DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service, is the world's largest funding organization for international academic exchange. Through its Research Grants program, it provides funding to support doctoral students and post-doctoral research at a German university.

For Barakov, a political science PhD candidate with a master’s degree from York, the funding will help enhance his dissertation via archival research and interviews with local residents. His thesis compares urban outcomes across 35 years of state socialism and 35 years of capitalism in the cities of Berlin, Germany and Sofia, Bulgaria. He will be hosted at Humboldt University in Berlin, working in coordination with the Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies. Following his time in Germany, he will do similar research in Sofia.

“I plan on visiting a variety of different archives specifically with the aim of understanding East German approaches to urban planning, as well as conducting interviews with local residents,” says Barakov.

Muci, also a political science PhD candidate, will be based at the Center for Post-Kantian Philosophy at the University of Potsdam for the first half of his time abroad, before relocating to the University of Münster. He will further his research on Marx and Marxism in Berlin by examining original sources related to the philosopher's doctoral dissertation at the University of Berlin from 1837-41, including letters from editors of a journal with which Marx collaborated.  

“I'm looking at the origins of this conception of the world in the only philosophical work by Karl Marx – his dissertation with which he graduated at the University of Jena in 1841,” explains Muci, whose work is supervised by York Professor Marcello Musto. “I'm interested in broadening the genesis and I need the archives to do that.”

HajiHosseinKhani is a computer science graduate student with a master’s from York, which she earned following an undergraduate degree in her home country of Iran. She will be joining the Institute for Data Science, Cloud Computing and IT Security (IDACUS) at Furtwangen University for a project that will focus on developing a comprehensive decentralized finance dataset. The project will then develop a self-defending AI architecture that will resist adversarial attacks, with stress-testing of the model to follow.

“The goal of this project is that we want to design a secure transformer-based AI model to detect and mitigate the malicious activities in the decentralized finance sector,” says HajiHosseinKhani.

She notes this collaboration follows another that she participated in with the Polytechnic University of Madrid. Her supervisor, Professor Arash Habibi Lashkari, was also a DAAD scholar for his postdoc and helped HajiHosseinKhani design a collaboration with Professor Christopher Reich that saw her start at York’s Behaviour-Centric Cybersecurity Center (BCCC), and finish the final seven months at IDACUS.

Political science Professor Heather MacRae is a DAAD ambassador at York. She is also Barakov’s supervisor and a past DAAD scholar who did graduate fieldwork at the University of Freiburg. She is thrilled to have had so many successful applications from York students.

“This is amazing. To my knowledge, after 15-plus years in my role, it’s the best record we’ve had,” she says. “It really speaks to the way that York International has been promoting the opportunity and working with people in our community. It helps put York back on the radar for German scholarly communities as well.”

MacRae notes the DAAD network is very active in Canada and provides opportunities for future funding.

Muci, who has spent time in Germany doing a joint degree with the University of Bologna in Italy and the University of Bielefeld, is looking forward to knowledge exchange with the research group.

Barakov says the DAAD funding has provided the means to advance his dissertation research.

“The longstanding tradition of academic exchange between Germany and Canada more broadly has very much played a foundational role in securing the possibility to actually go to Berlin in person, conduct work there and engage with their research community,” he says.

Faculty members and students interested in learning more about the DAAD programs and funding available to support research and study in Germany can contact goglobal@yorku.ca.

With files from Suzanne Bowness

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Peniston, an associate professor in the School of Nursing, is the fourth faculty member to hold the fellowship since it was introduced in 2023. Her project, titled “Global Citizenship: Experiential, Decolonial and Transformative Teaching and Learning for a Healthy and Just World,” aims to prepare students to graduate as both skilled health professionals and ethically engaged global citizens.

"We want students to graduate with ethical responsibility and global awareness of what's happening in the world, because there are real-world issues that will impact their profession," says Peniston.

The project unfolds across three interconnected objectives.

The first is professional development for faculty: equipping educators across the Faculty of Health with the tools and frameworks to weave international citizenship themes into their existing courses. The second is Faculty-wide curriculum transformation, co-developing a pan-Faculty general education course and classroom modular teaching resources centred on global citizenship, health equity and sustainability. The third is preparing students to be globally minded by developing their critical thinking, ethical reasoning and ability to work across perspectives, so they graduate seeing themselves as agents of change who feel capable of addressing real-world health challenges.

