Academic Appetizer Hour with Green College Leading Scholars

Bite-sized research presentations by recently appointed UBC Faculty Members across disciplines. Faculty presentations in this sixth session by the 2021-23 Leading Scholars Program cohort include:

On Black Breath
Kimberly Bain, Assistant Professor, English Language and Literatures

In my scholarly and critical-creative work, my most pressing and urgent concerns have consolidated around questions of the history, theory, and philosophy of Blackness. I am currently at work on two scholarly monographs. The first, entitled On Black Breath traces a genealogy of breathing, Blackness, and racial capitalism in the United States. My second book, Dirt: Soil and Other Dark Matter, turns to dirt for understanding how Blackness has shaped global considerations of the Anthropocene and refused the extractive relations of racial capitalism.

CO2-Free Fuel and Chemical Production Using Liquid Heterogeneous Catalysts
Chester Upham, Assistant Professor, Chemical and Biological Engineering

I am an Assistant Professor in the Chemical and Biological Engineering department. My academic history took me from McGill to UC Santa Barbara, and then Stanford. My research focuses on catalyst development for the sustainable production of fuels and chemicals. Current projects are related to hydrogen production, conversion of CO2 into fuels, and decarbonization of natural gas by developing new catalysts which incorporate separation and reaction. As an experimentalist, I build custom reactors and use in-situ spectroscopy in conjunction with kinetic and process modelling to understand mechanisms to enhance the impact of the work for use in commercial processes. 

A Picture Book of Psychiatric Epidemiology
Daniel Vigo, Assistant Professor, Psychiatry | Population and Public Health

I am a psychiatrist, clinical psychologist and public health specialist originally from Argentina. I am an Assistant Professor at UBC, a Lecturer at Harvard Medical School, an Advisor to the PAHO and the WHO, as well as the Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Mental Health Systems. I have worked in clinical, research, teaching and leadership positions across the public and private sectors, in Buenos Aires, Boston and Vancouver. My expertise is in public health, health systems, global mental health, psychiatric epidemiology, psychopharmacology, psychotherapy and e-mental health. I currently work closely with Health Authorities, the BC Ministry of Health and Health Canada to deliver evidence-based mental health and substance use services, with a focus on the most severely ill population with concurrent disorders.

Vernacular Interfaces in Modern Chinese Popular Culture
Renren Yang, Assistant Professor, Asian Studies

I do research on 20th- and 21st-century Chinese literature, film and popular culture, with a focus on the intersection between critical literary and media studies. My work centres on celebrith authorship, interface design, time-travel imagination and surveillance cinema in modern China.