Dean of Arts Office:
PAS building, room 2401
Tel 519 888-4567 ext. 48246
Arts Undergraduate Office:
PAS building, room 2439
Tel 519 888-4567 ext. 45870
Arts faculty and staff resources
Arts computing support for students, faculty, and staff
Friday, June 3, 2022
A doctoral degree is the ultimate culmination of hard work and dedication. From countless hours attending seminars and conducting research, to TA'ing courses and preparing a dissertation, our PhD students have shown grit and determination from the outset. For many, these integral parts of the PhD journey have been completed online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the pandemic may have impacted the way research and courses were conducted, it cannot take away from the monumental accomplishment of completing a doctoral degree.
If there is a defining feature of doctoral research across the Faculty of Arts, it is social impact — where the human being is at the centre of the inquiry. Our 2022 cohort’s dissertations make this clear: whether it's focused on health and well-being, economies and prosperity, governance and policy, accountability, equity, or cultural expression, their scholarship makes meaningful contributions that can benefit people and societies. Their work is a testament to the knowledge they have contributed and the change they will enact. The Faculty of Arts is honoured and proud to have supported them along the way.
Congratulations to our newest PhDs!
Liz Attisano
Department: Psychology
Thesis: Investigating Children's Naturalistic Explorations in a Living History Museum
Exploring the learning opportunities in a living history village at the Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum (WRM) and the contents of parents and children's conversations.
Keely Cronin
Department: English
Thesis: Broadcasting a Performance of Caring: Social Justice and Migrant Narratives on the CBC's Canada Reads
Arguing that migrant narratives are used to facilitate a Canadian performance of caring on the popular broadcast television and radio program Canada Reads.
Jessica Roberts
Department: Psychology
Thesis: Does Caring for Yourself Lead to Seeking Care From Others? Investigating the Relationship Between Self-Compassion and Interpersonal Emotion Regulation
Assessing the possibility that highly self-compassionate individuals may only seek others’ support when their level of distress is relatively high and exceeds their capacity to self-soothe.
Martyn Gabel
Department: Psychology
Thesis: Exploring Associations Between Response Inhibition and Emotion: Effects of Valence Motivation Information Processing Style and Emotional Reactivity
Explaining that response inhibition will be bolstered by approach motivation (e.g., anger, curiosity) but hindered by avoidance motivated experiences (e.g., anxiety).
Sara Gallagher
Department: English
Thesis: Black Frontiers: Race, Region, and Myth in African American Westerns, 1854-1954
Analyzing a diverse set of stories to show the ways African American authors and producers of Western texts have participated in the revision of the Western genre in a full range of imaginative forms.
Brandon Goulding
Department: Psychology
Thesis: Beyond Causality: Heuristics for Inferring Possibility
Exploring two strategies that children may use for inferring the possibility of improbable events: thinking about the causal circumstances that could enable an event, and using a memory-based heurisic that compares potential events to known events.
Min Jeong Hong
Department: Accounting
Thesis: Fair Value Accounting and Informational Efficiency: A Look at the Confirmatory Role of Financial Reports
Studying the confirmatory role of financial reports by examining how fair value accounting affects two aspects of informational efficiency: the credibility of voluntary disclosures and the timeliness of price discovery.
Dorian Lane
Department: Accounting
Thesis: Incomplete Incentives, Task Temporality, and Effort Spillover in a Multitask Environment
Examining how incentive type, task temporality, and performance feedback influence effort spillover onto a second, unincentivized task.
Chanel Jade Larche
Department: Psychology
Thesis: Escaping the Woes Through Flow
Investigating the relation between flow (a state of deep and effortless concentration) and the development of problematic gaming with smartphone games.
Shane Littrell
Department: Psychology
Thesis: The Psychology of Bullshitting: Measurement, Correlates, and Outcomes of the Propensity to Mislead Others
Presenting research on the associations of bullshitting with frequency to other relative constructs, and the extent to which those who produce bullshit are also receptive to other types of bullshit.
