UNews - National Geographic Society /unews/organization/national-geographic-society en U of L researcher part of team to study migration through the lens of refugee experience /unews/article/u-l-researcher-part-team-study-migration-through-lens-refugee-experience <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> <div class="field-items"> <div class="field-item even" property="rnews:articlebody schema:articleBody"> <p>How have current stories of migration been shaped by longer histories of borders and displacement? What can the experiences of those crossing the Canada-U.S. border tell us about the history of Canada and the U.S.?</p><p>These are some of the questions driving a new project, <em>Remembering Refuge: Between Sanctuary and Solidarity</em>, that will build a digital oral history archive of the Canada-U.S. border as recounted by refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Haiti.<div class="image-caption-container right" style="width:450px;"><img src="/unews/sites/default/files/Canada-USborder.jpg" title="Canada-U.S. border at Chief Mountain, Alberta, Flickr photo by Carolyn Cuskey and shared under Creative Commons (CC-2.0) licence." alt=""><div class="image-caption">Canada-U.S. border at Chief Mountain, Alberta, Flickr photo by Carolyn Cuskey and shared under Creative Commons (CC-2.0) licence.</div></div></p><p>The project, led by Dr. Julie Young, Grace Wu and Johanna Reynolds, is supported by a grant from the National Geographic Society and will be carried out in partnership with the Department of Geography at the 免费福利资源在线看片 of Lethbridge. Young, Wu, and Reynolds have worked collaboratively on a number of projects over the last decade related to borders and migration. Young is also the Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Critical Border Studies and an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the U of L.</p><p>&ldquo;At a time when the public is inundated with a crisis narrative about migration and borders,&rdquo; says Young, &ldquo;the oral histories in <em>Remembering Refuge</em> remind us that it is urgent to step outside this story of &lsquo;crisis&rsquo; and focus on the experiences of people who have been displaced multiple times, who now face being stranded by shifting policies between Canada and the US.&rdquo;</p><p>The project team will carry out 20 oral history interviews with individuals who made refugee claims between the 1980s and 2018 and entered Canada through the Detroit (MI)-Windsor (ON) or Plattsburgh (NY)-Lacolle (QC) ports of entry. The sound recordings will be digitized and made publicly available on an open access, multimedia website, along with teaching modules designed for secondary and postsecondary educators and students.</p><p>Through oral history, educational modules, and digital storytelling, <em>Remembering Refuge </em>seeks to illuminate the experiences of those people who have crossed the Canada-US border&mdash;stories that are not often told in-depth in public&mdash;and to foster critical thinking and engagement on how borders are constructed through politics, history, infrastructure, and our imaginations.</p><p>By focusing on the accounts of people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Haiti, &ldquo;whose movements are so often tied to the foreign policies of Canada and the US,&rdquo; says Wu, &ldquo;we want to engage with the public about the contexts that drive migration to and through North America.&rdquo;</p><p>&ldquo;Oral history is called &lsquo;history from below,&rsquo; and it&rsquo;s really effective for storytelling and education,&rdquo; says Reynolds. &ldquo;Our goal is to engage with communities about how it feels to encounter borders and how this might increase understandings of migration.&rdquo;</p><p>&ldquo;This project looks at how &lsquo;unofficial&rsquo; archives reveal that communities have always contested borders and the ways they are enforced,&rdquo; says Young, whose previous research has documented how border communities in the 1980s organized across the Canada-US border in solidarity with Central American refugees.</p><p>Oral history interviews will be carried out in the summer and fall of 2019 and the open access website, oral history archive, and teaching modules will be launched in early 2020. The team would like to speak with community members on either side of the border, who have themselves come through these routes, or who know of people who crossed the Canada-US border to seek refuge, especially from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Haiti, and entered through the Detroit-Windsor or Plattsburgh-Lacolle ports of entry between 1980 and 2018. Please contact <a href="mailto:rememberingrefuge@gmail.com" rel="nofollow">rememberingrefuge@gmail.com</a>.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="field-group-format group_related_topics field-group-div group-related-topics block-title-body speed-fast effect-none"><h2><span>Related Topics</span></h2><div class="field field-name-opencalais-organization-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Organization:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/unews/organization/faculty-arts-science" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">Faculty of Arts &amp; Science</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/unews/organization/department-geography" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">Department of Geography</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/unews/organization/national-geographic-society" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">National Geographic Society</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/unews/organization/department-geography-environment" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">Department of Geography &amp; Environment</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/unews/person/dr-julie-young" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">Dr. Julie Young</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/unews/person/grace-wu-and-johanna-reynolds" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">Grace Wu and Johanna Reynolds</a></div></div></div></div><span property="rnews:name schema:name" content="U of L researcher part of team to study migration through the lens of refugee experience " class="rdf-meta"></span> Tue, 14 May 2019 16:24:53 +0000 caroline.zentner 10216 at /unews U of L student awarded a National Geographic Society Early Career Grant /unews/article/u-l-student-awarded-national-geographic-society-early-career-grant <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> <div class="field-items"> <div class="field-item even" property="rnews:articlebody schema:articleBody"> <p>An interest in researching the evolution of human sexual behaviour has netted Francisco Gomez Jimenez, a master&rsquo;s student studying under Dr. Paul Vasey at the 免费福利资源在线看片 of Lethbridge, membership in an elite group.