This year's Fall Convocation brought sunny weather, autumn colours and awards and accolades for our community. Here's a look at some recent highlights:
Grads by the numbers
Dr. Douglas R. Stenton, Doctor of Literature, honoris causa
Dr. Douglas R. Stenton is an acclaimed scholar and former Director of Heritage for the Government of Nunavut, but you may know his name from the hundreds of articles in the media about his work helping to solve an enduring maritime mystery. For more than four decades, he has conducted pioneering archaeological research in the Canadian Arctic while shaping policies that protect one of the world’s most important cultural landscapes. His investigation of Sir John Franklin’s 1845 expedition — combining archaeology, archival research and Inuit oral history — led directly to the 2014 discovery of HMS Erebus. In recent years, Stenton and his research partners have identified the remains of six crew using DNA from living descendants, helping to share the story of what happened to the expedition members.
A Member of the Order of Canada, Stenton’s legacy includes mentoring Inuit youth, co-authoring resources in Inuktitut and serving as an adjunct faculty member in Anthropology at the University of Waterloo.
Stenton was recently on campus to deliver a special lecture: Bodies, Bones, and Burials: What Human Remains Reveal About the 1845 Franklin Northwest Passage Expedition.
James Malzahn, the University of Waterloo Alumni Gold Medal
Master of Fine Arts graduate James Malzahn was awarded for his Master of Fine Arts thesis: an immersive exhibition called Instruments of Belief: The Victory Box. His work explores the evolving relationship between humans and technology, using artificial intelligence (AI), surveillance systems and immersive environments to challenge how we understand truth, authorship and control. The work incorporates sculptural elements and generative AI to produce audio, video images and documents to create experiences such as a 1980s documentary or a security control room with AI-generated images on all of the screens
In his nomination, Malzahn's supervisors praised his pushing the boundaries of studio practice, working with emerging AI platforms, and critically examining the use (and misuse) of technology for propaganda and misinformation.
Malzahn's work has been featured in five solo and 14 group exhibitions. He also received external recognition with a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Master’s Scholarship.
Dr. Sarah English, valedictorian
Sarah English (MASc ’21, PhD ’26) completed both her master’s degree and PhD in Developmental Psychology at Waterloo, drawn to the program’s balance of rigorous research and a collaborative, community-oriented environment. Her graduate experience shaped not only her research, but also her belief in the power of the connections built along the way.
Her research explores how children and adolescents use social communication to connect with their peers. She examines how affiliative language, shyness, exclusion and familiarity influence young people’s experiences of social connection. Since 2021, English has served on the Psychology, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, where she helped develop and co-leads the Lift Undergraduate Mentorship Program, which supports students from historically underrepresented backgrounds interested in graduate studies in Psychology.
Now pursuing a post-doctoral fellowship at Waterloo, English hopes to build a career in academia that brings together the parts of her graduate experience she values most: research, teaching, mentorship and community-building.
