New Book Examines British Political Turbulence Through Novels of the 1970s

In his latest book, Dr. J. Russell Perkin explores one of the more tumultuous decades in modern British politics – as chronicled in popular novels of the time. Like much of the British music of the 1970s, these seminal bestsellers have endured over the past 50 years, reflecting the fascinating political history of the era but also playing a meaningful role in it.

While writing Politics and the British Novel in the 1970s, Dr. Perkin was struck by how “urgently contemporary” these stories remain: the environmental fable Watership Down by Richard Adams, The Ice Age by Margaret Drabble, Daniel Martin by John Fowles, John le Carré’s Cold War spy thrillers, V.S. Naipaul’s studies on post-colonial displacement, and works by Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge, Doris Lessing and others.

As Perkin conducted his research for the book, the Brexit controversy echoed the U.K.’s 1975 referendum on joining the European Economic Community. The Saint Mary’s English professor observed many other recurring and continuing issues of nationality and citizenship, race and immigration, right-wing extremism, social disparity, gender, and the environment.

Finishing his manuscript during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the spring of 2020, “I often felt as though one of Doris Lessing’s dystopian visions was playing itself out in reality,” he remarked in the preface of the book, which was released in June by McGill-Queen’s University Press. Lessing’s “apocalyptic visions and bleak view of existing society” also resonated with students in his 2019 honours seminar on the same topic as the new book, Perkin added in a campus news interview.

“Her great novel, The Memoirs of a Survivor, was about a society that was collapsing for reasons that aren’t really clear,” he says. “It might be an environmental disaster or a failure of organization, but all the normal infrastructure of life is just failing. She captures that world, and I imagine it was partly from having lived through wartime that she was able to do it so powerfully.”

Though he specializes in 19th and 20th-century British literature, writing the book was also quite a personal trip down memory lane for Perkin. Born in England, he moved to Canada at age eight and returned overseas to study at Oxford University in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Margaret Thatcher had just been elected, the national health service and public housing were in jeopardy, students were marching for nuclear disarmament, and many felt Britain was losing its global influence.

Back then, the big social novels by Fowles and Drabble particularly stood out for Perkin, as both authors were diagnosing the state of the nation in their fiction. Years later, he found himself still thinking about these stories.

“One of the things a lot of novelists explore is this nostalgic idea of the good old days of Britain when things were simpler, which is a myth that has been there as long as British literature,” says Perkin. “It has always been reproduced in popular culture but also questioned. Certainly, Fowles’ novel Daniel Martin does both of those things. It has incredible nostalgia for an idealized past, but at the same time recognizes that it’s a construct and that for many people it wasn’t in fact such a great time.”

We Can: A Community Research Lecture Series Launches

Researchers at SMU and their community partners are sharing their work with the Saint Mary’s University community in a new series of presentations and discussions on Zoom We Can: A Community Research Lecture Series. The new series is the creation of Dr. Adam Sarty, Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, and Associate Vice-President, Research, and Ray MacNeil, Network Manager CLARI, who want to demonstrate how research at Saint Mary’s is often a very close collaboration with community partners.

Research featured in the first session covered the connection between the agri-food business and immigration and will lead to recommendations about how to ensure the succession of family farms, grow small businesses, and encourage young entrepreneurs including Black Nova Scotians. A second team of researchers revealed their findings around the pre-contact use of copper among ancient civilizations here in Mi’kma’ki. A centerpiece of their work is the partnership and sharing with Mi’kmaq groups around Nova Scotia without whom their work would not be possible. Stay tuned for more sessions in Fall 2021.

Sociology Professors Mining Text Data to Cover Wider Ground in Immigration Research

Dr. Evie Tastsoglou

Dr. Eugena Kwon

Two Saint Mary's sociology professors are on a Halifax research team that has received a grant from the national Exploration competition of the New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF). The federal funding has an objective of supporting “high-risk, high-reward and interdisciplinary research” to strengthen Canadian innovation. 

Dr. Evie Tastsoglou and Dr. Eugena Kwon will investigate the changing public perceptions and social constructions of immigrants and refugees in Canada, starting from the time of Confederation to the current COVID-19 era. The research will also examine how these perceptions are systematically connected to specific economic, demographic, and political developments in the ongoing making of the Canadian state.

Titled “Visual analytics for text-intensive social science research on immigration,” the project will also introduce and evaluate a new artificial intelligence methodology for text-intensive social science research.

“The game changer in this research will be the consolidation of a new interdisciplinary way of working with disciplines that are far removed from social science,” explains Tastsoglou, who received the 2020 President’s Award for Excellence in Research at Saint Mary’s in February.

