VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Viral Hepatitis Among Immigrants: A Population-based Comparison using Linked Laboratory and Health Administrative Data
Keywords: Health administrative data
Immigrants
Infectious diseases
Sexually transmitted and blood borne infections
Viral Hepatitis

Viral hepatitis B (HBV) and C (HCV) are two of the most common causes of hepatitis disease and are among the most burdensome infectious diseases in Ontario, Canada. HBV is found predominantly among foreign-born individuals, whereas HCV is more of an issue among long-term residents. The health administrative data provides a potential avenue for identifying disease incidence and prevalence that can be leveraged as a public health assessment tool. In this dissertation, I examine whether it is appropriate to use the health administrative data for this purpose and then quantify the population-level cascades of care for HBV and HCV, in Ontario, Canada. Through a validation study, I found there to be few health administrative diagnosis codes for HBV/HCV infections, and the diagnostic performance of these codes were sub-optimal for population-level health assessment. Expanding on these conclusions, through a data mining study, I included additional health administrative data and developed case finding algorithms for the identification of laboratory confirmed HBV/HCV infections. This exercise showed that the additional information improved diagnostic performance, but was still sub-optimal for use as a population-level health assessment tool. I quantify the HBV cascade of care and show that HBV was predominantly observed among immigrant groups, more specifically those from HBV endemic countries. Additionally, I present estimates of the population level HCV cascade of care and show that HCV is more prevalent among long-term residents, but those from HCV endemic countries were important to consider since they represent a non-negligible portion of the population. These findings show that diagnosis and engagement with care is an issue experienced in both cascades of care and that there is significant heterogeneity between and within immigrant subgroups. I commented on the incremental contribution of this dissertation and the general use of health administrative data as a health care assessment tool for viral hepatitis in Ontario, Canada. Future work should be aimed at improving the Ontario’s health care diagnosis and fee management system. Both cascades of care models outline provide population-based benchmarks for future work geared at evaluating the efficiency and uptake of policies and initiatives for reducing HCV burden in Ontario.
Special Judicial Treatment on Sensitive Cases: Institutional Judicial Deviation from Law in China
Keywords: China
Rule of law
Sensitive cases
Special judicial treatment

Sensitive cases exist in different historical periods, and they are closely linked to the economic and social environment of the times in China. For now, sensitive cases are those involving group disputes that may affect social stability. Special judicial treatment on sensitive cases is the embodiment of the social governance model with a preference for stability in the judicial system. In China, judges are responsible for assessing social risks of all the cases in their hands in China. There are a series of institutions with regard to how to handle sensitive cases within Chinese judicial system, including judges’ preliminary screening, judge meetings and judicial committee. This special treatment to sensitive cases manifests the institutional excessive defense in the judicial system, might legalize some judicial results that violate laws and legal logic, and would damage public trust in and respect to the rule of law and the judiciary in China.
The Law, Policy, and Ethics of Migrants’ Health Care Entitlement
Keywords: entitlement
health care
international migrants
membership
solidarity

This dissertation examines laws and policies in Western receiving countries concerning migrants’ health care entitlement and queries their defensibility. Using Canada as a case study and drawing international comparisons where appropriate, it is shown that Western receiving countries often provide migrants with a level of health care coverage inferior to what is bestowed on their respective citizens. Proponents of such unequal health care entitlement between migrants and receiving-country citizens have commonly rationalized it as a measure to reduce public spending and to deter immigration-related fraud. Available evidence, however, challenges the validity of these claims. Instead, migrants’ lesser health care entitlement is more appropriately understood as a product of their social exclusion in receiving societies. To characterize all migrants as “others” fails to appreciate the reality that certain migrants constitute rightful members of receiving communities according to the theory of social membership. Like their citizen counterparts, migrants who are ordinarily resident and those whose establishment of ordinary residence can be confidently foretold are closely linked to Western receiving countries given their communal affiliations, involvement in social cooperation, self-identification, and subjection to the relevant state’s coercive authority. As their members, Western countries ought to afford these migrants the same extent of health care entitlement as they do their citizens in order to satisfy the dictates of equality and reciprocity. In contrast, differential health care entitlement between citizens of Western receiving countries and migrants whose residence therein is not ordinary in nature is morally permissible. In a world that largely depends on broad-based, ongoing resource redistribution within each nation to realize individuals’ right to health care, membership in these political communities is key to generating the solidarity needed to sustain such communal resource sharing. The inclusion of migrants who are not members of receiving societies in these redistributive processes raises concerns about illegitimacy. Nevertheless, given their territorial presence, pursuant to the principles of causation and remedial capacity, even non-member migrants should be entitled to a basic set of health care rights in Western receiving countries, including, at minimum, coverage for primary care and provision of medical treatment that cannot be deferred.
Contested Rights: Abortion and Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the United Nations
Keywords: abortion
contestation
norms
sexual and reproductive health rights
sexual orientation and gender identity
United Nations

