Have coffee and a casual chat with a FASS prof!
Have you ever wanted to have an in-depth conversation with one of your professors? Are you interested in asking them about their career path, experiences, or simply what it's like to be an academic? Perhaps you'd like some candid advice that might help you achieve your personal goals? Well, now is your chance!
To set up a coffee chat, please follow these three steps:
Step 1: Contact the professor of your choice from our list of participating faculty members (see below) and find a mutually convenient time for your meeting. We’ll pay for your coffee at Rooster's Coffeehouse (4th Floor Nideyinàn, formerly University Centre) or you can meet virtually over Zoom.
Step 2: Once you have confirmation from the professor, please email Jesse McClintock with the details of your coffee chat.
Step 3: If you’re meeting in person, tell the employees behind the counter at Rooster's that you’re participating in the Coffee with a Prof program and your coffee will be paid for! If you’re meeting online, you or the prof can schedule a Zoom meeting at a time convenient to you both.
Fall - Winter program dates: October 1, 2024 - May 31, 2025
Dr. Alexandra Arraiz Matute (Alexandra.Arraiz-Matute@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Arraiz Matute is an Assistant Professor in the Childhood & Youth Studies program. Her research sits at the intersections of identity, culture, race, and migration. Currently, she’s working with racialized immigrant families in Ottawa to understand their experiences with the public education system and online learning. As a former international student, she is happy to chat with students about transitions into university and post-secondary culture, working in education, working and researching with the community, or sharing good Netflix recommendations.
Not available this term.
Dr. Deidre Butler (Deidre.Butler@carleton.ca)Available: On campus or on Zoom, by appointmentDeidre Butler is the Director of the Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies and an Associate Professor specializing in Jewish Studies in the Religion program at Carleton University’s College of Humanities. Butler teaches in the areas of modern Judaism, gender, sexuality, and the body, theory and method in religion, and religious and philosophical responses to the Holocaust. Her research operates at the intersections of Jewish studies, religion, ethics, and feminist thought. Her current SSHRC funded research project, in collaboration with Professor Betina Appel Kuzmarov (Law and Legal Studies), is an interdisciplinary ethnographic (interview-based) project that investigates the phenomenon of Jewish religious divorce in Canada. The project interrogates the problem of Get abuse; the phenomenon of husbands delaying or refusing to grant their wives Jewish religious divorces or delaying or refusing religious divorces in order to extort more favourable terms in a civil divorce. She is also wrapping up the Hear Our Voices: Survivors speak of trauma and hate project which is an open-source online educational resource for students, educators, and researchers that centres on oral history interviews in the study of the Holocaust and Antisemitism. In addition to developing research interview footage with survivors from the HOV project, she is collaborating with director Francine Zuckerman on an animated documentary about Alma Rosé. Rosé was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and was forced to direct an orchestra of her fellow female prisoners. Antisemitism has become a key scholarly concern for Dr. Butler over the last several years, extending beyond in her teaching, into her service at the university, and advocacy and consulting at the provincial and national levels. She has just completed a program in Critical Antisemitism Studies as a Visiting Scholar at Oxford and is developing a new course on antisemitism with Dr. Pamela Walker (History). It is a pleasure to mentor students and help them think about how studying religion translates into future study and future careers.
Dr. Elizabeth Kennedy-Klaassen (Liz.Klaassen@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Klaassen is an Assistant Professor in the College of the Humanities. Her research concerns the ancient world, particularly Roman literature, and its intersection with Greek literature and Roman history. This year she is teaching courses in Archaeology and the Latin language.
Dr. Yukai Li (Yukai.Li@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Li is an Associate Professor in Greek & Roman Studies in the College of the Humanities. He teaches a range of courses in the ancient Greek language, literature, history, and culture. His research aims to bridge ancient literature, classical scholarship, and modern theory, and so he would be as happy chatting about psychoanalysis, (post)structuralism, and Deleuze as about Homer, tragedy, or pastoral poetry. He also has experience with graduate study in the US and the UK and would be happy to pass on any insights.
Dr. Jaclyn Neel (Jaclyn.Neel@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Neel is an Assistant Professor in the College of Humanities and is an intellectual historian specializing in Roman mythology. She also is interested in the history of scholarship about Greco-Roman antiquity, including in creative works.
Dr. Timothy Pettipiece (TimothyPettipiece@cunet.carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Timothy Pettipiece is an Associate Professor in the College of Humanities where he teaches courses in Greek and Roman Studies and Religion. He is interested in the religious cultures of Late Antiquity, particularly at the intersection of late Roman and Sasanian imperial cultures. He is also interested in the reception of religious themes in popular music and film. He enjoys spending time with a pug named Gary.
