7 minute read
Tuition waiver program first in Atlantic Canada
Tracking butterflies in the quest for eco-justice
Exploring the relationship between monarch butterflies and the people and communities they interact with has transported Dr. Columba Gonzalez-Duarte from Mexico to Halifax, where she is now an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. The monarch butterfly migrates across a large landscape in North America, notes Dr. Gonzalez-Duarte. “I picked communities that were key to the migration of this butterfly because they protect or unprotect the butterfly – like the Corn Belt region, national parks in Canada, or those that host the butterfly in Mexico – and do research with this butterfly.”
Dr. Gonzalez-Duarte has investigated connections between NAFTA’s agri-food industry, labour migration, and the monarch decline. She has also worked with Indigenous communities that co-habit with the butterfly across Canada, the United States, and Mexico, documenting their knowledge and ways of relating with the migratory insect.
“It’s a bit of pushing the boundaries of anthropology. I work with human and not-human communities – in this case the butterfly – and I also work with different communities across North America, so that gives my work as an anthropologist a unique lens,” says Dr. Gonzalez-Duarte.
She notes that there is a large online community built around the idea of protecting the monarch butterfly. “I am in constant connection with what they are doing and what worries them, so I don’t feel like I have this large detachment from my field work sites.”
Dr. Gonzalez-Duarte has also visited communities where she could observe the human-butterfly relationship while completing her PhD in socio-cultural anthropology from the University of Toronto, with a joint degree from the School of Environment. It’s that in-person experience of spending time and collecting data in communities that first drew Dr. Gonzalez-Duarte to anthropology,
and it remains her passion – one she has put her own stamp on.
“I think the most special thing about anthropology is that we get to do field work. We get to go to communities and learn from the communities themselves – that’s where we collect our data. To me, being in the communities was what really called my attention when I started my undergrad,” she says.
Moving forward, Dr. Gonzalez-Duarte intends to share her interest in social justice with her students, and – as seems to be her custom in how she approaches all of her work – she’ll do so with her own special twist.
“There’s an aspect of social justice that I want to bring to MSVU and to my students and future research – something I call eco-social justice,” she says. “How can we achieve justice for humans and non-humans? The butterfly project allows me to explore that in a context of thinking beyond borders – national borders, and those borders that we construe between human and non-humans. That’s my goal and that’s what I mean to pass to my students in my lectures and in my research.” FM
Exploring what physicians have to say about end-of-life care Supporting social and emotional learning in young children
Dr. Tracy Moniz, an associate professor with MSVU’s Department of Communication Studies, is exploring end-of-life care in Canada, particularly how narratives offer insight into health professionals’ perceptions of their experiences and challenges. Through physicians’ stories, obstacles and opportunities are brought to light allowing new views and discussion around quality patient care and physician burnout. Dr. Moniz, a recipient of the Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in 2019, believes that taking care of health professionals — and by extension, patients — requires cultivating a culture of reflective practice.
“Reflection is essential to self-regulated and lifelong learning and to the development of professional identity and expertise,” says Dr. Moniz. “Writing is a process that enables us to reflect on our experiences in ways that achieve deeper meaning to help guide future practice and professional growth.”
The nature of physician work is challenging, and burnout is a pervasive problem among doctors. A Canadian Medical Association 2018 report on the state of physician health in the country found that while 82% of physicians and residents reported high resilience, more than one in four also reported high levels of burnout and one in three screened positive for depression.
The stories that physicians write embody meaningful experiences of practice that they chose to grapple with and share through narrative reflection. This speaks to the power and potential of writing and sharing stories — and its place in combating stress, developing insight, fostering wellness, and promoting resilience. FM Dr. Jessie-Lee McIsaac and the Early Childhood Collaborative Research Centre (ECCRC) at MSVU were awarded a $271,903 grant last year through the Public Health Agency of Canada’s (PHAC) Mental Health Promotion Innovation Fund that supports mental health promotion projects with a focus on reducing systematic barriers for vulnerable populations.
The grant will support the ECCRC’s program titled Engaging families in positive solutions for social-emotional learning during early childhood, led by Dr. McIsaac, Tier II Canada Research Chair in Early Childhood: Diversity and Transitions and assistant professor in the Faculty of Education and Department of Child and Youth Study at MSVU.
The parent training and engagement program is designed to complement an existing social and emotional learning program called the Pyramid Model. The ECCRC has partnered with Nova Scotia Early Childhood Development Intervention Services to deliver online training sessions in early childhood centres in Nova Scotia. The program provides an opportunity for families of young children to strengthen parenting skills in social and emotional learning, healthy relationships, and pro-social behaviour.
Dr. McIsaac’s program of research is focused on enhancing well-being during early childhood by ensuring policy and practice support families as they transition across early learning environments. FM
Dr. Derek Fisher (centre)
Studying the effects of cannabis and caffeine on the brain
Dr. Phillip Joy Dr. Shannan Grant
Nutrition needs of people living with HIV/AIDS
Dr. Derek Fisher, interim associate vice-president of research, and chair of MSVU’s Department of Psychology, is currently researching the effects of cannabis on brain function, specifically, how cannabis alters the ability to suppress unwanted/ unnecessary responses. He is also looking at a measure called “auditory change detection,” a marker of overall auditory cortex function, and a known deficit in schizophrenia, which has been linked to cannabis use in adolescence.
In collaboration with Dr. Tara Perrot of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Dalhousie University, Dr. Fisher is working to understand the effects of caffeine on brain function during various stages of the menstrual cycle. So far, he has found that when estradiol and progesterone levels are high, the effect of caffeine is heightened. He hopes this research will help bring more equity to the psychopharmacology field as a specific focus on women has not often been part of the research.
In 2018, Dr. Fisher was named the recipient of the Presidential Service Award of the EEG and Clinical Neuroscience Society (ECNS). His work has been funded by various agencies, including the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and Research Nova Scotia. FM Dr. Phillip Joy and Dr. Shannan Grant, faculty members and researchers in the Department of Applied Human Nutrition at MSVU, have been awarded a $99,785 grant from Research Nova Scotia to gain an understanding of the nutrition and food needs of people living with HIV/AIDS in Nova Scotia.
People living with HIV/AIDS in Nova Scotia face barriers to meeting healthcare needs such as nutritional requirements. Optimal nutrition is critical to their health and well-being, including maintaining their immune system and preventing disease progression.
Despite this, there is a lack of knowledge and resources in Nova Scotia on the impact of stigma, homophobia, and food security on nutritional programming. Additionally, there is a lack of knowledge about community wants and needs for nutritional programming. Moreover, people living with HIV/AIDS now face novel challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This research will take a community-based approach engaging healthcare workers, several HIV/AIDS service providers, and people living with HIV/AIDS in Nova Scotia. FM
Dr. Kernaghan (standing)
The science behind making better wine
MSVU professor Dr. Gavin Kernaghan has teamed up with researchers Dr. Marcia English, St. Francis Xavier University, and Dr. Lihua Fan, Agriculture and AgriFood Canada, to investigate how locally occurring yeasts can be used by Nova Scotia vineyards to improve wine quality. Through this research collaboration, Dr. Kernaghan is looking at different yeasts present at select Nova Scotian vineyards and investigating how the commercially available yeasts and indigenous yeasts compete. Final results from this study will demonstrate how wine and grape producers can improve their wine quality using indigenous yeasts. Drs. Fan, English, and Kernaghan formed this research partnership through the Grape Growers’ Association of Nova Scotia.