This dissertation examines how contentious issues emerge as norms within international organizations (IOs). To do so, I use the case studies of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) and abortion in the United Nations (UN) from 1994 to 2019. I develop a theoretical model that addresses how normative claims experience contestation during the process of emergence within IOs. This model demonstrates how differences in the breadth of state support required by different venues influence how, whether, and where a norm emerges. These structural factors also present norm entrepreneurs and norm “antipreneurs” (opponents) with different strategic choices and trade-offs. This research is informed by 59 elite interviews, participant observation at various UN proceedings, and archival research. I demonstrate how the differences in abortion’s emergence and SOGI’s non-emergence in consensus-driven UN conferences in the 1990s was partially a result of abortion entrepreneurs’ greater willingness to compromise their proposed norm’s clarity, strength, and scope. I then demonstrate how normative gains related to SOGI (but not abortion) have become more attainable in contemporary vote-driven UN venues as a result of differences in how these two issues map onto pre-existing normative communities/negotiating blocs and as a result of abortion’s greater vulnerability to “framejacking” on the part of antipreneurs. Turning to UN agencies and mechanisms, I highlight how SOGI and abortion can attain a surprising degree of support within the technical/expert-driven components of IOs – irrespective of state support – when norm entrepreneurs link their prospective norm with agency-relevant issues and objectives. This research advances the literature on norm emergence by conceptualizing the early stages of emergence and contestation, and by specifying how a norm is likely to change in the process. My research also contributes to the IO literature by demonstrating how decision-making rules and norm entrepreneurs’ and antipreneurs’ strategic choices influence a contested norm’s trajectory. Empirically, my research offers detailed analyses into the often-inaccessible nuances of UN negotiations and venues. Finally, this dissertation provides in-depth insights into the trajectories of abortion and SOGI within the UN over the past twenty-five years.
Extending Carceral Control Pre-conviction: the Reception, Resistance, and Repercussions of Being Legally Responsible for People Accused of a Crime
Keywords: Bail
Community supervision
Punishment
Social Support
Surety

In Canada and the United States, the control, supervision, and rehabilitation of criminalized people often falls on the shoulders of non-state agents and organizations. Surety bail releases are a seemingly clear embodiment of this trend as the courts call upon relatives, friends, and employers to supervise the pre-conviction activity of people accused of a crime. The resulting diffusion of responsibility is said to increase the penal state’s power and control over criminal justice involved individuals while minimizing reputational risks. However, by analyzing data from a year’s worth of bail court observations from a mid-sized jurisdiction in Ontario and interviews with sureties, I find that how friends and family assume the role of surety varies considerably and regularly diverges from court expectations. Because sureties are not legal professionals, their understanding of and ability to enforce court-ordered conditions and report bail violations is primarily shaped not by court instructions and legal mandates but by their ever-changing relationship with the accused, existing biases towards the law, and extenuating life circumstances. In this way, carceral control is not just assumed by sureties but also resisted, ignored, and subsequently transformed in the context of their everyday lives. Under surety bail releases, the governance of accused individuals therefore represents a patchwork of different and sometimes competing modalities that are stitched together by both state representatives and ordinary citizens. Yet, for accuseds and their sureties, this involvement can come at a cost. While surety releases have the potential to improve the accused’s relationship with their friends and family and increase their surety’s willingness to continue their support, the rules of the court are like an omnipresent force that continually threaten to disrupt the ties that bind. Indeed, the constant pressure of having to enforce court-ordered conditions subjects sureties to a more punitive experience, demonstrating punishment drift in action. The results of this study inform a series of recommendations geared towards offsetting the pains of pre-conviction for accused and their loved ones.
Serving Stories: Servant Characters in Twentieth Century Japanese Literature
Keywords: Character
Japan
Literature
Narratology
Representation
Servant

