No. 545 - January 21, 2026

  • Coming Events:

    - Supporting Student Learning and Well-being Through Feedback
    - FIMS TA Pizza & Pedagogy Panel Series - Classroom Management Strategies
    - Down to Puck: Hockey, Queer Desire, & Heated Rivalry
    - Peculiar Satisfaction: Walter Benjamin, Thomas Jefferson and the Angels of History
    - FIMS Faculty Pastries & Pedagogy Drop-in Series
    - Covering Trump in a remarkable moment of change: the concerns and challenges ahead through a Canadian lens

  • Important Dates:

    - Friday, January 23, 2026 - Nominations close for administrative staff membership on Western's Senate
    - Thursday, February 5, 2026 - Meeting of the Board of Governors (10 AM, WIRB 3000)

  • News & Announcements:

    - Canadian Identities Focus Group project seeking participants

  • Awards & Accomplishments:

    - Michaela McBryde
    - Danica Pawlick Potts
    - Mark Rayner
    - Kendall Sturgeon

  • Publications & Presentations:

    - Aloa Alota
    - Revna Altiok
    - Chris Arsenault
    - Juan Andrés Bello
    - Lucia Cedeira Serantes
    - Basil Chiasson
    - Danica Facca
    - Harleen Grewal
    - Eden Hoffer
    - Jack Kausch
    - Santasil Mallik
    - Kevin Oswald
    - Selma Purac
    - Kamran Sedig
    - Sarah E.K. Smith

  • In the Media:

    - Chris Arsenault
    - Juan Andrés Bello
    - Alissa Centivany
    - Luke Stark

  • Activities of Note:

    - Juan Andrés Bello
    - The Museum of Dreams Introduces Dreamers of the 21st Century

  • News from the FIMS Grad Library:

    - Reading Week Hours
    - Upcoming Events at the Library
    - Make of the Month

  • News from Western Libraries:

    - Upcoming Research Skills Workshops

  • Next Issue:


Coming Events

Supporting Student Learning and Well-being Through Feedback Literacy
Wednesday, January 21, 2026
12:00 p.m. - 1:20 p.m.
Attend in person: FNB 4110
Attend online: Zoom Webinar
Presented by Erin Isings and Josiane N'tchoreret-Mbiamany as part of the FIMS Seminar Series 2025/26.
Abstract: It is common practice in many courses to instruct students to reflect on feedback for 24 hours after grades have been returned. It is less common to guide students in that timeframe on how to navigate the emotions of receiving feedback and use constructive strategies for engagement. The 24-hour waiting period has many benefits for students and faculty; however, students need additional training and well-being supports to increase their feedback literacy skills (continue reading).

FIMS TA Pizza and Pedagogy - Classroom Management Strategies
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Attend in person: Please RSVP (FNB 4110)
Attend online: Check your Western email for the Zoom link
FIMS TAs are invited to grab a slice and a seat to talk about classroom management strategies. Want some tips? Have questions? Join us! Attendance of this session counts towards the FIMS TA Professionalization Program.

Down to Puck: Hockey, Queer Desire, & Heated Rivalry
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Attend in person: FNB 3220
Attend online: Zoom Webinar
A panel moderated by Katie Esmonde and featuring panelists Cornel Grey, Adam Ali and Treena Orchard.
Description: Three academics walk into a room. The topic? Heated Rivalry. What kind of conversation ensues? Let’s find out. Bringing together three faculty members from three different disciplines, this conversation asks what happens when a sociologist of sport, a medical anthropologist, and a queer theorist all sit down to think about a story centered on four gay hockey players and a rivalry that unfolds both on and off the ice (read more).

Peculiar Satisfaction: Walter Benjamin, Thomas Jefferson and the Angels of History
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
StvH 3165
Presented by Melissa Adler in partnership with FIMS and the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism.
Abstract: The Declaration of Independence was a founding algorithmic statement authored by Thomas Jefferson 250 years ago. It announced, axiomatically, a “we” who hold certain “truths to be self-evident”—an expression that continues to frame the contradictions and limits of American democracy. How can critical theory aid in making sense of the pastness of the present political crisis in the United States, while confronting risks of anachronism, error, and reductionism (continue reading)?

FIMS Faculty Pastries & Pedagogy Drop-In
Thursday, January 29, 2026
9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
4th Floor Lunchroom
Please join us for the first FIMS Faculty Pastries & Pedagogy drop-in session of the new year! For those of you unfamiliar with this series, these sessions are casual, drop-in morning gatherings designed to get us talking about teaching. 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. Seeking advice? Unsure about an assessment? Excited by a new strategy you’re trying out? Looking to exchange ideas? Or, maybe you just want to caffeinate while chatting about teaching? Please pop by!