She and Kwon are collaborating with Dr. Evangelos Milios, a researcher from Dalhousie’s Faculty of Computer Science, who is the project’s co-principal investigator along with Tastsoglou. They will be pioneering new applications for natural language processing (NLP) and visual analytics (VA) systems, in hopes of enabling social scientists to retrieve and analyze much larger document sets than ever before.

This research will focus on news content going back to the mid-1800s in two national newspapers, The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star (and their antecedents). It will also use the technology tools and a number of keywords to sift through court decisions, parliamentary debates and 21st century social media data.  

“In the social sciences in general, it’s hard to cover mass amounts of information,” explains Kwon, co-applicant in the funding competition. “One of the main strengths of our project is, by collaborating with computer scientists and using visual analytics, it will help make it feasible for us to cover massive amounts of information.”

Without the visual analytics tools, it would be nearly impossible to manually collect and analyze historical texts spanning nearly two centuries. Input from the sociologists will be key to helping the computer scientists design and refine a text-retrieval system that will collect data that is most relevant to their immigration research.

“As social scientists, there’s no limit to what we can do if this is successful,” adds Kwon.

According to the team’s funding proposal, “Canada’s humanitarian tradition has been a pole of attraction to new immigrants and refugees and a source of pride for all Canadians. Understanding the changing, and often contradictory, perceptions/constructions of immigrants/refugees in Canadian history … will be of great benefit to scholars, policy-makers and the broader public. It may debunk certain taken-for-granted ‘truths’ about Canada but it can also help shape more informed policy to cope with economic and social challenges of the 21st century.” 

The project will receive $250,000 over two years. This year’s NFRF awards, announced May 31, are supporting 117 research projects across Canada with “the potential to yield game-changing results in social, cultural, economic, health-related or technological areas”.

The New Frontiers in Research Fund is administered by the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat on behalf of Canada’s three research granting agencies: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

Saint Mary’s University Anthropologist Investigates Former Shubenacadie Residential School Site

Dr. Jonathan Fowler.

An investigation of the former Shubenacadie Residential school site grounds has begun as the result of a partnership between Sipekne'katik First Nation and Saint Mary's University. 

"This has been top of mind for Sipekne'katik for many years and the tragic discovery in Kamloops brings a renewed sense of urgency to our work," says Sipekne'katik First Nation Chief Mike Sack.

The Sipekne'katik Council and management and Sipekne'katik Grand Council have been working directly in recent years with Dr. Jonathan Fowler, an Associate Professor with Saint Mary's University’s Anthropology Department. Dr. Fowler is one of the country's leading researchers in archaeological geophysics and remote sensing. His investigation on the former Shubenacadie Residential school grounds is to determine if there is any burial evidence on site. Using several techniques, including ground-penetrating radar (GPR) Dr. Fowler is working directly with community member and Mi'kmaq cultural heritage curator for the Nova Scotia Museum, Roger Lewis as a co-investigator. 

"This urgent and essential work must be undertaken thoroughly and to the highest standard," says Dr. Fowler. "We will examine the site carefully and with the most powerful technologies available." 

Dr. Fowler's GPR research has successfully mapped burials associated with the 1873 sinking of the SS Atlantic and identified nearly 300 unmarked graves in the pre-Deportation Acadian cemetery at Grand-Pré National Historic Site of Canada.    

Undergraduate Students Earn Paid Summer Research Positions

 With hard work and dedication to their studies, top undergraduate students at Saint Mary’s have won the opportunity to do paid research with their professors this summer. Some will be in labs, others in the field or working remotely.  

Research at Saint Mary’s University has an impact on our community and globally. These students are placed across the campus in Science, Arts and Business faculties. Research topics include applying human resource concepts to sports teams, analyzing data and images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the shift in approach to feminist policy in Canada, and analysing case studies on the collapse of fish stocks and fisheries worldwide.  

Canadian and International students are eligible for four award programs:

• Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Undergraduate Student
  Research Awards (NSERC USRA);

• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Explore Summer Research Awards; and,

• Dean of Science Undergraduate Summer Research Awards

• First Year Undergraduate Awards

Working with professors whose research is making positive changes in the world guides students on their educational path to become the next generation of researchers.  

“Saint Mary’s University faculty members excel at engaging undergraduate students in their research efforts, and these experiences are a transformational positive experience for every student that has the opportunity,” said Dr. Adam Sarty, Associate Vice-President, Research and Dean, Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research.  

