Earning a doctoral degree is a testament to an individual's academic commitment and perseverance. It is a journey marked by countless hours attending seminars, conducting research, teaching courses, and dissertation writing. Each step taken by our PhD students reflects their dedication and intellectual rigour.
This year's cohort from the Faculty of Arts has proved that the essence of doctoral research is in its social impact; their work is an embodiment of the valuable knowledge they have acquired and their potential to effect meaningful societal change. The Faculty of Arts is proud to have supported these students and is eager to witness the positive impact they will make.
Please join us in congratulating the 2023 cohort of the Faculty of Arts on this monumental accomplishment. Their journey has been inspiring, and we look forward to their continued success in the years to come.
Met our 2023 PhD graduates
Jesse Abbott
Department:
History
Thesis: “The
Art
of
Getting
Drunk:”
Martial
Masculinity,
Alcohol,
and
the
British
Army
in
the
Canadas
in
the
War
of
1812
Exploring the role of alcohol consumption in shaping masculine identities within the British army in the Canadas during the early 19th century.
Sarah Basco
Department:
Psychology
Thesis: The
Role
of
Executive
Functions
and
Emotion
Knowledge
in
Children’s
Communication
Repair
Investigating children's ability to detect and repair miscommunications in response to nonverbal cues.
Elizabeth Brey
Department:
English
Thesis: Digital
Dialogism:
Space,
Time,
and
Queerness
in
Video
Games
Arguing that the layers of "voices" in games influence player interpretation and identifying how its narrative and representational elements can inadvertently uphold white supremacy while silencing potential anti-racist perspectives.
Kevin Capobianco
Department:
Psychology
Thesis: Development
of
an
Efficient
and
Broadly
Applicable
Measure
of
Case
Conceptualization
Quality
Adressing the need for a reliable method to evaluate case conceptualization quality in psychotherapy to advance understanding of treatment outcomes.
Evan Cater
Department:
History
Thesis: Stand
Fast
for
Peace
&
Freedom:
A
Study
of
Foreign
Policy
of
the
British
Labour
Party
in
Opposition
1931
to
1940
Analyzing the British Labour Party's ideological split between idealism and pragmatism in countering fascism, and the shift from war resistance to collective security and rearmament.
Sushma Dusowoth
Department:
French
Studies
Thesis: Représentation
du
sujet
féminin
dans
les
romans
francophones
de
l’Île
Maurice
et
l’archipel
des
Comores
de
1990
à
2020
:
entre
soumission
et
désir
d’agentivité
Addressing female submission and the desire for agency in the island societies of Mauritius and the Comoros Archipelago.
Rochelle Evans
Department:
Psychology
Thesis: The
Idea
of
a
Follower:
An
Investigation
of
Implicit
Followership
Theories
and
Their
Correlates
Investigating how individual traits and situational contexts affect people's perceptions of followers and identifying common follower prototypes based on factors such as work experience and socio-demographic background.
Monique Kampherm
Department:
English
Thesis: Masks
and
Caricatures:
Prosopopoeia,
Ethopoeia,
and
the
Effect
of
Social
Media
on
Canadian
Political
Leaders’
Debates
Analyzing the effect of social media on political leaders’ debates and reavealing the rhetorical influence social media has on political parties, political leaders, and voters.
Jennifer Kandjii
Department:
Global
Governance
Thesis: Xenophobic
citizenship,
unsettling
space,
and
constraining
borders:
Assembling
refugee
exclusion
in
South
Africa’s
everyday
Exploring how the state, citizens, civil society, refugees, and the media all intersect to shape refugee experiences in urban centers in South Africa.
Yixuan Li
Department:
Economics
Thesis: Essays
on
Portfolio
Selection,
Continuous-time
Analysis,
and
Market
Incompleteness
Introducing a novel definition of concentration in portfolio investment and establishing a risk threshold where diversification and concentration strategies align.
Artur Lukaszczyk
Department:
Philosophy
Thesis: Towards
a
Cyber
Jus
ad
Bellum:
Bridging
Legal
Gaps
within
Cyberwar
Governance
Critiquing the current lack of international laws and the insufficiency of extending traditional armed conflict laws to the cyber domain.
Tommy Mayberry
Department:
English
Thesis: Queen
of
the
Academy:
Academic
Drag
as
Pedagogy
and
Praxis
Demonstrating the potential of academic drag to disrupt conventional academic norms and to create a more inclusive scholarly space.
Robert Morton
Department:
English
Thesis: Alone
Together
-
Convergence
Culture
and
the
Slender
Man
Phenomenon
Demonstrating how the Slender Man phenomenon uses digital media to merge horror aesthetics with internet trolling and often leads to serious real-world consequences.
Katharine Patterson
Department:
Accounting
and
Finance
Thesis: Calibration
Committees
and
Rating
Distribution
Guidance
Effects
on
Leniency
Bias
in
Subjective
Performance
Evaluations
Examining how peer calibration committees (PCCs) and rating distribution guidance (RDG) can impact leniency bias in performance evaluations.
Zachary Pearl
Department:
English
Thesis: Fictocritical
Cyberfeminism:
A
Paralogical
Model
for
Post-Internet
Communication
Arguing that "creative paranoia" inspired by fictocritical cyberfeminism provides a route towards a more paralogical media literacy that could redefine our future media environment.
Matthew Perks
Department:
Sociology
Thesis: Developing
a
Community:
Qualitative
Approaches
to
Understanding
the
Role
of
Community
Engagement
in
Gameswork
Investigating the growing emphasis on engaging and managing online communities within the gaming industry.
Brian Schram
Department:
Sociology
Thesis: Surveilling
Queerness
and
Queering
Surveillance:
The
Techno-Social
Making
of
Queer
Identity
in
the
US
and
Canada,
1939-Present
Exploring the relationship between Queer theory and surveillance technologies and linking to broader geopolitical and biopolitical phenomena such as national security, biosecurity, warfare, and statecraft.
Siobhan Sutherland
Department:
Psychology
Thesis: The
interpersonal
context
of
desire:
Exploring
associations
between
sexual
desire,
relationship
satisfaction,
and
sexual
satisfaction
in
romantic
relationships
Identifying the factors contributing to sexual desire in long-term heterosexual relationships and highlighting the importance of examining sexual desire from an interpersonal lens.
McLennon Wilson
Department:
Psychology
Thesis: Temperament,
attention,
and
the
social
world:
New
empirical
approaches
to
the
study
of
shyness
and
attention
in
middle
childhood
Developing new means of assessing the relationship between temperament and attention in social contexts to better support the social development of shy children.
Xinyuan Yang
Department:
Economics
Thesis: An
Analysis
of
Optimal
Agricultural
Fertilizer
Application
Decisions
in
the
Presence
of
Market
and
Weather
Uncertainties
and
Nutrient
Pollution
Addressing how uncertain corn market and weather factors affect optimal fertilizer application decsions of the farmer and social planner.