York University's Faculty of Graduate Studies will welcome five researchers through the York Postdoctoral Fellowship (YPDF) program this fall to support research excellence in a variety of disciplines.
The program is open to both Canadian and international students who have recently completed their doctoral degree at York.
Fellows receive a funded, one-year postdoctoral research position to conduct their proposed research project under the guidance of a faculty supervisor.
More information on the program is available at gradstudies.yorku.ca/postdoctoral-fellows/ypdf-program.
Leah Keating – Department of Psychology
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals experience elevated rates of trauma. LGBT-based discrimination is a barrier to accessing mental health care. Keating’s proposed study examines the proportion of LGBT individuals who have experienced trauma who access psychotherapy, barriers to attending therapy, and helpful and unhelpful aspects of therapy.
Melanie McBride – Faculty of Education
McBride’s study investigates the challenges and opportunities of physically embodied and multimodal approaches to teaching and learning involving taste in the largely text-bound paradigm of wine education. The proposed research not only addresses itself to established gaps in our understanding of taste as a "mode" of learning and communication, but also how practices of taste might be critically situated as a common literacy beyond wine. The proposed research also contributes new "inter-sensory" methodological interventions on research of the senses and sensory culture using a combination of pedagogical, technological and intersectional perspectives.
Emily McGiffin – Faculty of Environmental Studies
McGiffin’s interdisciplinary postdoctoral research works at the intersection of ecopoetics, Indigenous resurgence, climate justice and extractives resistance, examining how Indigenous poetics engage with the politics of climate change, social equality, decolonization, land and place. Looking at the rich cultures of Indigenous resurgence, colonial resistance and associated poetics that have emerged in British Columbia in recent years, particularly surrounding energy infrastructure and associated land rights, McGiffin asks how poetic works that have emerged from this milieu function not only as acts of resistance and activism, but also as a means of imagining and enacting an equitable and sustainable future.
Rehan Siddiqui – Department of Earth & Space Science & Engineering
The purpose of Siddiqui’s research is to investigate, validate and improve the atmospheric radiative budget and its correlation with high Arctic atmospheric information. The remote sensing data analysis of greenhouse gases, atmospheric pollutants, ozone layer and cloud radiative effects are a major focus for the proposed research. The ability to predict changes in our environment depends on an in-depth understanding of the atmospheric absorption features as well as the interrelated processes controlling climate, and on observations of the climate system. All the predictions require a validation process with radiative transfer model simulation results in contrast with real observations.
Hyekyoung Sung – Department of Biology
Sung’s proposed research is focused on examining direct effects of lipocalin-2 on cardiac remodelling and the functional consequences. Obesity and the associated metabolic syndrome, a cluster of chronic symptoms including insulin resistance, hypertension and inflammation, predispose individuals to developing cardiovascular dysfunctions. Heart failure is one potential cardiovascular outcome and the consequences in the obese and aging population can be devastating, owing to the higher risk of mortality or loss of quality of life. However, the mechanisms of obesity- and diabetes-induced heart disease are multifaceted and remain to be fully defined. Various hormones released from adipose tissue have also been suggested as potentially useful biomarkers for various aspects of cardiovascular disease.