Carleton University is welcoming 43 new faculty members who will enhance Carleton’s focus on dynamic teaching and innovative research that provides solutions to real-world problems.
The new members of Carleton’s academic community include:
Laura Banducci, assistant professor, College of the Humanities
Email: Laura.Banducci@carleton.ca
Banducci works primarily on central Italian archaeology, around the ancient Etruscan and Roman civilizations. Her research centres on three principle areas: cultural identities as examined through diet and dining practices; how artifacts were made, used, re-purposed and discarded; and entertainment and leisure culture. For the past six years, she has been involved in the excavation of the site of Gabii, an ancient town just outside of Rome.
John Gales, assistant professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Email: John.Gales@carleton.ca
Gales began his graduate studies researching post-tensioned concrete buildings. In 2009, he began his PhD at the University of Edinburgh where his doctoral thesis expanded on this topic by addressing fire. In 2013, at Queen’s University he undertook a collaborative project on the behavior of concrete in fire, specifically focusing on sustainable concretes using recycled concrete aggregates. At Carleton, Gales will be teaching civil engineering materials and a graduate class in fire dynamics.
Martin Geiger, assistant professor, Department of Political Science, Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Institute of Political Economy
Geiger is interested in the multitude of state and non-state actors involved in governing cross-border mobility, the various modes and tools that have been invented to manage the flow of people and the real-life effects these interventions have on states, societies and people crossing borders.
Geiger came to Carleton for the first time in 2011, as a E.U. visiting scholar with the Centre for European Studies. He later returned to Carleton for a second time, this time holding a Banting fellowship. He is involved in the Migration and Diaspora Studies (MDS) initiative and the Borders in Globalization Project.
Amrita Hari, assistant professor, Pauline Jewett Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies
Hari’s broad research interests include global migrations, transnationalisms, diasporic formations and citizenship. She recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at York University jointly funded by CERIS (the Ontario Metropolis Centre), the Centre for Refugee Studies and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation.
Her previous work examined migrants’ changing gender roles. Her current research pushes for a comparative examination of temporary migrants, their intersectional identities and acts of resistance.
Laura Horak, assistant professor, School for Studies in Art and Culture: Film Studies
Email: laura.horak@carleton.ca
Horak investigates how moving-image culture has historically produced what is normal, what is pleasurable and what is possible in relation to sexuality and gender. Her research shows that the U.S. film industry used cross-dressed women to achieve respectability during its first decades; then, in the late 1920s, it helped associate cross-dressing with lesbianism in a bid for worldly cosmopolitanism. Horak also writes about transgender, lesbian and gay cinema cultures, Scandinavian film and YouTube.
Kahente Horn-Miller, New Sun Visiting Aboriginal Scholar, School of Canadian Studies
Horn-Miller received her doctorate in 2009. Formerly, she was co-ordinator for the Kahnawà:ke Legislative Co-ordinating Commission, the body that oversees the legislative development process based in Haudenosaunee principles of consensus building. As an active member of her community, she continues to research indigenous methodologies, women’s issues, identity politics, colonization, governance and consensus-based decision making.
Her governance work and community-based research involves interpreting culture and bringing new life to old traditions and practices. She is currently working on revising a manuscript for publication on the Mohawk Warrior Flag that came to prominence during the Oka Crisis of 1990.
John Howat, instructor, School of Computer Science
Email: jhowat@scs.carleton.ca
Howat’s research interests include mesh processing (three-dimensional scanning and printing and the manipulation of large triangle meshes), computational geometry, algorithms and data structures. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Queen’s University where he worked with an industrial partner to write custom software to manipulate digitized fossils of dinosaur bones.
Irena Knezevic, assistant professor, School of Journalism and Communication
Email: Irena.Knezevic@carleton.ca
Knezevic studies communication, culture and health. She is especially interested in food systems, food labeling, health communication and advertising, health equity, informal economy in everyday practices and the discourse of food and health regulations.
Nduka Otiono, assistant professor, Institute of African Studies
A Fellow of the William Joiner Centre for War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts, Otionointerdisciplinary research focuses on street stories or popular urban narratives in post-colonial Africa and how they travel across multiple popular-cultural platforms such as the mass transit system, the news media, film, popular music and social media. As part of his Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship work, he recently completed a seven-country research tour of Africa for his first monograph on street stories in Africa.
