VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A Narrative Study on First-generation Women Students’ Experiences and Persistence Decisions in Ontario Undergraduate Mathematics or Physics Programs
Keywords: First-Generation Women
Mathematics
Persistence Decisions
Physics
STEM
STEM education

Though participation and persistence rates for women in university science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs are increasing, the experiences of an equity-deserving group, first-generation women students (FGWSs), those women first in their family to attend college or university, are not widely understood. This study used narrative inquiry and interviews to explore the journey of 12 FGWSs into and through their mathematics and physics programs, how they understood and made sense of their experiences, and how these experiences shaped their persistence decisions. The conceptual framework guiding this study draws upon Terenzi and Reason’s (2005) persistence framework, De Grandi et al.’s (2019) STEM climate constructs, and STEM literature. Although findings are mostly consistent with previous research, they also reveal new insights into FGWSs’ challenges and successes and how they use different lenses (e.g., gender or first-generation status) to understand their experiences. Growing up, participants developed an early interest in STEM through informal exploration and teachers who fostered their passion. Once they began university, participants felt disoriented as they were unfamiliar with the university context. Several themes emerged relating to their university journey. First, first-generation status is a hidden component of social identity acknowledged during first year. They do not know what they do not know (or should know), and some had experiences where they felt at a disadvantage. However, they were determined and recognized that they could ask their peers for advice. Second, doubts about their abilities led to lower academic confidence, imposter feelings, and thoughts about switching programs. However, they adopted new perspectives on learning and success and persisted as they felt a sense of pride in their accomplishments. Third, most participants suggested that STEM professors should adopt a pedagogy of care. They felt that student-centred teaching approaches engaged them and made them comfortable approaching professors. Lastly, even though their families did not have knowledge about university, many felt that family support was influential in their persistence. Not all FGWSs have the same experiences in mathematics or physics programs, so a one-size-fits-all model to support them is not appropriate. Several recommendations for post-secondary institutions and STEM departments are provided.
“Ontario’s Development Road”: The Ontario Northland Railway and Provincial Colonialism, 1901-1995
Keywords: colonialism
Indigenous
Ontario
politics
railway
tourism

In this dissertation I investigate the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway (known as the Ontario Northland Railway after 1946, or simply the ONR) in the Moosonee and Moose Factory region of Northeastern Ontario as a means to examine how provincial colonialism manifested through the railway’s actions. Railway infrastructure is an active agent of provincial colonialism. In Northeastern Ontario, the provincial government used the ONR to impose colonial control over the lands and waters of Omushkegowuk people by granting the railway power over land administration, resource development, and transportation infrastructure. In the Omushkego-Aski (James Bay Lowlands) in particular, the ONR was the first permanent provincial government presence and remained one of the most significant for decades. Industrial and natural resource development proposals, championed by the Ontario government, by the ONR, and by private enterprise show this colonial mindset in practice. Racially motivated indifference and outright discrimination exacerbated the railway’s unresponsiveness to the local situation. These actions demonstrated that, despite the relationship established in Treaty 9, the provincial government’s priorities did not include the local, primarily Omushkegowuk, population. In later years, tourism and leisure activities reinforced the railway’s imposed racial division and also further entrenched colonialism in the region. The Ontario government and ONR were willing to exploit the Omushkegowuk for their own ends, as producers of crafts for sale to tourists and as guides for elite sport hunters. In Northeastern Ontario, the ONR was a key agent of provincial colonialism, even as Omushkegowuk people developed their own complicated relationship with the railway that became a significant transportation link.
Economic Analysis of Violations of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran
Keywords: Economic Analysis
International Law
Iran
Political Economy
Repression
Violations of Human Rights

Human rights violations in Iran present a challenging issue for international law and a complex subject for research. Most effort has gone into broadcasting Iran's systematic and gross violations of human rights. As a way to move beyond this point, this thesis uses the "law and economics" approach, political economy, and behavioral insights to investigate the behavioral dynamics of state-based human rights violations in post-revolutionary Iran. The first chapter describes human rights in Iran and reveals how institutional designs exacerbate repression. Chapter two provides a literature review, addresses methodological concerns, and defines "Economic analysis of human rights" as a distinct field. The third chapter presents a political economic conceptual framework, discusses the determinants of human rights violations in Iran, and investigates some of the underlying behavioral dynamics of repression in Iran. Finally, statistical analysis indicates that political transitions and armed conflicts are causally linked to more human rights violations in Iran.
Transportation, Poverty, and Urban Dynamics
Keywords: cities
mobility
neighbourhood change
poverty
suburbs
transportation