“The one-on-one attention from our faculty members and teamwork with peers is a perfect complement to an undergraduate degree, and provides an exceptionally strong foundation for career entry, or future professional/graduate studies,” said Dr. Sarty.  

The Awards

USRA awards, open to Canadian students who have completed at least a year of a bachelor’s degree, are meant to help students develop their potential for a research career in the natural sciences and engineering.

SSHRC Explore awards are open to students studying social sciences and humanities. With these two award programs that are supported by our federal funding councils, combined with the Dean of Science and First Year awards, all Saint Mary’s University students, Canadian and international, have an opportunity to apply for summer research award positions, even after their first year of study. 

This year are students are working on these exciting and inspiring research projects:

Humaid Muhammad Agowun (Mathematics & Computing Science; Supervisor: Paul Muir) 

Tanisha Ballard (Chemistry; Supervisor: Clarissa Sit)

Continuing certain projects already initiated, my lab partners and I will be looking at improving plant growth, and potentially, pest control in crop production. This summer, hopefully we will be able to conduct field trials on various crops, as well as additional greenhouse and green roof trials this summer to investigate this.

Abigail Battson (Astrophysics; Supervisor: Vincent Hénault-Brunet)

I will be working on high-velocity stars in globular clusters. These stars are far too fast to have been produced by the typical cluster dynamics, and are likely produced by interactions between a binary star system and a black hole. My work involves finding these stars using the GAIA proper motion data and confirming that they are likely members of the cluster, with plans to apply this process to all the globular clusters I can. Eventually, I hope to analyze the three-body interactions that cause the star's high speed to discover what kind of black holes would produce the results observed.

Samantha Bennett (Environmental Science; Supervisor: Erin Cameron)

This summer I am going to be studying soil biodiversity and the effects of global change, climate change and invasive species on species distribution. I will spend part of the summer researching earthworms, looking into their distribution and dispersal. I am hoping to get the opportunity to go to Western Canada later in the summer to study the distribution of earthworms in Saskatchewan.

Hannah Birru (Economics; Supervisor: Joniada Milla)

Labour economics in Chile.

Abby Brouwer (Biology; Supervisor: Anne Dalziel)

Testing how freshwater tolerance evolves in stickleback or study the factors influencing hybridization rate and direction in killifishes. This work will involve collecting fish from the field, caring for fish brought back to the aquarium facilities, and conducting molecular and biochemical analyses in the lab.

Chloe Champion (Biology; Supervisor: Anne Dalziel)

Continuing field and molecular work in the Dalziel Lab on “Mechanisms affecting rates and directions of hybridization in killifish species producing asexual hybrids.”

Jakob Conrad (Mathematics; Supervisor: Mitja Mastnak)

The study and classfication of hopf algebras, using computational methods and tools, and studying the simultaneous triangularization of linear transformations and their corresponding chains of invariant subspaces.

Katrina Cruickshanks (Biology; Supervisor: Sean Haughian)

Analyzing lichen species of old growth forests of Nova Scotia to assist land managers with prioritizing conservation decisions. 

Myles Davidson (Psychology; Supervisor: Skye Stephens)

I am working with Dr. Skye Stephens on a prevention project for adults at risk of sexually offending against children. We are working on identifying what is considered best practice for preventing offending amongst this demographic.

Bryn de Chastelain (Political Science; Supervisor: Alexandra Dobrowolsky)

My research is supporting the development of an article by Dr. Dobrowolsky on the topic of feminist policy and gender equality in Canada. Specifically, I will be analyzing speeches and policy approaches under Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his son Justin Trudeau, demonstrating the shift (or lack thereof) in approach to feminist policy in Canada. This will inform a comparative analysis of the different political eras to showcase the realities of feminism and gender equality in Canada. 

Matthew Fancy (Marketing; Supervisor Tiffany Vu)

Helping to develop and test various theories in marketing pertaining to charitable giving and sustainability.

Mark Funnell (Geography & Environmental Studies; Supervisors: Matthew Novak & Khan Rahaman)

I am a first-year Geography undergrad working with the Wicked Problems Lab to assess the pandemic’s effect on local governance. This looks to answer how municipal government has been affected in Halifax and elsewhere in Canada through using qualitative data analysis software and other research methods.

