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Undergraduate Opportunities

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Undergraduate Student Fellowships

Note: CDHI’s Undergraduate Student Fellowship program is paused for 2024-25.

In collaboration with our divisional partners, we will be awarding undergraduate fellowships each year valued at $5000 each. These fellowships are designed to support undergraduate students working on faculty DH projects.

Current Fellows

Summer 2023 Undergraduate Fellows

Simon Reyes Elgueta (he/him), a third-year sociology major, was born in Chile and moved to Toronto at the age of 3. Interested in the immigrant experience, Indigenous studies, culture, craftsmanship, and Latin American studies, he explores the intersection of these areas for non-Indigenous immigrants on Indigenous land. Simon, a visual artist, expresses his identity and sociological learning through drawing and embroidery. By working on the Learning From Dolls project, his goal is to comprehend how traditional Indigenous dolls symbolize the past, present, and future of indigenous communities worldwide, while sharing their profound meaning and stories. Here holds his own Dönxu doll, the same kind that the project focuses on. Supervisors: Dani Kwan-Lafond, Nicole Klenk, and Erin Webster

Diana Vink (she/they) is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Toronto studying Literature & Critical Theory, Creative Expression & Society, and Women & Gender Studies. Di has particular interest in feminist and Queer literature, and broadly enjoys analyzing equity in the realm of publishing and the written word. With a background in historical and archival research, she is incredibly grateful to CDHI for the opportunity to work on the Modernist Archives Publishing Project with Claire Battershill, working to integrate diversity and inclusivity into historical accounts of the literary and publishing worlds. Supervisor: Claire Battershill

Brenda Martínez (she/her/hers) is an undergraduate student in the Arts, Culture, and Media department at UTSC. She is deeply interested in promoting diversity within those working in the arts, especially in a theatrical context. She’s currently a CDHI research fellow working increasing the diversity of plays and playwrights represented in the PLEDGE Project, led by Dr. Barry Freeman and Rebecca Burton. Supervisors: Barry Freeman and Rebecca Burton

Cassie Xu (she/her) is a recent graduate at UTSC, double majoring in statistics and finance. She spent her co-op semester at OLG where she maintained its data lake as well as generated business insights for the enterprise analytics team. Cassie is interested in bringing the power of data analytics to all fields, starting first with English Chinese translation. Supervisor: Chris Zijiang Song

Farzana Rahman (she/her) is a recent HBA graduate with a Specialist in International Development Studies and Major in Environmental Studies. She is broadly interested in resource and land rights, as well as solidarity-driven approaches to community-based development practice. As part of the QnR team she is excited to learn more about how people of color can be better treaty citizens and create pathways for solidarity for Indigenous place-making and sovereignty. Supervisor: Patricia Landolt

Bhargavi Arora is a third-year student, specializing in psychology and minoring in political science. She is very passionate about the application of forensic psychology principles in the legal system. Always a voracious reader, she is very interested in linguistics and creative writing, especially with respect to the many lost languages in the Indian Subcontinent. In her free time, she enjoys writing poetry and researching different cultures. Supervisor: Shafique Virani

Past Fellows

Fall 2022 Undergraduate Fellows

Kai Mall (they/she) is a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Diaspora and Transnational studies and double minoring in Human Geography and GIS. They have a deep passion for issues around displacement, migration and gender in the MENA region. Kai is currently exploring ways to build a personal interdisciplinary approach to connect Diasporic Foodways with the Stateless/displacement issues while using maps as a visualizing tool.

They are currently engaged as the CDHI Undergraduate Research Fellow on the Arab Women’s Writing project, which is the first English digital database on women writers of Arab heritage. Supervisor:Maria Assif

Sabrina Chang (she/her/hers) is a third-year undergraduate student doing a specialist in Global Asia Studies and a minor in Studio Art. With immense interest in human-rights, caste, gender, colonialism, migration, data preservation, and urban planning, she is currently a CDHI research fellow working on Dr. Mark Balmforth’s Legacies of Tamil Slavery Group for the Ceylon slave registry that contains data of over 10,000 enslaved between 1818 and 1832. This project explores slavery and caste in South Asian history through a longue-durée study of an oppressed-caste “untouchable” (or Dalit) Sri Lankan Tamil community called Panchamar, or the Fifth People.
Supervisor: Kirsta Stapelfeldt & Mark Balmforth

Shanice Burton is a third-year student at the University of Toronto studying Peace, Conflict & Justice Studies. She is interested in policy research to further environmental action as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion. Supervisor: Patricia Landolt

Maryam Habib Khan is one of the undergraduate research assistants working on the Quieting and Reclamation as Place-Making project. She is in her final year of completing her Honours Bachelor of Science Degree. She is majoring in psychology and minoring in sociology and philosophy. She became involved in Indigenous studies through a second-year social inequality course which sparked her interest, leading her to question her position as a South Asian Immigrant on Indigenous land. She aspires to continue to answer these questions by contributing to crucial Indigenous-related projects such as this one. Supervisor: Patricia Landolt