Covering Trump in a remarkable moment of change: the concerns and challenges ahead through a Canadian lens
Thursday, February 5, 2026
5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. (reception to follow lecture)
Attend in person: Get Tickets (McKellar Room, UCC)
Attend online: Zoom Webinar
The 2026 Clissold Lecture is presented by Katie Simpson, CBC News foreign correspondent based in Washington.
Description: What's it like trying to cover news coming out of the Whitehouse as a Canadian journalist on the ground in Washington, DC? Katie Simpson, CBC News' foreign correspondent based in Washington, will share her experiences and shed some light on challenges that could arise for Canadian journalism in the days and months ahead.


Important Dates

- Friday, January 23, 2026 - Nominations close for administrative staff membership on Western's Senate
- Thursday, February 5, 2026 - Meeting of the Board of Governors (10 AM, WIRB 3000)


News & Announcements

Canadian Identities Focus Group project seeking participants
"Interrogating Canadian Identities / Les identités canadiennes — une interrogation (ICI)" - PI: Professor Anne F. MacLennan. Students and faculty are invited to participate in a focus group discussion as part of a research study. Participants will talk about what being Canadian means or what living in Canada means to them. These insights will help the research team gain a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities in representing Canadian identity in the media.

If you are interested in participating or have any questions about the study, please contact: canadianid2024@gmail.com. Focus groups over Zoom and in person will run until April. For more information about the project and our research team, please visit our website: https://www.yorku.ca/laps/research/ici/ 


Awards & Accomplishments

Michaela McBryde was announced as the recipient of the Fall 2025 Spirit of Librarianship Award. The award is given out each term by the MLISSC. Past winners can be seen on the FIMS website.

Danica Pawlick Potts, LIS PhD candidate, successfully defended her thesis titled Classify, Communicate, Enforce: Territorializing Data for Indigenous Data Sovereignty in Research Data Repositories on December 15, 2026.

FIMS Instructor Mark Rayner's latest book, The Gates of the Polished Horn (Donovan Street Press, 2025) was included in the Toronto Star's 20 favourite fiction books of 2025. About Rayner's work, contributor Alex Good wrote: “A delightful collection of stories ranging across genres, whose recurring motif is the distinction between what is real and unreal, a true and a false dream. What this in turn leads to is the raising, usually in a lighthearted way, of the sort of moral questions we’ll soon be having to deal with more frequently.” 

Kendall Sturgeon was announced as the recipient of the Fall 2025 Fantastic FIMS Award. The award is given out each term by the MLISSC. Past winners can be seen on the FIMS website.


Publications & Presentations

Aloa Alota, recent PhD in Media Studies recipient, had a submission titled "Beyond Purity: Cultural Capital, Media Theory, and the Fiction of Ai Free Creativity" accepted for the Twenty-First International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Science, taking place July 15-17, 2026 at the University of Galway, Ireland.

Revna Altiok, PhD in Media Studies candidate, published the following article:

Altiok, Revna. “Tolerating Monsters: Challenging Extremism Through Animated Storytelling” Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, Vol. 6, no. 2 (2025). Eds. Billy Tringali & Maria K. Alberto.
https://doi.org/10.21900/j.jams.v6.2132 


The article outlines an anime course Revna developed and her teaching philosophy. She uses anime and monster narratives in the classroom to confront intolerance and extremist thinking.

Assistant Professor Chris Arsenault published an opinion piece titled "Don't expect a big gush of Venezuelan oil onto world markets any time soon," in The Globe and Mail on January 5, 2026.

Professor Arsenault also published the following peer-reviewed article, particpated in podcast and text interviews, and will appear as part of a conference panel on January 21:

Arsenault, C. (2025). ‘Fixing’ international reporting in Canadian media: Practical frameworks for more equitable collaborations. Facts & Frictions: Emerging Debates, Pedagogies and Practices in Contemporary Journalism, 5(1), 76-84. https://doi.org/10.22215/ff/v5.i1.07 

Lafleur, J. (Host). (2026, January 9). Chris Arsenault on unraveling an oil deal (No. 1) [Audio podcast episode]. In How they did it: The tradecraft behind Canadian investigative journalism. J-Source. https://j-source.ca/how-they-did-it-chris-arsenault-on-unraveling-an-oil-deal/ 

Arsenault, C., & Lafleur, J. (Hosts). (2025, December 9). Exposing abuse within Canada’s international student boom [Audio podcast episode]. In How they did it: The tradecraft behind Canadian investigative journalism. J-Source. https://j-source.ca/exposing-abuse-within-canadas-international-student-boom/ 

Arsenault, C., Béchard-Torres, E., Ngwaba, U., & Owie, U. (2026, January 21). A conversation surrounding United States actions in Venezuela and their impact on international law [Panel presentation]. Lincoln Alexander International Law Society, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON, Canada.


