Thursday, 8 October 2026

Faculty, Research Associates, students working in Canadian Studies, and anyone interested in learning about us are all invited to a day of ‘Welcome Back’ activities at Kaneff Tower on Thursday 8 October 2026!

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11:00am - 1:00pm

Meet & Greet at the Robarts Centre space (across from room 726). There will be snacks and refreshments!

Faculty and Research Associates can sign up for professional headshots.
Email by 5 October: robarts@yorku.ca

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1:00pm-2:30pm

Robarts Lecture in Kaneff 519 “History as Material: Practicing a Poetics of Care and Liberation through the Critical Art of Historical In(ter)vention.” Presented by: Prof. Chantal Gibson

Please RSVP: robarts@yorku.ca

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2:30pm-3:30pm

Reception in Kaneff 519 with Hors d’oeuvres, light refreshments and a jazz duo

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3:30pm-5:00pm

Roundtable Discussion: Black Feminisms Across Borders, 7th floor common area.
With Professor Chantal Gibson (Simon Fraser University-Surrey) and Postdoctoral Fellow Denise Braz (York University).
Chaired by Professor Johanne Jean-Pierre (York University).

Please RSVP: robarts@yorku.ca

Robarts Lecture 2026

Kaneff Tower | Room 519 | Thursday, 8 October 2026 | 1:00pm to 2:30pm
*followed by a reception and roundtable discussion*
Please RSVP: robarts@yorku.ca

History as Material: Practicing a Poetics of Care and Liberation through the Critical Art of Historical In(ter)vention
Presented by Professor Chantal Gibson

Thursday, 8 October 2026 | 3:30 - 5:00 pm
7th Floor Common Area, Kaneff Tower

With Professor Chantal Gibson (Simon Fraser University-Surrey) and Postdoctoral Fellow Denise Braz (York University).
Chaired by Professor Johanne Jean-Pierre (York University).

This roundtable discussion is part of Robarts’ “Welcome Day” series of events.

All are welcome!

To register, please email robarts@yorku.ca

Denise Braz is an Afro-Brazilian scholar whose research focuses on race, gender, territory, memory, and Black political struggles across Latin America and the African Diaspora. She holds a PhD in Latin American Studies from The University of Texas at Austin, United States, and a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her research examines Black women’s political practices, Black Geographies, Black Ethnography, Black social movements, and the ways in which memory and territory shape Black struggles for survival and political transformation. Her work develops the concept of quilombistas to theorize how Black women carry, recreate, and transform political practices historically associated with the quilombo across territories and generations. As a postdoctoral researcher at York University, she examines how these forms of Black women’s political action can challenge dominant understandings of democracy and contribute to reimagining democracy from the experiences, methos, and knowledge produced by Black women. Her broader research interests include Black feminism, public policy, aging, racial democracy, and counter-colonial thought.

Chantal Gibson is an award-winning writer-artist-educator living on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish Peoples. Working in the overlap between literary and visual art, her body of work confronts colonialism head-on, reimagining the voices silenced in the spaces and omissions left by cultural and institutional erasure.

A self-styled ‘Historical In(ter)ventionist,’ Gibson’s altered texts, mixed media installations and graphic poetry bring a critical-care lens to the historical representation of Black womanhood across cultural media. Her acclaimed poetry collections How She Read (Caitlin 2019) and with/holding (Caitlin 2021) appear on curriculum reading lists across the country. Her visual art has been exhibited widely across Canada—including the ROM, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Confederation Gallery PEI, the MacKenzie Art Gallery, the Vancouver Museum of Anthropology, and the Senate of Canada.

A 3M National Teaching Fellow, Gibson teaches in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at SFU and serves as the Faculty Advisor for Equity, Community and Care.

Johanne Jean-Pierre is an Associate Professor who conducts research projects in the fields of education and child and youth studies, particularly with Black Canadian, Francophone minority, and immigrant communities. She currently works on projects pertaining to intergenerational storytelling, first-generation students’ pathways, and youth outreach through arts, specifically animated films. She is a member of the Empowering Next Generation Researchers in Perinatal and Child Health (ENRICH) Network.

