Graduate Students
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NAME |
RESEARCH AREA |
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Soroor Aghaei Afshar
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Thesis topic: Latin American Cinema My research focuses on Latin American cinema, with particular attention to the representation of women and Indigenous communities in film. I examine how Latin American cinema exposes the enduring legacies of colonialism and the ways in which colonial power structures continue to shape the lives of Indigenous peoples and women. |
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Dorothy Akaelu |
Thesis topic: Machine Translation |
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Timothy Alayo |
Thesis Title: Translating Resistance: The Politics of Reception and the Reconstruction of Anglophone Nigerian Drama in the Francosphere My research aim to investigate the translation and cultural reception of Nigerian playwright Femi Osofisan’s Once Upon Four Robbers in the Francophone world. It examines how translating culture-specific elements like Nigerian Pidgin and Yoruba into French affects the play's Marxist, anti-colonial resistance. Using comparative textual analysis, reception history, and Extended Reality (XR) tools, the research explores whether French translations preserve or erase the socio-political realities of post-colonial Anglophone Nigerian drama. |
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Athena Arlinghaus |
Thesis Topic: Representations of Finland in Russian Modernism Literary Modernism, the Silver Age of Russian poetry, the significance of Finland in the biographies of Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, ecological themes in Russian Romanticism and Modernism. |
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Jordan Ashworson (Ashworth) |
Thesis title: On the Nature of Doing Glitches in Speedrunning Glitches, speedrunning, emergent gameplay, metagames, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, EMCA |
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Hind Atallah |
Thesis title: Palestinians in Diaspora & Homeland Literature How do Palestinians from different generations engage with their homeland literature? Do they read it in Arabic? If they belong to a younger generation whose fluency in Arabic is struggling, do they read homeland literature through English translation? How do these translation help (re)shape cultural and linguistic identity? What is preserved and what is lost through English translations of Palestinian homeland literature? |
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Reilly Bohan |
Thesis title: Publics to Watch Out For: Fan Engagement and Affect in Dykes to Watch Out For My research interests intersect with queer media studies, lesbian studies, comics studies, affect theory, and archival research. I am interested in how queer media represents and preserves histories of collective life, and how audiences engage with these representations through varied and contested responses. My research examines lesbian counterpublics and how cultural texts create spaces for queer community and memory across generations. |
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Mariia Burtseva (she/her) |
Thesis title: Navigating Communities: Queer Ukrainian Migration and Belonging in Canada (2014-2024) My research interests include Ukrainian LGBTQI+ migration in Canada, Ukrainian and Ukrainian Canadian Studies, Queer Studies, Oral History, and Migration Studies. |
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Maryna Chernyavska |
Thesis title: Unorthodox archiving in the archival multiverse |
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Myoungjin Chun
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Thesis title: Consciousness-raising tasks for grammar instruction My research examines the use of consciousness-raising tasks for grammar instruction in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programs. I investigate how these tasks support learners’ grammatical development by encouraging them to discover grammatical rules through collaborative problem-solving and discussion. |
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Derya Cinar |
Thesis title: Too Crowded Here: On Humanimal Bodies in Flux in 21-st Century Fiction and Film Posthumanism, Affect Theory, Animal Studies, Hybridity in Literature, Body Politics |
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Amirhossein Firuzkohi
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Thesis title: The Writing on the Wall: A Comparative Ethnographic Analysis of Protest Signs in the Political Semiotic Landscape of Iran between 1979 and 2022 My research focuses on multimodality, critical discourse analysis, semiotic landscapes, and interactional sociolinguistics. At the core of my research is a commitment to understanding how linguistic and semiotic practices shape human behaviour and social interaction. Through my work, I seek to uncover how language and ideology interact across different modes of communication, ultimately contributing to a deeper understanding of the social and cultural aspects of meaning-making. |
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Qian Feng |
Thesis Topic: Travel writing |
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Xiyuan Feng |
Thesis Topic: Chinese Social Media |
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Steven Gillis |