The most tangible deliverable is a digital global citizenship badge that students can add to their CV or LinkedIn profile, signalling they have engaged meaningfully with health equity, sustainability and social justice during their time at York.

“I want every student graduating from the Faculty of Health to leave not only with expertise in their discipline, but also as a global scholar equipped to engage with the world," says Peniston.

Earning the digital badge will require completing specific elective courses related to global citizenship, including the proposed interdisciplinary pan-University course, participating in a capstone project through York's Cross Campus Capstone Classroom (C4) and engaging with York International's learning partnerships.

Together, these elements are designed to create experiential and digitally connected learning opportunities that reach beyond the classroom.

Peniston also plans to develop a health-focused teaching toolkit to support faculty in incorporating the UN Sustainable Development Goals into their classrooms, building on work she completed through a previous Academic Innovation Fund grant.

Running through all three objectives is a commitment to decolonial teaching practices by centring a broader range of voices, perspectives and ways of knowing in health education.

The decolonial focus is grounded in practical classroom application rather than abstract theory. Peniston points to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action as one framework, and describes integrating Indigenous scholarship, diverse global perspectives and non-biomedical voices into what students read and hear.

"It's bringing in diverse perspectives and materials for students to engage with, inviting Indigenous scholars and other historically underrepresented voices, creating space to listen to those voices that haven't been heard and must be heard," she says.

Peniston will measure success at three levels: changes in student thinking about their professional roles and global responsibilities; increases in the number of faculty incorporating global citizenship modules into their teaching; and the Faculty of Health's ability to demonstrate leadership in socially accountable health education.

"What I find most exciting is the opportunity to work across all the schools in the Faculty of Health to co-create something together," she says. "It's about more than one course or one program; it's about building a shared approach to teaching that connects disciplines and prepares students for the world they're entering after graduation."

With files from Mzwandile Poncana

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Created in collaboration with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), the initiative brings together researchers, community organizations and international partners to build knowledge and capacity to respond to the global water crisis.

With Shooka Karimpour, associate professor at the , as academic director, the academy supports learning, strengthens global dialogue and bridges water knowledge with decision-making and public policy.

"Water insecurity means different things for different groups and different demographics," says Karimpour.

While some water challenges are shared internationally, she says, the academy also works to highlight local issues – from changing ice patterns in Canada to the impact of drought on specific communities elsewhere in the world.

That dual focus shapes everything the academy does. Its free online courses are open to learners worldwide at no cost. Offerings include “On Thin Ice: The Impacts of Climate Change on Freshwater Ice” and “An Introduction to Indigenous Relationships to Water on Turtle Island,” among others.

The courses aim to build practical knowledge of water systems, governance and sustainability at both local and global scales – whether the learner is a student, a community organizer or a policy professional.

In 2024, the academy engaged nearly 8,000 participants from 147 countries through courses, events and partnerships including United Nations conferences, international research collaborations and public exhibitions.

One of its most recent collaborations illustrates how that work translates beyond the classroom. For World Water Day 2026, the Global Water Academy partnered with the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto to present a Microplastics Discovery Station. This brought York scientists directly to the public to demonstrate how microscopic plastic particles move through aquatic ecosystems. Visitors examined water samples, identified microplastics and engaged with researchers first-hand.

For Karimpour, the event captured something central to the academy's mission: moving water science from the digital space into hands-on, in-person public engagement with communities.

There is also work happening with community-based organizations to surface stories and solutions that connect research to lived experience.

A with water activist Swani Keelson and the non-profit Global Water Promise examined how water insecurity in Ghana affects women's physical and mental health – and how limited access to clean water compounds broader inequalities, including period poverty and barriers to education.

"We are providing them with a platform and opportunity to share not only global water insecurity issues, but also innovative solutions that have been developed to mitigate this problem," says Karimpour. "Our goal is to raise awareness and ultimately inspire collective action."

That combination of training, storytelling and public programming reflects how the work aligns with York's broader sustainability agenda.

