Friday, May 15, 2026

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• PEGASUS Institute Conference explored health, peace, people on the move, and sustainability
• Michelle Lynn Kahn wins WCGS Book Prize
• Validate Foundations applications close on Sunday
• Voting in faculty Senate by-election now open
• What's open and closed this Victoria Day long weekend

PEGASUS Institute Conference explored health, peace, people on the move, and sustainability

A message from the Global Futures Office.

From May 1 to 3, the University of Waterloo hosted Interconnected Futures: Pathways to Justice in Global Health, Peace, and Environmental Sustainability, a three-day conference organized by the PEGASUS Institute, an educational charity focused on advancing health for all.

Held on the University of Waterloo’s main campus, the conference brought together more than 220 in-person and virtual participants  from across Canada and around the world, including health professionals, academics, researchers, students, and civic and non-profit leaders working at the intersection of global health, peace, and environmental sustainability.

The conference opened with an Indigenous welcome and reflections from Elder Peter Schuler of the Mississaugas of the Credit, who connected his personal experiences and indigenous teachings to the conference themes of justice, sustainability, and interconnectedness. He emphasized the importance of relationships with the land and living world.

President Vivek Goel offered welcome remarks on behalf of the University of Waterloo, emphasizing the university’s commitment to addressing complex global challenges through research, education, and partnerships.

“This conference’s focus on interconnected futures recognizes a powerful truth: that health, peace, and the planet are inseparable — and that justice across these domains requires approaches that are inclusive, interdisciplinary, and grounded in lived experience.” said Goel.

Non-traditional sessions, as well as artistic and cultural components were woven throughout the program, including performances by the Del O Jaan Choir, mentored through the Canadian Opera Company’s Opera Makers Programme, musicians James Gordon and Jessica Murray, and Brazilian cellist and peacebuilder Diego Carneiro. A Student Academy Award-winning film, A Dream Called Khushi, highlighted the experiences of a Rohingya refugee, Rahima Khushi, now living in Waterloo Region.

Several presenters and attendees shared lived and living experiences either as refugees or those providing humanitarian aid in zones of conflict, and interrogated causes and proposed solutions to various planetary crises. An evening dialogue featured Ziauddin Yousafzai (Malala’s father) alongside his family reflecting on education, displacement, and social change. In his keynote, Yousafzai reflected “we can’t change the world, but change starts with us.”

A key theme throughout the conference was how today’s most pressing challenges — including climate change, structural inequality, political violence, forced displacement, and global health inequities — increasingly shape and reinforce one another across communities and borders. Aligned with Waterloo’s Global Futures framework, the conference reinforced the importance of understanding how local and global issues intersect — and how solutions emerge through collaboration across disciplines, sectors, and communities.

Lili Liu, Dean, Faculty of Health highlighted the importance of dialogue across disciplines and lived experiences, noting that “health inequities, conflict, forced migration, and environmental degradation are no longer separate challenges, they are deeply intertwined.”

Fayaz Noormohamed, Executive Director, Global Futures, emphasized the need to create shared spaces for learning and collaboration. “The University’s Global Futures are premised on helping to shape the future of humanity and our planet. It is through conferences like this, which help strengthen our capacity for greater understanding and collective action, that we can look to our shared future with greater hope and confidence.” 

A global and multilingual gathering

The conference also reflected a strong commitment to accessibility and inclusion. Alongside in-person plenary panels, workshops and oral presentations, the plenaries and some workshops were offered virtually, with programming in English, French, and Spanish while a Francophone parallel stream and a Latin American hybrid pre-conference supported broader participation and knowledge-sharing across regions and languages.

Michelle Lynn Kahn wins WCGS Book Prize

A message from the Waterloo Centre for Germanic and Slavic Studies.

Michelle Lynn Kahn, author of Foreign in Two Homelands. Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History (Cambridge University Press), has been awarded the Waterloo Centre for German Studies Book Prize for first books published in 2024. The prize consists of a cash award of CAD $3,000 and an invitation to give a public talk on the book.

Dr. Kahn is an associate professor of history at the University of Richmond who earned her PhD at Stanford in 2018. Her interests lie in transnational history, and her book uses this approach to explore the situation of Turkish Gastarbeiter (guest workers), Turkish citizens invited in the 1960s and 1970s to offset a labour shortage in West Germany. In the 1980s, in the face of anti-Turkish resentment within West Germany, the German government enacted a policy of paying Gastarbeiter to return to Turkey, and those who took the government up on the offer faced the stigma of being “Germanized Turks.” 