Thesis topic: Steven's current research interests include speaker identities, language planning, and education planning in terms of second language acquisition, with a particular emphasis on the role that this planning plays in fostering student and teacher motivation throughout the language learning process. |
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Kenzie Gordon |
Thesis title: Press ‘X’ to Crush the Patriarchy: Video Games as Sites for Sexual Violence Prevention Gender-based violence in video games; intersectional feminist video game analysis; interventionist game design; equity and representation in the game industry; police abolition and abolitionist digital archives; digital humanities |
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Jonathan Grossman
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Thesis topic: Ukrainian Folklore In the Northern Territories of Canada ● Ukrainian Canadian diaspora studies. |
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Wangtaolue Guo |
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Hongyang Ji |
Thesis topic: Translation and ecology |
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Evgeny Kuznetsov
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Thesis title: Avatars of ADHD: Crip resonances between ADHD and game making I’m interested in ADHD as a cultural phenomenon, and as a condition viewed through the lenses of critical disability and neurodiversity studies. Having a background in feminist and queer game analysis, and game production studies, I’m especially intrigued by the intersections between ADHD and digital technology. Are games an ADHD medium? How are they co-produced with and through ADHD culture? What are the experiences of game makers with ADHD? How can they inform and reshape our views on ADHD? |
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Lisa Lawrence |
Thesis topic: My area of research involves topics around post-1950 Italy, as well as second-language pedagogy. |
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Rou Li |
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Wenzhu Li |
Thesis Topic: Modern and contemporary Chinese literature and media culture; critical theory of techno-human hybridity; abolitionist and transformative studies; contemporary Chinese poetry and poetics; women’s poetry and feminism |
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Kai Lin |
Thesis topic: Russian and Translation Studies |
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Sean Lis |
Thesis topic: Information Warfare My research exists at the intersection of new technologies (particularly AI) and culture, both material and digital. From the ways communications technologies have revolutionized diaspora relations and preserved old country traditions, to the ways that social medias can be used as tools of hybrid warfare. |
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Bingli Liu |
Thesis Topic: Ancient Chinese, Latin American literature and art; science fiction; fantasy; comparative literature |
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Jinxingqi Liu |
Thesis title: Taiwanese Modernism in the Cultural Cold War: U.S. Influence, Literary Journals, and the Sinophone World (1956–1973) My research examines Taiwanese modernism during the cultural Cold War (1956–1973), focusing on U.S. cultural influence and the journals Literary Review and Modern Literature. I study how modernist literature was selected, translated, and presented in these journals, and whether and how the ideas they introduced circulated and were received in Southeast Asia. My interests include Taiwanese modernism, Cold War cultural history, and literary exchange across the Sinophone world. |
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Anyi Luo |
Thesis topic: Caribbean and diaspora studies; cross-media cultural production; Sinophone Studies; Decolonialization. My doctoral project examines Chineseness in Caribbean narratives, bringing Caribbean cultural studies into conversation with Sinophone studies. Working across literature, visual art, archival materials, and digital media, I explore how imaginaries of Chineseness articulate embodied experiences of displacement, desire, and belonging. I am particularly interested in how these affective relations might contribute to decolonization and shape the production and circulation of Caribbean cultural works within transregional cultural industries. |
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Asma M'Barek |
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Gen Niu |
Thesis topic: Second language acquisition |
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Adamma Nnamele |
Thesis topic: Plurilingualism and Identity |
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Maria Carla O'Connor Barrios |
Thesis topic: Artificial Intelligence, media and the digital public sphere |
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Anna Olenenko |
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Adégòkè Owóṣení
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Thesis title: The Politics of Memory, Identity, and Autofictional Agency in 21st Century Francophone Narratives My research explores the intersection of personal and collective memory, examining how identities are constructed, deconstructed, and reimagined in 21st-century postcolonial autofictional, autobiographical, and historical narratives. |
