The Carleton University Research Opportunity Program (CUROP) program provides senior undergraduate students with an opportunity to conduct independent research during the summer months, under the supervision of a FASS faculty member. Each student receives a research stipend of $7500 to support their research. Here are this year’s winners:
By Shaylin Allison, Humanities and Art HistoryUnder the FASS undergraduate summer research internship, I have spent the past four months researching Anishinaabe visual art history, culture, and methodology through a unique Ojibway lens. Incorporating my family’s ancestral and legal ties to the land as direct descendants of Chief Shingwauk; my focus has been on both contemporary and historical art and visual culture of the area.
Supervisor: Dr. Carmen RobertsonAbstract | Powerpoint
By Raeann Au, History
There is no shortage of racist, sexist, or otherwise problematic children’s media – including movies produced in the 21stcentury. Though Disney’s Pocahontas has often received scholarly attention and criticism, there are several other animated films that are equally troubling. DreamWorks’ The Road to El Dorado and Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire hit theatres in 2000 and 2001 respectively, and both films rely significantly on outdated, racist tropes to form their plots and characterization.
Supervisor: Dr. Danielle KinseyAbstract | Powerpoint
By Abby Bradley, Psychology
The study of screen use in relation to mental health and well-being is growing rapidly, with prominent voices raising alarm about screens as likely culprits behind rising mental illness and suicide (Twenge et al., 2018). However, rigorous work shows that associations between screen use and well-being are trivially small (Hoare et al., 2016; Orben, 2020; Tang et al., 2021) and others show that social media (e.g., Instagram, TikTok, Facebook), is associated with increases in social capital, feelings of connectedness, and positive well-being (Verduyn et al., 2017). Despite frequent media attention to this potential problem, a priority for new research and the goal of this study was to describe the nature and quality of young people’s smartphone use, and identify which narrower, specific uses of screens (social media, entertainment, communication, productivity) are linked to well-being if any.
Supervisor: Dr. Andrea HowardAbstract | Powerpoint
By Kyle Grant, Cognitive Science and Psychology
The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly increased reliance on online learning. Students are required to interact with multiple online course interfaces daily. Each of these course interfaces can vary in the level of usability and utility that they offer to the student. Evaluating the usability and utility of online course interfaces is necessary for improving the user experience. Poor usability and utility can affect students in multiple ways. Learning outcomes, performance, motivation, satisfaction, and task efficiency are some areas that suffer because of poor usability and utility.
Supervisor: Dr. Nadiya SlobodenyukAbstract | Powerpoint
By Sarah Ham, English and History
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Toronto was home to a thriving underground press network. These publications, which were as varied and numerous as the communities that produced them, were a manifestation of this setting’s diverse countercultures. From hip community paper Harbinger to gay liberation journal The Body Politic, to the voice of the American war resister in Canada, AMEX, these papers contained various topics, but were similar in their value as tools of self-definition and declaration. These community newspapers also created vital communication networks between readers and contributors and gave voice to their resistance of a dominant culture.
Supervisor: Dr. Michel HogueAbstract | Powerpoint (JPG)
By Sarah Hembruff, Childhood and Youth Studies
Ontario families have experienced longer education and schooling disruptions than any other Canadian province or territory, with most schools closed for a total of 20 weeks during the period from March 14th, 2020 to May 15th, 2021 (Gallagher-Mackay et al., 2021). However, little research has been implemented to analyze the experience of families with online learning and school disruptions as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, particularly within the Ontario context (Gallagher-Mackay et al., 2021). Given the need for more insight into understanding how children and families have been impacted by these disruptions, I decided to inquire and analyze the experience of Carleton University faculty and staff with children aged 5 – 12 years old who attended school in Ontario during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic by rooting my inquiry and analysis in the discipline of Childhood and Youth studies.