Dr. Dana Dragunoiu (Dana.Dragunoiu@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Dragunoiu is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature. She loves teaching and is delighted to participate in the “Coffee with a Prof” initiative. Her first book on Nabokov, titled Vladimir Nabokov and the Poetics of Liberalism, was published in 2011 by Northwestern University Press. Her second book, Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Moral Acts, came out in September 2021 with the same press. In addition to her work on Nabokov, she has also published scholarly articles on Marcel Proust, J.M. Coetzee, Ernest Hemingway, Stendhal, and contemporary film. Currently, she is working on a short biography on Nabokov to be included in the Simply Charly series. She is excited to be writing about Nabokov for a general readership.
Dr. Andrew Wallace (Andrew.Wallace@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Wallace is a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature. His academic interests range widely, from Ancient Greece (Sappho, tragedy) and Rome (Virgil, Ovid) through the Middle Ages (Dante, Chaucer) and Early Modern (Shakespeare, etc.) periods. In addition to teaching and writing on these periods and authors, he regularly teaches a first-year grammar course. He is happy to chat about anything from learning languages to music theory to modern poetry and novels.
Dr. Céline Bonnotte-Hoover (Celine.Bonnotte-Hoover@carleton.ca)Available: On campus or on Zoom, by appointmentDr. Bonnotte-Hoover completed a PhD in French literature. She is Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Department of French. She teaches beginner and intermediate language classes, written French, and advanced grammar. She teaches in person, in HyFlex and online, and is passionate about using technology to enhance her students' experience. She is available to chat in French on topics such as languages, literature, traveling, and food. She is available on campus Monday-Wednesday, and online Thursday-Friday.
Dr. Carmen L. LeBlanc (Carmen.LeBlanc@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. LeBlanc is Chair of the Department of French and an Associate Professor of French linguistics. She is passionate about everything related to language. Her research focuses on the historical and linguistic links between varieties, past and present, of French communities in North America. More generally, she seeks to understand how and why languages change or die. What determines the fate of a dialect facing competition from a more powerful one? What part do individuals and groups play in language maintenance? How do we know a language is changing or endangered? Her past publications dealt with society, history, and language in Ontario, Québec, and Acadia.
Dr. Frenand Leger (FrenandLeger@cunet.carleton.ca)Available: In person on campus, by appointmentDr. Frenand Léger studied education sciences, linguistics, and literature. As an Instructor II in the Department of French, he primarily teaches and coordinate French language courses, as well as literature and language teaching methods. He is also a founding member of the Haitian Creole Academy and a courtesy Professor of Haitian Studies at Florida International University.
His research in three major fields (literature, educational linguistics, and sociolinguistics) adopts an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach, focusing on the intersections of languages, cultures, ideologies, identities, and politics in Haiti and in other former colonies in the Caribbean. His work in literature mainly focuses on questions of language, identity, and orality in fictional stories in the French-speaking Caribbean area. His upcoming book on Francophone literature examines a body of fictional literary texts written by major Haitian novelists and short story writers from the nineteenth century to the present day. It aims to validate the influence of Haitian literature on Francophone writers of the global South, particularly on Caribbean and African writers.
Dr. Dipto Sarkar (Dipto.Sarkar@carleton.ca)Available: On campus, by appointmentDr. Sarkar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. His research is situated at the crossroads of GIScience, human geography, and digital geography. His primary research interest is to model interactions, especially in a spatial context. He has developed a suite of methods and has applied them in a variety of application scenarios ranging from digital geography, and urban geography, to biodiversity conservation and ecology. Coming from a multi-disciplinary background, Dipto values work that transcends disciplinary silos. In his free time, he likes to play and watch soccer. If you like maps, geography, biodiversity conservation, or soccer, you will have a lot of things to talk about.
Dr. Dominique Marshall (dominique.marshall@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentI teach and research the past of social policy, children’s rights, humanitarian aid, refugees, disability, science and technology, and the extraction of natural resources. I coordinate the Canadian Network on Humanitarian History, which supports the rescue of archives of Canadian development and aid, co-direct the Carleton University Disability Research Group, the program Gendered Design in STEAM and I am a Co-Investigator of the Partnership Local Engagement Refugee Research Network. I also work on the teaching website Recipro: the history of international and humanitarian aid.I would be glad to talk about good history books (see the little piece on this I wrote for the Canadian Historical Association this Fall), the pleasure of collaborative research and collaborative teaching, how to write history “in an age of abundance” of documents, how to prepare for graduate school, how to support communities to work on their past. I am also ready to think with you about possible (paid or unpaid) undergraduate research assistantships linked to the research groups above, to entertain a conversation in French as it is my first language, to speak about my Twitter account (@Dominiq92516944), and to discuss the role of historians in the fight against complot theories and fake news.I have just finished writing an article about archives and disability, another about how to teach the history of human rights, and I am finishing a chapter on Leslie Chance, the Canadian who directed the deliberations at the United Nations which lead to the 1951 Refugee Convention. This is not available for reading yet. But to read or watch published results, or to see whose research I helped along, visit my page.