Justin Gray (Mathematics and Computing Science; Supervisor: Stavros Konstantinidis)

A regular expression is a pattern that is used to match desirable word(s) in a text. Given a regular expression and a word, there are algorithms to determine if the regular expression matches the word; this is called the membership problem. This is often solved by converting the regular expression into an automaton, but can also be solved using other direct algorithms. My research will focus on algorithms and implementation of the membership problem for multi-dimensional word/regular expression tuples, which are studied in the area of what is formally known as rational word relations. This type of regular expressions is of current interest both in the theory of rational relations and their applications in areas like databases and computer security.

Samantha Henneberry (Chemistry; Supervisor: Rob Singer)

This summer I will be working with Dr. Singer and his team on a green chemistry project involving ionic organocatalysis. These ionic organocatalysts can potentially provide more green alternatives to traditional organic liquids. Another project involves the N-demethylation of opioids, using sonochemical / ultrasound methods. This project falls under the medicinal side of organic chemistry, and may even be published by the end of the summer.”

Jacob Hoare (Chemistry; Supervisor: Rob Singer)

Sam Julien (Chemistry; Supervisor: Christa Brosseau)

I am a 4th year chemistry honours student. I will be developing a novel biosensor for rapid detection of cardiac biomarkers. This technology may be useful for the early evaluation of heart attacks before the onset of physical symptoms.

Amy Kehoe (Engineering; Supervisor: Adel Merabet)

Maggie Kelly (Biology; Supervisor: Laura Weir)

I will be working with Dr. Weir and her study of the mating behaviour of Japanese Medaka fish.

Madison Kieffer (Modern Languages and Classics; Supervisor: Sveva Svavelli)

Processing artifacts and organizing documentation from the archaeological excavation at the Oenotrian-Greek site of Incoronata “greca” (Pisticci-Basilicata-Italy) (8th- 6th c. BCE). Current investigation of the site focuses on the relationships formed between Indigenous populations in southern Italy and incoming Greeks in the wider context of Greek colonialism and imperialism in the ancient Mediterranean.

Mayara Mejri (Biology; Supervisor: David Chiasson)

Nam Nguyen (Accounting; Supervisor: Vasiliki Athanasakou)

I am super passionate about working in the accounting and taxation field. I am currently participating in the research project of Professor Athanasakou to perform analysis on corporate reporting, and I am working full-time as an Excise Tax Examiner at the Canada Revenue Agency.  I am interested in this topic as I have the opportunity to review and evaluate annual reports and information forms from many different companies. Working with Professor Athanasakou and learning from her stories and experience will allow me to learn and gain more handy skills and knowledge, and this would help in pursuing my CPA designation.

Narmeen Oozer (Mathematics & Computing Science; Supervisor Mitja Mastnak)

Bibek Parajuli (Psychology; Supervisor: Arla Day)

Gwen Pearson (Women & Gender Studies/Criminology; Supervisors: Byers/Collins)

Collecting existing data and research on the subject in the media, including television shows and documentaries. I will examine the content relating to many different aspects like story arc, genre, and how characters are portrayed. I also expect to learn skills relating to criminology, media studies, and research, that will likely benefit me as I complete my degree. 

Bernice Perry (History; Supervisor: Heather Green)

Working alongside Professor Green and her collaborators on the Northern Borders Project, researching first and secondary sources for developing an open access online teaching module, surrounding aspects of borders and boundaries in the North. This project entails looking at physical borders and cultural and racial boundaries using scholarly and local perspectives. There is also an opportunity for independent research surrounding the project themes, which may be featured in the teaching module.

Grace Robertson (Environmental Science; Supervisor: Tony Charles)

I will be compiling and analysing case studies and other information from around the world on the collapse of fish stocks and fisheries, leading to a published report. I will also be working with simulation modelling of the impacts of marine protected areas on fisheries and marine biodiversity. Lastly, I will be engaging in the work of the Community Conservation Research Network through research and outreach activities.

Jacqueline Shaw (Psychology; Supervisor: Kevin Kelloway)

Working with Dr. Kelloway and his research group to study organizational response to the Covid-19 outbreak, as well as psychological injuries at work, stress interventions, and the relationship between personality and organizational outcomes.

Jaylynn Skeete (Psychology; Supervisor: Nicole Conrad)

I will be assisting Dr. Conrad with her research on the relationship between spelling and reading comprehension, and with statistical input and analysis as well as creating my own research study and design. 

Ashley Ta (Management; Supervisor: Terry Wagar)

Applying human resource concepts to sports teams, coaches, and athletes. I will also be assisting in writing literary reviews, assembling data, and conducting interviews. 

Devin Williams (Astrophysics; Supervisor: Marcin Sawicki)

Analyzing data and images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other giant ground-based telescopes to study galaxy morphology, and learn how galaxies form, grow, and evolve in the early Universe.

