Recipients 2014

Since its launch in 2011, the PDF Travel Awards have helped many UBC PDFs attend conferences to present their work, enriching their PDF experience and helping anchor them within the academic world. Please read below to find out more about past award recipients.

PDFO Travel Awards awarded in 2014:

Name Department, Faculty Conference- Date Attended Location
Quarter 1:      
Andrew Denning History, Arts American Society for Environmental History - March 2014 San Francisco, CA, USA
David Gaertner First Nations Studies, Arts Modern Language Association - January 2014 Chicago, IL, USA
Quarter 2:      
Jesper Riis Christiansen Forest & Conservation Sciences, Forestry Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Soil Science - May 2014 Banff, AB
Quarter 3:      
Wei-Yew Chang Wood Science, Forestry Forest Products society International Convention - August 2014 Quebec City, QC
Amanda Chisholm Kinesiology, Education International Society for Posture and Gait Research - July 2014 Vancouver, BC
Lyndsay Hayhurst Liu Institute for Global Issues, Arts 4th International Conference on Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise - September 2014 Loughborough, UK
Rebecca Meagher Animal Welfare Program, Land and Food Systems International Society for Applied Ethology Congress - July 2014 Victoria-Gasteiz, Spain
Brenton Sullivan Asian Studies, Arts Digital Humanities - July 2014 Lausanne, Switzerland
Quarter 4:      
Wenying Liu Materials Engineering, Applied Science International Mineral Processing Congress Santiago, Chile
Sarah Stewart-Kroeker English, Arts American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting San Diego, CA, USA
Heather Walmsley Sociology, Arts 20th Annual Qualitative Health Research (QHR) Conference Victoria, BC

2014 Quarter 1 Recipients:

Dr. Andrew Denning

American Society for Environmental History - March 2014

I attended the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) in San Francisco, CA to present a paper on my research in progress. The ASEH brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars from across the globe to discuss the human relationship to the natural environment. I presented a paper based on my postdoctoral research in progress entitled, “Dark Crossings: Automobility, Nature, and the Mapping of African Empire before 1930,” which examines how various European attempts to drive cars across Africa influenced their perception of African lands and peoples. As I argued, automotive technology rendered African peoples and places abstractions, leading Europeans to consider each ripe for modernization projects. This paper was part of a global panel that brought together scholars from Canada, France, the United States, and Chile to discuss the relationship between automobiles and the environment in Africa, North America, South America, and Southeast Asia. I also had the opportunity to attend a reception for environmental historians from across Canada to meet colleagues from across the country working on a variety of groundbreaking projects. My thanks go out to the Postdoctoral Fellows Office for their support; this conference experience was truly productive and rewarding.

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Dr. David Gaertner

Modern Language Association - January 2014

MLA is the biggest conference in my field and presenting at at has been a goal of mine since I was a graduate student. The conference was a great opportunity to talk and share research with people involved in the very specific work I am currently engaged in (Indigenous Gothic) and I was introduced to a number of prominent scholars in the field; many of them saw my presentation and provided important feedback and insight--not to mention encouragement. After my presentation I was approached by the editor of the Cambridge edition of Gothic Literature, who asked me to email him a copy of the paper I read. There is a possibility that he will be referencing my work in that text. Builidning out of the feedback I received at MLA I am now developing that preentation into a full-length article, which I hope to have out for review by the end of February.

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2014 Quarter 2 Recipients:

Dr. Jesper Riis Christiansen

Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Soil Science - May 2014

I attended the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Soil Science - Advances in Geophysical and Soil Sciences to present the research I have been doing on the microbial regulation of the methane fluxes in temperate forest soils on Vancouver Island. I did an oral presentation and had the chance to discuss my findings with people throghout the conference. I received many useful inputs and can now start working on finishing the project. The  meeting was in Banff and gathered researchers from all over Canada. I was tehrefore an excellent forum to exchange ideas and learn about the state-of-the-art research on soil, agricultural, ecological and environmental science currently going on in Canada. My thanks go out to the Postdoctoral Fellows Office for the support, without which I would not have attended.

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2014 Quarter 3 Recipients:

Dr. Wei-Yew Chang

Forest Products Society International Convention - August 2014

I attended the Forest Products Society's 68th International Convention that was held on August 10-13, 2014 in Quebec City, Canada. As this convention was also co-hosted with the World Conference on Timber Engineering, it brought around 400 scientists, forest managers, industry professionals, professors, and graduate students from around the world to attend and discuss the latest forest products research and knowledge in the field.  My presentation was on the second day of the conference, which attracted around 40 attendees coming to my presentation (Title: Matching Market Signals to the Canadian Wood Products Value Chain-A Disaggregated Trade-Flow Analysis). I presented some highlights of my postdoctoral research that has been doing at the UBC here about how we used an economic modelling to examine the competitiveness of Canadian forest products on the world markets. This conference provides me a great opportunity to meet different specialists and to seek feedbacks from different perspectives. I had a fruitful discussion with different professionals and also had the opportunity to build networks with top researchers and industry leaders from around the world in the conference. I am grateful to the Postdoctoral Fellows Office for supporting me to attend the conference.        