Wednesday, 30 September 2026
1:30 - 3:00pm | ONLINE Event on Zoom

“Academic Book Publishing in Social Sciences and the Humanities” with Emily Andrew and Michaela Jacques, editors at McGill-Queen’s University Press. Emily Andrew acquires in Indigenous studies, international studies, law, military history, and political science, while Michaela Jacques acquires in sociology, literary studies, Jewish Studies, Eastern European Studies, and Iberian/Latin American Studies.

This workshop will cover: how to write a convincing proposal, how to navigate peer review, how to help promote and market your book — among other topics.

Register for this free online discussion here:
www.tinyurl.com/RC-30Sep

Thursday, September 24, 2026
Archives of Ontario (York University, 4700 Keele St., Toronto)
This event is in-person only. Registration (required) is FREE.

The conference on Ukraine and Ukrainian Canadians will feature four sessions. The first session will pay tribute to Orest Subtelny, who played a crucial role in analyzing and interpreting the history of Ukraine. Sessions 2 and 3 will focus on Ukrainian studies and the primary sources available to researchers. Session 4 will provide the audience with an opportunity to watch the documentary Horizons of Belonging and to ask questions of its director, Oleksandr Pankieiev. Finally, the fourth and final session will examine the current situation in Ukraine and the role of journalists.

More information will be added to this page over the coming weeks.

If you have any questions, you may contact Carolyn Podruchny (Professor, Department of History) at: carolynp@yorku.ca

Conference sponsors: LA&PS (York University), Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, and the History Department (LA&PS)

To register or to see the conference schedule CLICK HERE.

CALLING ALL ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCHERS AT YORK UNIVERSITY

Join us on Thursday, September 24 at 2:30 pm for The Alternative Campus Tour at Keele Campus led by Professor L. Anders Sandberg. All are welcome, including faculty, staff and graduate students from across the university.

Meeting Place and Itinerary

The Alternative Campus Tour will begin at 2:30pm outside the York University Subway Station. We will meet in the grassy area on the west side of the station. The tour is based on the idea of thinking critically about different sites and aspects of the university; to dig where you stand; to see the campus as a microcosm of the world; and to imagine and record alternative stories about it.

On the Tour we will explore many different sites and features of the campus, including gardens, sculptures, Indigenous sites, woodlots, and the names of buildings and faculties.

Please RSVP here: https://form.jotform.com/262214202707244

Event Sponsors: Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, Environmental Research Group (ERG)

About the ERG

The Environmental Research Group is one of the research clusters in the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies. The group brings together graduate students and faculty at York University studying aspects of the Canadian environment from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives including sciences, social sciences, humanities, fine arts, health, and engineering. We strive to provide a forum for researchers to make connections, share findings and explore key issues in environmental research.

The Symons Report is known for defining Canada Studies as a quest for self-knowledge. Fifty years after the release of this report, the conditions from which the scholarship on Canada originally emerged have shifted away from a singular unifying and exclusionary project. This event will be an opportunity to discuss how both conventional and less conventional scholarship associated with the study of Canada interact with the key lessons and observations of the Symons Report, while also highlighting possible new directions for the study of Canada. Established and emerging scholars will be invited to discuss their shared perspectives towards the development of a critical, decentered and collaborative field of Canadian Studies.

This event includes a book launch of Prof. William Jenkins’ edited collection titled Canada and the Great Irish Famine: Studying the Impacts of Ireland’s Great Famine Immigration to Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025).

Please register here before 4 June 2026

To learn more, please visit: https://www.yorku.ca/research/robarts/is-the-symons-report-still-relevant-after-50-years-framing-current-and-future-directions-in-the-study-of-canada/

Following the Symposium, the International Council for Canadian Studies will be hosting their Awards Ceremony and the Robarts Keynote by Dr. Eve Haque. This is a separate event. More information and registration form can be found here.

https://www.yorku.ca/research/robarts/robarts-keynote-at-the-iccs-presentation-de-robarts-au-ciec/

From 16 to 18 June 2026, the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies will host an online Summer Institute for undergraduate and graduate students focused on the configurations and impacts of socio-legal systems in Canada. The program will feature expert talks and hands-on workshops.

