Yoshitaka Ota served as director of the Nereus Program, a global interdisciplinary initiative between the Nippon Foundation and the University of British Columbia to further knowledge about how to best attain sustainability for the world’s oceans, between 2011 and 2019. During that time, he identified a capacity and knowledge gap in addressing the widening inequality in

Maya Angela Smith, an associate professor in the Department of French and Italian Studies, focuses on the intersection of racial and linguistic identity formations among marginalized groups in the African diaspora, particularly in the francophone world. She also researches how Blackness is constructed in francophone regions as well as how French studies can diversify and

Andy Meyer, a newly appointed assistant teaching professor in the Department of Scandinavian Studies, focuses on Norwegian and North American language and literature, with an emphasis on ecocriticism, poetry and poetics, and Arctic studies. His work and much of his teaching is engaged in questions about the relationship between literary imagination and the concept of

P. Joshua Griffin is an environmental anthropologist working at the intersections of Indigenous studies, political ecology, critical social science, and climate change. His community-engaged research focuses on Arctic Indigenous ecologies, climate change, environmental health, food sovereignty, hunting and fishing governance/rights, and environmental planning. More broadly, he is interested in approaches to “climate adaptation” that center

Mia Bennett is beginning at UW this fall as an assistant professor in the Department of Geography. As a political geographer with geospatial skills, through fieldwork and remote sensing, Mia researches the geopolitics of development in northern frontiers, namely the Arctic, Russian Far East, and the more remote corridors of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Richard Watts, faculty director of the Center and associate professor in French and Italian Studies, was recently awarded two grants for translation studies. The first grant constitutes the third year of support from the Simpson Center for the Humanities at UW for the activities of the Translation Studies Hub, a project Watts co-directs with Heekyoung

Professor Richard Watts, faculty director of the Canadian Studies Center, has received the Simpson Center for the Humanities’ Society of Scholars Fellowship for academic year 2021-2022, which will allow him to complete his book manuscript titled Reclaimed Waters: Literary History, Translation, and Resource Decolonization in the Francophone Post/colonial World, which includes a chapter on Indigenous literary responses to

Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, Art History, developed a micro seminar for graduate students – ART H 597C: First Nations Art, Resistance, and Governance: Haida and Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw Art Against Extraction. The seminar explores, in part, how art of the Northwest Coast functions within the political realm of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and in the face of extractive

Researchers from UW’s Information School, Computer Sciences and Engineering, and the Information and Communication Technology for Development Laboratory will all partner on a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant as part of the Navigating the New Arctic program. The PI, Kurtis Heimerl is an assistant professor with Computer Sciences and Engineering. Jason Young, co-PI, is a

Charlotte Coté (American Indian Studies) received a course development grant for a new course on Indigenous food sovereignty in our cross-border region. The Center for Global Studies awarded Charlotte Coté a $2,000 grant in summer 2019 to develop a new course on Indigenous food sovereignty. The course, AIS 380: Indigenous Food Sovereignty, was offered spring