Lansdowne Lectures
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Item Desistance is dead, long live desistance?: Can a 1990s theory be relevant for a world in crisis in 2025(2025-05-15) Maruna, ShaddOver the past three decades desistance from crime has become one of the most popular areas of study in criminology. Emerging out of life course and developmental criminology of the 1990s, the study of desistance stood in sharp contrast with the obsession in late 20th Century criminology in identifying “superpredators,” “psychopaths,” and other persistent or “career criminals.” Desistance research also challenged rehabilitation models and inspired strengths-based mutual aid work among people in prison and on probation. It was the right theory for the right moment in criminology in many ways. However, desistance research may have outlasted its relevance in the current political climate. As it became mainstreamed, desistance research has been rightly criticized for being too individualistic, ignoring the structural/political factors impacting individual journeys.Item Transgender & gender-diverse children & youth's development & psychological & brain health: A biopsychosocial perspective(2025-06-11) VanderLaan, DougDespite unprecedented societal and scientific interest in the needs of transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) children and youth, substantial inequities remain. Attention towards this topic tends to be concentrated on Euro-American and clinical populations, resulting in failures to consider large segments of the TGD population in Canada and globally. A multi-disciplinary, multimethod program of cross-cultural and community-focused research sheds light on TGD children and youth who are often overlooked in Canada and in Thailand. With a biopsychosocial framework in mind, a series of studies elucidate the interplay of biological, cognitive, and sociocultural factors in TGD people’s identity development as well as their psychological and brain health. Collectively, these studies point to a need for macro-level changes to address systemic barriers as well as future avenues for improving TGD children and youth’s well-being.Item Collaborating with the immune system to treat antibiotic-resistant superbugs(2025-04-23) Nizet, VictorThe Department of Biochemistry & Microbiology presents the 2025 Lansdowne Lecturer Dr. Victor Nizet, Distinguished Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Israni Biomedical Research Facility. This public lecture is titled “Collaborating with the Immune System to Treat Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs”.Item When do state-dependent local projections work?(2022-09-07) Gonçalves, SílviaSílvia Gonçalves is a Professor of Economics at McGill University specializing in the development of bootstrap methods for the analysis of economic and financial data. Her current research topics include bootstrap inference for time series and spatially dependent data, bootstrap inference in the presence of bias, and estimation and inference of impulse response functions in nonlinear macroeconomic models. Professor Gonçalves currently serves as a Co-Editor of the Journal of Financial Econometrics and as an Associate Editor of the Econometrics Journal, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Time Series Analysis, and the Portuguese Economic Journal. She is an elected Fellow of the Society of Financial Econometrics and of the International Association of Applied Econometrics. Before joining the Department of Economics at McGill University in 2017, she was a Professor of Economics at the University of Western Ontario and at the Université de Montréal. She is a research member of CIREQ and CIRANO and received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. UVic’s Public Lectures Series features accomplished individuals from a vast array of academic and research endeavours. As host of this lecture series, UVic continues its commitment to making a vital impact on people, places and the planet.Item Beyond imperial aporia: Taiwan and the Inter-Asia work in global transformations(2025-01-28) Wang, Andy Chih-MingIf colonialism is what made modernity, the American empire is the infrastructure of the present, the conditions of possibility that frame and organize the world and our knowledge of it. However, with the re-election of Donald Trump as the next American president who pledges to expel undocumented migrants, to erect a “tariff wall,” and to demand “protection money” from its allies, the American empire is now facing the possibility of its dismantling, a situation that while intellectually willing and jubilantly welcomed by some (the Arab World for instance), may sound like a bad news to others (such as Taiwan), given their worry about the other empire—China. The possibility of a dismantled American empire, and the threat of another emerging empire, creates an intellectual aporia, a political conundrum and a state of puzzlement, that constrains our understanding of the present and imagination of the future. How should critical humanities help us deal with this futurity by envisioning global transformation beyond the age of empire? Or is there room to reconfigure the meaning of empire for survival in the present? This lecture will address this weighty question by first offering a critical reflection on the political and intellectual conditions in Taiwan, as the island nation is gaslighted by both the