crackmitacsAll disciplines

American Studies

5 Mitacs Globalink (GRI) research projects for Summer 2027.

1. Cultural Identity: Technologies and the Media

This research will explore the rise and expansion of podcasting that parallels the expansion of open discussions of mental health. The discussion of mental health began with radio call-in shows and long-running television talk shows, allowing for a deeper discussion of mental health. The discussion of mental health began with radio call-in shows and long-running television talk shows, allowing for a deeper discussion of mental health. Mental health discussions have been transformed by the rise of podcasting, as any individual can speak about their mental health experiences on a global platform, sharing struggles and strategies. Podcasting has become more public in the last two decades, in part due to the increasing utilization of social media. The ability to share lived experiences through digital platforms has reshaped the discussion of mental health, enabling many to find solace in these collective circumstances. This work will focus on the emerging area of mental health and podcasting, which serves diverse

Research area, student roles & skills

Research area: Anne F. MacLennan, Associate Professor, York University and editor of the Journal of Radio and Audio Media is writing "Programming, Practices, Production, and Policy: Canadian Community Radio.” Her recent book is Seeing, Selling, and Situating Radio in Canada, 1922-1956 with Michael Windover. She has published in the Journal of Radio & Audio Media and Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, The Radio Journal, Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations, Urban History review and other collections. She researches media history, community radio, popular culture, women, social welfare, poverty and cultural representations. Recent work: “Forming Networks: National Radio Networks − Public, State, and Commercial”.

Student roles:
The student research interns will conduct cold calls or emails, technical tasks related to the updates for the website, editing and digital documenting of material for use on the website and design if desired, and administrative tasks involving the focus groups or other portions of the research. The student will transcribe qualitative data, perform content, framing, and discourse analyses, and work with primary and secondary source materials. They will undertake archival, library, microfilm, and online research, assist with literature reviews and bibliographic compilation, and support the preparation of background materials for research proposals. The student will contribute to data collection and analysis, identify and assemble materials for conference presentations and academic publications, and support ongoing and time-sensitive research activities. They will work collaboratively with the principal investigator and other members of the research team, participate in meetings and training sessions, and perform other research-related duties as assigned.

Skills required:
The student will need to be adaptable to working on a research team with the principal investigator, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Being able to effectively work on a team and independently will be important. The research intern will be trained to conduct new methodologies, so it’s not required that they know all the methodologies we employ when they arrive, but they should be open to learning new methods. The student must be able to ask questions, be mindful of deadlines, and be willing to work. The research intern must be able to conduct cold calls and participate in email

2. Freedom Narratives

“Freedom Narratives” (www.freedomnarratives.org) is a digital humanities project which is creating a digital database and research website of biographical accounts of individuals born in Africa from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The emphasis of this research is on the testimonies of those who may be considered to have been “Atlantic Africans”; those who experienced slavery or might have been subjected to the trans-Atlantic trade. This is achieved through the analysis of primary sources written in different languages, but at this stage, mainly English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. Although this project aims to recover the voices of those who may have crossed the Atlantic or remained enslaved within Africa, the project is not only limited to people who experienced enslavement. Individuals who traveled within Africa and who experienced the “Middle Passage”, are included in this digital repository. The Atlantic crossing is often considered a defining moment in the slavery experience, but individuals did cross the Atlantic. They might have experienced similar lengthy journeys across the Sahara or within Africa, via caravans and even might have crossed the Sahara. Hence there were several types of middle passages. African identities and their trajectories are the heart of this project. Unlike other databases for the study of Africa, diaspora, and transatlantic history, which focus on travel on slave ships, our focus is on people. This project shifts from a qualitative perspective that focuses on case studies by expanding the focus through the interpretation of big data to address to address the questions, “Who were these individuals?” “Where did they come from?” and “What happened to them?” It aims to bring real-life experiences and “faces” to many of the millions of human lives, who experienced the traumatic reality.

Research area, student roles & skills

Research area: FreedomNarratives.org brings together archival records, historical research, interpretation, and digital technology to examine histories of slavery, freedom, movement, and lived experiences. Developed in collaboration with scholars and partners working across African and Black digital humanities, the platform is designed to support research, teaching, and public engagement. Our objective is to expand our website and database to reconstruct lost African identities. Set to launch in September 2026, our large dataset allows us to trace the movement of individuals, but also how to record life narratives, map life trajectories across the Atlantic Ocean, and show personal connections between different groups of people.

