No. 539 - September 24, 2025

  • Coming Events:

    - Starling Centre Welcome Reception and Screening of Become/ing Otherwise
    - AI Won't Fix Our Social Problems: Deconstructing Risk in Predictive Risk Models
    - FIMS TA Pizza & Pedagogy: "Navigating GBSV"
    - FIMS Faculty Pastries & Pedagogy - Drop-In Session
    - Threads that Unite Us / Hilos que Nos Unen: Collective Art Against Rising Authoritarianism

  • Important Dates:

    - Friday, September 26 - Sunday, September 28, 2025 - Western Homecoming Weekend
    - Tuesday, September 30, 2025 - National Day for Truth & Reconciliation (no classes, FIMS offices open)
    - Monday, October 13, 2025 - Thanksgiving holiday (no classes, FIMS offices closed)

  • News & Announcements:

    - 🎥 Be Part of Our New FIMS Grad Student Video Series!
    - Weave: Journal of Library User Experience
    - Launch of Indigenous Allyship Guides at Western

    Awards & Accomplishments:

    - Billie Anderson
    - Alissa Centivany
    - Sarah Smith

  • Publications & Presentations:

    - Melissa Adler
    - Janelle Allan
    - Billie Anderson
    - Chris Arsenault
    - Pinar Barlas
    - Juan Andrés Bello
    - Alissa Centivany
    - Danica Facca
    - Dorotea Gucciardo
    - Eden Hoffer
    - Erin Isings
    - John Kausch
    - JP Mann
    - Takuya Maeda
    - Charlotte Nau
    - Joanna Redden
    - Sananda Sahoo
    - Hugh Samson
    - Sarah Smith
    - Luke Stark
    - Meghan Voll

  • In the Media:

    - Chris Arsenault
    - Alissa Centivany
    - Houda Houbeish (with EJ Boston, MMJC'25)
    - Prabu Nadaraja (with Shenghui Qiao, MMJC'25)
    - Selma Purac
    - Joanna Redden
    - Sarah Smith
    - Luke Stark
    - Sam Trosow

  • News from the FIMS Grad Library:

    - Upcoming Events at the Library
    - Make of the Month

  • News from Western Libraries:

    - Upcoming Research Skills Workshops

  • Next Issue:


Coming Events

Starling Centre Welcome Reception and Screening of Become/ing Otherwise
Wednesday, September 24, 2025
12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
FIMS Grad Library
Join members of the Starling Centre for Just Technologies and Just Societies in welcoming the new academic year with a reception for faculty and students. Enjoy light refreshments and watch a special screening of Become/ing Otherwise, a film by FIMS Postdoctoral Associate Myrna Moretti.

AI Won't Fix Our Social Problems: Deconstructing Risk in Predictive Risk Models
Thursday, September 25, 2025
5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Central Library, 251 Dundas St.
Join the Starling Centre for a public talk and reception to launch The Glass Room exhibit at London Public Library. Featuring Shion Guha, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, and author of Human-Centered Data Science: An Introduction. Lecture begins at 6pm (read abstract).

FIMS TA Pizza & Pedagogy - "Navigating GBSV"
Wednesday, October 1, 2025
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Attend in-person: FNB 4130
Attend online: Check your Western email for the Zoom link and passcode
Register now.
For FIMS TAs. Grab a slice of pizza and a seat as we cover how to navigate GBSV disclosures. For questions, contact Assistant Professor Selma Purac at spurac2@uwo.ca. Attendance of this session counts towards the FIMS TA Professionalization Program. 

FIMS Faculty Pastries & Pedagogy - Drop-In Session
Thursday, October 2, 2025
9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
4th Floor Lunch Room
This academic year, FIMS is launching Pastries & Pedagogy for faculty - a series of casual, drop-in morning sessions designed to get you talking about teaching. These informal gatherings will take place monthly on different days throughout the term to accommodate a variety of schedules. The goal is to offer a relaxed space for colleagues to connect over coffee and pastries while discussing teaching strategies, exploring classroom challenges, and sharing what's been working. Looking to exchange ideas? Or, maybe you just want to caffeinate while chatting about teaching. Please pop by! For questions, please contact Assistant Professor Selma Purac at spurac2@uwo.ca. 

Threads that Unite Us / Hilos que Nos Unen: Collective Art Against Rising Authoritarianism
Thursday, October 2, 2025 - 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Friday, October 3, 2025 - 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
FNB Atrium, Drop-In
Description: FIMS Rogers Chair Amanda Grzyb invites you to a collective embroidery gathering led by Salvadoran embroiderer and visiting artist Teresa Cruz, where each participant will stitch a small piece that will be joined into a larger tapestry of resistance. More information to come.
 

Important Dates

- Friday, September 26 - Sunday, September 28, 2025 - Western Homecoming Weekend
- Tuesday, September 30, 2025 - National Day for Truth & Reconciliation (no classes, FIMS offices open)
- Monday, October 13, 2025 - Thanksgiving holiday (no classes, FIMS offices closed)


News & Announcements

🎥 Be Part of Our New FIMS Grad Student Research Video Series!
FIMS Communications (Becky & Becky) are launching a new video series to showcase the amazing research being done by FIMS grad students. Each short Q&A-style video will highlight your project (and your personality!) with questions like: 

Coffee or tea while writing? What problem are you solving? What 3 emojis sum up your research?

Interested in being featured? Send a quick email to Digital Engagement Coordinator Becky Horst at becky.horst@uwo.ca, and we’ll set up a short filming session on campus.

Weave: Journal of Library User Experience
Submitted by PhD LIS student Katya Pereyaslavska.
Weave is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal for library user experience (UX) professionals published by Michigan Publishing. As one of the Board Members, I would like to invite contributions for those looking to publish their works. We frequently look for submissions in a variety of formats (Submission Guidelines).

Scholarly submissions
Our scholarly articles go through double-anonymized peer review, meaning author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. Our scholarly submissions team will guide you through the process.

Dialog Box submissions
Our Dialog Box articles are not peer reviewed, but you will get support from our editors to get them into shape for publication. The Dialog Box accepts the following types of submissions:

  • Opinion pieces
  • Case studies
  • Reviews of books and tools related to UX and libraries
  • Letters to the editors

For those looking to learn more about User Experience Research, this journal is a unique resource!

In other news, we just secured CLIR funding for WEAVE while also continuing to collect institutional contributions so we can continue to keep this as an open access publication! This is a significant milestone for WEAVE!

Launch of Indigenous Allyship Guides at Western
Two new complementary resources collaboratively developed by the Office of Indigenous Initiatives to support the Western Community's efforts to advance reconciliation and allyship in respectful, informed and relational ways are now available. Braiding Truth into Action: A Guide Towards Indigenous Allyship at Western University, and Centering Indigenous Voices: Guide Towards Allyship in Indigenous Research are both available online.


Awards & Accomplishments

Media Studies PhD candidate Billie Anderson successfully defended her thesis titled The Cultural and Political Monster: David Cronenberg's Body Horror as Disability Representation and Identity Crisis on August 13.

Assistant Professor Alissa Centivany was renewed as a core expert and also appointed co-chair of CIFAR's AI Insights for Policymakers.

Associate Professor Sarah Smith began her term as Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg global dis:connect at Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München, Germany. As a fellow at global dis:connect, Professor Smith will work on a monograph addressing the growth of diaspora museums as an institutional subsector in North America.


Publications & Presentations

Associate Professor Melissa Adler and HIS PhD candidate Eden Hoffer published the following article:

Hoffer, Eden, and Melissa Adler. "Institutionalizing Whiteness and Heteronormativity: Prisons, Libraries, and the Promise of Justice." The Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research, vol. 14, 2025, pp. 3-29.


Additionally, Eden authored a blog post for Women's Health Research Cluster on August 8 titled "The Impacts of Intimate Partner Violence on Survivors' Health and Well-Being."

Finally, Eden wrote an article titled "New gun law protections target domestic violence, but real prevention must start earlier," published in The Conversation on September 2. The article was later republished by Yahoo News.

Associate Professor Melissa Adler and LIS PhD candidate John Kausch presented a paper titled "Memory, Reason, and Imagination, the Coloniality of Knowledge Organization" for the panel "'Welcome to the beings of instauration': Ontologies at the End of the World." at the 4S Conference in Seattle (September 3-6).

John also presented a paper titled "What's in a Document? Word and Document Embeddings for the Future" at the 2025 Document Academy conference in Berlin (September17-20).

Janelle Allan, MA Media Studies student, and Meghan Voll, Media Studies PhD candidate, will present research from the Aging in Data Project on Data Harms and Aging in Padua, Italy, as part of the Digital Intimacies: Young People and Everyday Life Conference on September 26. They will present findings from their content analysis and emerging record on Generative AI and talk about next steps in conducting knowledge mobilization and co-production workshops with younger and older adults.

Media Studies PhD candidate Billie Anderson authored an article titled "Eddington ends with a dark joke about disability - but its punchline is centuries old," published in The Conversation on August 10.

