Podcasts about laurier centre

Calgary Liberal MP George Chahal says he is opposed to the deportation of the truck driver responsible for the Humboldt Broncos bus crash in 2018. He joins Vassy to discuss how is trying to rally support among his colleagues to block the deportation of Jaskirat Singh Sidhu. On todays show: Listen to Vassy's full conversation with a panel of MPs  as they discuss the bombshell report on MPs 'wittingly' taking part in foreign interference and the RCMP's statement on it.  Dan Riskin, CTV Science and Technology Specialist with his weekly segment 'Talk Science To Me'. The Daily Debrief Panel with Robert Benzie, Marieke Walsh, and Hannah Thibedeau. Terry Copp, Canadian Military Historian, Director Emeritus, Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada on the importance of D-Day in a Canadian context. 

Season 4: Episode 1 – Handpicked Presents: Voicing Change - “Introducing Voicing Change”  Featuring: Dr. Andrew Spring, Dr. Eve Nimmo, Enock Mac'Ouma  In this episode of Handpicked: Stories from the Field, we present an episode of the Voicing Change Podcast called, “Introducing Voicing Change.” This episode introduces the project, "Voicing Change: Co-Creating Knowledge and Capacity for Sustainable Food Systems." The project connects community partners, researchers, and students from three regions—Northwest Territories; Migori County, Kenya; and Southern Brazil—to create a Community of Practice exploring local, innovative, and sustainable food systems that centre traditional and Indigenous knowledges.     The project aims to:   -celebrate local food expertise and traditional knowledge that contribute to traditional, equitable, and culturally appropriate community food systems   -amplify the voices of community members and knowledge holders as they share their technical expertise   -spark food systems innovations that flow through the Community of Practice and are adapted and piloted in other areas   The project's goal is to build a healthier, more equitable, and socio-ecologically resilient future that is grounded in sustainable local food systems and centres Indigenous and traditional knowledges.     REGIONS AND KEY PARTNERS   Northwest Territories: Ka'a'gee Tu First Nation, Wilfrid Laurier University, University of Waterloo Southern Brazil: CEDErva and Embrapa Forestry  Migori County, Kenya: Rongo University and UNESCO Chair on Community Radio for Agricultural Education    FUNDING ACKNOWLEDGEMENT   Voicing Change is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.     LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT   We would like to acknowledge that these podcasts have been recorded on the traditional territories of Indigenous peoples in the lands now known as Canada, Brazil and Kenya. Though the histories of colonization, decolonization and reconciliation differ across these contexts, we recognise the ongoing legacies of colonial dispossession that have contributed to the food system injustices that we tackle in this podcast. Nevertheless, this podcast was also inspired by the survivance of traditional food systems based on care for the land and other beings; we acknowledge and pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and inheritors of these ways of knowing and being that continue to benefit us all to this day. In a spirit of reciprocity, we recognise the harms done by colonial powers, including by institutions of higher learning, and aim to cultivate an approach of listening and sharing knowledge rather than extracting and profiting from it.    Contributors  Co-Producers & Hosts: Laine Young & Charlie Spring  Sound Design & Editing: Narayan Subramoniam     Guests  Dr. Andrew Spring  Dr. Eve Nimmo  Enock Mac'Ouma     Support & Funding Wilfrid Laurier University  The Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems Balsillie School for International Affairs Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)    Music Credits  Ali Razmi Keenan Reimer-Watts     Resources  Moving Beyond Acknowledgments- LSPIRG Whose Land Voicing Change  Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems CedErva Rongo University     Connect with Us:  Email: Handpickedpodcast@WLU.ca  Twitter/X: @Handpickedpodc   Facebook: Handpicked Podcast   

We talk a lot about THE food system, but in reality, our world comprises multiple food systems, along with a lot of other kinds of systems, each of them overlapping with, interacting with, and often conflicting with each other. This episode looks at how those interacting systems of systems often produce really challenging types of conflict, whether it's between colonialism and Indigenous foodways, corporate-exploitative capitalism and nature, or technological systems and sustainability. Guests include food educator Jane Clause, artist-activist Zack Denfeld, and the incomparable systems thinker, astrophysicist, and former Green Party of Canada leader, Amita Kuttner. And oh, yeah—Maxime and David eat a piece of Christmas cake, quite a few months after the festive season.Guests:(Courtney) Jane Clause is the projects coordinator for the Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems and the UNESCO Chair on Food, Biodiversity, and Sustainability Studies. She is also the creator and professor of the Indigenous Food Systems course in the Bachelor of Food Studies program at George Brown College in Toronto. Jane is a registered band member of Six Nations of the Grand River.And take a look at the Haudenosaunee food projects Jane mentions in the podcast:Kayanase (greenhouse and native plant propagation business)Chef Tawnya BrantYawékon (catering by Tawnya Brant)the Healthy Roots and Our Sustenance initiatives (article in Canadian Food Studies)Zack Denfeld and Cathrine Kramer founded the Center for Genomic Gastronomy in 2010 and continue to lead many of the research projects the Center undertakes. They are artists, writers, speakers, and prototypers of alternative culinary futures. Their projects, blog posts, and images can be found on the Center's website, along with the Genomic Gastronomy Lexicon, a mind-expanding collection of terms and definitions that the Center's team have compiled in the course of their investigations into food, art, and the life sciences.Dr. Amita Kuttner (they/he) is co-founder of moonlight institute, a non-profit organization that seeks to create frameworks for an equitable and just future. Amita has a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, ran for Canadian parliament in 2019, and served as interim leader of the Green Party of Canada between 2021 and 2022.Host/Producer: David SzantoMusic: Story Modeadditional audio: Maxime Giroux@makingamealpodcastmakingamealofit.com

Many of us struggle with the concept of quantum computing: what it is, what it does, and how it works. So who better to explain it in plain language that our guest this week, Dr Shohini Ghose?Shohini is a theoretical physicist and Professor of Physics and Computer Science at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. She is a pioneer and trailblazer for woman in science, founding the Laurier Centre for Women in Science in 2012.She talked us through the differences between binary computing (or computing in black and white) and quantum computing (computing in greyscale), the challenges of engineering and technology being so far behind the theory, and she explained that quantum information processing (QIP) is about so much more than just faster computing. 

Lee Willingham is our guest for episode 10 of What's Your Forte's Season Three! Dr. Lee Willingham is the Professor of Music Education at Wilfrid Laurier University, where he runs the Music Education program, the Master of Arts program in Community Music and the Laurier Centre for Music in the Community. He co-authored the 2017 book “Engaging in Community Music, An Introduction” as well as the 2021 edited volume “Community Music at the Boundaries”. Lee was editor of the Canadian Music Educators' Association/ACME's journal The Canadian Music Educator/Musicien éducator au Canada for ten years and co-edited the book “Creativity and Music Education”. He is a past president and honourary life member of the OMEA - Ontario Music Educators' Association. We are delighted to talk to Lee about his musical journey, research in the field and community music.

Our guest today is Joshua Lohnes, food policy research director at the West Virginia University Center for Resilient Communities. He's a scholar activist who writes and organizes alongside members of the West Virginia Food For All coalition. Josh will help us shed light on whether and how food charity can be seen as political, why that is a problem for us all, and what those working on the ground can do about it. Interview Summary I'm Charlie Spring, your host for today, I'm a researcher at the Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems. I've been researching the growth of charitable food networks, particularly in the UK, where one thing I've noticed is food banking organizations lobbying national government for funding or for favorable regulatory environments for the redistribution of surplus food as charity. Meanwhile, some UK food charities have become vocal critics of government policy that they see as driving food insecurity. It's clear that the link between charity and state is a complicated and shifting one. My first question is, most people working and volunteering in food charities wouldn't think of their work as political. What's hunger and food charity got to do with politics? Food charity work is absolutely political. Anytime we intervene to assist someone on the brink of food access failure, we're shaping and even reinforcing the everyday realities of the politics that structure our entire food system. While charities may not want to contend with this reality, they are, by default, acting within a set of policies that govern society's response to household food insecurity. Those working in food charity, they know that they're working within an extremely complex food system. They witness this complexity every day, more than most. Charitable food workers are also often aware that this system is driven by profit logics shaped by powerful actors in the food system, including the state and large corporations. Even if individual charities tend to operate on a logic of care over a logic of profit, the fact that they exist as a critical part of our contemporary food supply chains is a testament to the way in which specific interests in society have shaped the laws that govern food charity and the expansion of these food assistance networks over time. Free, volunteer or even low cost labor that charitable food work provides to this system is very much a part of a broader calculation. From that optic, anybody engaged in food charity is really, intimately engaged in a political project around what the future of our food system will be. Thanks for bringing in some of those questions around logics of care over logics of profits and the question of labor in food charity work. Can you tell us a little bit more about how this expansion of food charity happened? How did politics fit into that? I study emergency food networks in a US context from here in West Virginia, one of the places with the highest food and security rates in the country. I've observed this expansion unfold here over the past eight years. I've taken more and more of an interest in the global expansion of food charity. If we look at the US case, specifically, food charity and politics really began to intersect in the 1980s, shortly after the Reagan administration came into power. There was this concerted effort to trim down social services provided by the state like housing, cash and food assistance programs. They were all cut pretty drastically. As a result, people began lining up at churches and other organizations that had previously provided ad hoc intermittent food aid. Those cuts, they were part of a political project, one that's typically branded as trickledown economics. It left many people vulnerable to hunger. As feeding lines expanded and became a regular part of everyday food sourcing strategies for some people, a word got out that there was all of this excess cheese and other surplus food commodities in government storehouses all across the country. Political pressure was put on the Reagan administration to release this public food to local feeding programs. That initiated a process of integrating food charities directly into federal food policy. 40 years on this response has evolved into a multi-billion dollar program we now know as the Emergency Food Assistance program or TEFAP. On the private side, the good Samaritan food donation laws were also written and shaped by corporate donors over the same period to benefit their bottom-line interests. Then we've seen this massive expansion over the past 18 months, as feeding lines expanded once again in the wake of the COVID 19 pandemic. Here, states, private corporations, philanthropies have all invested heavily in charitable food networks. This doesn't just happen. Decisions are made in corporate boardrooms and in government committees to leverage charitable food labor and the infrastructure there, to resolve a major crisis in our food system. One, that simultaneously produces absurd amount of waste and endemic levels of hunger. Unless charities mobilize together to come to this realization and push back against these perverse dynamics, unless there's some concerted political effort to counter these trends, we'll see food charity continue to normalize as a growing part of everyday life in our communities. I think we really need to be asking whom does food charity ultimately serve? Whom are we working for when we distribute food to those in need? We serve our neighbors of course, but we also serve a powerful food cartel that has significant interest in maintaining this status quo. I think we've seen similar trajectories of food charity expansion following welfare cuts in other parts of the world, certainly in the UK, across Europe, in Australia and increasingly in other countries as well. If charity is political then, what can people who are working assistance programs on the ground do to genuinely address food and security issues in their communities through the policy process? That's a great question. I think the answer is organize. Organize and keep organizing. Local food charities are already organized into some kind of structure. Here in the US if you distribute TEFAP food, you are working on behalf of the federal government, which is highly organized. If you redistribute food waste from Walmart or the Kellogg corporation, you're being organized by Feeding America and a board of directors, largely beholden to the interests of these corporations. Food charities need to organize independent movements that have a powerful enough political voice to counter the dynamics currently leading to the expansion of food charity. I think that once food charities realize that their labor, their fundraising, their infrastructure investments bring a significant amount of collective value to this profit driven system, they can begin to leverage and take back that social value to reshape the entire food system from below, for and with the very people to whom they're providing food aid. Now, I don't know how many people remember, but just last year, Donald Trump placed letters in every box of food distributed by the federal government during the pandemic right during election season. He understood food charity as a political space. How are we leveraging the spaces we've created to shape the food system that we want to see in the next 10, 20 or 30 years? These are questions I have because an organized political movement of local food charities that elevates the voices of those they serve, could be a powerful force, reshaping the moral economy of our entire food system. Of course, it involves rethinking what food charity is at its core as well. This will take time, but emergent initiatives like Closing the Hunger Gap here in the US, this Global Solidarity Alliance were part of is beginning to do work. Now, you can also do that work at the local level with your city or your county government. You can do that work by building alliances with other political groups that are already organizing around these issues. We're doing it here through the West Virginia Food for All Coalition, a broad coalition of food banks and farmers and anti-poverty advocates. We need to build alliances that connect across place, connect across space, advocating for social issues that go far beyond food; low wages, poor healthcare, high housing costs, expensive transportation. Now, we can collectively get involved in shaping the laws linked to the production of hunger in our communities. If we don't, you can be sure others will shape them on our behalf. We've seen where that's led these past 40 years, the continued expansion of food charity. I just learned last week that the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona seeded a political campaign to increase minimum wage in the city of Tucson. That just passed last week. Now, that's wonderful. Charities getting involved in the political process to actually reduce the need for charity. Here in West Virginia charities are beginning to get involved in the movement for constitutional amendment around the right to food. That's also really cool. It's wonderful. The first step, I think, is for charities to learn about the policies that undergird their systems. Food charity, why does it exist? Why is it there in the first place? Only then can we organize with purpose. From my vantage point, the right to food movement and the food sovereignty movement already give us all of the language and concepts that we need to begin doing that, no matter what political scale you're organizing at or that you feel your organization can act within. I know from firsthand experience, it's not easy doing politics, but again, anyone involved in distributing charitable food is already involved in a political project. Unfortunately, when you follow the money, it's probably not a project that you actually want to be a part of. I think that the first step in getting involved in this work, politically, is digging into the politics that create the need for food charity in the first place. Listening to this podcast seems like a great way to begin to do that. Thanks for inviting me on to contribute some of these thoughts. I look forward to learning with you as this project moves forward.    

Noreen Donnell is a Certified Music Therapist and Registered Psychotherapist with over 30 years of clinical experience. She graduated from Wilfrid Laurier University with the first Undergraduate (1988) and Graduate (2003) Music Therapy classes and has dedicated her entire career to the field. Her most recent success is the creation of the Commusicate program which is being used by music therapist's internationally! Noreen candidly tells us about her personal journey becoming a certified music therapist. The poignant stories she shares about three unique clients and how music made a pivotal difference in their lives will connect you to why music therapy is a powerful modality for growth and healing. Meet Noreen: Combining her desire to help others with a lifelong study of music, Noreen Donnell has dedicated more than 30 years to her profession as a Certified Music Therapist. Holding a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and Music Therapy and a Master's degree in Music Therapy from Wilfrid Laurier University, she has extensive experience working in different settings helping children and adults with developmental delays and physical disabilities, psychiatric and emotional challenges, and children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. From 2010-2014, she was the Clinical Director of Music Therapy at Blueballoon Health Services. Prior to that position, she operated her own private practise Halton Music Therapy, and has worked at hospitals, rehabilitation centres, and long-term care facilities. She is co-founder of ComMusicate, a successful and unique music-based group intervention program that combines music therapy and speech language pathology to improve communication skills in children. She is also accredited with the Canadian Association for Music Therapy where she served on the national board as Vice President (2004- 2009). Noreen is a Registered Psychotherapist with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario and is a member of the Music Therapy Association of Ontario, Laurier Centre for Music Therapy Research, and the Songwriters Association of Canada. Noreen has also published numerous articles in the Canadian Journal of Music Therapy, and has composed for and produced a children's CD entitled “Singalingalong”. Noreen is currently operating a supervision practise, MusicByDesign, working as music therapist at Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic School Board, and consults to various organizations. As a musician, Noreen plays piano, guitar, violin and percussion. Learn more about ComMusicate here: https://beyondthestudio.ca/commusicate If you are looking for customized online music lessons visit www.beyondthestudio.ca To join the discussion online, please use hashtag #CanadianMusicTherapy

Dr. Amy Shaw discusses her co-edited collection on women and girls in Canada and Newfoundland during WW2. *Dr. Shaw underscores that by listening to the women themselves – the archival sources and oral histories that are available – we can complicate the ways we understand wartime for women in Canada and Newfoundland. We also talk about a photograph from the Royal Canadian Navy and how camaraderie and safety was presented to young women and their parents as being aspects of military service. Buy the book here: https://www.ubcpress.ca/making-the-best-of-it More about Amy: Amy Shaw is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Lethbridge and a research associate with the Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic, and Disarmament Studies. She is the author of Crisis of Conscience: Conscientious Objection in Canada during the First World War and coeditor of A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland during the First World War. Learn more about me at https://www.SamanthaCutrara.com/ Order Transforming the Canadian History Classroom: Imagining a New 'We': https://www.amazon.com/Transforming-Canadian-History-Classroom-Imagining/dp/0774862831 https://www.ubcpress.ca/transforming-the-canadian-history-classroom #MeaningfulLearning #RemembranceDay #ChallengeCdnHist

  Technology is changing all aspects of the food system, including how smaller-scale farmers and food producers connect with different markets. In this episode of Handpicked, Dr. Theresa Schumilas describes her work as the Director of Open Food Network Canada, an open source software platform designed to help producers and eaters build better and more sustainable food systems. You’ll hear about how justice and fairness can inform an activist approach to coding and how non-proprietary software is contributing to food sovereignty in Canada and beyond. Using Open Food Network as an example, Dr. Shumilas explains how software platforms are helping smaller scale producers reimagine their operations by centring community, open source legal protections, and peer-to-peer learning.    Contributors  Co-Producers & Hosts: Amanda DiBattista & Laine Young  Sound Design & Editing: Adedotun Babajide & Laine Young  Research Assistants: Chiamaka Okafor-Justin & Jake Bernstein  Guests  Click the links to learn more  Theresa Schumilas    Support & Funding  Wilfrid Laurier University  The Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems  Balsillie School for International Affairs   CIGI    Music Credits  Keenan Reimer-Watts    Resources  Moving Beyond Acknowledgments- LSPIRG  Whose Land  Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems  Open Food Network Canada  The Open Food Network Global Project     Open Food Network Global Discussion Community    Building Back Better: Infrastructure investments for a greener, more resilient and sustainable country     Racial Justice and Food Systems Resources  Justice in June  Black Women on Black Food Sovereignty Panel, presented by FoodShare Toronto  “When you’re Black, you’re at greater risk of everything that sucks”: FoodShare’s Paul Taylor on the links between race and food insecurity  Seed Change Words From Our Chair: We cannot talk about food without talking about racism  Black Food Insecurity in Canada, Melana Roberts    Connect with Us:  Email: Handpickedpodcast@WLU.ca  Twitter: @Handpickedpodc  Facebook: Handpicked Podcast    Glossary of Terms  Commons  Cultural and natural resources that belong to everyone and that are not privately owned. The Commons can include resources that are in physical and/or digital space, are non-proprietary, and are cared for by a community. The Commons is an important concept in many disciplines, including political ecology, economics, philosophy, law, and the humanities, among others. The Commons can be legally protected, as in, for example, Creative Commons or Open Source licencing  Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)  Community supported agriculture (CSA) is a food sharing model in which people buy a share of a farm and then pick up their dividend as a harvest share every week. Consumers make a commitment to take their share, which could be anything from a particular farmer/producer, and to share the risk of the harvest with that farmer.  Data Sovereignty  The right of people to have access to and power over the data and information associated with their lives, work, or communities.   Food sovereignty   "Food Sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems."   https://viacampesina.org/en/     Global Food Commons   Natural, cultural, and digital resources shared with a global community of food actors. For example, Open Food Network includes a global community of coders creating and sharing code and educational experiences to better their platform.   Informal Economy of Food    Economies of food that emphasize “personal relationships, trust, and non-market values, which are inherently challenging to define and often impossible to quantify.” Informal economies of food are “spaces for non-traditional forms of innovation as well as opportunities for deep insights into social relationships, cultural meanings, and environmental values . . . and challenge us to think of economic systems in far more complex ways than mainstream economic theory would propose.”      http://nourishingontario.ca/the-social-economy-of-food/      Open Source  A non-proprietary legal protection that ensures ownership in the commons. Data, information, code, genetic code, etc. may be deemed Open Source.   Open Source Data   A legal protection that ensures that data that is owned and available for use to everyone in a particular community. In the case of Open Food Network, all users have access to all code associated with the platform but must make any alterations or new code available to all other users.   Peer-to-Peer Learning  Informal learning among members of a community, often based on the concepts of sharing and justice. Peer-to-peer learning may take place through forums, mentorship, or other means.  Platform  Digital infrastructure or framework for different kinds of exchange. For example, Open Food Network is a platform that enables digital food hubs, shops, or farmers markets.  Producer  A food enterprise which makes, grows, bakes, cooks, or produces food which it can supply to other businesses for sale.  https://guide.openfoodnetwork.org/glossary-of-ofn-terms  Production Management  The management of goods, knowledge, technology, employees, money, etc. associated with being a producer.   Sharing Economy  “An umbrella term that describes a wide range of economic activities that have been made possible by technology. Two well-known digital platforms have captured markets in transportation (Uber) and short-term accommodations (Airbnb), but sharing economy businesses are emerging in nearly every sector of the economy. . . . The common element is that they enable individuals to “share” their personal assets or skills. This sharing involves renting personal assets or providing services for a fee through an online application.”  https://www.ontario.ca/page/sharing-economy-framework  Supply Chain  All of the components of a system—including organizations, producers, suppliers, people, resources, activities, information, and infrastructures—that get a product to a consumer.    Sustainable Food System  Food systems that are “socially just, support local economies; are ecologically regenerative, and foster citizen engagement.”  https://fledgeresearch.ca/    Discussion Questions  What is open source data and why is it important to food sovereignty? How is Open Food Network changing the ways that smaller-scale producers do their business? How is it changing the ways that eaters/consumers interact with those farmers?  Justice and fairness are central to Open Food Network’s operations. How are justice, fairness, and activism important to technological and data sovereignty? How is activism taking place at Open Food Network? How and why are open source data and code being protected at Open Food Network? What are the parallels between open source data/code and seed saving movements?  Community is an important concept for technological and food sovereignty—name three ways that community is discussed in this episode and explain why community is so important in each instance.       

In this episode of Handpicked: Stories from the Field, we sit down with Dr. Nevin Cohen, an Associate Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health and the Research Director of the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute in New York City, to explore how to measure food system change. Because of the complexity of our food systems, there are hundreds of metrics that can be used to measure sustainability and food system health. Dr. Cohen explains how food system researchers are rethinking the kinds of metrics they use in order to make important food policy decisions. Dr. Cohen highlights how hidden food metrics, or “Food Metrics 3.0,” can provide us with more nuanced understandings of what is happening in our food systems so that we can work together to make those systems more sustainable.     Contributors  Co-Producers & Hosts: Amanda DiBattista & Laine Young  Research Assistant: Jake Bernstein    Guests   Click the links to learn more about their work  Dr. Nevin Cohen    Support & Funding  Wilfrid Laurier University  The Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems  Balsillie School for International Affairs     Music Credits  Keenan Reimer-Watts   Lee Rosevere    Resources  Moving Beyond Acknowledgments- LSPIRG  Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems  Food: Locally Embedded, Globally Engaged (FLEdGE)  Food Metrics Panel Discussion with Nevin Cohen  CUNY Food Policy Institute Home Page  SNAP Benefits Website  Canada’s Food Policy    References  Cohen, Nevin, et al. “‘B-side’ Food Metrics.” CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute, 2019.   Household food insecurity is a serious public health problem that affects 1 in 8 Canadian households. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://proof.utoronto.ca/  CANADIANS VISITED FOOD BANKS 1.1 MILLION TIMES IN MARCH 2018. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://hungercount.foodbankscanada.ca/overallfindings/    Connect with Us:  Email: Handpickedpodcast@WLU.ca  Twitter: @Handpickedpodc  Facebook: Handpicked Podcast 

  In the very first episode of Handpicked: Stories from the Field, we will introduce you to our podcast and give you a taste of what you can expect from the upcoming season. We sit down with Dr. Alison Blay-Palmer and ask her some tough questions about food systems and the work of the Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (LCSFS). We explore the concept of “sustainable food systems” in depth so that listeners have the context they need to better understand the work that will be highlighted throughout the Handpicked series. In this episode, we also speak with LCSFS Advisory Board members and students about they how define sustainable food systems and what that means for the research and community engagement work they do. We hope this episode leaves you with a better understanding of the work being done by the LCSFS to make our food system more sustainable and whets your appetite for more stories from the field. 

The Italian Campaign during the Second World War remains a subject of controversy—whether it was “Normandy’s Long Right Flank” or a costly stalemate continues to be debated by historians to modern day. Terry Copp, director emeritus of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, believes he has found a new multinational approach to studying the Italian Campaign as he zeroes in on the late 1943/early 1944 Allied assault on the Axis Winter Line. The Winter Line was the site of many famous battles that have since become important national icons, including Ortona, Orsogna, the Rapido River and Monte Cassino. Terry insists to properly comprehend the campaign historians should look passed the national narratives and address the combat operations across the entire peninsula. 

Shell shock has become a stand-in for the experience of all soldiers of the First World War. And it has also become one of the most popular topics of inquiry for historians of the First World War. Mark Humphries, associate professor history at Wilfrid Laurier University and Director of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, has contributed another addition to the ever-growing literature on the topic with his new book on shell shock in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War. Looking at the experience of doctors and patients as well as the medical management system that developed overseas, he investigates how shell shock was managed and mismanaged and how the search for a solution remained elusive. References Mark Osborne Humphries, A Weary Road: Shell Shock in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1918. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. 

