Research Spotlight

Building a transnational network of scholars on theory and practice to advance climate justice

Global climate chaos unfairly and disproportionately harms those already living in poverty and in polluted, unhealthy environments.  Accelerating climate-related impacts including extreme weather events threaten cities, public safety, agriculture, infrastructure and human livelihoods worldwide.  Since marginalized populations are first and most severely affected, their situated knowledge is crucial for timely and efficient policy-making.  Governance systems […]

Cleaning up Ontario's hydro mess

One of the central promises in the 2018 platform of the Ontario Progressive Conservative party was to “clean up the hydro mess.” And a mess there certainly is with the costs of subsidies out of general provincial revenues to artificially lower hydro rates now approaching the level of the province’s total pre-COVID-19 deficit. There is […]

Research Projects

Research is at the heart of EUC. The time and effort that faculty members devote to securing research funding and to engaging in knowledge mobilization activities help our faculty, postdoctoral fellows/visitors, and students get involved in innovative research that showcases the interdisciplinarity and the broad relevance of our work. Our research culture, however, goes far […]

Research ethics and accessible research results in the Jane-Finch community

The Jane Finch Community Research Partnership (JFCRP) was established in 2016 through collaborative engagement between members of the Jane Finch community and York University faculty and librarians. Academic research and journalism about Jane Finch have often stigmatized the community, emphasizing needs rather than assets while ignoring community members’ agency, creativity, and activism. Extractive research without […]

The Collective Cost of Anti-Black Racism: COVID-19 and the Boomerang Effect

by Joseph Mensah Abstract: Blacks are the primary scapegoats for the maladies of the world. This might sound melodramatic to those who are privileged enough to steer clear of this reality. The piece does not offer a definitive answer to the tripartite riddle of why Blacks are dying more than the rest, why they are […]

SIHub as a model to develop the next wave of innovative leaders

What are the conditions necessary to successfully graduate School of Community Services and social justice students into leaders in social innovation and social entrepreneurship? What are the conditions necessary for industry partners to successfully support community members from marginalized lived experienced groups to generate their own social enterprises or social innovative projects? What was successful […]

Towards understanding complex plant-climate interactions and evolutionary patterns of life

Being in science and technology means to never stop asking questions, challenge the status quo, take your research to the next level, and lead others to follow their passions. Being a physical geographer means being part of a diverse background of knowledge and research, and inspiring future geographers through leadership and personal experiences. On February […]

'Pivoting' in Arctic Hydrology

by Kathy L. Young The pandemic has changed much in a very short time, and we have all had to adapt in myriad ways, large and small. The word that comes to my mind is “pivot”. Distilleries have pivoted from bottling gin to bottling hand sanitizer, fine-dining has shifted to make-it-yourself-dining, and live theatre exists […]

Foraging ecology of polar bears

February 27 is International Polar Bear Day and in celebration of the event, we feature Gregory Thiemann whose research focuses on the ecology of polar bears and other Arctic carnivores, as well as the effects of climate change on food web dynamics. With a Killam/NSERC postdoctoral fellowship and a PhD in Biology from Dalhousie University, […]

Happy retirement, Lew!

It is with mixed feelings that we received news about the retirement of Professor Lewis Molot who joined then Faculty of Environmental Studies (now Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change) in 1990. Over the next 30 years, Professor Molot’s research interests have been on aquatic systems have included research topics of interests such as acidification, […]