Supervisor: Dr. Julie GarlenAbstract | PowerPoint
By Nicholas Pontone, Geomatics
Canada’s forests are subject to frequent biotic and abiotic disturbances. Modification to disturbance regimes can cause long-term changes in tree-species compositions and successional dynamics (He & Mladenoff, 1999). These changes influence carbon sequestration by forests (Hicke et al., 2012), and ecosystem processes such as the cycling of nutrients and biodiversity (Boring et al., 1981). Accurate detection of the type and magnitude of disturbance events is necessary for biogeochemical models and to inform forest management decisions (Jarron et al., 2017; Masek et al., 2011). Remote sensing methods are well suited for monitoring forests due to the systematic observations of surface conditions and dynamics across large areas and long periods, often in areas that are difficult to access (Kennedy et al., 2014).
Monitoring of forest disturbances is often impeded by periods of persistent cloud cover, and historical data losses such as the Landsat-7 scan line errors. The Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC) algorithm is capable of using all available observations to build season-trend models of vegetation phenology. In this research, I applied the CCDC algorithm to all available Landsat data to investigate 35 years of forest disturbances in Temagami, Ontario.
Supervisor: Dr. Koreen MillardAbstract | PowerPoint
By Belle Riley Thompson, Journalism and Humanities
Conspiracy theories have existed in the American political arena so long as there has been an American political arena. Often, we see conspiracy theories revolve around people, (Obama birther claims, JFK assassination theories, ‘the Clinton’s were responsible for the killing of so-and-so’) or events, (‘the moon landing was faked,’ ‘9/11 was an inside job,’ ‘the Sandy Hook school shooting was a false flag with crisis actors’). However, it was arguably not until Donald Trump that we witnessed the rise and popularization of American conspiracy theories directed at their own government. As David Rohde writes for the New Yorker, “the idea of the deep state saturates Trump’s rhetoric and worldview. His Presidency is predicated on the idea that the United States government is itself an enemy of the people.”
Supervisor: Dr. Kimberly Stratton Abstract | PowerPoint
by Jennie Seaborn, Music
As a professional drummer, I struggled with the playing-related musculoskeletal disorder (PRMD) De Quervain’s tenosynovitis of the wrist, which hindered my ability to play drum kit during my final year of Bachelor of Music study, and disrupted my career as a performer and drum kit instructor. I sought out professional medical care, which was helpful, but I knew that these professionals would have limited knowledge about the specifics of drumming and its career demands. Unfortunately, I struggled to locate information on the experiences of drummers affected by PRMDs; consequently, I lacked models on which to base my navigation of injury. Most research studies on PRMDs among musicians focus on statistics, medical perspectives, assessing injury risk, and anatomy-based prevention and treatment methods. By contrast, this ethnographic study aims to provide insight towards the lived experiences of drummers navigating PRMDs, and thus fill a gap in our understanding. My research asks: How do professional drummers approach PRMD recovery and prevention? What unique challenges do they face while navigating PRMDs, and do they have methods of overcoming such challenges? Are there recovery and prevention practices that they find practical and effective?
Supervisor: Dr. Ellen WatermanAbstract | PowerPoint
By Jayson Yung, Psychology
According to the transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioural theory of eating disorders (Fairburn, 2008; Fairburn et al. 2003), perfectionism is linked to disordered eating because it cultivates a self-concept focused on appearance (appearance overvaluation) – the core psychopathology underlying anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN). Research has also shown that an appearance focused self-concept may be a mediating mechanism by which perfectionism leads to disordered eating (Joyce et al., 2012; Watson et al., 2010). In an extended study of the model, the mediated effect of an appearance-focused self-concept was moderated by the extent people hold erroneous beliefs about the safety and effectiveness of maladaptive weight-control strategies (Tabri et al., 2021). Herein, I examined whether a similar moderated-mediation model may help explain orthorexia nervosa (ON) – less known and understudied eating disorder compared to AN and BN. ON is an emerging eating disorder characterized as a maladaptive fixation with eating healthy.
Supervisor: Dr. Nassim TabriAbstract | PowerPoint