Leading Scholars 2018-20

  • Muhammad Abdul-Mageed
    Muhammad Abdul-Mageed, Assistant Professor, iSchool / Linguistics / Computer Science
    email: muhammad.mageed@ubc.ca

    Muhammad Abdul-Mageed’s research is at the intersection of artificial intelligence, natural language processing and social media.


  • Julia Bullard
    Julia Bullard, Assistant Professor, iSchool
    email: julia.bullard@ubc.ca

    Julia Bullard studies the design, construction and maintenance of knowledge organization systems with a focus on how classification systems and metadata schemas can be responsive to community values.


  • Fionn Byrne
    Fionn Byrne, Assistant Professor, Architecture and Landscape Architecture
    email: fbyrne@sala.ubc.ca

    Fionn Byrne’s research focuses on the relationship between ecology and ethics, using speculative design to challenge dominant environmental narratives.


  • JP Catungal
    John Paul (JP) Catungal, Assistant Professor, Social Justice Institute
    email: catungal@mail.ubc.ca

    J.P. Catungal is an interdisciplinary scholar with interests in “for us, by us” community organizing and cultural production by marginalized ethno-racial, queer and migrant communities.


  • Toby Goldbach
    Toby Goldbach, Assistant Professor, Peter A. Allard School of Law
    email: goldbach@allard.ubc.ca

    Toby Goldbach’s research sits at the intersection of dispute resolution, legal anthropology, and law and development. Her current research asks the question, How is judges’ work in and beyond the courtroom transforming the politics and practices of court procedures and dispute resolution?


  • Kevin Golovin
    Kevin Golovin, Assistant Professor, Engineering (UBC-Okanagan)
    email: kevin.golovin@ubc.ca

    The Golovin group investigates interfacial mechanics, chemistry, and modification, including the development of next-generation coatings for anti-icing, oil-repellency, waterproofing, malaria prevention, dust-repellency, and sustainable textiles.


  • Emily Kennedy
    Emily Huddart Kennedy, Assistant Professor, Sociology
    email: emily.huddart@ubc.ca

    Emily Kennedy’s research examines the relationships among social class, status and environmentalism.


  • Ateya Khorakiwala
    Ateya Khorakiwala, Assistant Professor, Art History, Visual Art and Theory
    email: ateya.khorakiwala@ubc.ca

    Ateya Khorakiwala (GC Leading Scholar, 2018-19) researches the aesthetic and material histories of architecture, infrastructure, and the built environment in South Asia. She teaches in the Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory.


  • Nadja Kunz
    Nadja Kunz, Assistant Professor, Public Policy and Global Affairs
    email: nadja.kunz@ubc.ca

    Nadja Kunz’s work focuses on improving mine water management practices and governance processes within mining regions. An example of her current research considers how to improve decision making by mining companies to incorporate uncertainties such as climate variability.


  • Leah Macfadyen
    Leah Macfadyen, Instructor, Educational Technology Program
    email: leah.macfadyen@.ubc.ca

    Leah Macfadyen’s research addresses a range of challenges relating to eLearning and digital technologies, and includes qualitative investigation of cultural issues in online learning environments, and learning analytics approaches to understanding and optimizing learning and learning design.


  • Ervin Malakaj
    Ervin Malakaj, Assistant Professor, Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies
    email: ervin.malakaj@ubc.ca

    Ervin Malakaj researches German media history in the long nineteenth century with a focus on late-19th-century literary markets and literary form, German film studies with a focus on queer silent film cultures and film periodicals, and critical pedagogy with a focus on decolonialization in German Studies.


  • Carlos Molina Hutt
    Carlos Molina Hutt, Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering
    email: carlos.molinahutt@civil.ubc.ca

    Carlos Molina Hutt conducts research in the field of structural and earthquake engineering, specifically in the following areas: performance-based earthquake engineering, seismic resilience and risk analysis.


  • Patrick Moran
    Patrick Moran, Assistant Professor, French, Hispanic and Italian Studies
    email: patrick.moran@ubc.ca

    Patrick Moran’s research deals with 12th-and-13th century narrative fiction, with an emphasis on the interaction between poetics, philology and reader-response theory. His current research project focuses on the notion of genre in 12th-and-13th century vernacular literature.


  • Omar Swei
    Omar Swei, Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering
    email: oaswei@civil.ubc.ca

    Omar Swei’s research centers on the development of optimal infrastructure management policies under uncertainty and improving the economic performance and environmental sustainability of existing infrastructure assets.


  • Michelle Tseng
    Michelle Tseng, Assistant Professor, Botany and Zoology
    email: mtseng@zoology.ubc.ca

    Michelle Tseng’s research seeks to understand how species respond ecologically and evolutionarily to rapid changes in the environment. Variation in the environment is everywhere, and she aims to understand when this variation acts as background noise versus when it generates important broad scale patterns in nature.


  • Kerry Wilbur
    Kerry Wilbur, Associate Professor, Pharmaceutical Sciences
    email: kerry.wilbur@ubc.ca

    Kerry Wilbur is studying how cultural contexts (social, organizational, professional) influence health professions training and the quality of patient care.


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For a list of the: