Appointments and achievements across the board by DSR members.
← Back to Spring 2024 Newsletter Contents
Department Chair and Graduate Chair Pamela Klassen is the recipient of the JJ Berry Smith Doctoral Supervision Award. The award recognizes outstanding performance in the multiple roles associated with doctoral supervision over a minimum period of 15 years. Professor Klassen has supervised or co-supervised some 20 doctoral and 14 master's students, as well as serving on numerous dissertation committees at U of T and other universities. → Read more
Kevin O'Neill will serve as the next Dean of Arts and Vice-Provost at U of T's Trinity College, providing leadership for academic programs and advancing the academic mission within the College, the Faculty of Arts & Science and the University of Toronto. He will oversee the College’s undergraduate academic and co-curricular programming, including the Margaret MacMillan Trinity One Program, the College’s upper year programs offered in partnership with the Faculty of Arts & Science (Ethics, Society & Law and International Relations) and the Faculty of Medicine (Immunology), as well as Trinity’s academic sustainability programming – part of the Integrated Sustainability Initiative – in partnership with the School of the Environment. As Vice-Provost, the Dean is responsible for formulating plans and policies, building research capacity across the institution and acting on behalf of the Provost, as required. The Dean of Arts also represents the College in the wider academic community at the University of Toronto and contributes directly to the work of the Faculty of Arts & Science through membership on university committees. → Read the full announcement
Two faculty member promotions to celebrate, effective July 1, 2024: Historian of Christianity in the Department of Historical Studies at UTM Kyle Smith is promoted to Professor, and Alexander J. B. Hampton becomes Associate Professor, a well-deserved recognition of his research and teaching excellence. (Apr)
Congratulations to Nicholas Terpstra, Professor of History and cross-appointed to the DSR, who has been appointed Provost and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College, effective July 1.
We are delighted to welcome Sinae Kim to the DSR in July 2024, as she begins a two-year position in Religion in Transnational East Asia, a joint appointment between the DSR and the Department of East Asian Studies. A PhD candidate in the Department of Religion at Princeton University, Sinae will be defending her dissertation this July. She specializes in the history of religion, with a primary focus on medieval Chinese Buddhism. Her research explores various aspects of this tradition, including its practices, texts, and philosophical developments. Her dissertation, titled “Preaching Buddhism in Medieval China: Sūtra Lecture Texts and Performances,” examines the experiential dimensions of Buddhist preaching in the multi-cultural region of Dunhuang in seventh- to tenth-century China. Her broader interests include practical canon-making and Buddhist rituals in a transnational context. Sinae is a recipient of the Dissertation Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies/Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies in 2021-2022 and is currently a Graduate Fellow at Princeton’s Center for Culture, Society, and Religion.
On August 1, we welcome Dr. Geethika Dharmasinghe to the DSR and The Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Geethika earned her PhD in Asian Literature, Religion and Culture from Cornell University in 2022, and specializes in the relationship of Buddhists to violence in contemporary times, drawing on substantial training in cultural anthropology. Her dissertation research, “Terror-Making in Buddhist World,” was funded by the Wenner Gren Dissertation Fieldwork grant.
PhD student Ridhima Sharma was awarded the highly competitive Wenner-Gren Doctoral Dissertation Grant from by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. She was also awarded a U of T Environmental Humanities-International Doctoral Cluster award for travel to the University of Oxford for her research over the summer of 2024.
MA student Chana Weiss was awarded the 2024 Burstow Scholarship for Studies in Activism from the Margins. The award is made based on academic merit to students working on a thesis focused on activism by populations traditionally thought of as mad, or which would once have been so conceptualized.
The DSR has a record six awardees of the University of Toronto Excellence Awards. These provide undergraduate students with paid resarch fellowships with a faculty-led project for 14 full weeks during the summer term. The recipients are:
- Allison Cybulski (Major in Economics and Double Minor in French Language and Mathematics): “The Prehistorian and the Canadian Institute: Daniel Wilson and his Networks”, supervised by Pamela Klassen.
- Tristan Gosselin (Double Major in Indigenous Studies and Religion) “The Colonial Structure(s) of Bernard Lonergan’s Philosophy”, supervised by Reid Locklin.
- Kfir Hilel Harel (International Relations Major, Double Minor in Economics and Political Science): “Performing Orthodox Jewish Girlhood”, supervised by Naomi Seidman.
- Katie Jones (Major in Religion and Double Minor in Philosophy and Diaspora & Transnational Studies) “Servants of the Paraclete”, supervised by Kevin O’Neill.
- Bianca Quilliam (Specialist in Religion): “A History of Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre”, supervised by Pamela Klassen.
- Sylvia Wolk (Double Major in Environmental Science and Environment Chemistry with a Focus in Green Chemistry): “Performing Orthodox Jewish Girlhood”, supervised by Naomi Seidman.
Undergraduate Kaina Mendoza-Price has been awarded a Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI) Undergraduate Fellowship for 2024-25, under the year's theme of Undergrounds/Underworlds. The JHI theme description notes that "undergrounds have figured powerfully in human histories and imaginations as places of alterity, concealment, exploration, and discovery; of fear, transition, transportation, and transmutation," and invited proposals "that examine what a descent into the underworlds might reveal." Her project, "Cosmovisions of a Travesti: Religious Expression Amongst Trans Women in Brazil’s Underworld," is a semiotic study of how “Travestis” in Northeast Brazil engage with spirituality through documenting and disseminating their cultural and material productions for the spirits they venerate in the subaltern spaces they are bound to. Engaging as both a Trans Woman from Latin America and as someone who grew up in these spiritual-cultural systems, Kaína’s intention is to encourage critical discourse around what constitutes spirituality, religion, and profanity in the context of multi-layered existences of those living in socio-cultural peripheries. Kaina was also selected to participate in the JHI Scholars-in-Residence program, an intensive, 4-week paid research fellowship that provides the opportunity to acquire advanced research skills and experience, working on a project with affiliate DSR member Kamari Clarke. → Read more