Four faculty members receive School of Graduate Studies Supervision Awards
(left to right): Steven Bernstein, Matthew Roorda, Claire Battershill, Amaya Perez-Brumer (supplied images)
by Natasha Smith
Four faculty members have been honoured with the School of Graduate Studies Supervision Awards in recognition of their outstanding and thoughtful supervision and mentorship of graduate students.
“The annual supervision awards give us an opportunity to celebrate the essential role of supervisors at the University of Toronto. By awarding both early-career and long-time faculty members, we recognize the importance of graduate supervision throughout an academic’s career,” says Joshua Barker, dean of the School of Graduate Studies and vice-provost, graduate research and education. “I am delighted to congratulate this year’s winners and to thank them for their dedication and support of graduate students at U of T.”
Steven Bernstein, a distinguished professor at U of T Mississauga and co-director of the Environmental Governance Lab at the Faculty of Arts & Science, and Matthew Roorda, a professor in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering’s department of civil and mineral engineering, received JJ Berry Smith Doctoral Supervision Awards, which recognize excellence in supervision over a minimum 15-year period.
Claire Battershill, an assistant professor jointly appointed in the Faculty of Information and the department of english in the Faculty of Arts & Science, and Amaya Perez-Brumer, an incoming associate professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, received Early Career Supervision Awards, which recognize pre-tenure faculty members who have been supervising graduate students for up to six years. Anastasia Kuzminykh, assistant professor in the Faculty of Information, received an honourable mention.
JJ Berry Smith Doctoral Supervision Awards
“Graduate supervision is the single most important, impactful and rewarding part of being a professor. It’s extremely gratifying to know I’ve supported and motivated the next generation of scholars. Selfishly, I also enjoy learning from them, as I frequently supervise students outside my immediate research interests. Often these relationships lead to longer-term collaborations that develop in unexpected and exciting ways.”
— Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein is a distinguished professor of global environmental and sustainability governance, chair of the department of political science at U of T Mississauga, and co-director of the Environmental Governance Lab (department of political science and School of the Environment) at the University of Toronto. He also holds an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Copenhagen. Bernstein’s research spans the areas of global governance and institutions, global environmental politics, international political economy, and policy studies. His publications include five authored or edited books and over 90 scholarly articles and book chapters. His current research projects investigate transformative policies and initiatives to achieve decarbonization, coherence and incoherence in global sustainability governance, and change and transformation in international relations and global environmental politics in theory and practice. He has supervised 17 doctoral students and served as a committee member or examiner for another 60 at U of T and other universities. Professor Bernstein is extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to work with, learn from, and frequently collaborate with these incredibly talented and inspiring individuals.
Read more about Professor Bernstein.
“Supporting students is the most meaningful part of my work, by far. Their enthusiasm, talent, perseverance and career success energizes me, day-by-day. I take great pride in the success of my current and former graduate students, and thank them all for their talent, hard work and contributions.”
— Matthew Roorda
Matthew Roorda is a professor of civil engineering, has been faculty at the University of Toronto since 2005, and has worked in the transportation engineering profession since 1998. He has supervised 22 PhD students and 43 master’s students and many postdocs, undergraduates and research associates. Roorda has worked with his graduate students and collaborators to publish highly-cited papers in the leading transportation and logistics journals, to undertake industry internships, to work on pilot projects, and find other ways to collaborate with a broad range of industry and government and non-government partners. The research has led to some major and substantive impacts on government policy and industry operations towards sustainable and efficient freight transportation and logistics. Roorda’s research team focuses on topics related to urban freight transportation, freight planning and operations, parking and curbside management, street and neighbourhood design, cargo-bikes, and emissions analysis.
Read more about Professor Roorda.
Early Career Supervision Awards
“Supervising graduate students is a pleasure and an honour. One of the most rewarding parts of this job is to see a student’s ambitious project from proposal to fully written thesis. I love getting to know our remarkable students as they take on the challenge of graduate research and am grateful to them for this recognition and for the joyful community we have made together.”
— Claire Battershill
Claire Battershill is an assistant professor jointly appointed in the Faculty of Information and the department of english at the Faculty of Arts & Science. Her research focuses on the history and future of the book. Specifically, her work examines relationships between feminist experimental publishing, literary aesthetics, and practices of book making and archiving in 20th– and 21st-century literature. Battershill is co-director of the Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP), a critical digital archive of early 20th-century publishers’ records; the author of a collection of short stories, Circus (McClelland & Stewart, 2014); and the co-creator of ‘Make Believe,’ a collaborative research-creation project funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. Her most recent books are Women and Letterpress Printing: Gendered Impressions (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and Using Digital Humanities in the Classroom (revised 2nd edition, Bloomsbury, 2022). Professor Battershill is currently at work on a new research project on the history of creative writing prompts.
Read more about Professor Battershill.
“I am deeply honoured by this recognition. For me, graduate supervision is about co-creating spaces for critical inquiry, mutual growth, and meaningful connection. Amid ongoing global suffering, I am continually inspired by the care and curiosity students bring to their work, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to learn from them and to co-create, sustain, and celebrate our relationships.“
— Amaya Perez-Brumer
Amaya Perez-Brumer is a Latina, early-career interdisciplinary global health scholar and incoming tenured associate professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in the division of social and behavioural health sciences. She holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Global Health Intervention Justice and co-directs the 3P Lab: Centering Power, Privilege, and Positionality for Health Equity Research. Her research program focuses on advancing HIV prevention and care at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and migration in Latin America. Perez-Brumer has mentored two postdoctoral fellows, supported more than six PhD completions, and served on over 13 dissertation committees. As a mentor and educator, she is dedicated to promoting justice-oriented approaches in public health. Her mentorship is informed by pedagogies and theorists from Latin America, particularly Latin American Feminisms and the traditions of Social Medicine and Collective Health. These frameworks guide her efforts to challenge dominant paradigms in global health. Through collaborative learning, Dr. Perez-Brumer supports students in critically examining how power and systemic oppression, such as colonialism, cisheteronormativity, racism, classism, and ableism, are embedded and can be (re) produced through health research, institutions, and global health practice.