While its mandate is rooted in Sustainable Development Goal 6 – clean water and sanitation – the issues it engages consistently extend into climate resilience, health, gender equity and governance. The work around the Ghana story advances SDG 5 on gender equality, while the microplastics research supports SDG 14, life below water.

"You can't really confine the impact to one SDG because water availability is such a deep issue," says Karimpour. "It really affects and falls into a lot of other SDGs as well."

Karimpour credits strong institutional support from York, including from University leadership, as central to the academy's growth. Looking ahead, Karimpour says it will continue to build new courses and partnerships, with an emphasis on reaching communities that have the most at stake in global water insecurity.

With files from Mzwandile Poncana

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In 2023, a Canadian-wide review of undergraduate nursing programs found that of all 2SLGBTQIA+ topics, gender-affirming care was the least included in the curriculum. Haghiri-Vijehan, assistant professor in the Faculty of Health, was not surprised given her own experience as an educator.

“The literature shows that 2SLGBTQIA+ communities are not feeling safe and health care spaces are not affirming of their needs,” she says. “We need to include this as part of our education.”

As she considered how to incorporate more affirming care practices into her Community Health Nursing course, Haghiri‑Vijeh turned to an asynchronous learning tool called the Sexual Orientation Gender Identity Virtual Simulation (SOGI VS). The open‑access platform offers five‑ to eight‑hour modules featuring common patient scenarios, using interactive simulations to help learners identify appropriate, affirming approaches to care.

Haghiri-Vijeh integrated the tool into her course, but went a step further when she learned about York’s GNL initiative. The opportunity sparked a new idea: what if this simulation could become the foundation of a shared international assignment? It seemed like a powerful way to bring students in two countries into conversation, help them build intercultural competence and test whether a reflective, virtual global partnership could support that growth. Just as importantly, she hoped the project might serve as a practical model for other nursing programs.

To bring the collaboration to life, the GNL team at York connected Haghiri‑Vijeh with Alice Wong, a nursing lecturer at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU).

The process behind that has now been published in a paper in . Wong is a co-author along with York colleague Karen A. Campbell and York master’s student Camille Alcalde.

In the paper, the team outlines how they shaped the shared assignment. Early on, Haghiri‑Vijeh and Wong came together to learn about each other’s institutions, consult with their universities’ GNL offices, test the simulation tool and work together to design their co‑teaching approach.

They aligned the assignment timelines across their courses while keeping the activities asynchronous to accommodate the 12‑hour time difference. Students were required to complete the SOGI VS modules on their own and write a three‑page reflection connecting the experience to their specific placements or practicums. They also submitted an aesthetic piece of their choosing – a song, image, drawing or other creative representation – to capture how the coursework resonated with them.

From there, the students were paired across the two countries. York and HKBU partners exchanged reflections and offered constructive feedback. Guiding questions encouraged students to explore similarities and differences between their placements, and to reflect on at least one social determinant of health and one UN Sustainable Development Goal. Then students were asked to write a second reflection capturing what they had learned from the dialogue.

As the exchanges unfolded, both faculty and students began to see the impact of the work. Assignments and class discussions showed students learning about approaches to 2SLGBTQIA+ care in another country, but also about the social and institutional contexts shaping those approaches. Faculty gathered informal feedback through conversations and the student assignments, and identified increased awareness around issues such as cis-normativity, power dynamics in health care organizations and the importance of inclusive policies and representation in clinical settings.

When the project concluded, its success prompted Haghiri‑Vijeh to write about it with the hope of inspiring similar efforts across the field. A second paper is already under consideration with another major journal, this time exploring the data more closely to identify implications for nursing education. Three students are also developing autoethnographies based on their participation, and several alumni have presented their work at international conferences.

Haghiri‑Vijeh continues to advance her work through a recent to learn about migrant 2SLGBTQIA+ students’ sense of belonging and well-being.

For Haghiri‑Vijeh, student involvement has been among the most meaningful outcomes.

“Where possible, we engage students in the writing and co‑creation of knowledge,” she says. “Asking them if they would like to be involved builds capacity for them, as well.”