Assistant Professor Chris Arsenault published the following:

Study: Arsenault, Chris, Raphael Deberdt, and Philippe Le Billon. "Onshoring low-carbon supply chains: Can subsidies meet the challenge?." Earth System Governance 26 (2025): 100286. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589811625000527 

Book chapter: Arsenault, Chris. "Frontline Strategies for land Rights and Environmental Journalism: Methodologies for Melding Ground Truth Interviews and Primary Records in Investigative Reporting." In Insights on Investigative Journalism, pp. 49-67. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Insights-on-Investigative-Journalism/Macfarlane-Longo-Flint-Price/p/book/9781032763477?srsltid=AfmBOooa5W3VrZssnCGwRQsP7Z7MEt2Tf2LQ6-_gvvQ3ut4G4pVRI34a


Professor Arsenault also co-authored an article titled "Canada's $43-billion subsidy scheme for critical minerals misses supply chain steps," published in The Conversation on September 17.

LIS PhD candidate Pinar Barlas gave a presentation titled "Discarding practices in data cleaning as enacting power" during the panel "Echoes of Human Care and AI Repair in Times of Broken Machines" at the 4S conference in Seattle (September 3-6).

Assistant Professor Juan Andrés Bello was the Archival Producer of 'True North’, an archive-based documentary film that just premiered at TIFF. Directed by Michelle Stephenson, it explores the history of the anti-racism movement in Montreal in the late 1960s. View the trailer online.

As mentioned in a previous Bulletin, Professor Bello was also the Archival Producer for 'We Lend a Hand: The Forgotten Story of Ontario Farmerettes’. The reception to the film has been very positive with many sold out community events and screenings held across the province.

Assistant Professor Alissa Centivany presented "What's Good?: Towards Melioristic Solidarity in Sociotechnical Research and Interventions" at the 4S conference in Seattle (September 3-6).

Professor Centivany also co-organized a second panel at the 4S conference, with Starling Centre colleagues Associate Professor Joanna Redden and Dorotea Gucciardo, titled "Just Technologies for Just Societies".

Assistant Professor Erin Isings and LIS PhD candidate Hugh Samson published the following article:

Bell, C. E., Isings, E., Samson, H., Jones, S. M., McCorquodale, L., Telfer, T. G. W., Ropp, T., & Dong, C. S. (2025). Asynchronous Innovation to Support Well-being Through Mindfulness and Feedback Literacy in Higher Education. Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.7870/cjcmh-2025-006


HIS PhD candidate Danica Facca and Associate Professor Joanna Redden published the following article:

Facca, D., Hall, J., Teachman, G., Redden, J., & Donelle, L. (2025). Femtech in context: A critical conceptual (re)view. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1177/13634593251371327


JP Mann (LIS PhD candidate) and Charlotte Nau (Media Studies PhD candidate) presented a panel titled "Democracy in Retrograde: The Allure and Danger of Pseudoscientific and Superstitious Perspectives on Politics" at the 4S conference in Seattle (September 3-6).

Media Studies PhD student Takuya Maeda presented a talk titled "Conceptualizing Interaction Harms in LLM Systems" for the panel "Impact Engagements: Mapping the uneven consequences of AI with Speakers impacted communities" at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S): Reverberations on September 3.

Takuya and Assistant Professor Luke Stark will also present a talk titled "Human Enough: How the Eliza Effect Became a Design Strategy" at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group for Computing, Information, and Society on September 26.

FIMS Postdoctoral Associate Sananda Sahoo published the following article:

Sahoo, Sananda. 2025. Review of Joshua Barker’s State of Fear: Policing a Postcolonial City. Surveillance
& Society 23 (3): 388-390. https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/index

Associate Professor Sarah Smith presented material from her new book Trading on Art as part of a conversation with Curator Rachelle Dickenson (National Gallery of Canada) at the Global Centre for Pluralism on August 28. Professor Smith’s book has now been released as an open-access volume through UBC Press: https://www.ubcpress.ca/asset/103563/1/9780774868938_OA.pdf.

Professor Smith also shared her CRC research at the event Cultural Diplomacy for Ontario: New Horizons hosted by Her Honour Edith Dumont, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, at Queen's Park in Toronto on September 16.


In the Media

Assistant Professor Chris Arsenault was quoted in an article titled "For NHL teams, motivating mottos can be grammatically tricky. Ask the Maple Leafs," published by The Athletic on September 18.

Assistant Professor Alissa Centivany was quoted in an article titled "Apple launches program in Canada helping customers self-repair devices," published on August 19 by The Canadian Press. The story was then picked up by The Globe and Mail, CTV News, Financial Post, BNN Bloomberg and Pique Magazine.