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Illia Pokotylo
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Thesis topic: Ukrainian Community Choirs in Canada Driven by my passion for choral singing, my research will examine the history and community-shaping role of Ukrainian community choirs in Canada, particularly their impact on the experience of newcomers in Canada. My goal is to situate this cultural practice within broader discourse by comparing Ukrainian ensembles with with choirs in other diaspora communities. The methodology will include archival research, as well as ethnographic work (interviews with conductors and singers). |
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Madi Poulin
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Thesis Title: The Lesbian Vampire as Colonial Other: Queer Bodies and Uncanny Horror My research focuses on queer and postcolonial theoretical perspectives on the vampire in film, literature, and broader receptive culture. My thesis research investigates the link between colonial processes of othering and the tradition of vampire fiction by locating the colonial prejudice mapped onto the body of the lesbian vampire, while my broader work aims to highlight the decolonial potential of the contemporary vampire genre. |
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Ali Rajabi Esterabadi |
Thesis topic: Linguistic Imperialism, Neocolonialism, Indigenous Communities, Immigrant Narratives My research focuses on Canada’s positioning as a multicultural and multilingual nation, shaped by initiatives such as the Numbered Treaties and the Canadian Multiculturalism Act, which helped establish Canada as a global destination for immigrants. While these policies encourage diversity and growth, the dominance of English continues to marginalize Indigenous languages and cultures, creating tensions within Canada’s multicultural identity. Despite programs like Supporting Indigenous Language Revitalization, linguistic inequities persist. My work therefore investigates the dynamics of linguistic imperialism and neocolonialism in Canada, with particular attention to their impact on both Indigenous communities and immigrant experiences. |
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Haining Ren |
Thesis Title: Re-enchanting the South: Primitivist Sensibility in Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature Thesis Topic: Chinese literature, comparative literature, modernity, affect study, global south My doctoral research, “Re-enchanting the South: Primitivist Sensibility in Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature,” examines how Shen Congwen, Han Shaogong, and Gao Xingjian turn toward China’s South to challenge dominant models of modernity grounded in rationalization, progress, and linear historical time. Through their reimagining of myth, language, memory, and place, these writers cultivate a primitivist sensibility—a mode of perception grounded in immediacy, imagination, and connections between human and nonhuman worlds. By placing modern Chinese literature in dialogue with broader modernist and global literary debates, the project explores how the South becomes a site for rethinking tradition, modernity, and cultural identity. |
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Kylee Schmitt |
Research topic: Womens Mental Health and Illness in Old Norse Society, specifically in the Icelandic Family Sagas |
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Jianru Song |
Thesis topic: Early Chinese Immigrants; Chinese Canadian Literature; diaspora My research centers on the representation of Chinese workers in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway as depicted in Chinese Canadian literary works. I examine texts by both Canadian-born and immigrant writers, with particular attention to how their portrayals engage with questions of memory, identity, and cultural belonging. |
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Wenbin Wei |
Thesis topic: Science Fiction |
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Meiling Xiao |
Thesis title: Being Together Apart: The Poetics of Autonomy in Contemporary Chinese Poetry/field of study: aesthetics, global modernism, modern Chinese poetry, translation studies Beleaguered yet inspired by the precarious status of today's humanities disciplines, I am interested in how our poetic predecessors in mid-1980s China—no less disarmed by the crisis of legitimacy unleashed by the market economy and the rise of new media forms—maintained their aesthetic autonomy amid various sources of social pressure. |
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Dmytro Yesypenko |
Thesis title: "Neverending Epidemics” in Ukrainian and Polish Literatures, 1820s–1900s Dmytro's interests include Ukrainian historical and literary process of the 19th–early 20th centuries, Slavic studies and medical humanities. He co-authored “Lena and Thomas Gushul: Life in Front and behind the Camera" (jointly with Mariya Mayerchyk and Jelena Pogosjan; Edmonton: 2022–2023) and edited “Borys Hrinchenko: Povisti” (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2020), “Cossacks in Jamaica, Ukraine at the Antipodes: Essays in Honor of Marko Pavlyshyn” (jointly with Alessandro Achilli and Serhy Yekelchyk; Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2020) and “Oksana Kowacka. Ukrains'ka postkolonialnist' u tekstakh i kontekstakh” (jointly with Karol Kowacki; Brusturiv: Discursus, 2022). |