Study shows long-lasting impacts to lake health from old gold mines

Water on the tailing fields of the historical Montague Gold District transports contaminated materials towards Mitchell Brook, which flows into Barry's Run, and then into Lake Charles. Wind is also a mechanism of tailings transport. Credit: Linda Campbell

New findings of a multi-university team of researchers show that pollution from historical gold mining in Nova Scotia, Canada, persists at levels that impact the health of aquatic ecosystems, despite mine operations closing nearly a century ago.

“Mining activities from 100 years ago can still impact freshwater ecosystems today. Our work reveals that lakes may show signs of recovery from those impacts,” notes Saint Mary’s University Professor and co-author Dr. Linda Campbell. “Even so, we must remain vigilant about understanding and monitoring the legacy of those contaminated tailings in our modern ecosystems to support recovery processes.”

Over 350 gold mines operated throughout Nova Scotia between the mid-1800s and 1950. Urbanization and land development has taken place nearby some historical mining areas and people sometimes use these areas for recreational activities. Waste tailing materials with elevated and potentially toxic levels of arsenic and mercury often are associated with historical gold mining sites in Nova Scotia. The tailings can contaminate soil and aquatic sediments through water and wind movement.

This study used dated sediments from the bottom of two urban lakes located near one of the region’s largest historical mining operations. Lake sediments are a well-recognized and information-rich natural archive of past environments which allow the assessment of geochemical and biological conditions of lakes and their watersheds before, during, and after pollution has occurred.  

The study was recently published in the peer-reviewed international journal Science of the Total Environment and highlights how pollution from past gold mining combined with contemporary stressors such as climate change and urbanization may contribute to prevent complete lake recovery from century-old mining pollution.

“Past mining activities that occurred throughout Nova Scotia introduced considerable amounts of arsenic and mercury into the environment,” says lead author Allison Clark, from Mount Allison University. “Although the Montague Gold District closed to mining 80 years ago, lakes nearby still remain severely impacted.”

Currently, arsenic levels are still very high in the lake sediments—300 times above levels that are known to harm aquatic organisms. Mercury has returned to levels observed before gold mining began. This suggests that arsenic is behaving differently than mercury within the sediments at the bottom of tailing-impacted lakes.

“Mining is both a blessing and a curse,” notes Mount Allison University Associate Professor and co-author Dr. Joshua Kurek. “Society benefits but past mining activities practiced throughout Nova Scotia continue to harm ecosystems and citizens are now left with the clean-up costs.”

Additionally, invertebrates that live on and interact with the lake’s sediment have become less diverse compared with a similar reference lake, likely due to the mining pollution as well as other recent watershed stressors. Loss of key organisms may affect lake food webs, leading to issues with water quality.

Funding for this research was provided by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Genome Atlantic.

SMU Research Partnership Rewriting History of Pre-Contact North American Copper Trade

Cape d’Or and the surrounding areas are where much of the copper examined for this research originated. (Photo - Communications Nova Scotia)

A Saint Mary's University research partnership with the Nova Scotia Museum has uncovered evidence that may rewrite North American understanding of the pre-contact trade of copper across the continent.

The lead Saint Mary's researcher on this project, Dr. Jacob Hanley, is a geologist who studies ore deposits and is a member of Algonquins of Greater Golden Lake First Nation in Ontario, Canada. After an exciting discussion with a colleague regarding prehistory in Atlantic Canada, Dr. Hanley began to take an interest in where the Indigenous people of Atlantic Canada sourced their pre-contact metals.

"One of the most important metals to the Indigenous population of North America was copper. It was an essential material for toolmaking and working that also held a spiritual significance," says Hanley. "The prevailing understanding of copper in North America during the Late Archaic Period to Early Woodland Period, that is to say, is 4,500 years ago to 500 A.D, is that the copper originated from deposits from Lake Superior, the Lake Superior Basin, and Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan. Our findings strongly suggest this is not the case and that a site in the Bay of Fundy played a much bigger role in history."

The lead Nova Scotia Museum researcher is Dr. Katie Cottreau-Robins, Curator of Archaeology. Additional project collaborators include Roger Lewis, Curator of Mi'kmaq Cultural Heritage, Nova Scotia Museum, and the New Brunswick Archaeological Services Branch. The project itself would not have been possible without the permission and participation of the Metepenagiag First Nation and Mainland Mi’kmaq Grand Council members who allowed the team to examine significant cultural artifacts.

