Researchers Make Headlines
May 29, 2014 - In the News
A U of G research project -- headed by PhD student Gavin Armstong -- that aims to help combat life-threatening anemia was featured by CBC News May 29 in a story and video. The project was also featured in the Globe and Mail May 24 and on Global news, the Australia Network News and Radio AustraliaMay 22. Armstrong received an award this month from the government-backed Grand Challenges Canada for the Lucky Iron Fish Project.
Prof. Patrick Parnaby, Sociology and Anthropology, was interviewed on Q with Jian Ghomeshi on May 27. Parnaby discussed how more police departments across North America are expanding their use of social media, inventive uses of it by police and what lessons are to be learned when the use of social media backfires. Recently, a police department in Maryland received some backlash after they announced they were live tweeting a prostitution sting.
Parnaby's research focuses on social constructionism, social deviance, and policing. He also focuses on the sociology of risk and risk discourse as they relate to issues of expertise, social control, and governance.
History professor Stuart McCook, the associate dean of research and graduate studies in the College of Arts, was on CTV’s popular morning news show Canada AMMay 23 discussing coffee rust. The fungal disease is ravaging coffee crops, threatening farmers’ jobs and driving prices up worldwide. It’s caused more than $1 billion in damage across Latin American regions.
McCook’s is conducting a 150-year history of coffee and its relationship with coffee rust, work that has taken him to Costa Rica, Guatemala, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom and Venezuela. He also writes a blog about coffee and its history.
Noted Canadian playwright and U of G Prof. Judith Thompson was also featured on Canada AMMay 23. She was discussing the new one-woman play, Watching Glory Die, that she performs in and wrote. The play is based on the story of Ashley Smith, who committed suicide in 2007 while in segregation in the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ont.
This marks the first time Thompson has performed on stage since the 1970s. A U of G professor since 1992, she has written numerous plays and won many prestigious awards, including being the first Canadian to win the international Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
