How can collaborative doctoral research support the public good? The doctoral students of the 2024/25 PSI cohort reimagine traditional academic research with action-oriented and interdisciplinary scholarship.
Since 2015, UBC’s Public Scholars Initiative (PSI) has been supporting UBC doctoral students whose research extends beyond traditional approaches to address complex challenges facing the public. Nearly 400 Public Scholars across 10 cohorts have worked in partnerships with more than 200 partners in dozens of countries.
31 doctoral students from Vancouver campus join the program this year, alongside four new Public Scholars from the Okanagan campus. In continued support of public scholarship work across UBC, a total nearing $360,000 will be awarded to new and existing Public Scholars this year. Funding for the Health Equity Stream, launched in partnership with UBC Health, also continues to facilitate research improving equity within local, national, and global health systems. Scholars in the health equity stream are noted with an asterisk below.
Congratulations to the 2024/25 cohort of Public Scholars! Learn more about their innovative research in their profiles below.
| NAME | UNIT/DEPartment | FACULTY | PROJECT TITLE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alexa Norton | Interdisciplinary Studies | Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies | Optimizing the role of prescribed safer supply and exploring alternate dispensing models during an overdose epidemic |
| Amin Adibi * | Pharmaceutical Sciences | Pharmaceutical Sciences | Untangling Race and Lung Function in Prediction Models |
| Ana Laura Arrieta Zamudio | Linguistics | Arts | Modality in San Pablo Güilá Zapotec |
| Bulgan Batdorj | Resources, Environment and Sustainability | Science | Enhancing Mining Transparency and Accountability through Natural Language Processing |
| Chelsey Perry * | Population and Public Health | Medicine | Intersections of Indigenous health, gender equity, and climate justice. |
| Dora Gaviria-Serna | Gender, Race, Sex and Social Justice | Arts | Transformative Memory International Network Traveling Exhibit: memory work and aesthetic praxis as a creative force for public critical reflection and shared knowledge around mass violence |
| Elaine Lindsay Williamson | Interdisciplinary Studies | Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies | Empowering the Haida Nation: Indigenous Tourism as a Pathway to Economic Sovereignty, Cultural Sustainability and Self-Determination |
| Erin Tattersall | Forestry | Forestry | Toward Indigenous sovereignty in co-productive wildlife monitoring in northern Canada |
| Esther Roorda | Electrical & Computer Engineering | Applied Science | Developing sustainable practices in consumer electronic design and repair through community, education and technical design |
| Fatimah Bahrami | Neuroscience | Medicine | The Effects of a Child-Friendly Mindfulness Karate Program on Academic Success, Executive Functions, Mindfulness, Mental Health, and Motor and Character Development |
| Frances Valentine Maddalozzo | Language & Literacy Education | Education | Indigenous-led podcasts as social scholarship to transform teacher education practice and praxis |
| Gopal Khanal | Resources, Environment and Sustainability | Science | Understanding socio-ecological interactions among wildlife and livestock producers in Nepal |
| Judith Valerie Engel | Arts | Who is heard? Canadian Women Composers and the legacy of 'genius' Music | |
| Karen Lok Yi Wong * | Social Work | Arts | Understand the processes of the complex healthcare systems from the experiences of Chinese people living with dementia in Vancouver |
| Katherine White * | Population and Public Health | Medicine | The built environment and housing characteristics, indoor heat exposure, social isolation, and health outcomes of older adults during periods of high outdoor ambient temperature |
| Laen Hershler | Language & Literacy Education | Education | Exploring Holocaust Survivor Reflections Through Community-Based Performative Inquiry |
| Larissa Maxwell | Interdisciplinary Studies | Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies | From Communities to Corporations: Ethical Storytelling in First and Second Person Narratives |
| Manvi Bhalla * | Resources, Environment and Sustainability | Science | Co-Imagining Just Futures: Advancing Intersectional Environmental Justice in Canadian Environmental Health Policy-Making |
| Marie Boulinaud | Forestry | Forestry | Blaming shifting cultivation for deforestation and environmental degradation in the Philippines: evidence, consequences and understandings for Indigenous Peoples |
| Meghna Mohandas | Community and Regional Planning | Applied Science | Private space as sites of ‘othering’: Rental housing experiences of Indigenous migrant women in Bengaluru, India |
| Michelle Gagnon * | Nursing | Applied Science | Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy as Experienced by Patients and Providers in Canada: A Narrative Inquiry |
| Phan Phuong Trinh Nguyen | UBC iSchool | Arts | Exploring Information Governance in Decentralized Ecosystems |
| Rachel Moylan | Curriculum & Pedagogy | Education | Teaching and learning in the age of algorithms: Resisting the algorithmic order through co-created sociotechnical experiments |
| Rachel Stern * | Geography | Arts | Collab w Katherine White |
| Rinni Mamman | Rehabilitation Sciences | Medicine | What are the public perceptions of traumatic brain injury? |
| S M Farhan Samir | Linguistics | Arts | The AnySpeech project -- An accessible interface for automatic phonetic transcription |
| Sarinn Blawatt | Population and Public Health | Medicine | Perceptions of social support outside of clinical care during injectable opioid agonist treatment: An explanatory sequential mixed methods study in Vancouver, BC. |
| Sharayu Jakhotiya | Forestry | Forestry | People, Policy, and Predators: Studying the impacts of policy, governments, and markets on the governance models of forest dwelling communities in Central India’s tiger reserves |
| Xiaocong Guo | Population and Public Health | Medicine | Heat-related illness and injury: Prioritizing at-risk workers for policy and practice in British Columbia |
| Zeba Khan * | Medicine | Choices for Alleviating Menstruation-Related Pelvic Pain Study (CrAMPPS) | |
| UBC Okanagan | |||
| Burd Logan * | Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies - Community Engagement, Social Change, Equity | UBC Okanagan - School of Nursing, Faculty of Health and Social Development | NA |
| Lindsay Burton * | Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing | UBC Okanagan - School of Nursing | Advancing Preventive Care for Older Adults |
| Nathan Adams | Doctor of Philosophy in Kinesiology (PhD) | UBC Okanagan - Department of Health and Exercise Sciences | Will sitting kill me? Perceptions and meaning of sedentary behaviour amongst people with spinal cord injury. |
| Azize Nur Yildirim | Department of Health and Exercise Science | UBC Okanagan - Department of Health and Exercise Sciences | Embracing the Complexity of Diet in Diabetes Prevention: Motives, Behaviours and Outcomes |
About the PSI
The PSI was launched in 2015 to support UBC doctoral students whose research extended beyond traditional/academic disciplinary approaches. Recognized at the Reimagining the PhD Symposium 2017 as ‘revolutionary' and praised in the UBC Strategic Plan as "a key component" of UBC's Public Relevance strategy, the PSI has also received multiple awards for its promotion of excellence and exceptional service to students. Almost 400 scholars have been accepted into the program during the past decade, leading to collaborations with more than 150 different partners in 40 different countries. To learn more about how the PSI program reimagines the PhD, visit their website.
Learn more about the Public Scholars Initiative.