom discuss what western societies can learn from Russia, as well as Eastern Europe, when it comes to coping with hard-ships and protecting civil liberties in times of crisis.
Our guest for this episode is Ninan Abraham, professor in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology and the Department of Zoology at UBC. Abraham is also a member of the Infection, Inflammation and Immunity Research Group, and an expert on immunity to respiratory tract pathogens such as Influenza A, and more recently, COVID-19.In this episode, Kalina Christoff and Ninan Abraham discuss how it's possible for the same pathogen, such as SARS-CoV-2, to produce such vastly different responses in different individuals.
Our guest for this episode is Daniel Coombs, a professor in the Department of Mathematics at UBC and an Associate of the Peter Wall Institute (PWIAS). Coombs is also an expert on multi-scale infectious disease models and a member of the Mathematical Biology Group and the Institute of Applied Mathematics at UBC. In this episode, Ways of Knowing host Kalina Christoff and Daniel Coombs discuss the mathematical modelling of the new coronavirus and how it can be used to improve our response to the current outbreak. The discussion focuses on three recent mathematical models with relevance to COVID-19 public policy:• The Imperial College model that led the UK Government to drastically change its response to the COVID-19 outbreak• A model by researchers at Oxford, emphasizing the importance of antibody testing to determine the extent of already existing COVID-19 immunity in the population• A model by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, demonstrating that minimizing infections and minimizing deaths are not the same thingThis episode was produced remotely, with Coombs and Christoff recording from their respective homes.
Our guest for episode four of the Ways of Knowing podcast is 2019 Wall Scholar Tara Mayer, a Professor in the Department of History at UBC, as well as a former Wall Institute Distinguished Scholar in Residence. Mayer is a cultural historian who is working on new forms of teaching that use discomfort in the classroom to advace learning, for which she recently received a Killam Teaching Prize. She also recently organized am International Research Roundtable on visual literacy at the Peter Wall Institute. Today's conversation is about diversity in classrooms, safe spaces in universities, and new forms of pedagogy.
Our guest for episode three of the Ways of Knowing podcast is Hannah McGregor, an Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University's Publishing Program and host of the Secret Feminist Agenda Podcast. In October of 2019, Hannah co-authored an open letter to cancel a controversial SFU panel discussion titled “How Media Bias Shapes the Gender Identity Debate.” SFU didn't cancel the event, citing its commitment to academic freedom. But the event was relocated to a hotel in downtown Vancouver due to perceived security concerns. Hannah joins us today to talk about the concept and practice of academic freedom, especially as it affects, for better or worse, public conversations around complex and emotionally charged issues.
Our guest for episode two is Dr. Max Cameron, a Professor in the Department of Political Science at UBC and Acting Director of the UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. His research focuses on comparative politics, constitutionalism, democracy, and political economy. His book 'Political Institutions and Practical Wisdom: Between Rules and Practice' was published in 2018. Today's conversation is about the way good institutions depend on wise practitioners, especially at a time of excessive partisanship and the hollowing-out of democratic deliberation.
Our guest for episode one is Dr. Michelle Stack, an associate professor in the department of educational studies at UBC. Her research centres on the role of media in education. Her book 'Global University Rankings and the Mediatization of Higher Education' was published in 2015. Today's conversation is about university rankings and the pervasive yet often unappreciated role they play in higher education.
Welcome to the Ways of Knowing, a podcast produced by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia, housed on the unceded territories of the Musqueam people. On Ways of Knowing, we make sense of the world through conversations with scholars and artists. The podcast is hosted by Kalina Christoff, a professor of psychology at UBC and the director of the Peter Wall Institute.
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