She is eager to continue the initiative, including with partners beyond nursing. Conversations are already underway with U.S.-based colleagues in psychology and social work.

“I'm a big believer that if you're doing anything that might be innovative or helpful for others, you have to share it,” she says. “You have to mobilize your knowledge.”

With files from Suzanne Bowness

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As cities around the world grapple with mounting waste crises, researchers at the York Centre for Asian Research (YCAR) are exploring a critical but often overlooked question: who does the work of managing waste and under what conditions?

At �첥��Ƶ, this question is shaping an emerging area of interdisciplinary research that connects environmental change with labour, inequality and shared global priorities.

Research efforts led by Shubhra Gururani, a political ecologist, associate professor of anthropology and director of YCAR, examine how waste is a technical or environmental problem, but also a deeply political one, structured by histories of colonialism, race, caste and gender.

Waste is increasing at an unprecedented rate, expected to grow by around 80 per cent by 2050, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. “The systems that manage that growth still often rely on precarious labour performed by socially marginalized groups, including migrants, women and caste-oppressed communities,” says Gururani, who explores how these dynamics are embedded in broader processes of urban change and development. "This raises urgent questions about whether shifts to more environmentally sustainable systems may reproduce, rather than resolve, entrenched inequalities.”

A key contributor is Harsha Anantharaman, a postdoctoral Asian studies fellow at YCAR who focuses on informal waste workers – those who make a living by collecting and recycling waste outside formal, regulated systems – in urban India.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic and archival research across four cities for an ongoing book project – To Caste Away Waste: Racialized Labour and the Political Economy of Commodity Detritus in Urban India – Anantharaman studies how policies aimed at formalizing waste work often have contradictory effects. “As formalization policies reshape urban waste economies in India, the efforts to include marginalized groups can paradoxically deepen labour precarity and reproduce entrenched caste hierarchies,” he says.

His research shows that initiatives framed as inclusive, such as bringing waste pickers into formal waste management systems, can make working conditions more insecure. As municipal waste becomes increasingly controlled by governments and corporations as a private resource, informal workers are incorporated into systems that offer recognition without security. These processes reproduce caste-based hierarchies, reshaping labour relations. Anantharaman describes this as informal labour being absorbed into systems while caste-coded recognition continues.

By situating these dynamics within global political economic transformations in urban governance and political economy, his work highlights both the structural constraints faced by workers and the potential for more equitable alternatives. His findings suggest models such as the formal recognition and integration of waste pickers into municipal systems, cooperative-led recycling initiatives and policies that ensure fair wages, social protections and decision-making power for frontline workers.

Through these efforts, Gururani and Anantharaman’s work can contribute to a growing international conversation on the global politics of waste. It brings into focus how environmental governance, labour regimes and social hierarchies intersect in ways that challenge dominant narratives as municipalities and corporations transition to green and sustainable efforts.

“It is critical to remain cognizant of the ways in which such transitions often rely on the invisibilized labour of marginalized communities and reproduce existing inequalities even as they claim ecological progress,” says Anantharaman.

YCAR will continue this dialogue by hosting an international symposium in April titled . Organized by Gururani and Anantharaman, the two-day event will bring together scholars and practitioners working across regions, including South Asia, North Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America.

While the symposium is a closed academic gathering, it will feature two public keynote lectures that are open to the wider community. These talks will extend YCAR’s ongoing engagement with questions of labour, inequality and environmental change, offering an opportunity for broader public dialogue on the stakes of global waste economies. The symposium also contributes to a forthcoming special issue of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.

“Through initiatives like this, YCAR continues to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and public engagement around some of the most pressing challenges of our time, highlighting how questions of waste are inseparable from questions of justice,” says Gururani.

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From 2021-24, Silver was principal investigator on a project that explored how global discourse around gendered risk during the COVID-19 pandemic did – or did not – relate to the lived experiences of young people in Malawi. At that time, the small African country was also contending with the 2020 decision by the U.K. – one of several countries providing educational aid to Malawi – to cut a significant portion of its support as part of austerity measures.