"This copper comes from Cape d'Or, located in the Bay of Fundy, a place of extreme significance in terms of the history of Mi'kma'ki," says Lewis. "To get to these outcrops, you can only approach from the water or climb down the cliffs. We hope to support more research to examine whether the act of gathering the copper itself may have had an additional cultural significance due to the danger and the level of skill required to gather it successfully."

Unlike traditional methods of analyzing artifacts, the team uses a new method usually reserved for finding ore deposits for mining purposes. This new to archeology method is non-invasive and more accurately reads the chemical make-up of the copper while leaving the artifacts completely intact.

"Our data suggests that Cape d'Or and the Bay of Fundy was the main source of copper for the Mi'kmaq people and beyond," says Cottreau-Robins. "All the artifacts we have examined, and initially described as having come from the Lake Superior region, actually originated in the Bay of Fundy. This suggests that much of the copper artifact collection in the northeastern region, believed to have come from the Lake Superior area, may have an Atlantic origin. The implications of this are huge, as it means reshaping our understanding of pre-contact trade across Atlantic Canada, Eastern Canada and the Eastern United States and re-examining the role copper played cultural in the history of Atlantic Canada's Indigenous peoples."

This project recognizes the importance of the artifacts they are working with to the Metepenagiag First Nation and have ensured that they are analyzed in New Brunswick, so they remain in their province of origin and can be returned swiftly.

"Saint Mary's University takes pride in doing world-class research that creates new knowledge and disseminates it to the world," says Dr. Malcolm Butler, Vice-President, Academic and Research. "The work of Dr. Jacob Hanley and his team is an exemplar of this commitment and takes community-based research collaboration to a new level. We are proud to be a part of this collaboration across provinces and with the Metepenagiag First Nation."

Hanley and Cottreau-Robins have written about their research findings in a chapter of the upcoming anthology Far Northeast 3000BP to Contact, which can be found here.

Saint Mary’s University Researchers Take Part in CBC Earth Day Special

On Earth Day, Saint Mary’s University researcher Dr. Danika van Proosdij and honours student Makadunyiswe Ngulube took part in a special event hosted by CBC. They discussed climate change and, more specifically, the multi-million-dollar salt marsh restoration research project underway in the Chignecto area.

The project, Making Room for Wetlands: Implementation of Managed Realignment for Salt Marsh Restoration and Climate Change Adaptation in Nova Scotia, seeks to restore over 75 hectares of tidal wetland (i.e., salt marsh) habitat through the realignment and decommissioning of dyke infrastructure at multiple sites in the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.

This project includes a well-established partnership between Saint Mary’s University and CB Wetlands & Environmental Specialists (CBWES) Inc. using innovative and proven techniques with a comprehensive monitoring program.

Click here to read more on Saint Mary’s participation in CBC’s special Earth Day coverage. Or listen to the researchers on CBC’s Information Morning here (~32 minutes into the segment).

Additional reading

• Government of Canada partners with Saint Mary’s to create new coastal habitat and combat climate change

• National recognition for Saint Mary’s geographer

• SMU faculty participate as scientific experts at G7 Oceans Inspiration Expo

SMU archaeologist brings history into focus with LiDAR and 3D tech

Dr. Jonathan Fowler is bringing Nova Scotia’s historic settlements into sharper focus, using advanced digital tools to combine archival maps with landscape data in his research and teaching at Saint Mary’s.

“This is about as close as you can get to time travel without a DeLorean,” says the associate professor of archaeology. Instead of going Back to the Future, the texture mapping technology offers a fresh approach to viewing the past, showing in stunning detail how our farmlands and fortresses looked hundreds of years ago.

In a current project, Fowler shows how Fort Anne National Historic Site would have looked in 1706, combining a centuries-old military map with a 3D terrain model created from current aerial Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data. 

“Airborne LiDAR has become a powerful tool for archaeologists to tell the stories about our heritage while also providing historical information for us to study and interpret,” says Fowler, who teaches in the Department of Anthropology.  

LiDAR technology has been around for decades, but the provincial government’s open data model is enabling an explosion of new research in many disciplines. Free LiDAR data is now available for much of Nova Scotia through GeoNOVA’s DataLocator Elevation Explorer portal. Aircraft mounted with LiDAR transmitters and receivers fly over landscapes across the province, emitting pulses of light energy. This provides detailed data about the ground surface, and archaeologists can filter out trees and other high vegetation to see a bare surface model.