This dissertation examines suburbanization of poverty in Canadian cities during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with particular focus on its relation to the distribution of transportation infrastructure and travel behaviour outcomes. The body of this dissertation consists of a literature review followed by three quantitative research papers. The first examines suburbanization of poverty in Toronto over a 25 year period relative to changes in public transit accessibility and adverse travel behaviour outcomes (e.g. longer commute times). The second uses panel data to analyze and tabulate individual pathways to suburban poverty across Canada. And the third directly asks whether low-income residents are disproportionately moving away from public transit. Findings show that many suburban areas are not only declining in socio-economic status, but are also experiencing worsening travel restrictions, evidenced by longer commute times and lower activity participation rates. Importantly, the primary pathway to suburban poverty is sourced from residents dropping into poverty in the suburbs, rather than from moving away from central areas or due to immigration. Moreover, while low-income residents reduce their level of transit accessibility when they move, they are not doing so at a greater rate than higher-income movers. Overall, this research generates important knowledge about the changing structure of urban neighbourhoods while also providing pertinent information to aid preventative policy aimed at reducing suburban poverty in Canada.
Reading, Evaluating and Commemorating Feminism : Excluding and Reviving Dynamics of L'Euguélionne’s Reception in Québec
Keywords: Archives
Commemoration
Feminism
Québec Studies
Social Movement Studies
Sociology of Culture

My doctoral research relies on the premise that political books are more than a receptacle of movement ideas. They are texts that reveal and put words on felt oppression; they are works that resist artistic norms and often challenges literary institutions; and they are objects that can garner solidarity amongst readers and nurture one’s connection to the movement. In other words, I understand political books – reading them, evaluating them, commemorating them – as a way in which culture shapes our political imagination. Québec's feminist novel L’Euguélionne is a good example of this type of political book. Published in 1976 as Louky Bersianik’s debut novel, it was a critically acclaimed and best-selling book that also received vitriol for its ideological commitments. Over time, it became a forgotten classic known only amongst small reception communities, until 2016, when a new feminist bookstore borrowed its name. Using L’Euguélionne as a point of departure, my doctoral research traces the cultural trajectory of this feminist artistic production to enhance our understanding about the ways in which feminist ideas are critiqued and undermined, but also circulated and kept alive. The dissertation raises three central questions: How is feminist art received by masculine gatekeepers of art worlds? What does the reception and revival of feminist art make possible for activists as they attempt to renew the movement? How does friendship shape intergenerational transmission of feminist art? Methodologically, my approach to the study of L’Euguélionne proposes to consider reception like ethnographers would a city sidewalk (Duneier 1999) or an Argentinian neighbourhood (Auyero 2015). This involves looking at the complex dynamics that characterize the site, what I term the push and pull of cultural reception, mapping the connections between actors, and paying close attention to forms of activism that happen under the radar. This approach complements more conventional studies of cultural reception and could be used by scholars interested in how critical appraisal of political art shapes public discourse about social movements, how consumption of art can fuel activism, and how consecration affects the diffusion of political ideas and shapes intergenerational movement dynamics.
English Academic Writing and Affordances for Writing Support: Perspectives and Experiences of Plurilingual International Course-based Master of Education Students in a Canadian University
Keywords: academic writing support
English academic writing
international graduate students
plurilingualism

Many international students are pursuing graduate education in Canada using languages other than English. The Master of Education degree has been particularly attractive as it offers significant cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) in return for a relatively short period of study. However, there is an implicit expectation that because these students have met admission standards, they should be performing at the same level as their peers who use standard English. Should these international students face challenges with their written English proficiency, they experience discourses of deficit that negatively affect their experience in the academy. Using a multiple case study design, I conducted a three-part series of semi-structured interviews with plurilingual international course-based Master of Education (PIM) students at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) to examine their perspectives on and experiences with English academic writing and academic writing support. To learn about the affordances for academic writing support for these students, I collected data from a variety of sources, including a demographic questionnaire, participant observations, document analysis, focus group with students, and interviews with support providers. I examined the resulting data using Framework Analysis (Spencer et al., 2014) and the theoretical lenses of Academic Literacies (Lea & Street, 1998, 2006) and ecological perspectives (Bronfenbrenner, 1997; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Van Lier, 2000, 2004). The PIM students in this study reported challenges with English academic writing at the graduate level that left them feeling anxious and inadequate. To resist being marginalized by an English-dominant ideology that adopts a deficit view rather than values the diverse assets afforded by plurilingualism, these students demonstrated agency by engaging with an array of affordances that served to build English writing skills, to socialize students into the discourse practices of their disciplinary communities, and to develop identities as novice English scholarly writers. This study builds upon the literature that views academic writing support as integral to all students’ development as academic writers while recognizing the unique needs of plurilingual international graduate students. Implications from this study suggest a need for culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy, and policies that help students leverage their plurilingual repertoire.
Suboptimal Oral Health and Cardiovascular Disease: Towards an Organized Research Field and Informed Preventive Strategies
Keywords: cardiovascular disease
heart disease
periodontal disease
tooth loss