Dr. Rod Phillips (Roderick.Phillips@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Phillips is a Professor in the Department of History. He is a specialist in the history of the family, the French Revolution, and the history of food and drink and teaches courses on these subjects. He has published widely and is the editor of the Journal of Family History. Dr. Phillips is also a wine writer and wine judge. He travels the world to visit wine regions, has written several books on wine, writes for the international wine media, and judges in wine competitions. He’s happy to chat about history, the French Revolution, and wine.
Dr. Marc Saurette (Marc.Saurette@carleton.ca)Available: Thursdays between 9:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m., by appointmentDr. Saurette is an Associate Professor of Mediaeval History.He wants students to learn that the Middle Ages is more than the knights, princesses, and fairy tales that video games and movies represent. In addition to teaching courses about the Medieval World, he has begun to teach more about how games represent the past and encourages his students to design games in class. His research explores the twelfth-century monastery of Cluny and its abbot, Peter the Venerable, who sought to harness the power of literacy to rewrite the rules of Cluniac monasticism. He is willing to talk about monks or historical games studies at the drop of a hat – longer than any person could bear in one sitting.
Dr. Pamela Walker (Pamela.Walker@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Walker is a Professor in the Department of History who is interested in modern European, gender and women’s history, African American history, and the history of antisemitism. Her most memorable research experience was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where she worked with other professors on the history of Christianity in Africa. Her most exciting teaching experience is playing immersive historical games and watching students debate big historical questions and have serious fun.
Dr. Shazia Sadaf (Shazia.Sadaf@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Sadaf is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies (Human Rights). She was a tenured Associate Professor at Peshawar University in Pakistan before emigrating to Canada in 2013 due to Taliban unrest in the region. After arriving in Canada, she completed a second doctoral degree at Western University in postcolonial studies, specifically in the intersectional areas of War on Terror studies, human rights discourse, and post 9/11 literature. Shazia joined Carleton University in July 2018 and teaches Human Rights.
Dr. Monica Patterson (Monica.Patterson@carleton.ca)Availability: By appointmentMonica Eileen Patterson is an anthropologist, historian, and curator who is interested in the connections between memory, violence, and childhood in postcolonial Africa, particularly South Africans’ memories of childhood from the apartheid period. Her most recent project on Children’s Museology attempts to forge a new domain of scholarship and practice in which children are treated as valuable contributors to museums rather than just visitors in need of education or entertainment. She is also Assistant Director of Carleton’s graduate program in Curatorial Studies, and is interested in how museums and exhibitions can better engage with pressing issues of social justice such as racism, homophobia and transphobia, climate change, the legacies of the Indian Residential Schools, and children’s issues.
She would love to talk with students about their future goals, student experience, and any shared interests, including Carleton’s one-year graduate diploma in Curatorial Studies, museums and exhibitions, childhood and youth, memory, history, and the legacies of past violence and inequality. She is also always looking for restaurant, movie, travel, and exhibition recommendations!
Dr. Evelyn Mayanja (evelyn.mayanja@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Namakula Mayanja’ is an Assistant professor in the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies. She is an interdisciplinary scholar who combines many disciplines to research and teach social issues. Her research and teaching follow trajectories of critical analysis, decolonization, and African Indigenous philosophy at the intersection of global political economy, natural resources, race, politics, and governance. Her primary area of research focuses on the struggle of those marginalized by colonial and neocolonial systems of oppression and exploitation, neoliberal authoritarianism, and political repression. I am currently researching mineral resource-based wars/armed conflict, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and the hype of renewable/green energy in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). My teaching and research also combine my experiences of being born in Africa, traveling, and living on five continents. In other words, my life and work follow a global trajectory. I am very interested in young people and passionate about working with them to create a better world where every person will live in peace and freedom.
Dr. Peggy Hartwick (PeggyHartwick@Cunet.Carleton.Ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Hartwick is an assistant professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies. Her research interests focus primarily on the potential learning benefits afforded by digital technologies and online spaces in learning and teaching contexts (including assessment practices). Peggy is fascinated by innovative teaching practices and continuously looks to evolve her teaching according to ‘best practice’ and research. She has taught all levels of ESLA, ALDS 1001, 4209, 4906 and 5002. She is teaching ALDS 2203 and ALDS/TEAL 5216 and ALDS/TEAL 5202 in winter 2025.
