Welcome to our newest staff and faculty!
It’s with great pleasure that we welcome 7 faculty and 5 staff to the Humanities community and share with you a quick glance into their work and interests.
Below you’ll also find a list of retirees, whom we thank for their service and to whom we bid a fond farewell as they begin the next chapter of their journey!
Faculty
Adebisi Alade (History)
Assistant Professor Adebisi Alade was a Trillium Scholar in History at McMaster U. and Water Without Borders student at the United Nations University’s Institute for Water Environment and Health, where he studied International Policy Development before joining us here at UVic. His research and teaching interests are in African history, British imperial history, urban history, and histories of environment, health and medicine in the colonial world.
Q: What’s your favorite way to unwind after a long day?
A: “Playing video games with my daughter or watching a TV series.”
Rachel Brown (Religion Culture and Society)
Assistant Teaching Professor Rachel Brown has worked at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society for three years as program and research coordinator – a position she will continue to hold while teaching in Religion Culture and Society. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of studies in food, religion and migration. She is especially interested in how members of minority immigrant communities create, maintain and present their cultural and ethnic identities through food and food practices in secular contexts.
Link: https://www.uvic.ca/research/centres/csrs/about/team/brown-rachel.php
Q. What’s the last book you read that you’d recommend to others?
A. “A Bite-Sized History of France: Gastronomic Tales of Revolution, War and Enlightenment (The New Press, 2018). It offers an amazing overview of French history through the lens of food and is a must-read for anyone with interests in France and/or food.”
Jason Collins (Academic and Technical Writing Program)
Assistant Teaching Professor Jason Collins completed their PhD and taught first-year and technical writing at Ohio State University prior to joining us at UVic. Before that, they were an IBEW electrician, working for a decade in electrical construction. Their teaching focuses on first-year academic writing as well as business and technical writing. As an instructor, they encourage students to question and challenge academic writing’s deeply rooted history of colonization.
Q. What’s the last book you read that you’d recommend to others?
A. “There There by Tommy Orange. The book offers a raw glimpse into the diversity of the Indigenous experience in North America.”
Rebecca Halliday (English)
Assistant Teaching Professor and Professional Communication Adviser Rebecca Halliday worked as an assistant professor in the School of Professional Communication at Toronto Metropolitan University before being hired at UVic. Her research examines how digital media has impacted fashion and retail communication practices, exploring material and immaterial interactions with fashion content and documenting how companies use media to form and mobilize consumer communities.
Link: https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/fashion-show-goes-live-9781350226340/
Q. What’s the last book you read that you’d recommend to others?
A. “I Hear She's a Real Bitch, the 2017 memoir from Toronto restaurateur Jen Agg, owner of The Black Hoof, Grey Gardens, Rhum Corner and Cocktail Bar. It's a no-holds-barred account of her rise in Toronto's bar and restaurant communities, and the risks that women in the cultural industries often take in being decisive and outspoken.”
Thiti Jamkajornkeiat (Pacific and Asian Studies)
Assistant Professor Thiti Jamkajornkeiat received a PhD in South and Southeast Asian Studies with an emphasis in critical theory from UC Berkeley last June, having submitted his dissertation just prior to being hired here at UVic. He is a comparative Southeast Asianist specializing in the global intellectual history of Southeast Asia, with special focus on Indonesia and Thailand.
Q. What’s the last book you read that you’d recommend to others?
A. “I just read Syed Hussein Alatas's classic The Myth of the Lazy Native to prepare for my class at UVic. I recommend it to anyone interested in the interlocking issues of capitalism, colonialism and race in Southeast Asia.”
Tri Phuong (Pacific and Asian Studies)
Assistant Professor Tri Phuong worked as a community organizer, development consultant and journalist prior to joining us at UVic. As a sociocultural anthropologist, Phuong specializes in digital media, youth culture and social movements in contemporary Vietnam. His research examines the local and global intersections of new media technologies and cultural expressions through semiotics of play to illuminate the ways people experience, evaluate and contest shifting terrains of authoritarianism and censorship in the digital era.
Tracy Underwood (Indigenous Studies)
Assistant Teaching Professor Tracy R. Underwood is a W̱SÁNEĆ Matriarch who joins us from the Faculty of Human and Social Development, where she worked as an Indigenous Academic Coordinator. Her research and teaching focus on land-based learning, history, storytelling, and the ethics of care for children, families and communities.
Q. What is your favourite way to unwind at the end of a long day?
A. “My favourite way to unwind is to spend time with my eight children and ten grandchildren - to just be who we are in W̱SÁNEĆ.”
Staff
Katie Croudy-Hollott (English)
Receptionist and Undergraduate Secretary Katie Croudy-Hollott is a former manager of food security for emergency housing at the Victoria Women’s Transition House Society and current volunteer in Victoria’s food security community. Returning to the Department of English, where she earned her BA in 2020, Katie provides administrative support to the department's students, faculty, staff and Chair.
Q. What’s your favourite way to unwind at the end of a long week?
A. “I look forward to weekends when I can walk downtown with my husband, get coffees, and wander aimlessly through pretty neighbourhoods.”
Alison Hogan (History)
Undergraduate Secretary and Assistant to the Chair Alison Hogan is a singer-songwriter and historian by training whose ‘careen’ (read: wandering path as career) has included managing oral history projects at Craigdarroch Castle, hosting a radio show for the college station CKMO Village 900, and completing a songwriting residency at the Banff Centre. Before returning to the Department of History, where she earned her BA and MA, Alison worked briefly at Island Health, helping with post-pandemic planning. She describes her current role as equal parts student service and admin support, with some social media, web development and event coordination on the side.
Link: www.alisonhogan.com
Q. How do you unwind at the end of a long week?
A. I can be found biking around the lovely greenways in our fair city in search of the perfect patio experience.
Brooke Isherwood (European Studies)
Administrative Assistant Brooke Isherwood works full-time in the BC Public Service as a writer, in addition to this part-time position with European Studies. Previously she worked at the Legislative Assembly as a researcher after completing an MA in English here at UVic. In her current role, she assists the EUS program director by providing administrative support for the program’s students and faculty.
Nicole Pointon (Dean's Office)
Development Officer Nicole Pointon joins us after a two-decade career working for various post-secondary institutions — including the University of Toronto, Capilano University and Royal Roads University — in communications, marketing and student recruitment. In her role at UVic, she pairs the philanthropic priorities of major gift donors ($25k +) with the exigencies — and the change-making aspirations — of Humanities staff and faculty.
Q. If you could eat only one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?
A. My late mom’s salmon casserole. All the food groups, smothered in cheddar cheese.
Laura Smith (Dean's Office)
Administrative Assistant Laura Smith worked with the BC Initiative for Inclusive Post-Secondary Education as an inclusion facilitator here at UVic before joining the Dean’s office in the Faculty of Humanities. She describes her current responsibilities as “dynamic and varied, but all focusing on supporting the Dean’s office team and Faculty as a whole.”
Q. What’s your favourite way to unwind after a long day?
A. “I like to play a good story-based video game with a big mug of tea or visit the beach with my dog.”
Retirees
Rob Alexander (History)
Michael Bodden (Pacific and Asian Studies)
Gordon Fulton (English)
Robert Miles (English)
Guoguang Wu (History)