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Livable Cities Forum: Creating Adaptive and Resilient Communities

The Livable Cities Forum: Creating Adaptive and Resilient Communities

November 29-30, 2012
Hamilton, ON Canada

The Livable Cities Forum is now less than three weeks away! This forum will bring together adaptation experts, municipal staff, and local elected officials from across Canada. Don't miss your chance to engage in these exciting and timely dialogues!

Keynotes and parallel sessions will cover a wide range of topics including: strategies for bridging science and communication; adaptation tools and frameworks; insights from the insurance industry, adaptation strategies for small and rural communities; adaptation, mitigation and biodiversity synergies; communication strategies; and planning for resilient communities, among many others.

We are also very pleased to be offering a special program stream - Elected Officials Connect. Canadian Mayors and Councillors are invited to participate in these exclusive and exciting workshops to hear Dispatches from City Hall and Stories of Prevention and Preparation from fellow elected officials. To learn more about how your elected officials can participate, contact Megan Meaney (megan.meaney@iclei.org).

To find out more about sessions, speakers, and keynotes, contact Leya Barry (leya.barry@iclei.org) or visit http://www.icleicanada.org/events/10-livablecities


York’s Strategic Research Planning Process

Strategic Research Plan Open Forum - November 20

Robert Haché
Vice-President Research & Innovation Invites you to an open forum update on
York’s Strategic Research Planning Process

to discuss the feedback received from the community
to date and explore draft research themes for the Strategic Research Plan

November 20, 2012
10 - 12 pm
Senate Chamber
N940 Ross Building
York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON

Please RSVP by Monday, November 19, 2012


Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark – Film Screening and Panel Discussion

Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark – Film Screening and Panel Discussion

Thursday, November 29, 6:30 p.m

University of Toronto
Room 108
Shoppers Drug Mart Auditorium
Koffler House
569 Spadina Crescent

Pay-what-you-can (suggested donation of $5.00)

In partnership with the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Canadian Centre for International Justice's Toronto Working Group is hosting a screening of this award winning film that tells the story of the Arab revolution that was abandoned by the Arabs, forsaken by the West and forgotten by the world. The film won the Award for Best International Television and the Grand Prize at the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards, the Amnesty International Media Award, a Gold Nymphe (Nymphe d'Or) for Best Documentary at the Montecarlo Television Festival, the Foreign Press Association Documentary of the Year award in London, the George Polk Award for Excellence in Journalism and the Scripps Howard Jack R. Howard Award for Television Reporting.

A panel discussion will follow featuring:

• Abdullah Abuidrees, Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (streamed in from Bahrain)
• Yusur Al Bahrani, Director at Large, Amnesty International and a human rights activist who has worked on the issue
• One other panelist, to be announced.

Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark is the second in a series of three films we are screening at this year's Justice Film Festival. Our next screening is:

Granito: How to Nail a Dictator

York University

Thursday, January 24th, 6:30 p.m.

Room 1014
Osgoode Hall Law School
Ignat Kaneff Building
4700 Keele Street


Genes, Genomes, and the Nature-Nurture Debate

Science and Technology Studies Seminar Series presents:

Professor Evelyn Fox Keller

Genes, Genomes, and the Nature-Nurture Debate

Tuesday 13 November, 12:30-14:00, 203A Bethune College.

My concern is with the unreasonable persistence of the Nature/Nurture debate, and I argue that, in good part, that persistence derives from the fundamental uncertainty surrounding the subject of debate. What exactly is the question we are trying to answer?  What do we mean by “nature”?  And what effect does the changing discourse of genes and genomes have on this debate?

Evelyn Fox Keller received her Ph.D. in theoretical physics at Harvard University, worked for several years at the interface of physics and biology before turning to the history and philosophy of science. Professor Emerita of History and Philosophy of Science in the Program in Science, Technology and Society at MIT, she is the author of over 10 books (e.g., The Century of the Gene; and Making Sense of Life), and the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees.  Her latest book, The Mirage of a Space between Nature and Nurture, appeared in 2010.

For a poster of this event, click here.

For Dr. Keller’s paper on the topic, click here.

A poster of the full 2012-2013 Science & Technology Studies seminar series, can be seen by clicking here.

For information and photographs of past ISTS events please visit the Past Events page, and check back here or on our Twitter feed for announcements of new events in the 2012-2013 academic year.



The CITY Institute at York and the CCGES will host a talk by Dietmar Schirmer (visiting professor at the University of Florida Department of Political Science)

Dietmar Schirmer
University of Florida

High-Modernism and Mass Utopia
in Twentieth-Century Urban Planning

Friday November 9, 2012
12:30-2:30 pm
Room 280A, York lanes, York University

Together with the CITY Institute at York, and The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies will host a talk by Dietmar Schirmer (DAAD visiting professor at the University of Florida Department of Political Science) Friday, November 9th from 12:30 to 2:30 pm in room 280A York Lanes.

Dietmar Schirmer, Ph.D. in Political Science from Free University Berlin, 1990, is a DAAD visiting professor at the University of Florida Department of Political Science. He has taught at Free University Berlin, University of Vienna (2004), at Cornell (1998-2003), and the University of British Columbia. Dietmar Schirmer was a Fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., from 1992-1995.

