Principal Investigator

Paul Yachnin, Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies at McGill University in Montreal, has published widely on early modern literature and culture. He was Director of the project, Early Modern Conversions (2013-2019). Before that, he directed the Making Publics project (2005-2010). For the past ten years, he has been working on higher education practice and policy. He was lead author of the White Paper on the Future of the PhD in the Humanities. He recently wrapped up TRaCE McGill, which tracked the career pathways of more than 4,500 PhD grads from across all the faculties at McGill and told the stories of more than 100 of them.

Tabitha Sparks is currently Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies, in the Faculty of Arts at McGill.  As ADR she has been responsible for the development of several new interdisciplinary MA programs, now under Provincial review. She is also an Associate Professor in the Department of English, and has published widely on Victorian novels, narrative theory, women's writing, and literature and medicine.  

Philomina Okeke-Ihejirika is a Full Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Alberta and the Director of the SSHRC-Partnership for Research with African Newcomers (PRAN), a facet of her broader community-based program - the Pan African Collaboration for Excellence (pace.ualberta.ca). Over the course of a nearly 30-year academic career, Dr. Okeke-Ihejirika has been involved in numerous research projects and community programs related to the wellbeing of Black populations. She brings, in particular, feminist, Afro-centric, Resilience and critical race perspectives to her research projects, publications, community service and activism.

Enajite Eseoghene Ojaruega is Professor of African Literature in the Department of English and Literary Studies at the Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria. She was Ag. Chair of the Department between 2018 and 2023; and currently, the University's Orator. Her areas of academic interest and specialty include: Modern African Literature, Gender Studies/Theories and African Cultural Studies. She is co-editor, The Literature and Arts of the Niger Delta (Routledge, 2021). Enajite spent the 2019 Fall Semester as a Senior Visiting Researcher and Fellow of The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, Columbia University in the City of New York, USA.

Giles E. M. Gasper is a Professor in the History Department, and is currently Deputy Executive Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Durham University. His areas of interest are the religious, intellectual, and cultural histories of the European Middle Ages, and its inheritances from Late Antiquity and the Early Church. Recent publications include a 5-volume series with Oxford University Press, The Scientific Works of Robert Grosseteste, featuring new editions, English translations, and interdisciplinary commentary.

Ratna Ghosh is Distinguished James McGill Professor and Sir William C. Macdonald Professor of Education at McGill University where she was Dean of Education. Her area of teaching and research is Comparative and International Education. A Fellow of Canada’s National Academy, the Royal Society of Canada, she was also elected Fellow of TWAS, The World Academy of Sciences - for the advancement of science in developing countries. She has been decorated as a Member of the Order of Canada, Officer of the Order of Quebec, and Officer of the Order of Montreal. She was featured in Time Magazine (Canadian Edition, 13.10.2003), in an article on “Canada’s Best in Education”.

Harinder Singh, Ph.D. is a lecturer focused on medical education. He serves as the Medical Physiology and Medical Immunology course coordinator for first-year medical students. Dr. Singh also serves as the Co-Director of Workforce Development division of Institute for Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS) at UCI, where he helps building programs for engaging medical students into the translational research.

Since completing his PhD in cell biology at the university of Coimbra and at McGill University in 2010, David Mendes has been building a career in the medical communication and linguistic services industry. After 4 years as a medical writer in a medical communications agency, David has since started his own business offering language services in the biomedical domain and has co-founded PhDesign, a media agency dedicated exclusively to bridging the gap between the research community and society. David is also the producer and host of Papa PhD, a bilingual podcast where he shares the career journeys and career advice of PhDs making a difference around the world.

Professor Inger Mewburn (better known as @thesiswhisperer) is the Director of Researcher Development at The Australian National University where she oversees professional development workshops and programs for all ANU researchers. Aside from creating new posts on the Thesis Whisperer blog, she writes scholarly papers, books and book chapters about research education, with a special interest in post-PhD employability.

Teklu Abate Bekele (PhD) is an associate professor of international and comparative education in the Department of Educational Studies at the American University in Cairo. His research interest areas include emerging higher education-society engagements and partnerships in Africa, digital technology integration in higher education learning and teaching, and international organizations and educational development in the Global South.