Hannah Arendt, Sherene Razack and others have shown that a lot can be learned about a society by examining who, in practice, has a right to assert their claims and identity through socio-legal frameworks. This is especially the case for individuals and groups whose claims are intersecting or overlapping, who often finding themselves caught in the crack of siloed systems. This year’s Summer Institute will examine how individuals and groups in Canada interact with socio-legal systems in complex and interlocking ways, including based on gender and gender identity, race, class, ability, age, language, sexual orientation, geography, migration status and so forth.

Specialized lectures will cover topics such as consequences of legal frameworks on particular groups, and how individuals navigate such systems for their claims to prevail. Workshops will address critical approaches to online archival work, use of multi-media data collection for analysis, and publishing practices in the humanities and social sciences.

Registration for the Summer Institute will open on 7 January 2026 and last until 29 May 2026.

To register and learn more, please visit https://www.yorku.ca/research/robarts/robarts-summer-institute-2026-online/.  

Participants who attend eight (8) sessions will have the option of receiving a certificate of completion.

International Symposium (online)
Hi/Stories at the Crossroads: Intersectionality and Canadian Narratives
Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, York University, Toronto | May 22, 2026

Intersectionality, as a framework for understanding how multiple social identities and systems of inequality overlap to shape people’s experiences of privilege and oppression, helps explain why the effects of different forms of discrimination are not experienced in isolation but interact in complex ways.  Engaging intersectionality in Canadian narratives involves looking at how overlapping identities (race, gender, class, disability, sexuality, indigeneity, immigration status, etc.) shape characters, communities, and storytelling across genres and media. We are interested in exploring complex colonial and Indigenous sovereignties; multicultural and multilingual fabric; regional diversity and geography; policy and institutional contexts; Indigenous resurgence and reconciliation discourse; diverse media ecosystems and formats; histories of migration, bilingualism, and transnational connections; and Canada as a social project.

This international symposium hopes to open a discussion about the possibilities and limitations that various intersectionality theories set for practicing literary and cultural analysis.

This event is co-organized by the Institute of Literature and New Media, Faculty of Humanities, University of Szczecin; and Institute of Romance Studies, Faculty of Modern Languages, University of Warsaw.

We invite you to join us ONLINE on Friday, May 22, 2026.
Click on the following link to register (free):
https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/qOBLmgdQRYO0NVEHS0cQcw

For the full event schedule:
https://www.yorku.ca/research/robarts/2026/05/09/hi-stories/

CHAIR

• Soma Chatterjee, Associate Professor, Social Work, York University

MODERATOR

• Roopa Desai Trilokekar, Associate Professor, Education, York University

SPEAKERS FROM THE RAIS COLLECTIVE

• Ann H. Kim, Associate Professor, Sociology, York University
• Sophie Xiaoyi Liu, PhD Candidate, Sociology, University of British Columbia
• Lori Wilkinson, Professor, Sociology and Criminology, University of Manitoba
• Jean Michel Montsion, Professor, Department of Global & Social Studies, York University

DISCUSSANT

• Lisa Brunner, Research Associate, Centre for Migration Studies, University of British Columbia

This event is co-sponsored by Fernwood Publishing and the York Centre for Asian Research.

Gateways to Trade: Global Value Chains and Governance in Canadian Cities

16 April 2026, 1:00 pm EST (Zoom) | Register Here

A book launch presented by the CIVIS: Urban Governance and Citizenship
Research Cluster, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies

Join us for a book launch with the authors of Gateways to Trade, a groundbreaking study investigating the role of global value chains, infrastructure, and governance in four Canadian cities, and the corresponding challenges posed to urban democracy.

This talk will be moderated by Patricia Wood (Faculty Lead, CIVIS).

Authors

Dorval Brunelle, Retired Professor, Sociology, Université du Québec à Montréal

Claudia De Fuentes, Professor, Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary’s University

Peter V. Hall, Professor, Urban Studies, Simon Fraser University

Jean Michel Montsion, Professor, Global and Social Studies, Glendon College

Discussants

Mariana Valverde, Professor, Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto

Sergio Montero, Associate Professor, Geography & Planning, University of Toronto

Jean Paul Addie, Associate Professor, Urban Studies, Georgia State University