Dr. Karen Jesney (Karen.Jesney@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Jesney is an Assistant Professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies. Her research focuses on how children acquire the sounds of their language, and what this can tell us about adults’ cognitive representations. She teaches various courses in Linguistics, including courses in child language development and phonology.
Dr. Beth MacLeod (Beth.MacLeod@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. MacLeod is an Assistant Professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies. In her research, Dr. MacLeod explores how social meaning is encoded in phonetic variation; that is, what kind of information we can express to others via our pronunciation and what do others understand about us from how we pronounce our words. She teaches various Linguistics and Applied Linguistics courses, but her specialty is Phonetics.
Dr. Geoffrey G. Pinchbeck (GeoffPinchbeck@cunet.carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentGeoffrey G. Pinchbeck has previously taught courses at the graduate level in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) Methodology and Practicum, Pedagogical Grammar, and Research Methodology. At the undergraduate level, he has taught Major Structures of English and TESL Practicum. He taught English as a foreign language (EFL) for five years in Quebec, Japan, and Saudi Arabia, and was an instructor, materials developer, and language curriculum designer in a wide variety of language teaching contexts in Alberta, and these have included English for academic & specific purposes, Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC), and ESL-literacy.His dissertation work used corpus linguistic and statistical approaches to examine how academic English language and vocabulary use in high school English Language Arts (ELA) exam writing relates to academic achievement in Social Studies, ELA, and Math. His data set included both native English speakers and multilingual students and his analysis was consistent with the idea that “academic English is no one’s first language.”
Current Research Interests
Dr. Brian Strong (brian.strong@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Brian Strong is an Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies. His research interests include second language acquisition and second language vocabulary acquisition and teaching. Brian has over 20 years of experience teaching English as a foreign and second language. He loves talking about teaching English as another language and ways to investigate how languages are learned. His availability varies by week, but he is happy to find a time that works.
Dr. Nick Treanor (NickTreanor@cunet.carleton.ca) Available: By appointmentDr. Nick Treanor is a prof at the University of Edinburgh and has a visiting appointment at Carleton. He’s originally from Canada, studied in Canada and the US, and then moved to the UK in 2008. His research focuses on questions that can be put very simply, like ‘what must the world be like if I can know more about it now than I did 30 years ago?’ He very nearly failed out of university as an undergraduate and tries to never forget that. He is interested in almost everything and loves to learn about other subjects by talking to students who are studying them. He's happy to talk to students about philosophy, grad school, studying in other countries, what they’re studying at Carleton, or even just about what to do if everything at university seems to be going wrong.
Dr. Anne Bowker (AnneBowker@cunet.carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Anne Bowker is a Professor in the Department of Psychology, as well as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Her general research interests are in the area of positive youth development, with a particular interest in the role of extracurricular activity participation. More specifically, her research focuses on the different types of activities (particularly sports activities) in which adolescents participate, and how this might predict positive developmental indices such as self-esteem, body esteem, self-efficacy and leadership ability. She is also interested in peer relations during adolescence and emerging adulthood, both at the group level and with respect to dyadic or specific friendship relations. Her most recent research focuses on emerging adulthood and the transition to university, examining individual and relational factors which might impact this transition.
Dr. Janet Mantler (Janet.Mantler@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Janet Mantler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, as well as the Director of the Centre for Initiatives in Education. As an Organizational Psychologist, she is interested in people’s lives at work – whether it is the role of work stress in the mental health of employees, the role of implicit bias on attitudes toward leaders, or the transition from university to career. She’s always to discuss your university journey, your thoughts on what you want to do following university, and anything to do with your work life.
Dr. Kira McCabe (Kira.McCabe@carleton.ca)Available: On campus or on Zoom, Mondays and Tuesdays, by appointmentDr. McCabe is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology. As a personality psychologist, she studies how individual differences and personality are important for key outcomes in life (such as career success, health, and happiness). Her main research interests investigate the relationship between goal pursuit and personality, and specifically, how we use our personality to achieve our goals in a given moment. She also teaches a second-year course on Introduction to the Study of Personality.
Christopher Motz (Chris.Motz@carleton.ca)Available: On campus or on Zoom, by appointmentChris is an Instructor III in the Department of Psychology and over the last one million years has taught a wide variety of courses in psychology. More recently Chris has been working on developing his YouTube channel: The Science of Academic Success. A focus on academic success feels like the right research topic for Chris, as the instructor position places an emphasis on teaching. In addition to psychology and academic success, Chris is also geeky about a number of other topics, including, but not limited to, jazz and marketing/advertising.