Kennan Kellaris Salinero is principal founder of ReImagine Science, a non-profit based in Washington DC that actively explores the question of ‘what sort of scientist is needed for the science of tomorrow?’  ReImagine Science was created in 2008 to facilitate change for the way we 'do' science in the United States. A former faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at Georgetown University, Dr. Salinero has also held research positions at Los Alamos National Labs, Livermore National Labs, and more recently at Åbo Akademi in Finland. 

Professeure Marcelline Bangali à l’Université Laval et chercheure au Centre de recherche et d’intervention sur l'éducation et la vie au travail (CRIEVAT), ses travaux portent sur l’analyse des processus de reconstruction identitaire qu’impliquent les situations de transition complexes. La problématique de l’insertion professionnelle des titulaires de doctorat en dehors du milieu universitaire ainsi que la reconnaissance de leurs compétences constituent un axe principal des travaux de recherche qu’elle a développé ces 10 dernières années.

Jennifer Polk, PhD, is a career coach and educator. She regularly facilitates professional development workshops and delivers presentations for students and postdocs. Her University Affairs blog was a three-time gold winner from the Canadian Online Publishing Awards. Jen’s essays have also appeared in Inside Higher Ed, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Globe and Mail, Academic Matters, as well as in three books. More recently, she was an expert panelist for the 2021 Canadian Council of Academies report, Degrees of Success, on the challenges PhDs face transitioning to employment. In addition, Jen currently serves on the board of directors for CAGS, the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies. She earned her PhD in history from the University of Toronto. Find Jen online at From PhD to Life.

Katina Rogers is the author of Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and beyond the Classroom (Duke University Press, 2020) and the founder of Inkcap Consulting. With over a decade of experience as a researcher, administrator, and educator, Dr. Rogers works with colleges and universities to design and implement creative, sustainable, and equitable structures for graduate education. Her career has included work at The Graduate Center, CUNY, the Modern Language Association, the Scholarly Communication Institute, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Sidonie Smith is the Lorna G. Goodison Distinguished University Professor Emerita of English and Women's and Gender Studies, University of Michigan, and Past President of the Modern Language Association of America (2010). Her major research interest is in autobiography/life writing studies, with specialties in women’s life writing, life writing and human rights, and a range of contemporary genres of life writing in textual, graphic, performance, and online media. Her publications include many essays and many books, including Manifesto for the Humanities: Transforming Doctoral Education in Good Enough Times (2015). She received her BA and MA from the University of Michigan and her 1971 PhD from Case Western Reserve University. She has a long history of administrative positions at the deaconal, departmental, program, and institute levels.

Dr. Liu Baocun is a professor of comparative education and the director of the Institute of International and Comparative Education (IICE) at Beijing Normal University. He serves as president of China Comparative Education(CCES). With his specialization and research interests in comparative education, higher education, education policy and management, he has been involved in a wide range of national and international research and consultancy projects, and published more than 300 journal papers and 20 books. He has received many honours and awards for his research and teaching in the field of education, including the Ministry of Education Distinguished Professor of Changjiang Scholars Program.

Tina Gruosso is a medical affairs professional. She completed her PhD at Institut Curie in Paris, her Postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University in oncology and precision medicine and joined the private sector as R&D scientist. Tina is an advocate for evidence-informed policy making, innovation, science diplomacy, science communication as well as equity, diversity and inclusion. As a board member and ex-president for Science & Policy Exchange, Tina is devoted to establishing the next generation voices as key stakeholders in science policy and bridging academia, industry and government. Tina is also a member of the CCA expert panel on The Labour Market Transition of PhD Graduates and chairs BioCanRx EDI Board Committee.

Dr. Shannon Hutcheson is a newly minted PhD from McGill University’s Department of Integrated Studies in Education and is thrilled to join the TRaCE Transborder Team as Program Manager/Postdoctoral Fellow. She has contributed innovative research and publications to the Research with International Students group and iMPACTS project, focusing on international student research around equity and marginalization, higher education policy, and systemic issues in internationalization. She looks forward to bringing this lens to the project. Funded by FRQSC and recognized with awards like the Mitacs Globalink Research Award, Shannon has also held visiting scholar roles at the Manchester Institute of Education. Her community work earned her the Outstanding Leadership and Service Award from McGill’s Faculty of Education (2018). As an educator and researcher in France, the U.S., Canada, and England, she values a comparative perspective and is dedicated to supporting graduate students through her work with GPS and Graphos at the McGill Writing Centre.