Silver, is also a faculty affiliate in the Faculty of Graduate Studies Development Studies program and examines power dynamics in international development and humanitarian aid structures. She had the opportunity to observe how funding reductions ripple through relationships in schools and programs, which inspired a larger project: investigating how Malawians working in the education sector navigate shifts in austerity.

Silver and her colleagues also wondered what new possibilities for funding, partnerships and education might exist in the wake of these changes.

In December 2024, Silver returned to Malawi to meet with colleagues and explore research focused on post-aid futures. They piloted the study through interviews and discussions with local educators and then, something unprecedented happened, she says.

In March 2025, President Donald Trump shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development, the world’s largest bilateral funder of education, removing support accounting for more than 13 per cent of Malawi’s 2024-25 national budget.

These events prompted a paper – – funded in part by the 2025 Seed Grants in Critical Social Science Perspectives in Global Health Research.

The study examined the emerging impacts of aid cuts and found that while aid can improve lives, it often reinforces unequal power dynamics rooted in colonial histories. Conducted by a transnational team, the pilot explored whether such cuts could open space to rethink international development and support more locally driven approaches.

Silver, however, wanted to take the project further and has now received funding from the Spencer Foundation. The U.S.-based organization that supports education research will provide more than $500,000 for a three-year study entitled Reconfigurations and Refusals: Forging Futures Beyond Aid in Malawi’s Education Sector, allowing Silver to expand on the 2025 paper.

“We were pretty shocked and elated,” Silver says, noting that only nine projects out of 380 submitted for consideration received funding. “It feels very meaningful to be able to do this.”

The research will include three longitudinal case studies involving Malawian educational organizations: a girls’ education NGO, a university and a basic education NGO. Silver and her partners will conduct an extensive interviews with individuals across government and the non-profit sector, capturing a broad range of perspectives from Malawi’s education landscape. The funding will also support local collaborators and enable the hiring of graduate students from �첥��Ƶ and Malawi-based institutions, ensuring the research remains collaborative and grounded in the communities it studies.

The goal is to further understand how educational organizations and communities in Malawi respond to evolving pressures from international donors. “The consequences of aid cuts are very harmful,” says Silver, “but there is also much to be learned from how people respond, as it presents a chance to reimagine possibilities.”

New opportunities may emerge if organizations are no longer required to align closely with donor priorities. The project will examine how these changes create space for local actors to set their own agendas, explore new approaches and potentially redefine education in Malawi. Early insights point to several pathways, including shifting decision-making and funding power to local organizations, developing alternative financing models such as regional partnerships, diaspora support, and private capital and diversifying funding sources to reduce reliance on U.S. aid.

Silver hopes the work will amplify how Malawian organizations are navigating this period of uncertainty and that insights will inform responses from remaining funders, including the Canadian government and international NGOs.

She also aims for the research to reach Canadian, North American and global audiences, offering new perspectives on how education systems can be designed and delivered in times of change. She notes that this is especially important in the current moment of global uncertainty. “Thinking about aid, responsibility and power – and how our world operates – is always important, but it is particularly crucial at this moment of rupture and change,” she says, noting that austerity measures are affecting countries beyond the U.S., including the U.K. Germany.

Despite the potential global reach of the work, for Silver there is also a personal dimension. She has conducted research in Malawi since 2012 and the country holds significance for her. Initially drawn to Malawi as a space to reconsider international development because of the high concentration of international interventions relative to its size, she has come to appreciate how those in the country navigate an inequitable playing field – with lessons that may now serve as a model for the world.

“Seeing how people are navigating this period and the creative ideas they’re developing is both interesting and meaningful to me,” she says.

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“For many people, the experience of TB is debilitating physically, emotionally, socially and financially,” says Nancy Bedingfield, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, who works with Associate Professor Amrita Daftary at the School of Global Health. The way these effects are typically studied is through a unifying framework. “Quality of life (QoL) is a single concept capable of capturing these wide-ranging impacts,” she explains.

To measure QoL, researchers often use an internationally recognized questionnaire called the World Health Organization Quality of Life – BREF (WHOQOL-BREF). But while working on a larger study called MISSED OUTCOMES, which explores the causes and effects of high TB rates in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, Bedingfield realized that standardized measures might miss something vital.