The disease detectives investigate the theory that the Spanish flu originated in America and another theory that it came from China: in both cases the flu was first identified as ‘plague’.  Presented by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum and Hannah Mawdsley @HannahMawdsley With: Dr. David Morens, CAPT, United States Public Health Service, Senior Advisor to the Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, USA. www.demystifyingmedicine.od.nih.gov/dm17/m05d16/Biosketch-Morens-David.pdf  John Barry, Author of ‘The Great Influenza: the story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History’. www.johnmbarry.com Professor John Oxford, Blizzard Institute, Queen Mary College, London. Scientific Director, Oxford Media Medicine www.oxfordmediamedicine.co Professor Wendy Barclay, Action Medical Research Chair in Virology, Imperial College London. www.imperial.ac.uk/people/w.barclay/honours-and-memberships.html Dr. Michael Worobey, Louise Foucar Marshall Science Research Professor, Department Head Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona. www.eeb.arizona.edu/people/dr-michael-worobey-department-head Glyn Prysor, Chief Historian at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. @glynprysor Find out more about Noyelles-sur-Mer cemetery: www.cwgc.org/find/find-cemeteries-and-memorials/68500/noyelles-sur-mer-chinese-cemetery Mark Humphries, Associate Professor; Dunkley Chair in War and the Canadian Experience; Director, Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies (LCMSDS), Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada. www.wlu.ca/academics/faculties/faculty-of-arts/faculty-profiles/mark-humphries/index.html The series is produced by Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg Cover art by Patrick Blower. www.blowercartoons.com Readings by: Will Huggins https://voiceovers.mandy.com/uk/voice-artist/profile/will-huggins-1 ‘Going Viral’ is supported by Wellcome www.wellcome.ac.uk / @wellcometrust Follow us on Twitter: @GoingViral_pod    

The disease detectives investigate the theory that the Spanish flu originated in America and another theory that it came from China: in both cases the flu was first identified as ‘plague’.  Presented by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum and Hannah Mawdsley @HannahMawdsley With: Dr. David Morens, CAPT, United States Public Health Service, Senior Advisor to the Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, USA. www.demystifyingmedicine.od.nih.gov/dm17/m05d16/Biosketch-Morens-David.pdf  John Barry, Author of ‘The Great Influenza: the story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History’. www.johnmbarry.com Professor John Oxford, Blizzard Institute, Queen Mary College, London. Scientific Director, Oxford Media Medicine www.oxfordmediamedicine.co Professor Wendy Barclay, Action Medical Research Chair in Virology, Imperial College London. www.imperial.ac.uk/people/w.barclay/honours-and-memberships.html Dr. Michael Worobey, Louise Foucar Marshall Science Research Professor, Department Head Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona. www.eeb.arizona.edu/people/dr-michael-worobey-department-head Glyn Prysor, Chief Historian at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. @glynprysor Find out more about Noyelles-sur-Mer cemetery: www.cwgc.org/find/find-cemeteries-and-memorials/68500/noyelles-sur-mer-chinese-cemetery Mark Humphries, Associate Professor; Dunkley Chair in War and the Canadian Experience; Director, Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies (LCMSDS), Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada. www.wlu.ca/academics/faculties/faculty-of-arts/faculty-profiles/mark-humphries/index.html The series is produced by Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg Cover art by Patrick Blower. www.blowercartoons.com Readings by: Will Huggins https://voiceovers.mandy.com/uk/voice-artist/profile/will-huggins-1 ‘Going Viral’ is supported by Wellcome www.wellcome.ac.uk / @wellcometrust Follow us on Twitter: @GoingViral_pod    

The disease detectives investigate the theory that the Spanish flu originated in America and another theory that it came from China: in both cases the flu was first identified as ‘plague’.  Presented by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum and Hannah Mawdsley @HannahMawdsley With: Dr. David Morens, CAPT, United States Public Health Service, Senior Advisor to the Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, USA. www.demystifyingmedicine.od.nih.gov/dm17/m05d16/Biosketch-Morens-David.pdf  John Barry, Author of ‘The Great Influenza: the story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History’. www.johnmbarry.com Professor John Oxford, Blizzard Institute, Queen Mary College, London. Scientific Director, Oxford Media Medicine www.oxfordmediamedicine.co Professor Wendy Barclay, Action Medical Research Chair in Virology, Imperial College London. www.imperial.ac.uk/people/w.barclay/honours-and-memberships.html Dr. Michael Worobey, Louise Foucar Marshall Science Research Professor, Department Head Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona. www.eeb.arizona.edu/people/dr-michael-worobey-department-head Glyn Prysor, Chief Historian at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. @glynprysor Find out more about Noyelles-sur-Mer cemetery: www.cwgc.org/find/find-cemeteries-and-memorials/68500/noyelles-sur-mer-chinese-cemetery Mark Humphries, Associate Professor; Dunkley Chair in War and the Canadian Experience; Director, Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies (LCMSDS), Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada. www.wlu.ca/academics/faculties/faculty-of-arts/faculty-profiles/mark-humphries/index.html The series is produced by Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg Cover art by Patrick Blower. www.blowercartoons.com Readings by: Will Huggins https://voiceovers.mandy.com/uk/voice-artist/profile/will-huggins-1 ‘Going Viral’ is supported by Wellcome www.wellcome.ac.uk / @wellcometrust Follow us on Twitter: @GoingViral_pod    