</p><p>Gomez Jimenez has been awarded an Early Career Grant through the National Geographic Society. The society&rsquo;s website indicates it has awarded more than 11,000 grants for research, conservation and exploration to forward-thinking students. The Early Career Grant provides funding for individuals to have their first opportunity to lead a project, whether it involves exploration, scientific research, conservation, education or storytelling. In so doing, the National Geographic Society aims to cultivate young leaders around the world.<div class="image-caption-container right" style="width:400px;"><img src="/unews/sites/default/files/FGJMain.jpg" alt=""></div></p><p>&ldquo;In March, I received an email saying &lsquo;Congratulations,&rsquo; and I was thrilled,&rdquo; says Gomez Jimenez. &ldquo;To think that the National Geographic Society thought my work was interesting enough for them to fund is amazing.&rdquo;</p><p>The award of nearly $5,000 will allow Gomez Jimenez to continue his research into how male homosexuality has survived through time even though it&rsquo;s not logical from an evolutionary point of view.</p><p>&ldquo;One of the things we do is try to understand how a trait such as male homosexuality, which is costly from an evolutionary perspective, can survive and be passed on through generations when these homosexual males are not reproducing themselves,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Across the world, we tend to see around one to five per cent of the male population being homosexual.&rdquo;</p><p>The archaeological record&mdash;cave and pottery art, specifically&mdash;provides early evidence of homosexual behaviour. Scientists like Gomez Jimenez want to know how a trait that inhibits reproduction survives over the centuries and is found all over the world. One of the hypotheses is called kin selection, where the cost of not reproducing is offset if a homosexual male enhances the survival and reproduction of his close relatives who share common genes.</p><p>Previous research by Vasey in Samoa, a culture that recognizes the fa&rsquo;afafine as a third gender, has shown these same-sex attracted males tend to be avuncular, or uncle-like, in their behaviour. They invest time and resources in their nieces and nephews, something that gay men in North America typically don&rsquo;t exhibit.</p><p>Vasey&rsquo;s research has also demonstrated that the transgender form is the ancestral form of male homosexuality. Given this, the members of Vasey&rsquo;s lab suspect that in cultures where the transgender form of male homosexuality is more common, like the fa&rsquo;afafine and the muxes of the Istmo Zapotec culture of southern Mexico, the social environment is more likely to be conducive to the expression of avuncular behaviour.</p><p>A further grant from Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society, will allow Gomez Jimenez to explore another idea about the evolutionary paradox of male homosexuality. The Sexually Antagonistic Gene Hypothesis suggests that genes associated with male homosexuality, while they reduce reproduction when present in males, will increase reproduction when present in their female relatives. Tests of this hypothesis in Western cultures have been inconclusive but this may be due to overall low reproduction rates. Gomez Jimenez will test the hypothesis in the Istmo Zapotec, where reproduction rates are much higher. The Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research program is highly competitive, with only about 15 per cent of applicants being successful.</p><p>Gomez Jimenez, currently a master&rsquo;s student who expects to start a PhD later this summer, plans to travel to Mexico in November to pursue his research project. He&rsquo;ll be interviewing muxes and straight men to further test the kin selection hypothesis.</p><p>Originally from Puerto Rico, Gomez Jimenez completed a bachelor of science in biology at the 免费福利资源在线看片 of Puerto Rico (UPR). He worked on research projects with Dr. David Logue, a former post-doctoral fellow at the U of L who was then a professor at UPR. When Logue returned to the U of L, he recommended Gomez Jimenez to Vasey. Vasey had been looking for a student who could speak Spanish and was interested in human sexuality. Gomez Jimenez jumped at the chance.</p><p>&ldquo;I felt blessed and was very happy about it,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always been interested in the evolution of human sexual behaviour and have found it fascinating.&rdquo;</p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="field-group-format group_related_topics field-group-div group-related-topics block-title-body speed-fast effect-none"><h2><span>Related Topics</span></h2><div class="field field-name-opencalais-industryterm-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">IndustryTerm:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/unews/industry-term/early-career-grant" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">Early Career Grant</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-opencalais-organization-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Organization:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/unews/organization/national-geographic-society" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">National Geographic Society</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/unews/person/francisco-gomez-jimenez" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">Francisco Gomez Jimenez</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/unews/person/dr-paul-vasey" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">Dr. Paul Vasey</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-opencalais-position-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Position:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/unews/position/masters-student" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">master&#039;s student</a></div></div></div></div><span property="rnews:name schema:name" content="U of L student awarded a National Geographic Society Early Career Grant" class="rdf-meta"></span> Wed, 05 Jul 2017 16:54:08 +0000 caroline.zentner 9003 at /unews