Student roles:
Students will assist in the continued growth and maintenance of the Freedom Narratives website and database, working with open-source design frameworks and established digital-humanities methodologies. Each student will receive hands on training in the Regenerated Identities content management system, developed by Walk With Web, and will contribute to editing, programming, structured data entry, and quality control following both digital and analog best practices refined over the course of the project’s ongoing research.
Students will contribute to expanding the project database by organizing and meta‑tagging biographies of Africans based on primary sources written in French. These sources include newspapers, published accounts, archival documents from French repositories, and other digital humanities projects such as Le Marronage. Although they will work alongside French‑speaking members of the team, students must input all data in English and be able to communicate the content of French‑language materials to colleagues who do not speak French.
They will use pre-defined controlled vocabularies, and will transcribe primary sources, expand metadata using Regenerated Identities, and meet virtually with the team of experts involved in the project from around the world. Each student will work with the technical team for Prof. Paul Lovejoy on the production of the components of the Freedom Narratives website and database including the development of computational methods for cross-referencing information with some 25 other digital humanities projects focused on Africans and the African diaspora hosted under the umbrella of Regenerated Identities network by Walk With Web.
This project seeks students with an interest in interdisciplinary research who have experience in computer science and some interest in African and diaspora history.

Skills required:
Students working on this project must have some background or experience in either qualitative or quantitative research. Knowledge and/or skills in ANY of the following disciplines and areas of specialization are required: archival research, historical writing, digital humanities, public history, library and information studies, quantitative and qualitative data analysis, interdisciplinary research, and critical thinking. Preferred areas of expertise include Black studies, and Africa and African diaspora studies.
Students must be able to read primary sources in French and communicate their content in English to team members who are not francophone speakers.

3. Immigrants and Food in Children's Literature

This project will gather primary materials from online special collections, and secondary sources (literary criticism, theory, historical non-fiction) to trace the reception of the immigrant through representations of food in 19th century USA and Canada. Interns will help me organize and analyze these materials.

Research area, student roles & skills

Research area: I am a specialist in American children's literature and culture.

Student roles:
Students will work with online databases to locate and download materials, will annotate sources and organize the data sets, and will help me in the analysis of those texts.

Skills required:
My interns need to be fluent speaking and writing in English.

4. Immigrants in American Children's Literature

This project will gather primary materials from online special collections, and secondary sources (literary criticism, theory, historical non-fiction) to trace the reception of the immigrant in 19th century USA and Canada. Interns will help me organize and analyze these materials.

Research area, student roles & skills

Research area: I am a specialist in American children's literature and culture.

Student roles:
Students will work with online databases to locate and download materials, will annotate sources and organize the data sets, and will help me in the analysis of those texts.

Skills required:
My interns need to be fluent speaking and writing in English.

5. Racial Equality on the Edge of Empire: The African Canadian Civil Rights Movement of Victoria, British Columbia, 1858-1866

The scholarship of colonial Canada has neglected the role of African Canadians settlers in western Canada. Approximately one-fourth of the African American residents of California migrated to Victoria, B.C., in 1858. This population sought social and political membership in the British colony. Their migration to Victoria was part of their quest for full citizenship in the wider trans-imperial world. Activists and historians have called for scholars to reexamine the history of Canada from a multi-racial perspective. This project aims to intervene in the present understanding of historical Canada by writing African Canadian histories into the literature of colonial British Columbia, the early Canadian nation-state, and the wider Canadian historical narrative.

Research area, student roles & skills

Research area: I work in nineteenth-century legal and women's history. My first book used legal records from the US Army's military justice system to examine the strategies employed by enslaved women seeking their freedom before and during the US Civil War.

Student roles:
The student will be reviewing archival documents including 19th-century court cases, diaries, letters, police records, Justice of the Peace Records, and colonial records pertaining to the British colony of Vancouver Island. Among those documents are several court cases which involve African Canadians fighting against racial discrimination in 1860s Victoria. The relevant cases, and documents related to the civil rights movement, must be found, sorted, analyzed and the data entered into the research project Excel spread sheet. I will be overseeing and mentoring the student researcher during this project.

Skills required:
Students should be capable of reading and writing at the university level and have an interest in learning historical research methods.