To process LiDAR data, Fowler’s go-to is the Surfer surface mapping platform from Golden Software of Golden, Colorado. He has been using it for years to visualize geophysical survey data, and more recently to collate and analyze LiDAR data with old maps. The technology “essentially drapes historical maps over digital 3D models, creating a vivid visualization of the former landscape,” he explains.  

For his Fort Anne images, Fowler used high-resolution scans of historic maps of the fortress: a 1706 military map from France’s National Archives, and a 1753 map from the Library of Congress, showing the site under British rule. He put them through a georeferencing process in a Geographical Information System (GIS) program, then used LiDAR data to create a ‘bare Earth’ 3D surface model of the area’s current topography, minus vegetation and buildings. Combining them in Surfer created a 3D map revealing the original layout of buildings within the fort’s ramparts and beyond.   

“Interestingly, most of the fort’s buildings no longer exist, but some structures still stand today in [the town of] Annapolis Royal and are among the oldest buildings in Canada,” says Fowler.

Fowler hopes to unearth new information about Fort Anne and its surroundings. As he has in Grand Pré and other projects, he can use the new 3D imagery as a guide to return with Ground Penetrating Radar to further investigate what remains hidden beneath the surface.

“Dr. Fowler’s research demonstrates the value of visualizing and modeling multiple diverse data sets to gain deeper scientific insights,” adds Blakelee Mills, CEO of Golden Software.

In another study of the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site, Fowler used a map dating back to 1745, after the New England siege. Though Parks Canada rebuilt much of the town’s outer wall during the 20th century, LiDAR data shows evidence of the craters left when the British military attempted to demolish the site in the mid-1700s.

Aside from its research benefits, fun, and aesthetic value, this approach to historical mapping holds great potential for explaining landscape histories with vivid visualizations.

“Rather than asking someone to imagine a past environment, we can digitally render it in 3D, resulting in a much more immersive experience of the past,” says Fowler.

“As a teacher of history, archaeology, and heritage resource management and interpretation, I am thrilled that these tools are becoming more affordable and user friendly. We are presently integrating them into several of our archaeology courses, including Archaeological Remote Sensing, Landscape Archaeology, and Cultural Resource Management Archaeology.”

For more details on the Fort Anne project, read Dr. Fowler’s articles on LinkedIn and Facebook. Follow his updates on Twitter at @ArchInAcadie.  

Research Expo showcases the exceptional talent of Saint Mary’s researchers

A screenshot from this year’s virtual expo.

Sixteen talented researchers from Science, Arts and the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s University gathered to share their research on March 5, 2021.

Each year Research Expo offers a wide range of topics, and this year’s event —held virtually for the first time—was no exception. Open to both the Saint Mary’s community and the public, Expo had more than 170 registered participants.

Panelists were asked to condense their research—sometimes months or even years in the making—into a three-minute presentation, in the same format as the 3-Minute Thesis competition our graduate students participate in.

The wide range of topics showcases the breadth of research expertise at Saint Mary’s. Professors spoke about their work on measuring dark matter, ultra-fast laser scanning microscopes, the psychology behind video interviews in hiring practices, and Colombian post-traumatic literature. 

Kevin Buchan, Director of the Office of Innovation and Community Engagement (OICE), facilitated a question-and-answer period after each presentation session, providing an opportunity for panelists to offer more detailed explanations of their work.

Events like Research Expo are key to building partnerships across different departments within the university as well as external partnerships. OICE is looking forward to continuing to highlight the excellent research happening here at Saint Mary’s University.

The Office of Innovation and Community Engagement (OICE) at Saint Mary’s facilitates research relationships between faculty members and government departments, private companies, industrial associations and international agencies. To learn more about the Research Expo and the Office of Innovation and Community Engagement, click here.

Dr. Sara Malton researching hunger and fasting in the Victorian era

Current cultural dialogues about womanhood and agency are popular topics of inquiry in today’s social science research, yet society’s apparent need to contain the female body has been a poignant issue for centuries. Dr. Sara Malton has been researching the representation of women’s bodies – and women’s physical and psychological health – by revisiting understandings of fasting, starvation and selfhood in 19th-century literature and culture.

Dr. Sara Malton

“This research could help us approach with greater care our thinking about women’s relationships with their bodies and questions of agency and help us critically consider the ways that we tend to pathologize everything,” says Dr. Malton, a Professor in the Department of English Language & Literature.

