2023 - Véronique Labonté
Quebec-born Véronique Labonté holds a Bachelor's degree in Journalism from UQAM and a Master's in Public Communications from Université Laval. She also attended the Centre de formation des journalistes in Paris. She has worked within Quebec's working group on journalism and the future of information and as project lead at Télé-Québec. In 2018, she began her doctoral research at ESEI, analyzing the role of the media and NGOs in post-conflict contexts with Aurélie Campana (Political Science) and Dominique Payette (Communications). Entitled, “Impossible mémoire collective ? Analyse des récits de contre-mémoire dans l’espace public de Bosnie-Herzégovine,” [Impossible Collective Memory? Analysis of Counter-Memorial Narratives in the Public Sphere in Bosnia-Herzegovina] her thesis draws on an analysis of media discourse and a series of interviews held with memorial activists in 2021-2022 in several cities across Bosnia-Herzegovina. In it, she explores the multiple strategies implemented by different actors to disseminate memorial narratives that distanced themselves from the nationalist paradigm that dominated the traditional public sphere. An article on her research will be published in 2023-2024 in the journal Memory Studies. She is also working on a chapter on digital counter-memorial spaces for a collective work on post-conflict representations, to appear in 2025. She is currently working as a research assistant for the Research Chair on Visual Culture in the International Studies department at Université Laval, with Professor Jessica Auchter. She is also an expert participant in the “Transformation of Conflict” working group for the “Slow Memory: Transformative Practices for Times of Uneven and Accelerating Change” project.
2022 - Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa
My name is Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa and I am a PhD Sociology candidate at York University, Tkaronto, Ontario, as well as a creative writer, community organizer, and educator across The Greater Tkaronto-Hamilton Area and The Haldimand Tract.
I would describe myself as a race scholar who focuses on gender, sex, and sexuality. Theoretically, my work is grounded in queer, trans, and feminist Black, Indigenous, Postcolonial, and Of Colour scholarship, with my publications all converging on topics of race, gender, and sexuality. My PhD dissertation specifically explores how to vision a collective memory of HIV/AIDS resistance narratives that foregrounds the contributions of racialized and Indigenous organizers within central Southern Ontario.
Further, I am the founder and Editor-in-Chief of New Sociology: Journal of Critical Praxis, the cofounder of food justice group, The People's Pantry, the founder of Paper Roads, a social justice themed traveling library, and the curator of Erotic Pedagogy, an online resource for PK-12 educators on how to develop anti-racist and intersectional sexual education lesson plans. I am also a part-time professor at Sheridan College, an award-winning writer and teacher's assistant, and a published poet.
2021 - Andréanne Lavoie
Andréanne Lavoie is a doctoral student in Plant Biology at Laval University.
Her interests include the effect of agroforestry systems on the conservation of agrobiodiversity, the preservation of knowledge and know-how to of the farmers who protect this diversity, and the concept of biocultural diversity more generally. Her dissertation project addresses the on-farm conservation of cacao intraspecific diversity in Peru. To this end, she collaborates with The Alliance of Biodiversity International and CIAT, a research institute connected with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) that specializes in issues involving the use and conservation of agrobiodiversity.
Her studies are part of the Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services and Sustainability (BESS) program, a collaboration between McGill, Laval, UQAM and various Latin American institutions funded by the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). Andréanne also received a Joseph-Armand-Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to complete her doctoral dissertation.
She previously worked for five years as a professional researcher in agroforestry before embarking on a doctorate.
2020 - Fiorella Rabuffetti
Fiorella Rabuffetti is a PhD candidate at the School of Political Studies of the University of Ottawa. She earned her BA from the Universidad de la República (Uruguay), and her MA from the University of Alberta.
Her doctoral dissertation seeks to better understand statelessness, legally defined as the condition of not being recognized as a national by any country. It approaches statelessness as a form of dispossession by which states actively undermine stateless people’s ability to settle anywhere. Looking at three cases of statelessness –the Erased of Slovenia, the Dominicans of Haitian descent in Dominican Republic, and the Bedouns of Kuwait—her thesis questions the reduction of statelessness to a lack of legal status, arguing that it leaves unaddressed the politico-economic mechanisms underlying the reproduction of statelessness. Among those mechanisms, she is particularly interested in how stateless people’s constraints to entering into contracts (e.g., of employment, ownership of land and goods, marriage) contribute to them remaining stateless.
She has a long-standing passion for creative writing and theatre, and is the author of two award-winning plays, which were staged in Uruguay. This passion carries on through her interest in the possibilities opened by artistic expression for research and teaching in the social sciences.