Examining associations between suboptimal oral health (SOH) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) has formed a broad and heterogenous epidemiological field with unclear implications and persistent methodological gaps. The objectives of this dissertation are to: (1) systematically map clinical heterogeneity and selected methodological gaps in the existing literature, (2) assess the relevance of SOH to the risk of CVD when defined within overarching concepts, (3) understand the associations between SOH and three competing CVD outcomes (ischemic heart disease (IHD), stroke, revascularization), and (4) simultaneously assess the association between SOH and CVD and competing death (CD). To address the first objective, a mapping review of longitudinal studies in this area was conducted. To address the remaining objectives, three 9.6-year-median follow-up data linkage studies that included 36,176 Ontario residents aged 40 years were completed. The main oral indicator was self-rated oral health (SROH), which was assessed as excellent, very good, good, fair, poor, with SROH being defined with respect to self-rated health (SRH) to address the second objective. Participants were followed until they experienced the event of interest, loss of eligibility to healthcare, death, or end of study (December 31st, 2016). Multivariable survival models were adjusted for socioeconomic characteristics, behavioural factors, and intermediate health outcomes. The mapping review showed a severe form of clinical heterogeneity and underutilization of the examined methodological approaches, including the use of randomized controlled trials, time-varying exposures, propensity methods, mediation analysis, and competing risks analysis. The three data linkage studies indicated that: SROH may capture additional information about the risk of CVD when considered within the overarching concept of SRH; the associations between SROH and IHD and revascularization are largely explained by confounders, but not with stroke; and the association between SROH and CD is more pronounced than its association with CVD. In conclusion, this work indicates the need for: an interdisciplinary approach to refine the conceptualization of SOH in relation to CVD, closing critical methodological gaps, and mitigating the risk of CVD associated with SOH in the broader context of health promotion.
Learning to Live with the Atom: US Public Opinion and International Control of Atomic Energy, 1945-1950
Keywords: Atomic energy
Early Cold War
Nuclear history
Public opinion
United Nations

The advent of the atomic age at the end of the Second World War raised debates over how to protect the world from the dangers of the atomic bomb while promoting the peaceful uses of atomic energy. This could be achieved, scientists argued, only through the international control of atomic energy, which would secure nuclear technology and material under an international body. The devastation caused by a future nuclear war meant the problem affected everyone, everywhere, but as guardians of this unprecedented new weapon, Americans bore special responsibility for its future. Learning to Live with the Atom: US Public Opinion and International Control of Atomic Energy, 1945-1950 examines the two-way relationship between the American public and policymakers during the first years of the atomic age. By examining American diplomacy on the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission alongside domestic public relations initiatives to engage the American people on nuclear issues, it tells a comprehensive story about how Americans tried to make sense of the fundamentally new world in which they lived and slowly came to terms with the emerging Cold War.
Pandemonium of Hope: Oil, Aspiration, and the Good Life in Alberta
Keywords: Alberta
aspiration
good life
oil
secularism
spirituality

For people living in Alberta, Canada’s largest oil producing province, oil is a key symbolic element in imagining what a good life is. A Pandemonium of Hope explores how oil companies, government agencies, and community organizations in Alberta use oil to describe a specific set of morals and values. In Alberta, labour, land, and aspiration are bound by a world in which religious meaning making and ideas of the good life are entangled with oil. Oil culture shapes how both the past and the future of Alberta are imagined. This dissertation discusses how oil and the good life are bound through the four case studies: Imperial Oil’s description of its own virtue in its public relations, narratively aligning itself with the Christian colonial project of settlement in western Canada; spaces that the Alberta government calls “Energy Heritage” sites and how they have used historical narratives of extraction to articulate Albertan values; the corporate culture of Calgary and its philosophies about energy; and The Calgary Stampede rodeo as a culminating spectacle in which the goodness associated with oil labour, extractive land use, and assertive aspiration is articulated as specifically ‘western.’
Atmosphere and Ocean Components of the Sahel Climate Response to Aerosol Forcing
Keywords: Aerosol Forcing
African Climate
Atmosphere-Ocean Interactions
Global Climate Modeling
Monsoon Climate Change