threat of Chinese invasion and the worry of US abandonment so much so that the discussion of peace becomes unutterable. This “imperial aporia,” the inability to think beyond the terms of empire, particularly about and beyond China, is a serious problem in East Asia, but one not as heeded in the Asian studies of North America. The Inter-Asia cultural studies (IACS), a translocal intellectual movement and network that emerged since the 1990s, is an effort to address this problem. Reflecting on the work of the IACS collective in the last two decades, the lecture intends to explicate how it envisions global transformations through inter-referential methodology as a form of relational thinking and connective history, and how its translocal, translational alliance may generate solidarity and a new subjectivity against empire. Andy Chih-ming WANG currently holds the position of Research Fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica (Taiwan). Additionally, he serves as the Chair of the Inter-Asian Cultural Studies Society. He is a prominent thinker in the Inter-Asian tradition, which spearheads placed-based collaborative research on interconnected questions of knowledge production, decolonization, the Cold War, and political movements in Asia. His articles have been published in renowned journals such as Contemporary Literature, Geopolitics, boundary 2, Amerasia, and positions, as well as in edited volumes, and translations. Currently, he is engaged in writing his second book titled Multiple Returning: Asian American Literature and Post/Cold War Entanglements.Item Religion and spirituality are not something we have (or do not have), they are something we do(2024-10-24) Hjelm, TitusOur commonsense ways of recognizing and talking about ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ are problematic. Looking at phenomena as varied as rock music, meditation, and the asylum process, I argue that religion and spirituality are not something institutions or individuals possess but are rather constantly co-created and recreated in human interaction. In this lecture, I reflect on the ways our conventional understandings of ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ sometimes hinder rather than help us understand the world.Item I am Maya (sometimes): Fetishizing Mayaland(2024-10-23) Castillo Cocom, Juan A.Juan A. Castillo Cocom is Maya (sometimes) and professor at the Maya Intercultural University of Quintana Roo, Mexico. A specialist in Maya philosophy and epistemology, Dr. Castillo Cocom's work challenges deeply held assumptions among scholars and the general public alike about "Maya" identity and Maya identity politics. Using the concept of "ethnoexodus" as an identity strategy, Dr. Castillo Cocom will discuss the temporal, cultural, and situational factors that allow the Maya peoples to escape the discriminatory processes of sociocultural marginalization.Item Little red barns: Hiding the truth, from farm to fable(2024-10-08) Potter, WillWe all know what a farm looks like. It’s happy cows, happy chickens, happy farmers, and little red barns dotting the green countryside. The nostalgic image persists, although those farms of our imagination are disappearing. Award-winning journalist and TED Senior Fellow Will Potter will speak about his 10-year investigation into factory farming, and how the most powerful industries on the planet are outlawing journalism and censoring research to keep consumers in the dark.Item Entitlements, block grants, work requirements, and the safety net: Evidence from the US in times of economic crisis(2024-10-03) Bitler, MarianneMarianne Bitler received her PhD in economics from MIT in 1998. She is currently a professor of economics at UC Davis, and has also worked at UC Irvine, RAND, and the Federal Reserve Board. Her research focuses on the effects of the means tested safety net and economics of the family. She is a co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources. She has served on a number of National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine panels on topics related to social programs. She is a research associate of the NBER and a Research Fellow at IZA. Her research has been funded by NICHD, RWJ, and USDA. Professor Bitler's research focuses on the effects of government safety net programs on disadvantaged groups, economic demography, health economics, public economics, and the economics of education.Item Mechanisms of injustice: Bridging gaps in access and treatment to address inequities for minoritised children and young people living with chronic pain(2024-09-12) Hood, AnnaPain inequities are a global concern. The mechanisms through which inequities manifest occur for pediatric populations. Antiracism pain scholarship involves recognising and rectifying the racialized pain inequities in assessment, treatment, and outcomes. This session will focus on pain inequities for children living with pain, highlighting the experiences of children living with sickle cell disease (SCD). Here, I will discuss empirical research showing that children living with SCD are labelled as “drug-seekers,” leading to the underestimation of pain, longer wait times, and inappropriate and delayed treatment. Further, children living with SCD from migrant families typically encounter stigma because of differences in culture, beliefs, and healing practices. Additionally, we will discuss the potential pathways for restoration and