Media: news releases

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Marine fossil record reveals climate change insights

April 17, 2024 - Media release

As ocean temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, marine plankton may be the newest candidate to act as an oceanic early alert system. According to a new Nature paper from UVic micropaleontologist Andy Fraass, and a team of international collaborators at the University of Bristol and Harvard University, an analysis of the fossil record shows that changes to community structure take place long before mass extinction occurs.

Read more: Marine fossil record reveals climate change insights
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Opera star Marion Newman joins UVic Music

March 22, 2024 - Media release

Critically acclaimed Canadian opera singer and national CBC Radio host Marion Newman is returning to the University of Victoria to join the award-winning teaching faculty at the School of Music. Newman—whose traditional name is Nege’ga—is of Kwagiulth and Stó:lō First Nations descent with English, Irish and Scottish heritage. The 2022 UVic Distinguished Alumni Award recipient will officially join the School of Music as an assistant professor on July 1, 2024.

Read more: Opera star Marion Newman joins UVic Music
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Discovery tests theory on cooling of white dwarf stars

March 6, 2024 - Media release

Open any astronomy textbook to the section on white dwarf stars and you’ll likely learn that they are “dead stars” that continuously cool down over time. New research published in Nature is challenging this theory, with the University of Victoria (UVic) and its partners using data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite to reveal why a population of white dwarf stars stopped cooling for more than eight billion years.

Read more: Discovery tests theory on cooling of white dwarf stars
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Canada and Spain scientists establish new Antarctic Ocean observatory

January 16, 2024 - Media release

Canadian and European experts in polar observation are joining forces in a new partnership that will see Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) operating a subsea observatory at the Spanish Antarctic Station, providing year-round, near real-time data on ocean conditions there—the first time that ONC will extend its ocean monitoring outside Canadian waters.

Read more: Canada and Spain scientists establish new Antarctic Ocean observatory
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New director joins Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium

November 20, 2023 - Media release

Xuebin Zhang has been named director, president and chief executive officer of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC), bringing more than a decade of experience collaborating on PCIC projects and 25 years of experience as a research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada where he led the assessment on changes in temperature and precipitation for Canada’s Changing Climate Report.

Read more: New director joins Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium
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UVic awarded $8M Canada Excellence Research Chair

November 16, 2023 - Media release

Globally renowned Indigenous art historian and curator Dr. Heather Igloliorte joins the University of Victoria as the inaugural Canada Excellence Research Chair in Decolonial and Transformational Indigenous Art Practices. The $8-million research chair will advance reconciliation through the transformative power of art and innovative exhibition practices and support a new generation of students, researchers, educators, curators and artists to drive change through artistic practice.

Read more: UVic awarded $8M Canada Excellence Research Chair
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UVic documentary celebrates resilient spirit of Métis nation

November 14, 2023 - Media release

The Métis are often referred to as Canada’s “invisible people” – the “ghosts of the land” – whose stories haunt the country’s collective unconscious. Lii Michif Niiyanaan: We Are Métis is a one-hour documentary that addresses this invisibility by shining a new light on the historical and contemporary experience of Métis people in Canada and providing a space for Métis people to share their diverse perspectives on what it means to be Métis today.

Read more: UVic documentary celebrates resilient spirit of Métis nation