Also a writer, he is the author of The Night Hides with a Knife, which won the ANA/Spectrum Prize; Voices in the Rainbow, a finalist for the ANA/Cadbury Poetry Prize; and Love in a Time of Nightmares for which he was awarded the James Patrick Folinsbee Memorial Scholarship in Creative Writing. He has co-edited We-Men: An Anthology of Men Writing on Women, and Camouflage: Best of Contemporary Writing from Nigeria.
Carolyn M. Ramzy, assistant professor, School for Studies in Art and Culture: Music
Email:Carolyn.Ramzy@carleton.ca
Ramzy is an ethnomusicologist studying the Egyptian Coptic community during the January 25 Uprising and how popular religious song became an alternative medium to talk about citizenship and belonging in Egypt.
Megan Rivers-Moore, assistant professor, Pauline Jewett Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies
Rivers-Moore has a PhD in sociology from the University of Cambridge and recently completed a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto. She is working on a book about sex tourism in Costa Rica. Her research interests include sexuality, labour and transnational feminisms.
Kristin Snoddon, assistant professor, School of Linguistics and Language Studies
Email: Kristin.Snoddon@carleton.ca
Snoddon’s research is in the area of applied sign language linguistics. She comes to Carleton from the University of Alberta, where she worked as the David Peikoff Chair of Deaf Studies. She received her PhD in second language education from the University of Toronto and was awarded a SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellowship with Ryerson University. Her book American Sign Language and Early Literacy: A Model Parent-Child Program was published by Gallaudet University Press. Her other publications have appeared in the Canadian Modern Language Review, Current Issues in Language Planning, Disability & Society, Sign Language Studies, and Writing & Pedagogy. She is developing an American Sign Language (ASL) curriculum for parents of deaf children.
Dale Spencer, assistant professor, Department of Law and Legal Studies
Email: Dale.Spencer@carleton.ca
Spencer’s research interests include violence, victimization, embodiment and the criminalization of marginalized populations, with a specific focus on homeless and young people. In the last three years he has published two books, Reimaging Intervention in Young Lives and Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment, and two edited volumes, Emotions Matter and Fighting Scholars. His work can be found in a number of journals, including Body and Society, Punishment and Society, and Ethnography.
Bruce H. Tsuji, instructor, Department of Psychology
Email: Bruce.Tsuji@carleton.ca
Tsuji’s research is broadly concerned with the psychology of technology, sometimes called human-computer interaction (HCI). Some of his research projects include investigating how experts and novices differ in their understanding of data; mobile user interfaces; tools to help first responders in terrorist events; technology to help people with visual impairments; and the application of technology to improve engagement in post-secondary classrooms. This fall Carleton will launch its first Massively Open Online Classroom (MOOC) with an Introduction to Psychology course developed by Tsuji.
Benjamin Woo, assistant professor, School of Journalism and Communication
Email: benjamin.woo@carleton.ca
Woo studies media audiences and industries with a focus on contemporary geek culture, including comic books and graphic novels, science-fiction and fantasy, gaming and fandom. His research focuses on working conditions and experiences of comic creators.
Quotes
“For me, coming back to Carleton was an easy and logical choice. There is simply no better place to research and teach about mobility, migration, border security and international politics on human cross-border movements.” Geiger.
“The position at Carleton was a perfect fit with my work, in a school with an excellent reputation. When I did my interview last winter, I left with the impression that the department, the university and the city were all very welcoming places. I was thrilled when I got the offer.” Knezevic.
“I joined Carleton to contribute to the advancement of the Institute of African Studies, Canada’s only stand-alone institute of African Studies, while engaging in scholarship and teaching that fosters a deeper knowledge of the continent.” Otiono.
“I decided to join Carleton because I really enjoyed the music faculty when I was here during my interview. The department seemed open for me to experiment with new courses and to grow as a teacher, researcher and musician. So here I am!” Ramzy.
“I decided to join the faculty here at Carleton because of the Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies program. This program is uniquely suited to my teaching and research interests.” Snodden.
“I first learned about HCI when I attended a talk by the late Dick Dillon and Jo Wood, both of Carleton, in 1979. How could I resist the institution that first informed me about the topic to which I’ve devoted most of my professional career?” Tsuji.
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