The prize jury found Kahn’s history of this remigration process to be “clear, expressive, and engaging.” Particularly memorable are the “personal interviews and anecdotes that enliven the scholarly analyses” and give the reader insight into the “very human story” of this chapter in transnational history. Distinguished by its use of multi-faceted, multilingual sources, this “landmark text” is not only noteworthy for its exceptional scholarship, but also for the quality of its layout and illustrations. The cautionary tale that unfolds in this history is sure to inform future histories and policy discussions surrounding immigration in Germany, Turkey, and elsewhere.

Those interested in reading the book will be happy to learn Cambridge University Press has published the book in an Open Access format, making it freely available in PDF and HTML formats. See the publisher’s book page for more information.

The Waterloo Centre for German Studies, a research institute at the University of Waterloo, promotes scholarly inquiry into all aspects of the German-speaking world. As part of this mandate, the WCGS takes great pride in sponsoring an award that celebrates the dynamic and engaging scholarship seen throughout German Studies. The prize is adjudicated by a jury of German studies scholars chaired by James M. Skidmore, Director of the Centre. Members of this year's jury were Sara F. Hall (University of Illinois Chicago), Christina Kraenzle (York University), Paul M. Malone (University of Waterloo), and Maria D. Mitchell (Franklin and Marshall College).

Dr. Kahn's book was one of seven books shortlisted for the prize, all of which are outstanding examples of the fine scholarship in German studies today. Nominations are now being accepted for the WCGS Book Prize for first books published in 2025. For more information on how to nominate a book, please visit our Book Prize nominations page.

Validate Foundations applications close on Sunday

A message from the Office of Research.

Think your idea has potential? Consider applying for Validate Foundations. The registration deadline is Sunday, May 17.

This three-day intensive program (May 25 to 27) is designed to give attendees a test drive of the Lab2Market experience and gain essential knowledge and tools to seize these opportunities. If you’re looking to strengthen your final application for the $10,000 Ontario Fall Validate program, this is also a helpful opportunity.

If you have questions before submitting an application, join a final session to learn what the selection committee is looking for. Final Validate info sessions will be held May 19 and May 21 at 5:00 p.m. Please register.

Voting in faculty Senate by-election now open

A message from the Secretariat.

Senate By-Election voting has opened and will remain open until Tuesday, May 19 at 4:00 p.m. Eligible faculty will have received an email to cast your ballot through the Secretariats online voting system (SimplyVoting). If you have not received a ballot, or have questions, please contact us at elections@uwaterloo.ca.

The following faculty members have completed the nomination process and are the By-Election Faculty-at-Large Senator candidates:

• Kankar Bhattacharya, Electrical and Computer Engineering;

• Changling Chen, School of Accounting and Finance;

• Mike Collins, Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering;

• Craig Hardiman, Classical Studies;

• Spiro Karigiannis, Pure Mathematics;

• Pengfei Li, Statistics and Actuarial Science;

• Jonathan Oakman, Psychology; and

• Armaghan Salehian, Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering.

There is one vacant Faculty-at-Large position available.

To view the candidate statements, please visit the 2026 Faculty at Large By-Election website.

What's open and closed this Victoria Day long weekend

A sure sign of spring's swing towards summer is upon us this weekend as the Victoria Day holiday beckons on Monday, May 18.

Victoria Day, named to celebrate the birth of Queen Victoria, who was sovereign at the time of Confederation in 1867, is a statutory holiday held on the last Monday before May 25. Colloquially referred to as the "May Two-Four weekend," which this year seems weird because May 24 (Queen Victoria's actual birthday) falls on next weekend, the holiday has been celebrated in one form or another since 1854, and has evolved to mark the unofficial start of the summer season, with barbecues, fireworks, and other celebrations. The weather forecast for the long weekend looks good too, which is a bonus.

A long weekend does result in a number of operational changes on campus, including:

Most Food Services locations will be closed on Monday, May 18, with the exception of The Market at Claudette Millar Hall. Check the locations and hours page for more details.

The PAC and CIF will be closed on Monday, May 18. Check the facility hours page for more details.

The Libraries locations, including Dana Porter and Davis Centre, will be closed on Monday, May 18. Check the opening hours page for more details.

All Print + Retails Solutions operations will be closed on Monday, May 18. Check the hours and location page for more details.

Conversely, the Student Life Centre, the Turnkey Desk, and the Flock Stop will all be open this weekend. However, Turnkey@DC will be closed on holiday Monday.

Enjoy the long weekend, everyone!