Allison Mascella
Department: Economics
Thesis: The Time-Use of Canadian Immigrant Families: Differences in Time Inputs on Child Raising
Analyzing the time-use of foreign-born parents and their children as measured by their daily time-use records to learn whether their cultural background and their integration into Canadian society affects time-use allocation decisions.
Andrew Moore
Department: History
Thesis: Manorial Regulation and Negotiation in a Late Medieval Environment: Land and Community at Herstmonceux, 1308-1440
Examining the role that environment played in the negotiation of rights and responsibilities on a fundamental socioeconomic institution of rural communities in late medieval England.
Kathryn Ann Morrison
Department: Philosophy
Thesis: Mature Minors Eligibility for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD): An Ethical Analysis
Exploring the prospect of extending MAiD eligibility to mature minors and arguing that eligibility should be calibrated according to maturity rather than age.
Zehua Pan
Department: Economics
Thesis: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation Into the Economic Relationship Between Forested Watersheds and Water Treatment Costs
Arguing that surrounding forest cover has a significant negative effect on water rates and incidence rates in Ontario while also highlighting that surrounding forest cover significantly reduces water treatment costs across Canada.
Karen Pinto
Department: Accounting
Thesis: The Valuation of Economic Earnings and Income Shifting of U.S. Multinationals in Domestic and Foreign Jurisdictions
Developing the concept of economic earnings, measuring economic and shifted earnings, testing their market valuation, and testing differences in valuation across investor types.
Sam Schirm
Department: German & Slavic Studies
Thesis: L2 Discourse Markers and the Development of Interactional Competence During Study Abroad
Investigating how speakers of a second language develop the ability to interact in the second language, and how they develop their interactional competence.
Jamie Sewell
Department: Philosophy
Thesis: From the Standpoint of The Reasonable Person: Epistemic Ignorance Culpable Dispositions and the Objective Standard
Arguing that adding tools in epistemologies of ignorance helps address the difficulty in identifying when actions are borne of indifference to others' interests by offering ways of thinking about the underlying dispositions toward the important interests of others.
Madison Stange
Department: Psychology
Thesis: Examining the Influence of Scratch Card Structural Characteristics on Psychophysiology Motivation and Gambling Behaviour
Adding to our existing knowledge of scratch card gambling and emphasizing the impact that structural features have on gamblers' experiences.
Qi Tang
Department: Accounting
Thesis: KPI Information Acquisition by Analysts: Evidence From Conference Calls
Investigating analysts’ demand for KPI-related information in earnings conference calls and whether managers adjust their decisions about voluntary KPI disclosure in subsequent earnings calls.
Christin Taylor
Department: English
Thesis: 'Sorry if my Words Aren't Right': Writing Studies' Partnership With Second Language Writing to Support Translingual Students in the Anglo-Canadian Classroom
Advocating that translinguism be adapted, rather than adopted, to fit writing studies in Canada.
Kiruthiha Vimalakanthan
Department: Psychology
Thesis: Compassion Over Competition: The Momentary and Longitudinal Benefits of Adopting a Caregiving Mentality in the Face of Appearance Comparisons
Investigating the potential in harnessing the caregiving mentality to buffer the negative consequences of appearance comparisons on women’s body image, and psychological and social well-being.
Cameron Winter
Department: History
Thesis: Three Years and two Continents Apart: A Comparative Study of the Great Sioux War and Anglo-Zulu War
Comparing the battles of the Little Bighorn and Isandlwana and arguing that it was the similarities in American and British perceptions of their Indigenous foes that led to the defeats and difficulties that the campaigns encountered.
John Yoon
Department: English
Thesis: Stories in Play: Narrative Formation in Sports and Esports
Proposing a model for analyzing the narrative formation in sports broadcasts by tracking the live narrativization to the formulation of a final narrative.