“Standardized questionnaires yield very valuable information, but cannot capture the cultural and individual complexity that really matter when it comes to an outcome as personal as quality of life,” she says. “We can’t truly understand the impacts of TB unless we look at the experience holistically. We need a nuanced understanding in order to do that.”

To address this, Bedingfield pursued a stand-alone study within MISSED OUTCOMES which has now been published in . The study was co-designed with Andrew Medina-Marino’s team at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation, University of Cape Town, and engaged a recent graduate of York’s School of Global Health, Mahilet Girma.

The team conducted open-ended interviews with individuals at different stages of treatment, giving participants space to share their own experiences of how TB affects their daily lives.

Participants described how TB didn't just damage their lungs, but disrupted routines, limited their independence and reshaped how they saw themselves and their roles within families and communities. Many described a decline leading up to a diagnosis, as unmanaged symptoms made work and everyday tasks increasingly difficult. Treatment was not an automatic remedy. In fact, early treatment was often the most challenging stage, marked by medication side effects, fatigue and mounting financial strain. Even after treatment ended, many participants continued to experience those challenges.

Participants judged their well-being on what mattered most to them: the ability to work, support family or pursue personal goals. Physical recovery wasn’t enough; without income or social assistance, many still felt the quality of their daily lives was poor. Through those personal perspectives, the study will add nuance to how well-being is understood in TB patients and highlight gaps in social and economic services, pointing to the systemic changes needed to improve outcomes.

“People experiencing TB, especially in low- and middle-income countries such as South Africa, require financial assistance and personalized counselling to achieve a fulfilling quality of life and recover from the setbacks imposed by TB,” says Bedingfield.

The study recommends more support during early treatment, when well-being is often at its lowest, as well as after treatment ends when people are considered "cured." This could include income assistance, counselling, education and programs to help people return to work.

Recovery from TB is about eliminating infection as much as it is about restoring stability, independence and dignity – something medicine alone cannot achieve.

“We hope our study comes to the attention of international and national decision-makers who can increase prioritization and funding for social protection programs – such as cash transfers, nutrition programs and personalized counselling – for people affected by TB,” Bedingfield adds. “The needs of people affected by TB are great, but the resources available for person-centred supports are lacking.”

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The Mercator Fellowship is a competitive award that supports international research collaborations, allowing scholars to work with leading experts and research centres abroad. For Shivener, the fellowship connects him to an international project at the University of Konstanz: a Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) titled “Silence, Noise and Signal in Language.”

Funded by the German Research Foundation, the CRC brings together more than 25 academics across 17 multi-year projects to explore how silence and disruption impact communication in settings such as gaming, social media and institutional life.

The project is organized around three key concepts. “Noise” refers to anything that interferes with or complicates interactions – such as ambiguity, misunderstanding or conflicting cues. “Silence,” meanwhile, is not just the absence of communication, but can carry meaning depending on context. “Signal” refers to the message that emerges through – and is shaped by – these conditions.

Shivener’s path toward this international and interdisciplinary collaboration began in 2025, when he participated in the Ontario Baden-Württemberg Faculty Research Exchange – a program funded by the Ontario Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security. While conducting a pilot study on virtual reality and social deduction gaming at Konstanz, he was invited to review the CRC proposal.

His involvement was requested due to his ongoing research into how people create and interpret meaning in technologically mediated environments through writing and conversation. He has examined this topic in studies about emotional writing practices, virtual reality and digital games and through books such as Living Digital Media and Digital Literacies for Human Connection.

The Konstanz researchers saw a conceptual fit and went a step further than their invitation to review the proposal; they asked him to join the project as a collaborator, if it was funded.

Shivener, who teaches in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, was intrigued. He had observed in interviews how absence of noise can create space for participants to reflect and respond. In virtual or in-person social deduction games, focused on reading and influencing others, he had also seen how players use noise to redirect blame or build trust.

Shivener was also enthusiastic about the chance to work across disciplines and across countries. “International collaboration is a chance to meld our theories and methods in ways that simply don’t happen when you’re working within a single institution or tradition,” he says.

Now that the CRC has been approved and funded, Shivener has been appointed as a fellow through to 2029. He will contribute to the sub-project “Ambiguous Signals: Exploring Noise and Silence in Gaming.”