Her research has been funded by the Ontario Trillium Scholarship, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and the P.E.O. International Scholar Award.
2019 - Elizabeth McCallion
Elizabeth McCallion, a PhD candidate at Queen’s University, has been awarded the 2019-2020 Stewart Reid Memorial Fellowship. The award was established by CAUT to honour the memory of the Association’s first Executive Secretary and comes with a $5000 scholarship. McCallion is studying the representation of women in the Canadian Parliament. She is also examining the effects of the recent Senate reforms on women’s representation in the upper house. McCallion holds a B.A. from the University of Western Ontario in History and Political Science, and won the Gold Medal in her graduating class. She also holds an M.A. from Queen’s University in Political and Legal Thought.
2018 - Claire Thomson
Claire Thomson is a previously SSHRC funded and Fulbright Fellow PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Alberta.
She earned her MA from the University of Saskatchewan in History in 2014. Her dissertation examines the connections of Lakota people between her home community of Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan and American Lakota reservation communities between 1880 and 1930. She is particularly focused on utilizing a Lakota worldview framework of Lakota Tamakoče [Ta-ma-ko-chey] (Lakota Country) to situate Lakota relationships and place in this history. Her dissertation will investigate how Lakota people drew on their own relationships and understandings to defy the 49th parallel and navigate constraining Indian policies within Lakota Tamakoče.
Claire spends her a lot of her time on the road between her home in the Wood Mountain hills and South Dakota, researching, writing, and riding her horses when she can.
2017 - Crystal Acosta
Crystal Acosta, a PhD candidate at the University of Manitoba, has been awarded the 2017 J.H. Stewart Reid Memorial Fellowship. The fellowship, established by CAUT, recognizes and funds a graduate student from a Canadian university that has demonstrated academic excellence.
Crystal holds a bachelor’s degree in microbiology and a master’s degree in pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Manitoba. She has published her research in several peer-reviewed journals and delivered a number of presentations at international conferences. As a doctoral student, Crystal was fortunate to be supported by Research Manitoba, as well as the J.G. Fletcher PhD Fellowship from the University of Manitoba. Other awards and distinctions include the Smerchanski Endowed Studentship Grant from the St. Boniface Hospital Foundation and the Dr. Mark Nickerson Graduate Entrance Scholarship in Pharmacology and Therapeutics from the University of Manitoba, among others.
Crystal is investigating the physiological mechanisms that regulate the structure, mechanical properties and function of brain-penetrating arterioles in health and cardiovascular disease. “A large proportion of heart failure patients develop cognitive decline and dementia,” she says. “The literature suggests there is indeed an association between heart failure and neurodegeneration, but more study is required to identify underlying mechanisms.”
Crystal has been a fixture in student governance for the past three years at the University of Manitoba, serving on the executive of the Health Sciences Graduate Students’ Association. She also has a continued interest in community outreach through her work with the Manitoba Neuroscience Network.
2016 - David Christopher
PhD candidate David Christopher from the department of art history and visual studies at the University of Victoria has been awarded CAUT’s 2016–2017 J.H. Stewart Reid Memorial Fellowship. Christopher’s research is centred on the rising significance of Canadian cinema as both a cultural art form and a vehicle of socio-political criticism.
“Canadian cinema requires analytical tools that contribute to an understanding of both its socio-political underpinnings and the significance of its material conditions of production,” said Christopher. The graduate student wants to understand the role media and cinema play in reproducing, subverting, or challenging contemporary political power dynamics.
Christopher holds an MA in film studies and cultural theory and an MA in theatre history from Victoria, and degrees in english and economics from Carleton. His work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals and he has contributed to numerous academic conferences. Christopher also teaches as a sessional instructor at Victoria.
2015 - Ingrid Robinson
Graduate student Ingrid Robinson has won CAUT’s annual J.H. Stewart Reid Memorial Fellowship to continue work on her PhD in Educational Studies at St. Francis Xavier University this fall.
Her research is centred on the professional and personal factors that have positioned Aboriginal women as leaders in one educational authority in Atlantic Canada.
"Women are proportionately underrepresented in principal positions in schools and women from racialized minorities are even less represented," Robinson said. "However, within the Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey educational authority, Aboriginal women hold 70 per cent of all principal positions. Such stories of Aboriginal women’s empowerment reflect the hope and possibility for more equitable representation of both women and Aboriginal peoples in educational leadership within Canadian society, but we need to learn how these women became successful and how this can benefit learning experiences for women pursuing leadership positions in educational institutions."