While the servants who appear in twentieth-century Japanese literature are often minor characters, they are far from insignificant. Rather, these servant characters in fact play a vital role in the narrative discourse seemingly out of proportion with the attention that their class, gender, and employment status—as well as a surface reading of the story—might lead us to expect. By exploring some of the different kinds of structural ‘work’ they do, then, as well as the ways in which their very literary nature grants them a degree of authority beyond that of their real-life corollaries, this dissertation aims to construct a narrative about a type of character whose impact on literary fiction well exceeds the bounds of the textual space they occupy. With this in mind, I take up an examination of servant characters in the works of three canonical authors who themselves experienced life with servants, Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916), Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886-1965), and Mishima Yukio (1925-1970). An analysis of servant characters offers an opportunity to explore issues of representation, power, and authority in modern Japanese fiction. From the ethical question of how to acknowledge those we cannot speak for, to examining the connections between domestic spaces and literary spaces, to uncovering the latent power of traditionally undervalued forms of labor, this dissertation proposes a narratological examination of the role of servants in twentieth-century Japanese fiction as a means for rethinking questions of representation and the plurality of perspectives in literature. Over three chapters, I discuss questions of literary ethics and what it means to respect and acknowledge the blind spots that always accompany difference, how servant characters share and construct the domestic space with their employers, and how the embodied intimacy and unbridled access afforded servant characters might empower them even to take control over their employers’ narratives. In doing so, I argue for a reconsideration of what it means for the minor to assert itself from within the canon, proposing new ways of thinking about the structural dimensions of representation, power, and authority as revealed through the roles of minor servant characters.
Enacting Social Justice Leadership in the Division of Student Affairs
Keywords: Community College
Educational Leadership
Social Justice Leadership
Student Affairs

Heads of Student Affairs in the Ontario College sector are leaders who hold responsibility for services and programs designed to serve diverse student populations, outside of the classroom. In the College of Applied Arts and Technology system, these administrators are typically VPs of Student Affairs and Services, Deans of Students or Executive Directors of Student Services. Given their location in the institutional hierarchy these leaders can play a significant role in challenging and disrupting policies and procedures that reproduce dominance and oppression yet how they express and enact social justice leadership is significantly understudied in the higher education and student affairs literature. Grounded in two large bodies of literature in higher education, and informed by critical theory, eleven student affairs leaders were asked to reflect on ways their work related to social justice and then to discuss when and how their work reflected social justice; the central research question was: How do Heads of Student Affairs enact social justice in their leadership practice? The findings from this study reveal how student affairs leaders, who self-identified as leading from a social justice perspective, enacted social justice in their leadership practice as they attempted to transform student operations, policies and structures of power, by calling into account, seemingly unproblematic practices in efforts to reveal problems, strengths, and possibilities for sustainable change. The data also highlights that those leaders who were able to articulate a deeper understanding of how their identity impacts and informs their leadership practice tended to be more critical in their approach and, as a result, were more likely to face barriers and consequences to enacting social justice leadership. As a result, this study has the potential to provide timely insights for current and emerging leaders to develop robust policies and programs that advocate, and transform educational spaces, for our increasingly diverse student populations from a social justice perspective.
Movement Imagery-dependent Neuroplasticity can be predicted by Motor System Activation and Behavioural Assessments
Keywords: Imagery
Motor Imagery
Motor Learning
Movement Imagery
Neuroplasticity
TMS

Movement imagery (MI) is a cognitive motor process wherein a person consciously imagines themselves performing a movement. It has been demonstrated that MI can be an effective technique to generate and enhance motor learning and rehabilitation. These results may occur because the neural networks and processes involved in MI overlap with those of movement execution. The purpose of research reported in this thesis was to investigate the neural mechanisms involved in MI training and to link these mechanisms to behavioural measures of MI ability. Previous transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies have demonstrated that physical and observational training can temporarily modulate the excitability of cortical representations of movement in a manner consistent with the neuroplastic adaptations that occur through learning. This dissertation describes three experiments where TMS was used to assess similar training-induced modulations in the cortical representation of thumb movements following MI training. To investigate the neural mechanisms involved in these adaptations, the relationship between the magnitude of motor system adaptations and both neurophysiological measures during imagery and behavioural assessments of imagery ability were assessed. Three main conclusions were supported by the described research: 1) MI training can result in short-term adaptations in the motor system; 2) the magnitude of corticospinal excitability during imagery predicts the magnitude of motor system adaptations; and 3) behavioural measures of imagery ability associated with inter-individual differences in neural activation patterns during imagery can also predict the magnitude of motor system adaptations. Overall, this research has demonstrated that imagining movement alters the excitability of the motor system and can be an important mechanism for the initial process of motor learning using MI training.
Toronto's Housing Crisis: An Intersectional Politics of Housing and Settlement Services for Refugees
Keywords: Housing access
Intersectionality
Refugees
Toronto