“Silence and noise are powerful means of persuasion. They also function differently depending on the context,” explains Shivener. His work will focus on both analog and digital games as sites for exploring how those elements influence communication.

For example, in the video game Among Us, players take hidden roles on a spaceship. They try to identify who is sabotaging the crew while keeping their own role secret. In this kind of game, players use silence, misleading statements and other cues to influence others and interpret intentions, showing how noise and silence carry meaning and affect interactions. Synchronized video recordings and close observation of people playing will be used in the research inquiry to see how these elements emerge, are interpreted and influence the flow of play.

Insights from his work will feed into the broader goals of the CRC, and help researchers understand how silence, noise and signal operate in other social context – from online discussions and social media to workplace and institutional communication. In these settings, ambiguity and interpretation similarly affect human interaction.

Therein lies the impact Shivener hopes his work – and the CRC’s – may have over the next years on a broader level.

“The results of studying social deduction games, for example, have relevance to understanding how we speak and write to each other in times of political and interpersonal conflict,” he says. “I hope that we can call further attention to the problems and affordances of silence and noise across everyday situations.”

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Caleb Morgan is the second York student accepted into the competitive international research internship at the National Institute of Informatics (NII) in Japan. The program offers graduate students the opportunity to conduct research at global partner institutions, enhancing international collaboration and research inquiry.

A final-year master’s of applied science candidate, Morgan will spend up to six months at NII working on AI systems that could accelerate the way scientists discover and design new tools, as well as inform real-world progress in AI applications for greener manufacturing, aerospace innovation and faster drug development.

Morgan will begin his internship in late March.

At NII, he will work under Associate Professor Mahito Sugiyama on knowledge graphs – a way of organizing information so AI models can understand individual data points and the relationships between them, much like the the relationship between list of names and a family tree.

Morgan shares an example of how this is applied in practice: in disease prediction, a knowledge graph allows a model to connect a patient's medical history to their location and a specific time period. This produces more accurate results than a model working from isolated data, says Morgan.

"If you throw data into a model without any knowledge graph, the model might learn about people and situations but not be able to relate them to each other," he says. "When we construct a knowledge graph, the model understands that this person was related to this event or this place, and that gives us a more generalized, more insightful output."

He will also work with transformer models – the same foundational architecture behind well-known AI tools like ChatGPT – to decode the language of chemical structures and materials. The goal refining AI systems to make reliable predictions even when data is scarce – a significant bottleneck in scientific research and engineering, notes Morgan.

NII's environment, he says, is what makes it the right place for this research. The institute draws researchers who develop novel AI architectures grounded in advanced mathematics – exactly the kind of computer science apporach he wants to bring back to engineering.

Morgan’s foundation for this field was cultivated at York. In the Lassonde-based Processing Structure Property Performance (PSSP) Lab, supervised by Associate Professor Solomon Boakye-Yiadom, he has been developing AI models to predict defects in metal 3D printing for high-entropy alloys – a newer class of metal blends engineered for extreme environments like aerospace and high-corrosion applications.

Representing atomic compositions as knowledge graphs has already improved prediction accuracy, he notes, and he has presented these findings at several conferences. This combined effort in research and knowledge sharing shaped his successful NII application.

Getting there took persistence, however. Morgan applied to the NII program once before and while he was not selected, he applied again with a sharper, more focused application – one that advocated for why an engineer should cross into computer science.

"I had to steer my application to say ‘Yes, I'm an engineer, but I want to delve into computer science to develop architectures for my domain,’" he says. "I was much more intentional about the second application."

Behind the scenes, York International has been closely involved in his preparation, helping with documentation and accommodation planning in Tokyo – support Morgan says has made the process seamless.

Day-to-day at NII, his work will largely be behind a desk: writing code, reading papers and running experiments with datasets and models to test how well they can extract meaning from structured knowledge.

He will return to York later this year with new collaborations, novel methods and a sharper way of thinking.

"I'm going to have the mindset of a computer scientist and keep my domain knowledge as an engineer and be able to merge them to do new things,” he says.

For York students eyeing similar opportunities, Morgan's path offers its own message.