Malton’s current research focuses on representation of the “fasting girl,” which she describes in her research abstract as “a phenomenon which became the focus of much scrutiny in British, European, and Anglo-American medicine and the popular press, as well as nineteenth-century literature. Fasting girls were frequently purported to survive on nothing but the Eucharist and sips of water often for weeks, months, or sometimes even years. On the one hand, such young women evoked a pattern of behavior that recalled that of earlier miraculous saints, such as Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-80), who was renowned for what was then termed anorexia mirabilis. Yet into the latter decades of the nineteenth century, doctors largely discredited the entire notion of anorexia mirabilis.”

Last summer, Malton received a federal SSHRC Insight Development Grant for her project, entitled “Wondrous Hunger: Salvation, Starvation and the Nineteenth-Century 'Fasting Girl.'” Further investigation on the subject has led her to the Welsh girl Sarah Jacob, a figure who has been addressed by authors ranging from Charles Dickens to Emma Donoghue in her recent historical novel, The Wonder [2016]. Cases such as Jacob’s “were at the nexus of this transition from the perception of self-imposed starvation as redemptive sacrifice to a pathologized illness, anorexia nervosa, which was defined in 1873,” says Malton in her abstract.

With “intermittent fasting” becoming popular again as a weight loss strategy, Malton hopes her research will contribute to current discussions on gender, agency and the body, as well as tensions that remain between medical practice and religious belief.  

“There has been a battle of authority between religion and science, and during the Victorian era there was a desire to pathologize and reclassify. Prior to the late 19th century, there was no specific medical pathology for anorexia. So, who controls these women’s stories? After their deaths we have trial records and medical records, but no records from the women,” Malton explains.

“In a time when we are so polarized in our discussions, I think that it is now useful to add nuance to historical issues where religious discourse relates to scientific discourse,” she adds.

In much of her research, Malton explores the intersections of fiction, finance, technology and law, as well as consumer and commodity culture. Her publications include the book, Forgery in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture: Fictions of Finance from Dickens to Wilde (Palgrave-Macmillan 2009).

She is the current Secretary and a past Trustee of The Dickens Society, and hosted the international 20th Annual Dickens Society Symposium at Saint Mary’s in 2015. A few months ago, Chicago's Remy Bumppo Theatre Company invited her to present Between the Lines: The Chimes, a pre-show lecture for its virtual performance of the 1844 Christmas story by Dickens.

Learn more about Malton’s work at saramalton.com and follow her on Twitter at @saramalton.

SMU receives federal funding for major new chemistry centre collaboration

This week a major $518-million funding initiative from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) was announced by the federal government, giving support to 102 projects at 35 post-secondary institutions across Canada.

Saint Mary’s is proud to be a collaborating partner on a project at Memorial University in Newfoundland. The new ACESCentre: Atlantic Canada Environmental and Sustainable Chemistry Centre was granted $6.7 million in federal CFI funding; Saint Mary’s will see approximately $485,000 of the total. The total value of the project with funding from other organizations will be $16.9 million.

This new world-class research centre will address challenges related to the environment. Many faculty members across campus, including those in Chemistry, Geology, Biology and Environmental Science will benefit from this investment.

At Saint Mary’s the funding will provide the installation of three new instruments for the Centre for Environmental Analysis and Remediation (CEAR) lab, which will serve the university and the greater community for the next two decades.

These significant investments in science and technology will provide our team with the ability to build on a history of collaborative research excellence, with a focus on sustainable chemistry and materials,” says Dr. Christa Brosseau, Chemistry researcher at Saint Mary’s and co-applicant on the project.

“We are grateful to be able to share this knowledge with the next generation of scientists, and with this strengthening of our Centre for Environmental Analysis and Remediation, we look forward to highlighting Atlantic Canada's abilities and goals on an international stage,” says Dr. Brosseau.

“Researchers at Memorial University and Saint Mary’s will collaborate to “address, study and solve problems related to several key, interrelated areas of environmental and economic importance pertaining to sustainable resource development and environmental knowledge in Atlantic Canada,” reads the project proposal.

“The tools requested will provide chemists, ocean scientists, biochemists, and engineers access to world-class instrumentation for characterization of molecules and materials for both sustainable resource processing and product development, and environmental understanding and monitoring.” 

About the Canada Foundation for Innovation

For more than 20 years, the CFI has been giving researchers the tools they need to think big and innovate. Fostering a robust innovation system in Canada translates into jobs and new enterprises, better health, cleaner environments and, ultimately, vibrant communities. By investing in state-of-the-art facilities and equipment in Canada’s universities, colleges, research hospitals and non-profit research institutions, the CFI also helps to attract and retain the world’s top talent, to train the next generation of researchers and to support world-class research that strengthens the economy and improves the quality of life for all Canadians.