Kim Wilkins is a recognised expert on creative practice, popular literature, and the publishing industry. She is the author of more than 30 full-length works of fiction, and her work is translated into more than 20 languages globally. Her scholarly research centres on creative communities, such as writing groups and fan cultures. She also leads creativity workshops for academics in other disciplines, to help them imagine different perspectives on research problems and their stakeholders, and has worked on teams researching digital health, defence innovation, and zero net emissions in agriculture.

Aparna Rayaprol is Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad. Her areas of academic interest include gender studies, migration and diaspora, qualitative research methods and urban sociology. She is the author of Negotiating Identities: Women in the Indian Diaspora, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1997 among other publications. She has held several administrative positions, was with the Study in India Program (SIP) at the University of Hyderabad since its inception in 1998 and has been closely involved with the internationalization of the university. Her PhD was from the University of Pittsburgh, USA and she did postdoctoral work at Princeton University at the Center for the Study of American Religion in 1998-99.

Enajite Eseoghene Ojaruega is Professor of African Literature in the Department of English and Literary Studies at the Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria. She was Ag. Chair of the Department between 2018 and 2023; and currently, the University's Orator. Her areas of academic interest and specialty include: Modern African Literature, Gender Studies/Theories and African Cultural Studies. She is co-editor, The Literature and Arts of the Niger Delta (Routledge, 2021). Enajite spent the 2019 Fall Semester as a Senior Visiting Researcher and Fellow of The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, Columbia University in the City of New York, USA.

Micah True is Associate Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Alberta. He is the author of Masters and Students: Jesuit Mission Ethnography in 17th-Century New France, published in 2015 by McGill-Queen's University Press, and a new annotated translation of Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix's monumental 18th-century epistolary account of his journey through North America (Brill, 2019). In addition to his longstanding interest in the writings of missionaries in New France, he studies how seventeenth-century French theatre intersected with France's colonial projects in what is today eastern and maritime Canada.
 

Johanna Frances Yunker serves as the Associate Director for Higher Education Careers in the Graduate School's Office of Professional Development at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In this role, she develops programs to help graduate students and postdocs enhance their teaching and writing skills, navigate the faculty job search process, and explore career opportunities across various organizations. She leads more than 80 workshops annually, co-facilitates three week-long dissertation writing retreats, and organizes teaching orientation for new UMass TAs. Johanna holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Stanford University and specializes in the intersection of politics and gender in East German opera and film music.

Jennie Weemhoff is a policy advisor at the Faculty of Humanities of Utrecht University, working on the interface between research and education policy. She has a coordinating role at Team Academic Skills, responsible for the training and education program of all PhD-candidates at the Graduate School of Humanities.

Chris DeLuca is an Associate Dean at the School of Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs and Professor in Educational Assessment at the Faculty of Education, Queen’s University. Chris leads the Classroom Assessment Research Team and is Director of the Queen’s Assessment and Evaluation Group. Chris’ research examines the intersection of assessment, curriculum, and pedagogy from socio-cultural frameworks. His work largely focuses on supporting teachers in negotiating these critical areas of practice to enhance student learning for all. At the School of Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs, Chris works with colleagues across the campus to support a thriving supervision culture for holistic graduate student success.

Jonathan Miles-Watson is the inaugural Associate Dean of the Doctoral School for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Durham University, UK. He is also Professor of the Anthropology of Religion in the department of Theology and Religion and Durham’s Academic Director of the Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership, which incorporates 7 universities and 10 non-HEI partners. His research has developed over the last 20 years to include a wide range of topics that can all be bound together under the broad heading of the Anthropology of Religion. He has active, developing, research interests in dual-faith heritage identities. His teaching experience extends from talent identification, through curriculum design to leading multiple education programmes. He is an FA-qualified coach and spends his spare time coaching girls’ football.

Sainico Ningthoujam is a Doctoral student and Tomlinson Fellow in the English Department, McGill University. Her research interests include environmental humanities, world literature and gender studies. She is a former Sahapedia-UNESCO Research Fellow and has published an open-access module documenting the intangible culture in South Asia. She was also awarded the Zubaan-Sasakawa Peace foundation Research Grant, for her work on the epic form and gendered representations. She has previously worked as an editor at a multinational publishing house and a content editor for fast-paced global start-ups.