"Be intentional, tailor your application," he says, "and don't be discouraged by rejection."

With files from Mzwandile Poncana

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Launched following the COVID‑19 pandemic through �첥��Ƶ’s Catalyzing Interdisciplinary Research Clusters program, the group brought together Black scholars from five Faculties to study structural inequalities that influence how Black communities experience and recover from epidemics.

From the outset, members knew the work would require a differently approach to fulfill a key goal: collaborating and centring the lived experiences and resilience strategies of Black populations.

“We were clear from the start that we had to depart from traditional means of doing research that tend to be extractive,” says Sylvia Bawa, associate professor of sociology and co‑principal investigator. Research in marginalized communities, she explains, often involves collecting data without collaboration or returning findings in accessible ways.

Jeffrey Squire, an instructor in the Department of Social Science and co-principal investigator, notes this top‑down approach is common in academia. “We undertake research that affects the lives of a community, but often their input is limited,” he says. “We wanted to incorporate those voices.”

Cluster members began by meeting with local organizations, including Toronto’s Black Creek Community Health Centre, to discuss research opportunities. Rather than arriving with a fixed agenda, researchers outlined their goals transparently and asked, “What would make sense for you as a partner in knowledge creation?” Those discussions led to more in-depth engagement through town halls with the broader communities, ensuring priorities reflected lived concerns.

At a public town hall in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood, residents spoke candidly about challenges – from vaccine hesitancy to unequal access to care – and emphasized that inquiry should reflect real, everyday priorities. This reinforced that meaningful research requires listening first and allowing community concerns to shape questions, methods and outcomes.

The cluster extended its approach internationally, connecting with think tanks, advocacy organizations and local health groups across six African countries, including Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda. These partnerships were central to its transnational mandate: to link Black communities in Canada and Africa for knowledge sharing on how epidemics are experienced and managed in different social and health contexts.

Early conversations revealed a common concern that partners valued collaboration on data collection but wanted supporting research. “Many of those groups talked about the fact that conducting research was important because the data was helpful for them, but they also wanted research that would be helpful for their work – not necessarily research questions that would be helpful only to us,” Bawa recalls. In response, the cluster created small internal grants for co‑developed projects and committed to shared authorship, ensuring collaborators were involved in producing publications and other knowledge outputs.

Three years into its efforts, the initiative has now entered what Bawa describes as its “research dissemination phase.”

Findings will be published, such as a forthcoming open‑access paper co‑written with Black women leaders in the Greater Toronto Area about guiding communities through the pandemic. It has also contributed to other research examining how the pandemic intersected with gender‑based violence in ways relevant to advocacy and intervention.

Impact on the community remains central, and Bawa stresses the importance of providing accessibility through open‑access venues and plain-language reporting. Published findings are structured so community partners can provide feedback, engage with findings and see their voices reflected.

Research is also shared through interactive forums to foster dialogue and bring together scholars and community partners to exchange insights and reflect on findings. Last fall, the Community Research Showcase and Gathering at York’s Keele Campus featured presentations of funded projects alongside community‑led reflections, with panels deliberately weighted toward community voices. African collaborators joined via Zoom, while local organizations, including Toronto Public Health and grassroots health groups, participated in person.

During the event, Bawa and Squire observed how meaningful the work – and the international engagement – has become. “There’s a real appetite for this kind of work,” Squire says, noting one participant in Africa logged in by generator after losing electricy and another found the session so valuable they stayed up until 2 a.m. local time.

The cluster plans to continue meeting that appetite. Members are translating findings into practical recommendations, organizing an academic-community panel for an upcoming Canadian Association of African Studies conference and planning public showcases focused on Canadian and African contexts to ensure ongoing transnational knowledge exchange.

These efforts of the cluster have real‑world stakes; since SARS in the early 2000s, major epidemics have emerged every few years, says Squire.

Now, with networks firmly in place across Canada and Africa, lessons learned through the cluster's work can travel faster and reach the contexts where they matter most when health crises emerge. “Through our research, through talking to people, through observing what is going on in communities and overseas, we are able to disseminate information that now will be very useful in addressing responses,” Squire says.

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