Robinson holds a BA from Dalhousie University, a BEd from Acadia University, and received a MEd from St. Francis Xavier University in 2012. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals and contributed to academic conferences internationally. Funding for her research has been awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Federation of University Women, among others. She also has a longstanding interest in culturally-responsive pedagogy and most recently spearheaded efforts to design and implement the national Positive Youth Development Curriculum for Belize.
2014 - Will Plowright
Will Plowright is the recipient of CAUT’s J.H. Stewart Reid Memorial Fellowship for 2014–2015. Plowright, a PhD political science student at the University of British Columbia, specializes in the politics of insurgency and the negotiation of humanitarian access in ongoing conflict zones.
He is additionally a Liu scholar at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC, holds a master’s in conflict studies from the London School of Economics, and has six years of experience working in conflict and disaster zones across Asia, Africa, South America and the Caribbean.
The results of his work have been reported in extensive journal and conference papers, and he is the recipient of numerous awards, including a SSHRC doctoral award, a Rotary International Peace Fellowship, and an Endeavour Research Fellowship from the Government of Australia.
CAUT’s nationally competitive fellowship award provided Plowright with $5,000.
2013 - Annette Gallant
A Laval University PhD student has won a national award for her research into eating behaviour and patterns in children, adults and families and how these behaviours relate to obesity.
Annette Gallant , who holds an honours bachelor of science degree in human kinetics from the University of Ottawa and a master’s of science degree in kinesiology from Laval, was given this year’s J.H. Stewart Reid Memorial Fellowship by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, in recognition of the quality and level of research being undertaken.
The fellowship is awarded for academic excellence and comes in the form of a $5,000 grant to fund a doctoral student who studies at a Canadian university.
In her research proposal, Annette focused on the night-eating syndrome in families and she is the first to explore this disorder in children. After her PhD, she plans to broaden her research expertise and to explore the relationships between the timing of food intake, the circadian system and appetite control all in the context of weight gain susceptibility.
She has published 10 peer-reviewed articles and two book chapters relating to eating behaviour, appetite control and obesity and is a review editor for the scientific journal Frontiers in Eating Behaviour. She is also the recipient of several awards, including a $40,000 Richard J. Schmeelk Fellowship for academic achievement and for pursuing her MSc in Canada’s other official language, and a $45,000 doctoral research grant from the Quebec Heart and Lung Research Institute.
With the CAUT award, Annette said she plans to organize an international research internship to further her expertise on the circadian aspects of food intake and associated health consequences.
Stewart Reid scholars are granted the award to commemorate the life and work of CAUT’s first executive secretary and are determined by a national selection committee, which this year included University of Manitoba botany professor Tom Booth, Victor Catano, professor and chair of psychology at Saint Mary’s University, and Jean-Charles Cachon, who teaches organizational strategy at Laurentian University’s faculty of management.
2012 - Roula Markoulakis
Roula Markoulakis, a University of Toronto student completing a PhD in rehabilitation science, has been chosen as CAUT's J.H. Stewart Reid Memorial Fellowship recipient for the 2012-2013 year.
Markoulakis, who graduated with a Master of Science and Bachelor of Science in kinesiology from Wilfrid Laurier University, was named the winner of the fellowship by the selection committee based on her academic achievements, information in her personal statement and funding eligibility.
Markoulakis is researching how university policies and practices influence service access and use by students with mental health concerns. She is conducting an institutional ethnography — a method of inquiry that explores how activities within an organization are coordinated and socially driven — and serves on the National Post-secondary Student Mental Health Working Group, a group struck by the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services to develop a post-secondary student mental health strategy.
She attributShe attributes her PhD research interests to her prior experience at Wilfrid Laurier’s Accessible Learning Centre, where she volunteered as a learning strategist working one-on-one with students experiencing a variety of difficulties, from acute injuries to enduring cognitive or physical impairments and mental illnesses.
"These activities have contributed greatly to the development of my project and will continue to be important as I carry out my research," she said.
Markoulakis has received numerous other scholarships and awards, including three-time placement on the faculty of science dean's honour roll during her undergraduate years and recipient of the prestigious Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She has also authored or co-authored journal articles and conference papers.
J.H. Stewart Reid Memorial FellowshiJ.H. Stewart Reid Memorial Fellowships offer PhD students a one-year award of $5,000. Fellowships are funded from a trust established by CAUT in honor of the association's first executive secretary, an appointment tasked with organizing a national office in Ottawa. Stewart Reid served in this capacity from June 1959 until his untimely death on Dec. 13, 1963, at age 54. The first fellowship to a graduate student was awarded in 1969.