Alia Offman (alia.offman@self-balance.ca)I would be interested in some Zoom coffee dates with students. I am available from 3pm-4pm most days for a chat.I am a registered psychologist with over 20 years of experience in the field of psychology in various roles including, researcher, contract instructor, trainer and therapist Currently, I specialize in Mindfulness-integrated CBT. My teaching and private practice focus on integrating mindfulness meditation into therapeutic interventions, with a particular interest in how these methods can be applied across various psychological conditions. I am passionate about sharing my experiences as a therapist and am eager to participate in the student coffee dates initiative to discuss mindfulness meditation, my journey in the field, and insights from my extensive counselling work.
Dr. Lorena Ruci, (LorenaRuci@cunet.carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Ruci is an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Psychology. She teaches first, second, and third-year courses at Carleton while providing psychological services at the Sports Medicine Clinic at Carleton and in her private practice. She is a proponent of the researcher-practitioner model, conducting mental health research in post-concussion syndrome and personality. Her hobbies include baking, planting trees and flowers, and going on long walks with her dog Toby.
Dr. Lindsay Richardson (LindsayRichardson@cunet.carleton.ca)I am available for in-person coffee dates or virtual meetings over Zoom, by appointment.Lindsay Richardson is an Adjunct Professor and Contract Instructor in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University. She also works full-time as the Educational Technology Supervisor with Carleton’s Teaching and Learning Services, collaborating with various departments like the Centre for Student Academic Success (CSAS). Her research focuses on educational cognition, particularly evidence-based methods for enhancing durable learning, and she has a growing interest in the impact of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) on education. As a Carleton alumna, Lindsay has a deep understanding of the university’s inner workings. She is passionate about supporting student learning and fostering a growth mindset and curiosity within academia. Lindsay is happy to discuss educational technology, cognitive psychology, and the evolving role of AI in education over coffee.
Dr. Matthew Hawkins (Matthew.Hawkins@carleton.ca)Available: By appointment Dr. Hawkins is an Instructor II in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. He is an anthropologist who studies soccer cultures with a focus on fandom in Argentina, where he has conducted fieldwork on the stadium terraces of San Lorenzo de Almagro. Recently, his research has been with fan and player activists who are creating a “feminist football” culture in Argentina. He is interested more broadly in the social and cultural significance of sport, public and shared emotions, Latin American music (especially cumbia!), ethnographic research, and transformative political movements.
Dr. Beatriz Juárez-Rodríguez (Beatriz.JuarezRodriguez@carleton.ca)Available: By appointment Dr. Juárez-Rodríguez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Her academic research has focused on the intersection of ethnic, racial, and gender identities, Black women’s social organizations, and social movements, and the state in Venezuela and Ecuador. Her current research involves ethnographic work with and alongside Afro women’s organizations in the northern highland region of Ecuador, analyzing their political practices and antiracist and antisexist discourses to show how they are fighting against multiple forms of oppression while challenging exclusionary public policies. A related research interest is the politics of memory and how social organizations, and community members engage in collective processes of recovering their past and mobilize local historical memories as political strategies to create a shared history of resistance and struggles against national oblivion, political oppression, and social injustice. She has explored these themes both in her research in Ecuador and through her participation in a collaborative team research project in El Salvador, called “Surviving Memory in Post-Civil War El Salvador”.
Dr. William Walters (William.Walters@carleton.ca)Available: By appointmentDr. Walters is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. He trained in chemistry at Imperial College, London, before doing graduate studies in politics at City University of New York and York University, Toronto. He has published widely in the areas of political sociology, citizenship theories, and Foucault studies. His current research looks at secrecy, mystery, conspiracy, deception, and revelation within politics and culture. His hobbies include football/soccer (Liverpool FC), music (indie, electronic, alt-folk), running, and travel.
Dr. James Wright (James.Wright@carleton.ca)Available: On campus or on Zoom, by appointmentDr. Wright is a Professor of Music in both the School of Studies in Art & Culture and the College of the Humanities. He is an active composer and musicologist with expertise in research areas including music theory and analysis, music history, music perception/cognition, ludomusicology, film music, Arnold Schoenberg studies and Glenn Gould studies. Dr. Wright's geekiness also extends to other topic areas such as prog rock, musical theatre, and the Montreal Canadiens. He always enjoys chatting with students about their interests and goals, or about any aspect of university or post-university life.