Research Day 2026

Adopting a Data Curation Lens for Rigorous, Reflexive, and Responsible Machine Learning Data Practices

Data are a crucial ingredient in any AI system. For example, in machine learning (ML), datasets are a key factor in determining a model’s performance. Recognized biases are attributed to the datasets used for training and the associated data practices. Despite increased research on data-centric ML, there remain challenges around accountability and transparency. Many argue that the adoption of theory and practices from archives and data curation fields can support more ethical machine learning. Currently this conversation has not yet fully explored the environmental impact of datasets and whether smaller datasets can be developed while yielding better model outcomes, i.e., through responsible and frugal data practices. My research, by adopting an interdisciplinary approach, explores this subject further and redesigns data practices to make ML model development more rigorous, reflexive, and sustainable.

Don’t Lead with Climate: On meaningful engagement of residents in urban climate action

Achieving net-zero emissions in cities requires strong political support and resident engagement. Traditional, top-down climate engagement, focusing on education and input on emissions reductions, may not generate the needed support. This paper discusses a project in Scarborough, which starts with local aspirations and values, rather than the City’s climate agenda. By connecting community goals with Toronto’s climate targets, we aim to increase public support and engagement in climate action.

“Hijos de padres que lucharon…”: Young Adult Rural Livelihoods and the Political Ecology of Healing in Post-War El Salvador

In the wake of the Salvadoran Civil War, rural actors in Chalatenango, a region that witnessed mass violence, spearheaded post-war development to support livelihood reconstruction and democracy. In this Dissertation, I analyze the legacies of community projects on the lives of young adults, and argue that the communal care of the post-war buffered some of the impacts of youth migration and opened space for a new generation of activists to heal intergenerational trauma of the civil war.

A Plural Tool for Latin American Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations Climate Change system

Indigenous peoples are increasingly identified as key climate decision-makers as research finds them protectors of 80% of the global biodiversity (Fleck, 2022). However, they face constraints participating in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations, such as marginalization and lack of legitimation of their knowledge, despite their role as land stewards highly vulnerable to climate impacts (Suiseeya and Zanotti, 2019). Indigenous participants from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) require additional translational support in climate negotiations, face insufficient funds to access these spaces, and are often excluded by nation-states during the domestication of global environmental policies (Belfer et al., 2019; Gustaffsson and Schilling-Vacaflor, 2021). While the UNFCCC includes Indigenous observers from the Central and South America, and the Caribbean region, there is limited understanding of the participants’ specific needs and whether these are being met in climate negotiations. Considering that they face differentiated conditions of historic racialization and vulnerability in the world’s most dangerous region for environmental defenders (Verweijen et al., 2021). My dissertation’s overarching objective is to explore plausible mechanisms that foster the desired participation of Latin American and Caribbean Indigenous peoples in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations. Hence, my current aim is to design a political tool useful for LAC Indigenous Peoples that enhances their participation in international climate policy. This project contributes to multidisciplinary discussions in the literature about LAC Indigenous Peoples’ ecological priorities in global decision-making and seeks to deliver an innovative tool that, based on their needs, assists them in legitimizing their rights within international climate dialogues.

Music, Sound, and Landscape as British Cultural and Material Resource, c.1900-1927

This presentation explores how extraction and industrialism influenced music production and reception throughout Britain, and how extractive industries influenced the cultural understanding of landscape. Musical and sonic features of nature and landscape in early 20th century British orchestral music are frequently understood as utopic or pastoral musical renderings of visual-spatial impressions of environment. Yet, by situating these features within the complex imperial and environmental contexts of turn of the century Britain, I offer a richer account of the way music worked to negotiate tensions and oppositions inherent to questions of land use, extraction, and materials and was never isolated from broader cultural debates about land.

Impacts of Polystyrene Nanoplastics on the Photosynthetic Activity of Cyanobacteria

Plastic pollution is one of several threats to aquatic environments. Due to their small size, nanoplastics (NPls) can adversely affect cyanobacteria. Despite their importance, the impacts of NPls on Synechococcus remain underexplored. The effects of NPls on cyanobacterial photosynthetic activity under environmentally relevant concentrations were investigated. We found that NPl concentration and surface charge significantly affect the degree of inhibition of primary productivity.

Evaluating the environmental impacts of therapeutic and recommended diets for cardiometabolic health: A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of diets in Canada

Achieving sustainable nutrition in Canada requires regionally relevant dietary data. We developed the Canadian Food Life Cycle Inventory database and the Environmental Impact Score-Nutrition to jointly assess nutritional quality and environmental impacts of foods and diets. Animal-based foods, particularly beef, demonstrate highest environmental impacts, while plant-based foods and diets yield co-benefits for human and environmental health, supporting sustainable dietary guidance in Canada.

Calls to Ecological Conscience: Self, Relation, and Responsibility

This thesis compares the various strengths of different literary forms for addressing climate crisis and relations with other-than-humans. As carbon emissions blow past benchmarks for avoiding irreversible temperature change, there is an increasingly large gap between scientific recognition of planetary warming, on the one hand, and individual and political responses to climate crisis, on the other. Authors use diverse literary genres to portray how these human-environment relations are evolving. My research traces contemporary expressions of interspecies relation and climate crisis in novels, poetry, film, and protest literature, and by comparing these divergent forms, I address the larger question of how literary studies might contribute to interdisciplinary conversations about ecology and climate justice.

Mitigating Global Warming and Reducing the Over-Reliance on Critical Minerals Using Smart Cities: A critical review and analysis of the smart-city concept from theory to practice

Cities are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, and smart cities have an opportunity to simultaneously mitigate global warming and alleviate an emerging critical minerals crisis. My thesis proposes a smart-city definition with three elements that includes consideration for critical minerals. These three elements raise two research questions addressed in this thesis, leading to an analyses of extant definitions, frameworks, and initiatives.