Media Studies PhD candidate Houda Houbeish was featured in an article titled "PhD candidate investigates human consequences of crisis journalism," published in Western News on August 20. The article was written by EJ Boston, MMJC'25.

HIS PhD student Prabu Nadaraja was featured in an article titled "PhD student explores digital foodscapes on social media," published in Western News on September 11. The article was written by Shenghui Qiao, MMJC'25.

Assistant Professor Selma Purac provided quotes for an article titled "Canadian pop-culture nostalgia rules at this year's TIFF," published by CBC Arts on September 4.

Research done by Associate Professor Joanna Redden looking at government use of AI in the public service was cited in an article titled "Ottawa drafting public registry of AI projects as tech spreads through government," published by The Canadian Press on September 9. The article was then republished by a number of outlets including CTV News, CP24, BNN Bloomberg, the Toronto Star and CityNews.

Associate Professor Sarah Smith shared her research with Colin Robertson and Patricia Bovey on The Global Exchange podcast: "Art of Influence: Canada's Cultural Diplomacy," August 5, 2025. The podcast is produced by the Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI).

Assistant Professor Luke Stark is quoted in an article titled "Lawsuits allege AI chatbots have pushed kids to die by suicide. Is the technology safe for children?" published in the National Post on September 2.

Professor Stark also appeared on numerous CBC radio programs on September 12 to discuss the risks of young people using AI as a mental health resource.

Sam Trosow, Professor Emeritus and current London City Councillor for Ward 6, was interviewed by London Live on AM980 on September 8 about planned work at the Western Rd. and Sarnia Rd. intersection that hopes to improve traffic and pedestrian flow.


News from the FIMS Grad Library

Upcoming Events at the Library

The FGL hosts workshops, lectures, and community events each term to support graduate teaching, learning, and research. Events are posted to our website (https://lib.fims.uwo.ca/events/) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/fimsgradlib/)

Game Night

Grab your friends, ditch the textbooks (just for a bit), and come play! From timeless board games like Catan, Monopoly, and Scrabble to party favorites like Concepts, we’ve got something for every vibe.

And for the nostalgia lovers, we will have fun retro game emulators set up for you to play. Think pixelated adventures like Streetfighter and Pacman. All the throwback fun!

Whether you’re a strategy master or just here for the snacks, everyone’s welcome. Let’s roll!

Thursday, October 2, 2025
5:00 pm - 8:00 pm
FIMS Graduate Library

Banned Books Reader’s Advisory

Join us at the FIMS Graduate Library for a special Banned Books Week event exploring readers’ advisory and the fight against censorship. This one-hour presentation will highlight some of the most challenged and banned books in Canada and the United States.

This presentation will explore how censorship and book banning intersects with racism and the deliberate suppression of marginalized voices and diverse narratives. Attendees will also learn practical ways to defend diverse books, support intellectual freedom, and amplify the voices of educators and librarians.

Why it matters: Book bans have reached historic highs in the past three years in the US and Canada. In the 2023-2024 school year alone, PEN America reported more than 10,000 instances of banned books in public schools, affecting more than 4,000 unique titles. These mass book bans were often the result of targeted campaigns to remove books with characters of color, LGBTQ+ identities, and sexual content from public school classrooms and libraries. This presentation aligns with the 2025 Banned Books Week theme, “Censorship Is So 1984. Read for Your Rights.”

Bring your questions and ideas for the Q&A session following the talk!

Thursday, October 16, 2025
12:00pm – 1:00pm
FIMS Graduate Library Room 3020 D/E
Zoom: https://westernuniversity.zoom.us/j/98123697302 

Make of the Month – October – Beaded Skull Charm

Get into the spooky spirit this October with our Make of the Month! Drop by anytime to create your own skull charm using black and white beads and safety pins. They’re fun, quick to make, and the perfect little accessory you can clip to your backpack, pin to your jacket, or decorate anywhere you like.

All materials are provided, and you can craft your charm whenever it suits you, all month long!


News from Western Libraries

Upcoming Research Skills Workshops

For all research skills workshops, visit the Western Libraries Events page. If you have questions about workshops, please email rsclib@uwo.ca. 


Next Issue


The FIMS Bulletin is your source for news, announcements, and events pertaining to FIMS graduate programs. Submissions from the FIMS community are always welcome and may be sent via e-mail to fims-communications@uwo.ca.

The next issue of the FIMS Bulletin will be published on Wednesday, October 8, 2025. Please submit any items by noon on Tuesday, October 7.