2011 - Sheila O'Keefe-McCarthy
University of Toronto PhD candidate Sheila O'Keefe-McCarthy has been named a recipient of CAUT’s J.H. Stewart Reid Memorial Fellowship.
The nursing student was recognized in July with the 2011–2012 fellowship as part of CAUT’s annual awards program. The fellowship is intended to recognize and reward outstanding doctoral students from among all Canadian universities, and provides $5,000 in funding.
O'Keefe-McCarthy, who holds a nursing diploma from George Brown College, a bachelor of science in nursing degree from Ryerson University and a master's degree in nursing from the University of Toronto, focuses her dissertation research on pain management, pain, and anxiety for acute coronary syndrome patients awaiting transfer for urgent diagnostic cardiac catheterization.
ACS refers to the clinical symptoms of severe chest pain and/or impending heart attack due to heart disease. ACS is a leading cause of death and disability in Canada and as O'Keefe-McCarthy notes, "a painful and frightening condition. If not adequately managed, the pain and anxiety caused by ACS can escalate the disease process and increase heart damage."
Evidence indicates that chest pain is routinely under-medicated and her work will provide much needed information to develop pain evaluation frameworks and management standards for people who suffer with cardiac disease. "This study has major implications for cardiac pain research, impacting front line nurses' pain and anxiety assessment and management practices, decreasing mortality and reducing the health service burden," says O'Keefe-McCarthy.
She has published four scientific articles, a book chapter and a requested publication, presented at numerous international and national scientific meetings, served on the Canadian Pain Society executive board of directors, and received many awards, including three Ontario Graduate Scholarships and a fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, for her academic achievements. Her vision is to be a career researcher in the field of cardiac pain.
Recipients of the Stewart Reid Fellowship, a one-year grant given by CAUT to commemorate the life and work of the association's first executive secretary, are determined by a national selection committee, which this year included University of Manitoba botany professor and former president of CAUT Tom Booth, Chris Ferns, professor of English at Mount Saint Vincent University, and retired Bishop's University sociology professor and former president of CAUT Loretta Czernis.
2010 - Nadia Guidotto
Nadia Guidotto, a student working towards a PhD in political science at York University, has been awarded CAUT’s J.H. Stewart Reid fellowship.
Nadia studies gender identity and sexual orientation. She has an honours bachelor of arts degree from Queen’s University, a master of laws from Osgoode Hall Law School and a master of arts from York University. Her current research analyzes intersex and how authoritative discourses like medicine and law support one another in maintaining a hierarchy of bodies to the exclusion of some bodies and to the benefit of others. Her goal is to shed light on how gender has been — and continues to be — constructed and regulated, and help explain why bodies that exist outside the binary gender system create anxiety and elicit violence as a result.
In 2008, she won an internship working on gender equality issues at the U.N., and while in New York took on an additional internship at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. In 2009, she was simultaneously accepted for the Summer Course on Human Rights held jointly in The Hague and Leuven (Belgium), the inaugural Canadian Institutes of Health Research summer institute on gender and health at the University of British Columbia, and the international summer school program, Interfacing the Sciences and Humanities, at the University of Bologna’s branch centre in Rimini, Italy. Also in 2009, she won a visiting research fellowship at the Centre of Gender Excellence at the University of Linköping, Sweden. This summer she enrolled in the one-week intensive CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women) for Change session held within the Women’s Human Rights Institute at the University of Toronto.
She has presented at numerous conferences and published articles on a variety of topics throughout her graduate career. Among her academic honours are a Chancellor’s Scholarship from Queen’s University, the high-profile Abella Scholarship for Studies in Equity from York University, and Canada Graduate Scholarships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for both her masters and doctoral work.
Nadia was selected for CAUT’s fellowship by a three-member application review committee, which this year included Queen’s University biology professor Ken Ko, Chris Ferns, a professor of English at Mount Saint Vincent University, and retired Bishop’s University sociology professor and former president of CAUT Loretta Czerniz.
2009 - Kevin Walby
Kevin Walby, a doctoral student in sociology at Carleton University, has been awarded CAUT’s Stewart Reid fellowship.
Walby graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a bachelor of arts (Hons), earned a post-graduate sociology degree from the University of Victoria, and in 2006 went to the European Consortium for Political Research summer school, otherwise known as the “research methods summer camp.”
Contributing to the sociology of sexuality, his doctoral dissertation research explores the working lives of 30 male-for-male internet escorts in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto (Canada), Houston and New York (USA), as well as London (England). His ambition is to have his research papers published as a book with a Canadian university press.
His current research interests include surveillance and urban governance and he has published 30 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and review essays, as well as authored numerous other papers, reports and book reviews.
In addition to his contributions to Canadian sociology, Walby serves as the prisoners? struggles editor as well as the outreach/advocacy coordinator for the Ottawa-based Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, a peer-reviewed, nonprofit publication about prison issues that is mostly written by prisoners. He is also a member of Books2Prisoners Ottawa.
He has received a number of scholarships, awards and honours over his student years, including the Queen's Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and hopes to take up a career at a Canadian university.
Walby was selected for the fellowship by a three-member application review committee, which this year included Françoise Naudillon, a professor with the French department at Concordia University, Queen's University biology professor Ken Ko and Chris Ferns, a professor of English at Mount Saint Vincent University.
2008 - Jonathan Crane
Jonathan Crane, a University of Toronto student completing a PhD in Modern Jewish Thought, has been chosen for this year’s Stewart Reid fellowship sponsored by CAUT.
Crane holds a BA, summa cum laude, from Wheaton College in Massachusetts, a master’s degree in international peace studies from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, and a MPhil in Gandhian Thought from Gujarat Vidyapith in Ahmedabad, India. As a Wexner Graduate Fellow, he received both rabbinic ordination and a Master of Arts in Hebrew Letters from Hebrew Union College — Jewish Institute of Religion.
His doctoral dissertation develops a new method of understanding religious (specifically Jewish) ethical discourse. Combining philosophy of theology with discourse analysis, Crane says his study demonstrates both how religious ethicists argue and why they argue as they do, and intends to contribute to fields that analyze the confluence of law and ethics, the construction of religious norms and the role of religious discourse in multicultural societies.
In conjunction with his academic work, Crane has presented at conferences and guest lectured throughout the world on a diverse range of topics from Judaism, interfaith relations, social justice, and Gandhian philosophy to euthanasia and war and peace. He has written a book and two book chapters, and his research has appeared in several peer-reviewed journals. He has received numerous awards and honours, including Connaught and Ontario Graduate scholarships, as well as having won support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Centre for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto.
Crane was selected for the fellowship by a three-member application review committee, which this year included Christine Storm, a former professor with Mount Allison University’s psychology department, Françoise Naudillon, an assistant professor of French at Concordia University, and Queen’s University biology professor Ken Ko.
CAUT established the annual J.H. Stewart Reid Memorial Fellowship 40 years ago to honour the memory of its first executive secretary. The program invites applications from students of exceptional academic standing in doctoral programs at Canadian universities. Stewart Reid Fellows receive $5,000 for one academic year of study.
2007 - Bénédicte Fontaine-Bisson & Jacqueline Kennelly
Doctoral students Bénédicte Fontaine-Bisson and Jacqueline Kennelly have both been awarded CAUT’s 2007-2008 J.H. Stewart Reid Fellowship. The fellowship, given by CAUT to honour the life and work of the association’s first executive secretary, provides financial assistance of $5,000 to a student with high academic standing registered in a doctoral program at a Canadian university. In cases where the recipient has obtained funding from other sources, the fellowship trustees will limit the grant to cap the total assistance at $25,000.
Bénédicte Fontaine-Bisson, a PhD student with the University of Toronto’s department of nutritional sciences, is investigating how nutritional factors interact with the genome to affect health and why some individuals react differently. Her work in nutrigenomics, a relatively new area of study, has potential for the prevention and management of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease as both dietary and genetic factors are involved in their development. After receiving a BSc in nutritional sciences from Laval University she went on to study for her master’s at the UofT and within one year reclassified into the PhD program. Since beginning her post-secondary education, she has received 11 scholarships, including master’s and doctoral awards from NSERC, three poster and two oral competition awards, seven travel grants and one excellence award. Fontaine-Bisson, who is planning a career as a university researcher and teacher, has published one book chapter and seven scientific articles and presented her work at various international conferences. She will receive $4,000 of fellowship support from CAUT.
Jacqueline Kennelly, a PhD student in educational studies at the University of British Columbia, is researching young people's involvement in diverse political processes. Her work will ethnographically document how and why young people become engaged through participation in youth activist communities. Kennelly holds a masters in environmental studies from York University, and a bachelors of arts and science from McMaster University. Alongside her doctoral work, she has been involved in various youth-driven organizations in Vancouver and has focused time and energy to helping young people become more critically educated and democratically engaged within their communities. Her academic project has been recognized by an award for best publication by the Canadian Association of Foundations of Education, for a 2006 article published in the Canadian Journal of Education. As runner-up to Fontaine-Bisson, Kennelly will receive $1,000 of fellowship support from CAUT.