Assistant Professor Juan Andrés Bello presented "The Telenovela Archives: The History of TV Series in Latin America (1950-1999)" at the Media Archives and Comparative Histories panel, part of the Moving Media in the Americas conference organized by Tulane University.

Assistant Professor (SA) Lucia Cedeira Serantes, in collaboration with Annie Kavanaugh (MLIS'24, now University of Windsor), Arathy Sivasubramaniam (MLIS'23, now Mississauga Public Library), and Olivia Kerr (MLIS'24, now London Catholic School Board), will be delivering a 2hr workshop about comics advocacy for librarians and educators at the Ontario Library SuperConference, as part of the pre-conference workshops.

Assistant Professor Basil Chiasson co-edited (with Judith Roof), the final issue (Vol.9) of The Harold Printer Review: Essays in Contemporary Drama. The journal, published in the US since the 1980s, is now retiring.

In addition to the editorial work. Professor Chiasson also authored two pieces in the issue: The Editor's Note, co-written with Judith Roof, and "Drama's Critical," a short critical essay that's part of a forum reflecting on the state of teaching and learning in higher education.

Danica Facca, recent HIS PhD graduate, co-authored the following publication:

Facca, D., Hall, J., Teachman, G., Redden, J., & Donelle, L. (2025). Femtech and the Paradoxes of Empowerment: A Critical Conceptual (Re)View. Women’s Reproductive Health, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/23293691.2025.2589202


MLIS student Harleen Grewal will present a poster at the upcoming OLA conference in Toronto (January 28-31) that focuses on research conducted while on co-op. As a co-op student at the Dr. John Archer Library and Archives, Harleen conducted an environmental scan for the Inclusive Language Team focusing on alternative vocabularies and how they can be integrated into library catalogues. Language both shapes and reflects its users and the times, hence it is important that catalogues accurately represent all groups. Using multiple authority controls allows the inclusion of other authoritative bodies to destabilize the reliance on the Library of Congress Subject Headings.

Additionally, Harleen also published a poetry collection over the summer titled Heartbroken: poems. The work is described as "a poetry collection exploring the duality of the heart-mind, sorrow-content, (im)maturity, and acceptance-defeat post-heartbreak. The contemplative nature of this work reveals the complexities of grief and healing while seeking synthesis through introspection." It is available through Western Libraries. 

Eden Hoffer, HIS PhD candidate, co-authored an article titled "Navigating Services: A Scoping Review of Mothers' Experiences with Intimate Partner Violence and Social Systems in Canada and the United States," in Sage Journals (November 2025).

Jack Kausch, LIS PhD candidate, and Professor Kamran Sedig, co-authored the following paper:

Zhurov, V., Kausch, J., Sedig, K., & Milani, M. (2025). Fuzzy Ontology Embeddings and Visual Query Building for Ontology Exploration. Informatics, 12(4), 133. https://doi.org/10.3390/informatics12040133


Santasil Mallik, PhD in Media Studies candidate, published the chapter "Sri Ramakrishna in Three Frames: Performative Structures of Photography and Spiritual Practice" in the book Photographic Practices and the Making of Religion, edited by Moritz Lampe, from De Gruyter.

Santasil also published a review of the book The Synthetic Eye: Photography Transformed in the Age of AI, Fred Ritchin (2025) in the journal Afterimage, Vol 52 (no. 4): pp. 95-100.

Kevin Oswald, LIS PhD candidate, co-authored an article titled "The Blurred Thresholds of AI-Use Disclosure: Health Professions Education Journal Editors' Expectations of Necessity and Sufficiency," published in Perspectives on Medical Information (December 2025).

Assistant Professor Selma Purac presented a paper at the MLA in Toronto on January 8, titled "The Sound of the Female Body: Nightbitch (2024)".

Associate Professor Sarah Smith co-authored a new article with Bethany Berard titled "Platform super user: Examining Google Arts & Culture’s cultural production,” out now with Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565251413321 

Additionally, Professor Smith gave a lecture titled “Diaspora Museums & Dis:connectivity” on Jan. 12, 2026 at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg global dis:connect, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Lastly, Smith shared research from her book Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America at the ifa Library in Stuttgart, Germany on January 15, 2026. This event was hosted by ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, in partnership with the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Zentrum/James-F.-Byrnes-Institut.