Jyael Lalic (she/her/hers) is a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in sociology and mental health studies. She has a particular interest in Filipino history due to her Filipino heritage as well as an interest in Indigenous studies and its cultural implications in modern day society on a global scale. She is currently involved in the Quieting and Reclamation project at UTSC. Supervisor: Patricia Landolt

Farzana Rahman (she/her) is a 6th year Undergraduate student Specializing in International Development Studies and Majoring in Environmental Studies. She is broadly interested in resource and land rights, as well as solidarity-driven approaches to community-based development practice. As part of the QnR team she is excited to learn more about how people of color can be better treaty citizens and create pathways for solidarity with Indigenous place-making and sovereignty. Supervisor: Patricia Landolt

Haven Clare Townsend (she/her) is a second-year International Development student with a minor in Human Geography. She is highly motivated towards issues of trafficking patterns and policies, community applications of geospatial analysis technologies, and ecofeminist literature. She is researching, as part of the mapping team, archival topographies and geocoding artifacts to uncover the settler-colonial placemaking of the UTSC campus. With the help of CDHI, Haven aims on making legacies of quieting as well as GIS representations accessible knowledge. Supervisor: Patricia Landolt

Summer 2022 Undergraduate Fellows

Aidan Mitchell-Boudreau is a third-year undergraduate student double majoring in Ethics, Society, and Law and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations with a minor in Music History and Culture. She is most passionate about the areas of digital ethics that relate to privacy, data security, indigenous data governance, and computational creativity. After working as an RA for GRASAC under the supervision of Prof. and Prof. Krmpotich this past year, her current project will focus on working with the GRASAC team to assess their ethical guidelines in accordance with OCAP and UNDRIP. Supervisor: Heidi Bohaker

Awa Diagne is a third year student majoring in sociocultural anthropology and double minoring in equity studies and women & gender studies. Having interests in science and technology studies, Black studies and digital humanities, she is currently working on Dr. Edward Jones-Imhotep’s Black Androids project, an initiative that investigates and archives the “black androids,” a series of racialized automata created between the 18th and 20th centuries. Supervisor: Edward Jones Imhotep

Pallavi Maharaj is completing a major in Psychology and minors in Business and Political Science. In addition to these subjects, she has profound interest in Hindu philosophy and literature. This led her to study Sanskrit in her first year, and subsequently seek out research opportunities in the field. The research project she is currently working on will help develop digital technology that processes the content of Sanskrit manuscripts. Supervisor: Ajay Rao

Hajir Sharifi is a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Information at the Faculty of Information, iSchool. He is specializing in designing and maintaining highly available and horizontal scalable IT infrastructure. Coming from a background in human rights, equity studies, and philosophy, he is interested in researching social justice-related issues in the fields of HCI, UX and product design. Supervisor: Thy Phu

Shengsong Xu is a junior year undergraduate student at University of Toronto Scarborough, he is a computer science co-op specialist in software engineering. He is currently working as a software developer at UTSC Library Digital Scholarship Unit. The work is to develop a web crawler and visualization tools to help Dr Alejandro Paz on his research. He is enthusiastic about computer science and planning to pursue a graduate degree in computer science after graduation. Supervisor: Alejandro Paz

Winter 2022 Undergraduate Fellows

Bisma Ali is a fourth-year Health Studies student at UTSC. Her academic and research interests are in health inequities, where she has explored topics such as: mental health, women’s health, aging populations, and accessibility. The current project Bisma is working on as an Undergraduate Fellow will be exploring the use of digital humanities tools in contemporary disability studies.

Juan Antonio Bobadilla is a third-year international student, with a Double Major in Political Science and Economics, and a Minor in History. I am passionate about Latin American politics and history. In my free time, I enjoy filmmaking and supporting my hometown football team, Pachuca.

John Liao is an undergraduate double-majoring in Classics and Classical Civilization. Interested in theories of paratext and its application in ancient literature, he is currently working with Prof. Kenneth Yu on a project uncovering the logic and functions of Greek titles.

Darla Reslan majors in Cognitive Science & Anthropology at the Faculty of Arts & Science, U of T. Coming from a background in studies of the mind — neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and computer science — I am interested in the generation and evolution of intelligent systems, both natural and artificial. I am focused on the integration of cognitive science with the teachings and methods of sociocultural anthropology, hoping to provide meaningful & actionable insights into the nature of mind and the research and development of artificial intelligence.

Sebastian Rodriguez is a second-year undergraduate student studying Communication, Culture, Information & Technology at UTM. His educational pursuits include ethical computing, surveillance, UI/UX design, front-end development, and data science.