In this dissertation, I unpack the intersectional politics of the housing crisis in Toronto through the perspectives of frontline staff working in non-profit organisations. Two critical questions frame this study. Firstly, how have service providers addressed the housing and settlement needs of refugees in the context of Canada’s housing crisis? Secondly, how are race, class, language and citizenship status tied into the politics of housing and settlement service provision in Toronto? Utilising semi-structured interviews with frontline staff employed in various non-profit across Toronto, this research identifies and analyses systemic barriers to housing access among newly arrived refugees in Canada as they cut across race, class, language and citizenship status. This study interrogates the disjuncture between immigration and housing policies, programs and procedures and access to rental housing among refugees in Toronto. I draw on antiracist feminist frameworks, particularly intersectionality and theories of home-making, to enrich current conceptualisations of housing access and inequality in Canada. I unpack barriers refugees face when accessing the private rental market in Toronto, to reveal the multilayered ways in which marginalized communities experience housing inequality in Canada. In doing so, this dissertation reveals the limitations of the reliance on private housing stock for housing refugees as they face barriers, including lack of Canadian references and credit scores, lack of employment, language barriers and housing discrimination. Additionally, this study underscores the limitations of settlement and housing service provision available to vulnerable populations, such as refugees in Toronto. By engaging with the voices of frontline staff who consistently interact with refugees, this study sheds light on the intersectional praxis of service provision and the limitations service providers confront when administering programs for vulnerable populations in Toronto. Finally, this study unveils the roles community and grassroots organisations, such as the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and Parkdale Organize!, play in (re)imagining housing justice in Toronto. This study identifies and contributes a novel methodological and conceptual approach to housing research in geography by bringing to the fore frontline staff as a key category of analysis seldom featured in studies on Canada’s housing system.
Interactome Mapping of the Mitochondrial Intermembrane Space Proteases Identifies a Novel Function of HTRA2
Keywords: Acute Myeloid Leukemia
BioID
HTRA2
Mitochondrial Biology
Mitochondrial Protease
Protein-protein interaction

Mitochondrial proteases are enzymes responsible for the breakdown of proteins within the mitochondria. A number of these unique proteases localize to specific sub-compartments of the mitochondria, but the functions of these enzymes are poorly defined. To better characterize these proteases, I used proximity-dependent biotinylation (BioID) to map the interactomes of seven proteases localized to the mitochondrial intermembrane space (IMS). In total, I identified 802 high confidence proximity interactions with 342 unique proteins. While all seven proteases co-localized with the IMS markers OPA1 and CLPB, 230 of the interacting partners were unique to just one or two protease bait proteins, highlighting the ability of BioID to differentiate unique interactomes within the confined space of the IMS. Notably, high temperature requirement peptidase 2 (HTRA2) interacted with eight of 13 components of the mitochondrial intermembrane space bridging (MIB) complex, a multiprotein assembly essential for the maintenance of mitochondrial cristae structure. Knockdown of HTRA2 disrupted cristae in HEK 293 and OCI-AML2 cells and led to increased intracellular levels of the MIB subunit IMMT. Using a cell-free assay, we demonstrated that HTRA2 could degrade recombinant IMMT, while two additional core MIB complex subunits, SAMM50 and CHCHD3 remained undegraded. Based on these findings, I further investigated the role of HTRA2 in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Knockdown of HTRA2 in OCI-AML2 cells showed a decrease in cell growth and an increase in cell differentiation. Additionally, mice injected with HTRA2 knockdown AML cells displayed reduced engraftment, highlighting the role for HTRA2 in tumour cell growth in vivo. Lastly, I collaborated in the development of additional mitochondrial BioID datasets to help characterize the potential functions of these mitochondrial proteins. Overall, my characterization of the IMS protease interactome provides important biological context to an understudied class of proteins and represents a rich dataset that can be further mined to uncover novel IMS protease biology.
Redefining and Reclassifying Acute Traumatic Cervical Incomplete Spinal Cord Injury with Special Reference to Central Cord Syndrome: Implications for an Aging Population
Keywords: Biostatistics
Central cord syndrome
Cervical spine
Clinical epidemiology
Spinal cord injury
Surgery

In the face of the global aging population and the shifting epidemiology of acute spinal cord injury (SCI), there is a critical need to revisit the definition and clinical management of central cord syndrome (CCS). This dissertation investigated the hypothesis that the neurological outcomes of patients with ‘central cord syndrome’ are heterogeneous and predicted more accurately by acute clinical variables and interventions, including early surgical decompression. First, a systematic review of the literature pertaining to CCS was performed to identify: 1) predictors of outcome; and 2) the efficacy of early (