advocate for change so that pain science and clinical practice move toward equitable treatment for all children living with pain.Item Managing the Colonial Legacy for the Benefit of Indigenous Language Communities(2023-12-15) Grounds, Richard A.Dr. Richard A.Grounds (Yuchi/Seminole) is working at the grassroots level to create new fluent speakers of Yuchi using full immersion language methods. This presentation addresses the little recognized yet enormous gap between the academic study of Indigenous languages and the hands-on practice of keeping a language alive as the heartbeat within an Indigenous community. The bottom line for our ancient and embattled First Nations is growing new young speakers, so that we will have new speakers as culturally competent members within our own living communities to lead our Indigenous societies into the future.Item Drawing from Indigenous and Western Science: Three Decades of Relationships and Renewal in the Klamath River Dam Removal(2023-12-15) Reed, Ron; Norgaard, Kari MarieRon Reed and Kari Marie Norgaard have worked closely together since 2003, conducting policyrelevant research on tribal health and social impacts of environmental decline. Their 2019 article “Emotional Impacts of Environmental Decline: What Can Attention to Native Cosmologies Teach Sociology about Emotions and Environmental Justice,” received the Best Article Award from the Sociology of Emotions section of the ASA. Ron Reed is a traditional Karuk dipnet fisherman, spiritual leader and important public figure for the Karuk Tribe. Ron has collaborated closely with researchers at Stanford, U.C. Berkeley and University of Oregon, has co-authored many articles and book chapters as well as co-supervised graduate and undergraduate theses. Kari Marie Norgaard is Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at University of Oregon. She has served as consultant for the Karuk Tribe and has chaired the Environmental Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA). Dr. Norgaard is author of Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions and Everyday Life and most recently Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People: Colonialism, Nature and Social Action as well as dozens of other articles. Ron and Kari have worked closely together since 2003, conducting policyrelevant research on tribal health and social impacts of environmental decline. Their 2019 article “Emotional Impacts of Environmental Decline: What Can Attention to Native Cosmologies Teach Sociology about Emotions and Environmental Justice,” received the Best Article Award from the Sociology of Emotions section of the ASA.Item Michif...and other languages of the Canadian Métis(2023-12-15) Papen, RobertHistorically, the Canadian Métis have always been multilingual, speaking a variety of Indigenous languages, learned from their mothers and either French or English, learned from their fathers. Unfortunately, this is no longer true today and the vast majority of Métis now speak only English. In this talk, I briefly discuss the difficulty in defining who exactly are the Métis in Canada and their current political situation. After having detailed the etymology and the various meanings of the term ‘Michif’, I go on to briefly describe some of the unique features of the four main language varieties developed and spoken by the Plains Métis : Michif French, (Heritage or Southern) Michif, Northern Michif, and Bungee, the now defunct dialect of English, once spoken by many Métis in Manitoba. I then point out some of the unfortunate consequences of the ambiguity of the term ‘Michif’ as well as some of the myths and misunderstandings about the Michif language. To conclude, I discuss the current politicization of Michif, taking as example the efforts of the Métis Nation of Ontario to ‘michivize’ their variety of French and the Métis National Council to make Michif the historical and official language of the Métis.Item Making excuses and the blame game(2023-12-15) Hieronymi, PamelaPublic life has recently seen some spectacular displays of defensiveness and seemingly unending iterations of the blame game. To know what to make of these phenomena, we need a better account of their inner workings. In this talk, moral philosopher Professor Pamela Hieronymi (known to a wider audience through her work as ethics consultant on the NBC show “The Good Place”) uses the tools of philosophical analysis to offer such an account.Item Daily Life in the Households and Archives of Ferrara in the Fifteenth Century(2023-04-24) Cossar, RoisinUntil recently, histories of the Christian church in the Middle Ages rarely examined the domestic worlds of those who lived and worked within the church. Now, a growing group of scholars is exploring the households of Christian clergy across Western Europe. Their discoveries are changing our understanding of the history of the church and the family in the medieval period. Several scholars have noted that the sexual and intimate relationships of supposedly celibate clerics were documented in complicated ways: sometimes in records that were hostile to those relationships and sometimes in records that deliberately obscured them. In this presentation, I use a case study from the Italian city of Ferrara to examine how critical attention to written sources enhances our understanding of daily life in clerical households. My source is a register created by the notary Pietro Lardi at the behest