Mona Abousidou is a doctoral student at McGill University. She is interested in the relations between the Ottoman Empire and early modern England during the sixteenth- and seventeenth centuries. Currently, she is working on the representation of parodied Muslimness in Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist (1610) and Thomas Tomkis’s Albumazar (1615). 

Komin Qiyomiddin is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at McGill University. His research focuses on the role that academic fields of study play in shaping the relationship between postsecondary educational attainment and labour market outcomes. He has actively engaged in designing and implementing advanced quantitative research methods to address sociological questions. He is currently working to contribute to advancing the empirical literature in Canada by estimating the causal returns to sub-baccalaureate credentials and graduate degrees by making use of linked longitudinal administrative datasets.

Alexandre Zaezjev is a film and media researcher, course lecturer, and multimedia artist currently pursuing my doctoral studies in the Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department at McGill University. Ever since completing his MA thesis on the role of new media in the Ukrainian Euromaidan Revolution at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, he has been delving into the cultural and political landscape of the post-Soviet region. His PhD dissertation examines how major traumas of the region’s twentieth-century history – such as the Holocaust and the Stalinist repressions, have been addressed in two site-specific projects by contemporary multimedia artist and film director Ilya Khrzhanovsky – the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (Kyiv, Ukraine) and the multimedia project DAU (Kharkiv, Ukraine).

Brooke Steinhauer joins the TRaCE team as a Graduate Student Researcher and is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. She is also a member of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship and a Doctoral Fellow with the Media Ecosystem Observatory. Her research interests include political behaviour, public opinion, and elections, especially when they intersect with gender. Her current dissertation work focuses on the spread of gendered disinformation and violence against women politicians online.

Dr. Pandrapragada Raghavendra has completed his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Hyderabad. His research interests lie in the broad areas of social and political movements, Indian society, public health, tribal studies, gender studies, and human rights. He worked at the Department of Sociology, Osmania University, and the Institute of Public Enterprise (IPE), Hyderabad. He worked on major research projects sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), the University Grants Commission (UGC), the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of the Government of India. He has published research in national and international journals.

Jorien van Beukering is a PhD candidate and Senior Research Technician in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, where her PhD explores identity of unacknowledged persons of biracial heritage from colonial Indonesia. She is also Postgraduate Representative for the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) and Secretary/Historian for the Camp Columbia Heritage Association Inc.

Jaye Leighton is a PhD candidate with the Centre for Heritage & Museum Studies at the Australian National University and current incumbent of the Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Research (ICCR) Collaborative Doctoral Program with the National Museum of Australia. Jaye’s research explores how social and cultural perspectives of ‘time’ shape the process of heritage in museums. Outside of her research, she has held academic and professional roles for private and public organisations in the arts and cultural heritage sector.

Ijeoma Susan Ilechukwu is an Assistant Lecturer in English and Literary Studies deparment, at Delta State University, Abraka. She is currently a PhD student at the University where she teaches literature.  Her academic  interests include: trauma studies and national literature.  

Adam Cook is a film scholar, critic, curator, and teacher. He is currently enrolled in the Screen Cultures & Curatorial Studies PhD program at Queen’s University where he is researching unique formal configurations in contemporary cinema as a means to explore—and help revive—aesthetic engagement in the 21st century.

Dorcas Asaah Peprah is presently a PhD candidate in Development Economics at the University of Ghana. She is passionate about advancing research that enhances natural resource management and balances economic development with sustainable practices. Currently, she is researching on the effect of Self-Efficacy on non-compliance of fisheries regulations among Artisanal fishermen in Ghana. Also, her work as a research assistant on numerous developmental research projects has served as experiential learning for her career advancement. She is particularly interested in translating her research into tangible local and national policies.

Bryan Levina Viray is a PhD Candidate at the Australian National University’s Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies under the Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Research (ICCR) Higher Degree by Research Program. His research engages with critical heritage as an interdisciplinary area that intersects with public history, memory, theatre and performance studies. Key to his PhD research question is the understanding of commemoration as a form of intangible heritage and the implications of this for collective memory. He has published on: decolonizing performance pedagogies in Southeast Asia; protest performances in the Philippines, ethnochoreological/anthropological studies of dance rituals and cultural performances. He is an assistant professor at the University of the Philippines. Profile: https://pages.upd.edu.ph/bryviray/home.