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Dr. Amanda Chisholm

International Society for Posture and Gait Research - July 2014

I had the opportunity to attend and present my research at the International Society for Gait & Posture (ISPGR) World Congress this year. I presented two projects at the conference; 1) a poster presentation of our work combining sensory stimulation with motor practice for balance and gait training after spinal cord injury, and 2) an oral presentation of our work examining motor control strategies to learn a skilled walking task. Both presentations facilitated opportunities for discussion and networking with colleagues outside the allotted presentation time. Since the conference was in Vancouver, we also hosted a pre-conference workshop in our laboratory to share our current work on the emerging principles in gait training for neuro-rehabilitation. WE were able to engage people in our work with hands-n demonstrations, as well as perspectives from clinicians and individuals living with a neurological injury. The conference invited interesting keynote speakers examining different aspects in the neural control of movement, sensorimotor processes and locomotor behaviours. I also attended other symposium presentations that highlighted recent work on new technology for measuring gait and balance functions.

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Dr. Lyndsay Hayhurst

4th International Conference on Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise - September 2014

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Dr. Rebecca Meagher

International Society for Applied Etholgy Congress - July 2014

This is the major conference for people working on the behaviour and welfare of captive animals (farm, laboratory or zoo), and was attended by approximately 350 people. This year's theme was "moving on": there was a large focus on the use of new technologies for monitoring animals and analysing complex behaviour such as social interactions, as well as new methods being developed for assessing animal welfare, such as the use of "cognitive biases" to make inferences about animals' emotional states.

I presented the work I conducted last year at the UBC Dairy Research Centre, investigating how individual vs. social housing beginning at different ages affects the cognitive abilities and anxiety levels of dairy calves. This work attracted interest from many people, and good questions about future measures and possible factors influencing my results. I also attended a satellite workshop on "Dam rearing in dairy production", which served as a means of networking with others working on topics related to mine, as well as providing a useful discussion of what questions still need to be answered regarding the effects of giving calves access to their mothers. Finally, I had the opportunity to speak to a wide range of researchers, making new contacts and strengthening old ones.

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Dr. Brenton Sullivan

Digital Humanities - July 201

Digital humanities is a young and dynamic field in the scholarly world. Scholars come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and draw on methods from the information technology sector, the social sciences, and other domains. At this annual conference one witness the diverse array of novel approaches to the study of texts, art, history, society, and people. Our own UBC-based project, the Database of Religious History, fit perfectly at this conference. As our project's name suggests, ours is a thoroughly digital humananities project (although we were slow to realize this, focusing instead on the project's unique combination of theories and methods from the sciences with those from the humanities). In short, this was a great opportunity to introduce our project to the growing digitial humanities community and to learn from others who have encountered and overcome challenges that are common to interdisciplinary research.

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Dr. Wenying Liu

International Mineral Processing Congress - October 2014

I attended the 27th International Mineral Processing Congress (IMPC) held in Santiago, Chile between 20 and 23 October, 2014. I presented my postdoctoral work conducted at the NKB Institute of Mining Engineering under the supervision of Dr Marek Pawlik. My paper, titled “the role of colloidal precipitates in the interfacial behavior of long-chain ionic surfactants” and coauthored with Dr Marek Pawlik, was awarded the “Young Author Award-one of the best ten technical papers presented by an author younger than 35 years”. This award shows that our work was recognized internationally and made a significant contribution to the field. Findings in this paper enhance understanding of the interfacial behavior of long-chain ionic surfactants, which would help improve the efficiency of reagent utilization in froth flotation.

The IMPC has been in existence now for more than sixty years, with the very first congress held in September 1952 in London. The Congress has been a major driving force for the promotion of scientific and technical knowledge in mineral processing and extractive metallurgy worldwide. It is the most prestigious and truly international event in the field of mineral processing in the world today, with delegates from all parts of the world deliberating on issues facing the mining and minerals processing industry globally.    

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Dr. Sarah Stewart-Kroeker

American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting - November 2014

I attended the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting in San Diego, November 2014, where I presented a paper in the Augustine and Augustinianisms group for a panel on "Augustine and the Emotions." My paper, "World-Weariness and the Ordering of the Emotions," presented initial findings from my postdoctoral research project at UBC. I discussed how for Augustine the disposition of world-weariness, which orients one in lament to earthly suffering and anticipation of heavenly fulfillment, orders the affective life and empowers the earthly practice of love. My presentation was well-attended and well-received. In addition to the panel presentation, the conference provided the opportunity for several important meetings with colleagues and senior scholars in my field, which were directly beneficial to planning my research trajectory. I am very grateful to the Postdoctoral Fellows Office for their support.

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Dr. Heather Walmsley - October 2014

20th Annual Qualitative Health Research (QHR) Conference - October 2014

I attended the 20th Annual Qualitative Health Research Conference in Victoria, BC, on 22nd and 23rd October 2014. It was an exciting interdisciplinary event and I am deeply appreciative of the opportunity to network, gain ideas from others’ research projects, and present my own postdoctoral research. I gave two oral presentations. The first, a sole-authored paper, considered online discussion forums as a resource for analysis of outbound Canadian reproductive tourism. This generated interesting questions from both scholars and clinical professionals interested in social media and qualitative methodology.

The second, I co-presented with Professor Susan Cox (my supervisor) and Professor Carl Leggo. This explored “found poetry” as an arts-based methodology for understanding reproductive tourism. We performed our paper in an experimental format, interweaving poetry and critique. This work generated a striking emotional response in the audience, and interesting questions about ethics and participation. Exposure to innovations in arts-based health research within the discipline of nursing was a highlight of this event for me. This included the use of arts in ethnography with children with learning disabilities (Great Ormond Street Hospital), and found poetry and photography as knowledge translation for experiences of chronic disease (University of Victoria).

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