of the Dominican inquisitor Fra Bartolomeo after the local lord, Niccolò III d’Este, forced the expulsion of dozens of women from clerics’ residences in that city and diocese in 1421.Item Making the Home 1400-1550: Artisans and Material Mimesis(2023-04-24) Ajmar, MartaThe fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian home was a site of central artistic, social and cultural development. Investment in the material culture of the home varied immensely, and it has been argued that among the elites objects of high ‘intrinsic’ value – such as metalwork and tapestries – were gradually integrated or replaced by artefacts designed to impress more by virtue of their ‘added’, cultural value – such as paintings and sculpture. This paradigm built around distinct and supposedly shifting ideas of value has tended to obscure other ways of interpreting the extraordinary variety of domestic visual and material culture that emerged in the period under scrutiny. In this talk I will focus on the role of artisans in the creation of new material forms for the domestic sphere that don’t sit comfortably within this ‘intrinsic’ versus ‘added’ value paradigm by discussing objects of material mimesis. From ceramics and glass imitating stone, woodwork imitating textiles, to lacquer imitating metalwork, artisans led fluid processes of experimentation across media that created an environment of heightened material awareness and ambiguity, where certainties around materiality were constantly challenged, and new knowledge created. I will argue that these phenomena are an active response to the arrival in cities such as Venice, Genoa and Florence of non-local technologies and artefacts perceived as new, and that their significance should make us question narratives that have tended to overemphasize ‘local’ and ‘national’ explanations for artistic change built on narrow and singular ideas of originality. Artisans will emerge as central agents in the making of domestic interiors that combine ‘global’ and ‘local’ and that participate to the production of a transcultural material world built on reciprocal imitation.Item Art and Anti-Racism in Latin American Racial Formations(2023-04-24) Wade, PeterThis paper reflects on possibilities for anti-racism in artistic practice. Drawing on the work of the diverse artists we have collaborated with in the project Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America (CARLA), I focus on two types of affective intervention that I think help to think about various ways of doing anti-racism through art. The two types are challenging stereotypes and working with communities and I explore how various artworks engage with these modes of artistic action and how they create affective traction. The aim of the exercise is to be productive and helpful in the struggle against racism by providing some tools that artists and organisations can use to think strategically about anti-racism as a practice and reflect on the opportunities and risks that attach to different interventions and images are, she argues, more compelling.Item Roots, Routes, and Reckonings: On Blackness and Belonging in North America(2023-02-22) Thompson, DebraDr. Debra Thompson is a leading scholar of the comparative politics of race, with teaching and research interests that focus on the relationships among race, the state and inequality in democratic societies. She is the author of The Long Road Home: On Blackness and Belonging in North America (Simon & Schuster, 2022), finalist for the Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize for Nonfiction. This lecture discusses her new book on histories and experiences of Blackness in Canada and the USA.Item The Itelmen Khodila as a Song Genre: Nature, Consciousness and Time(2023-02-22) Koester, DavidAnthropologist, Dr. David Koester is Professor Emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He has worked with communities of both the North Atlantic and the North Pacific and primarily, over the past 30 years, with Itelmen people of Kamchatka peninsula in the Russian Far East. Founded on a long-standing interest in historical consciousness, Koester’s work with Itelmens has included research on Itelmen history, religious revival, and cultural, linguistic and musical revitalization. In his lecture he will explain how a form of Itelmen personal song known as the khodila maintains a traditional and unique type of expression of consciousness, focused on perception of the natural environment. There is evidence for the existence of this traditional form of human-environmental relations spanning nearly 300 years.Item Reflections on Reclamation(2023-02-13) Leonard, Wesley Y.Language reclamation is a decolonial approach to Indigenous language revitalization, one that identifies and responds to the core causes of community language shift, and that at all stages is embedded in community needs, wellbeing, and goals. Within a language reclamation framework, Indigenous community definitions of "language" - which are often very different from definitions used in language sciences - become the baseline for planning, doing, and assessing language work. In this lecture, I reflect upon my lived experiences as a Miami linguist long engaged in language reclamation, both in my community and also in academic fields such as Indigenous Studies and Linguistics, to consider how Indigenous language work in a variety of spaces can operate within a reclamation frame.