The Sahel region of Africa experienced a severe drought in the 1980s, and understanding the causes of this drought are crucial for anticipating future climate changes in the region. Large ensembles (LEs) of coupled global climate model simulations of the historical period show that anthropogenic aerosol (AER) forcing causes a drying, then wetting in the Sahel with roughly coincident timing to the observed drought. To illuminate how AER forcing causes these changes, we use the ocean model hierarchy to ascertain the role of different atmosphere and ocean mechanisms. Using prescribed sea surface temperature (SST) experiments, we separate the fast direct-atmospheric (DA) effect, due to rapid atmospheric adjustments and land surface responses, and slow ocean-mediated effect (OM), due to atmospheric responses to SST changes. Then, using slab ocean model (SOM) experiments we separate the direct-atmospheric effect plus ocean mixed layer temperature change effect (DA+OT) from effect of changing ocean circulation (OC). Crucially, for both cases we derive boundary conditions from the coupled model LE so that we can perform a detailed, model-consistent assessment of these mechanisms. From the 1950s to 1970s, AER emission increase causes Sahel drying. We find this is a DA effect caused by North American emission increases. The OM effect weakly increases rainfall, due to offsetting drying effects from Atlantic cooling, which causes Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) shifting, and wetting effects from Pacific cooling, which causes a "reduced-ante" response. OC changes damp the AER forcing cooling in the North Atlantic, reducing the drying signal. From the 1970s to 2000s, the shift of AER emissions from Europe and North America to Asia cause Sahel wetting. We find this is an OM effect due to complementary wetting effects of Atlantic warming and tropical Pacific cooling, which appears to be largely due to OC changes. The DA effect of local African emissions cause drying in the West Sahel and remote Asian emissions cause drying in coastal West Africa via Walker circulation adjustments. Thus, we find that the Sahel response to AER forcing is the result of a complex combination of different mechanisms that shift as AER emission patterns change.
The Association between Maternal Oral Inflammation and the Composition of Breast Milk: A Cohort Study
Keywords: Breast milk
Breastfeeding
Maternal health
Oral health
Oral inflammatory load
Periodontitis

Introduction: Maternal health conditions such as diabetes and obesity have been shown to be associated with altered breast milk composition. Periodontal diseases are among the common oral health conditions affecting mothers during pregnancy and postpartum. However, it is not known whether periodontal diseases affect breast milk composition (including immune cells, fatty acids, cytokines, etc.). Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the impact of maternal oral inflammatory load (OIL) on breast milk composition including neutrophil counts and activation state, and fatty acids concentrations. This study also aimed to identify the impact of maternal OIL on the oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) and the dietary intakes and quality of postpartum women. The association between maternal OIL and infant outcomes at birth were also investigated. Methods: This is a prospective cohort study where fifty breastfeeding mothers were recruited from St. Michael’s hospital and followed up from 2-4 weeks until 4-months postpartum. Oral rinse and breast milk samples were collected from the participants. Participants also completed an OHRQoL and 24-hr dietary recall questionnaires as part of the study. OIL, as expressed by the absolute oral neutrophil counts was used to assess the periodontal and oral inflammatory status of mothers. Mothers’ oral health state was categorized into “Healthy”, “Moderate” and “Severe” groups based on the oral neutrophil counts. Results: Mothers with moderate to severe OIL had a statistically significant decrease in the expression of activation biomarkers on breast milk neutrophils and decrease in the poly-unsaturated fatty acids at follow-up compared to baseline (p<0.01). Our study also showed a positive correlation between the maternal dietary inflammatory potential and OIL at follow-up. Infants of mothers with severe OIL had significantly lower birthweight z-scores compared to infants of mothers with moderate OIL (p=0.04). Conclusion: This study suggests that maternal OIL can affect breast milk composition. Future studies are needed to investigate the impact of the alterations in breast milk composition on infant health outcomes on the short and long term. This study represents a starting point for a new line of research aiming at filling the gap in the literature regarding this possible and clinically important association.