Luka Hattuma is a graduate of Comparative Literature at Utrecht University (UU) where her academic interests lie at the intersection of blue humanities, postcolonialism, textuality, epistemology and posthumanism. Within that spectrum, she focusses on (eco)poetic, literary and theoretic counter-narratives in- and against colonial afterlives and the entangled contemporary capitalist reproductions. Within that vein, her current research projects evolve around ecocritical poetry, theory and literature, with an emphasis on the tides of epistemological and geological injustices in (Dutch-related) postcolonial spaces. She also assists the Literary Studies Department (at UU) and serves on the editorial board of a peer-reviewed literary academic journal called FRAME.

Dr. K. Pavani Sree  received her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, where she focuses on Sociology of Disability Studies.  She also  received  her Integrated Master of Arts from the same Department. Her research topic is on Disability, Identity and Assistive Technologies : A Sociological study of 'Orthotics' and Prosthetics among orthopedically challenged. Her research areas of interest are  Sociology of gender,  Science, Technology and Society Studies, Social Stratification, Sociology of  Globalization and Development etc. She has published few short stories on Amazon. Seeing modern India through the lens of a woman with a disability, she seeks to bring the issues facing Indian women into the spotlight. Her writing can be recognized for its progressive yet cautionary stylings.

Sharanya Sridhar (She/Her/Hers) is a PhD candidate (English) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. A Mellon Fellow and Fellowship co-ordinator at Western Massachusetts Policy Center, Sharanya is passionate about expanding alt-act career pathways for humanities PhD. Sharanya is also a mom of 3 feisty, rat terriers and one adorable human baby. When not working on her dissertation or on the TRACE project, Sharanya and her husband love exploring the beautiful landscapes of New England.

Isolde Kors is a Research Master student of Comparative Literary Studies at Utrecht University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in cultural history and literary studies, both obtained at Utrecht University. In their research, they study the affective interrelation between culture and politics, with a current focus on literature and environmentalism. She is interested in how methodologies from the fields of literary studies and history complement and respond to one another in approaching these questions.

Bridget Andresen is a PhD candidate in the field of history in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland, Australia. She is also a member of the Lilith: A Feminist History Journal Editorial Collective. Her Honours research was awarded the Margaret Julia Ross Prize in Australian History and the 49th Battalion AIF Honour Fund Prize. She researches the history of sexual violence in Queensland, focusing on the experience of criminal trials in the mid-twentieth century.

Aditi Dubey is a PhD candidate in the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics at the Australian National University, where she also completed a Master of General and Applied Linguistics. Her research focuses on language contact and seeks to understand the processes of language change through a multi-layered approach that combines linguistic analysis with sociohistorical research. Her PhD research uses such an approach to investigate language contact in the context of Nagpur, India. Aditi is also very passionate about learning and teaching languages and works as a French and Korean teacher.

Samira Torabi is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Anthropology Department at the University of Alberta. Her research interests and experience include anthropology of gender and sexuality, post-colonial theories, anthropology of Iran, and the intersection of migration, grief, and trauma. She is also interested in social justice advocacy. Outside of her academic life, Samira enjoys photography, hiking, and poetry.

Ezekiel Abriku is a graduate student researcher with TRaCE Transborder at Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria. Currently an Assistant Lecturer at Delta State University, Abraka and a PhD candidate at the Federal University of Petroleum University, Nigeria in Earth Sciences.

Bernadette Huber is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. She researches how undergraduate students emotionally experience academic writing and teaches into undergraduate and postgraduate writing subjects. She also holds a Masters degree in language education from the University of Vienna and teaches German. Her research interests include academic writing, higher education, language policies, and feminist research methodologies.

Qian Sun is a graduate student researcher with TRaCE Transborder at Durham University, England. She is currently a PhD candidate at the School of Education, Durham University, she researches foreign language anxiety and psychological adjustment processes in a target language environment from a longitudinal perspective. Her academic interests include: psychological adjustment; personality traits, foreign/second language acquisition.

Wanling Gong is currently a graduate student in the Statistics Department and a researcher with TRaCE Transborder at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has an extensive background as a professional cyclist, having competed for 12 years and securing numerous championships in her cycling career. Following her transition to academia at UCLA, she has dedicated her focus to the field of statistics.