In 2025, the Associate Dean (Graduate Studies) and the Office of Arts Education were delighted to work with four Research Assistants (RAs) on a project designed to provide more support for graduate instructors across the Faculty of Arts.
The outputs of the project include the following two resources:
Handbook for TAs in the Faculty of Arts 2025
TA Orientation Slide Deck Faculty of Arts 2025
Below are the biographies of the RAs who worked on the project.
Salma Aly Shaaban
Salma Shaaban is a PhD candidate in the Institute of Islamic Studies studying contemporary Arabic literature and translation. An interdisciplinary project, her doctoral thesis looks at woman-authored texts in colloquial Egyptian Arabic, examining how vernacular language strategies facilitate expressions of feminist solidarity. Born and raised in Cairo, Salma holds a BSc in Foreign Affairs from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
Rupinder Liddar
Rupinder Liddar is a PhD candidate in Political Science. Rupinder studies visible minority political behaviour with a focus on the South Asian diaspora and the Sikh community. Her work seeks to articulate variations in race, ethnicity and religion and has regional interests in Canadian politics, as well as in other Western democracies.
Adam Hill
Adam Hill is a PhD candidate in the Department of English. His doctoral research centres on the affects, ethics, and aesthetics of eco-anxiety in the twentieth- and twenty-first-century Anglophone novel. He also completed his MA in English at McGill.
Mathew Kipchumba
Mathew is a PhD candidate in the School of Religious Studies. His research seeks to engage the Hebrew Bible as an interlocutor to explore the intersection between religion and contemporary ecological issues.
Originally from Kenya, Mathew also brings academic and teaching experience from the United States, where he completed part of his graduate studies. At McGill, Mathew has worked as a Teaching Assistant in the School of Religious Studies and as a Swahili language course instructor in the African Studies program. He also volunteers as a student advisor for the program.