Since 2014, there has been an outpouring of literature on the First World War that has moved the field in exciting new directions. Over thirty books have been released by Canadian academic presses over the past almost four years, including titles on conscription, shell shock, and the memory of the war. But before these books were published, Mark Humphries wrote an intriguing 2014 article in the Canadian Historical Review about the historiography of the First World War in Canada and where he thought the field should lead next. Among several other revealing insights, he urged future scholars to adopt a transnational approach that would challenge the exceptionalist literature that characterizes Canadian First World War history-writing. But where has the field gone since? Mark has some thoughts. Mark is the director of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, the Dunkley Chair in War and the Canadian Experience and an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Wilfrid Laurier University. References Tim Cook. Clio’s Warriors: Canadian Historians and the Writing of the World Wars. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006. ------. The Secret History of Soldiers: How Canadians Survived the Great War. Toronto: Allen Lane, 2018. Patrick Dennis. Reluctant Warriors: Canadian Conscripts and the Great War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017. Richard Holt. Filling the Ranks: Manpower in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1918. Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017.  G.W.L. Nicholson. Official History of the Canadian Army in the First World War: Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1919. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1962. Pierre Nora. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations26 (1989): 7–24. Gary Sheffield. Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities. London: Headline, 2001. Hew Strachan. The First World War: To Arms. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Who is Wilfrid Laurier University’s Cleghorn Fellow in War and Society? Mary Chaktsiris dropped by the studio this month to talk about her new position, teaching in a different environment, and her research into Toronto and the Great War. Mary became the Cleghorn Fellow in 2016, following a two-year stint at the Council of Ontario Universities. Teaching four classes at a new university this past year, Mary still finds that community-building is one of the most important parts of being a professor wherever one may be. Focusing on Toronto during the Great War-period in her dissertation, Mary insists that gender is a key component of understanding Torontonians’ responses to the war effort. In doing so, her short but stellar publishing career has been marked by challenging or as she puts it, “complicating” the literature on the First World War. Certainly, patriotism and pro-war sentiment existed in Toronto, but so did the voices of ambivalence. As she moves on as a scholar in history, Mary is now looking into the post-war experiences of veterans living in Canada. Utilizing the valuable resource of the pension records located here at the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, she is beginning to understand the challenges and difficulties that many veterans encountered when they came home. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, Mary says, but many of these challenges that veterans of the Great War faced in the 1920s and 1930s continue to plague veterans of today. Music by Lee Rosevere. References Chaktsiris, Mary G. “A Great War of Expectations: Men, Mothers, and Monsters in Toronto, 1914–1918.” Ph.D. Diss., University of Toronto, 2015. ------. “‘Not Unless Necessary’: Student Responses to War Work at the University of Toronto, 1914–1918.” Histoire Sociale/Social History 47, no. 94 (2014): 293–310.

Eric Story sits down with Dr. Alex Souchen, a post-doctoral fellow at the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies in Waterloo, ON, to discuss his research on munitions dumping in Canada during the 1940s. Alex helps explain the destructive environmental legacies of munitions dumping in Canada and around the world, and speaks about the growing scientific debate surrounding these legacies. Where does the historian fit in these discussions? In a small role, perhaps, says Alex, but an essential one if we are to understand the ecological impacts of munitions dumping.  Towards the end of the conversation, Alex provides some helpful advice for soon-to-be graduating PhDs about how to market yourself as you enter the workforce and the difficult transition from academics to a profession outside of the field of history.  Music credits: Lee Rosevere

Here is the conclusion of the interview with Cpl Frank Reid of the Royal Canadian Regiment. Check out Frank Reid’s and many other blog at The Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies Blogs. Follow me on Twitter @MikeLacroix32 and keep track of my results on #Mike100Workouts You can support this site by shopping on Amazon.  You still enjoy Amazon’s great prices, but a portion of your purchase goes to supporting the show.   Cpl Frank Reid arrives for […]