Research Interests: Comparative Politics and Historical Sociology, regional specialization in Europe. Current research agenda in state-formation, nationalism, and European integration and in the aesthetics of the state

Recent Publications: The Beautiful State: Architecture and Political Authority in Europe Since the Renaissance (under review at Cornell University Press); “State, Volk, and Monumental Architecture in Nazi-Era Berlin," in: Andreas Daum and Christoph Mauch, eds., Berlin – Washington, 1800 – 2000: Capital Cities, Cultural Representation, and National Identities, Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 127-153; “Closing the Nation: Nationalism and Statism in 19th and 20th Century Germany,” in: Sima Godfrey and Frank Unger, eds., The Shifting Foundations of Modern Nation States, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004, 35-58; Identity and Intolerance: Nationalism, Racism, and Xenophobia in Germany and the United States, Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press 1998 and 2002 (ed. with Norbert Finzsch).

All are welcome, but attendees are asked to register with ccges@yorku.ca


Call for input on a draft business plan for a sustainability office at York University

York University strives to be a leading post-secondary institution for sustainability. We are currently going through an exciting period of change and need the community’s assistance. The President’s Sustainability Council would like your input on the development of a business plan to outline the strategies, goals and rationale for establishing a permanent sustainability office with committed funding, as per recommendation #9 from the 2009 PSC report and the subsequent motion from the PSC meeting in January 2012.

Accordingly, you are cordially invited to give your input at one of our two lunchtime visioning sessions:

Visioning Session #1: Tuesday, November 13th - 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm – York Research Tower, Room 519

Visioning Session #2: Wednesday, November 14th - 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm – York Lanes, Room 280A

Please bring your lunch. Coffee and cookies will be provided.

If you are unable to attend one of the visioning sessions, you can instead drop in at the Red Zone on the following day to fill out a comment card with your input:

Drop In Session: Thursday, November 15th – 11:00 am – 2:00 pm – Red Zone, Vari Hall

We ask that individuals only provide their input once, to ensure that everyone participating has an equal voice.

Please RSVP to this doodle poll by November 9th if you wish to attend either visioning session on the 13th or 14th. If you are unable to attend the visioning sessions or the drop-in session, but are still interested in giving your input, please send an email to sustainability@yorku.ca and arrangements will be made to receive your comments.

We look forward to your participation in helping to create a new vision for sustainability at York University.

ANDREW PLUNKETT • Sustainability Project Coordinator
Office of the President


Join the York Federation of Stdents’ Town Hall on Campus Food Options

When: Wednesday, November 7, 6-8PM
Where: Curtis Lecture Hall F

Food options at York University just don't cut it. Late night eats are few and far between; campus cafeterias dish out the same bland food for outrageous prices; buying groceries is a two hour journey; and unless you’re willing to pay big bucks for a suite, students in residence can’t cook much more than Kraft Dinner and pizza pops – if they’re lucky!Contribute to the YFS Taske Force on Campus Food by attending our Town Hall so we can hear your views about what you love, hate and want to eat at York University.

rsity's Keele and Glendon campuses! Follow this link to RSVP on Facebook for the event: http://tinyurl.com/artlhmf.

Environmental Justice, Tar Sands and Line 9- Organizing Meeting @ York

Date and Time: Wednesday, November 7 at 3:30pm

Location: Room 311B, Student Centre @ York U.
This is the first meeting for the environmental justice working group of OPIRG York, and is going to focus on and be a follow-up from discussions and ideas that were discussed during OPIRG's Tar Sands workshop in October.
The meeting will provide information on ways to get involved with tar sands and line 9 organizing and empower participants to take action, as well as to come up with action plans around this, on work that we can be doing around this at York University.
After the meeting, we will go on a walk to visit the Line 9 site, that is close to the university.
 More information on Line 9 organizing
For more information, please visit the Facebook page at Environmental Justice, Tar Sands and Line 9- Organizing Meeting @ York 

The Asia Lecture 2012 – The Intermediary Trap: International Labour Recruitment, Transnational Governance and State-Citizen Relations in China

The Asia Lecture 2012

Celebrating 10 years of the York Centre for Asian Research (2002-2012)

The Intermediary Trap: International Labour Recruitment, Transnational Governance and State-Citizen Relations in China

Dr. Xiang Biao

University Lecturer in Social Anthropology

University of Oxford

5th November 2012, 2:30pm to 5pm, 519 York Research Tower | York University

Based on long-term field research spanning Japan, Singapore, South Korea and multiple locations in northeast China, this presentation traces how transnationally-linked commercial labor recruiters gain a dominant position in cultivating, facilitating and controlling migration. These intermediaries render themselves indispensable both for migrating workers and for the states seeking to make order from migration. The intermediary trap is thus more dynamic and complex than a simple “capture” by identifiable interest groups and is deeply implicated in changing state-citizen relations in China. Rooted in Chinese and other Asian states’ agenda to liberalize socioeconomic life without compromising sovereign power, the intermediary trap may become a worldwide phenomenon with the resurgence of state power alongside a continuing neoliberal hegemony beyond Asia.

Dr. Xiang Biao is University Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. He has conducted extensive field research on migration and social change in China, India and Australia. His work includes ethnographic studies of migrant communities in Beijing (Transcending Boundaries, Brill, 2005) and Indian migrant professionals (Global Body Shopping, Princeton, 2007). His forthcoming book (Making Order from Transnational Mobility, Princeton) is the result of four years of field research in China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, and examines the transnational governance of labor mobility in East Asia.

Reception will begin at 2:30pm to be followed by the Lecture at 3pm.
All are welcome!
For more information: ycar@yorku.ca || www.yorku.ca/ycar


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