Students gather to share food and conversation at the Holiday Mixer sponsored by TUGSA at the University of Waterloo.
TUGSA purpose
The Tri-University Graduate Student Association (TUGSA) was established in 2007 to help bring together the graduate students from the three universities of the Tri-University Graduate Program in History. Our organization has three primary goals:
- foster student community
- maintain communication among the three departments and their students
- strengthen the connections among the three universities.
We hold a variety of different social and academic events throughout the year that rotate between Waterloo and Guelph, providing every student with an equal opportunity to participate in the growth and success of the Tri-University student community.
In 2023 we began an initiative that highlights student research. This initiative will continue in Winter 2026.
2025-26 TUGSA Co-Presidents
University of Guelph
Wilfrid Laurier University
University of Waterloo
Aidan Hughes is a PhD candidate in his second year. He is interested in the histories of performance-enhancing drugs, body cultures, and masculinities. Aidan’s doctoral work examines the Dubin Inquiry and the ways in which athletes perceived and justified their own anabolic steroid use at a time when the anti-doping movement was gaining considerable moral currency. Aidan spends his free time weightlifting and boxing.
Brian Gibb is a Ph.D. student and is originally from northern Ontario. His research interests include European expansion in the early-modern period, global history and political economy. He hopes to research resistance to British and French customs and tariffs in the Channel Islands in the mid-eighteenth century. He also works in harm reduction and is an advocate for people who use substances, and helps them do so safely.
Vera Zoricic is a PhD candidate, studying under the supervision of Dr. Ian Milligan. Her research topic focuses on the digitization of the black freedom struggles during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. She is particularly interested in how the issues of race, class, and gender intersect to shape individual and group experiences in Canada and the United States. Vera enjoys gardening and baking in her free time.