In the Media

Assistant Professor Chris Arsenault, who has reported as a journalist on and from Venezuela in the past, made a series of media appearances discussing the ongoing political situation in the country. Professor Arsenault joined ABC Australia’s The World Today on January 6, nine CBC radio afternoon shows, including CBC Afternoon Drive, and The Morning Show with Devon Peacock on AM980 to discuss the future of Venezuela and its political history.

Assistant Professor Juan Andrés Bello was a guest on CBC's London Morning with Andrew Brown on January 6 for a segment titled "Local reaction to what's happening in Venezuela."

Professor Bello also joined London Live with Mike Stubbs on January 7 for a segment titled "How are Venezuelans feeling nearly a week after the capture of Nicholas Maduro?".

Assistant Professor Alissa Centivany is quoted in a Canadian Press article titled "'Read the fine print': Some lifetime warranties don't last a lifetime," published on December 25, 2025. The article was reprinted by CTV News, the Financial Post, the Toronto Star and CP24.

Assistant Professor Luke Stark was a guest on Ottawa Now on 580 CFRA on January 8 to discuss the generational divide of AI users and the social impacts of AI.

Professor Stark is also quoted in an article titled "The race to make AI adorable was on full display at CES," published by The Washington Post on January 10.


Activities of Note

Assistant Professor Juan Andrés Bello participated in the archival production of Narco Mennonites, a true-crime docuseries streaming on Crave. It premiered on January 16th. The trailer is available online.

The Museum of Dreams Introduces Dreamers of the 21st Century
Professor Sharon Sliwinski's Dreamers of the 21st Century was built though a series of community collaborations, and the project showcases how dreams provide an alternative view of some of our most entrenched social conflicts. The first three chapters are available now: GENEVA, features the daydreams of people at a migrant centre in a city that is home to international humanitarian law; TORONTO, spotlights injection drug users who are grappling with the forced closure of supervised consumption sites in the midst of an opioid crisis; and LONDON, in which residents of the British capital describe how their dreams helped them make sense of the Covid-19 pandemic. Visit the project.


News from the FIMS Grad Library

Reading Week Hours

The Grad Library will be closed from Saturday, February 14th, to Friday, February 20th. If you would like access to the library during this time, please feel free to email fimslib@uwo.ca to discuss arrangements.

  • Regular hours will resume Saturday, February 21st at 12:00pm.

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/)

#1Lib1Ref Continues until February 5th!

Thank you to everyone who attended our Wikipedia Birthday Bash at the FIMS Graduate Library. The campaign is still underway, and participants are encouraged to continue adding references to Wikipedia. Every citations helps to strengthen the world's largest open online encyclopedia.

Those registered on our Dashboard will have their contributions counted, and the top three contributors will each receive a $50 gift card!

Not yet registered? It's not too late!

Open the Dashboard, sign in to your Wikipedia account (or create one if you’re new), and click “Join Program” to have your edits counted.

Make of the Month – January – Play with Circuits

This month, the FGL Makerspace is featuring Snap Circuits, a hands-on electronics kit that lets you build working circuits. Snap Circuits are a staple in many public libraries, used to introduce kids and teens to the basics of STEM through play.

Whether you want to brush up on a popular educational tool or just tinker for fun, this is a great chance to explore electricity in a safe, creative environment.

Come drop in anytime during January and start snapping pieces together. Your inner engineer will thank you.

Make of the Month – February – Spring Festival/Lunar New Year Word Decor

The Mandarin Chinese character for spring is 春, pronounced chūn, and it visually combines the sun (日) and sprouting plants (艸), symbolizing new life and growth after winter. This character is often found in decorations celebrating Chinese/Lunar New Year (February 17, 2026) and Spring Festival (February 17 – March 3, 2026).

This month, in the library, we’re making 3D paper word decor featuring this special character. Spring might seem like an eternity away, but Spring Festival is right around the corner. So, brighten up your space with this cute design which you can place on any surface or hang with string. Takes only a few minutes, and all materials are provided. Drop in anytime in February and ask at the service desk for supplies.


News from Western Libraries

Upcoming Research Skills Workshops hosted by Western Libraries. From data collection to publishing, get expert help at all stages of the research cycle with free workshops.


To find more upcoming Western Library events and workshops visit the Western Libraries Events page. Western Libraries has also launched a new newsletter which brings you timely updates on services, programs, and resources at Western libraries—designed to support your academic work, if you'd like to subscribe, please visit: Western Libraries Newsletter. 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, February 4, 2026. Please submit any items by noon on Tuesday, February 3, 2026.