François-Marc Gagnon joins the Ordre du Quebec

François-Marc Gagnon, a distinguished research fellow and the founding director of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, has been named an Officer of the Ordre national du Québec.

The honour was presented at a special ceremony in Quebec City on Tuesday, June 16.

Gagnon is recognized as a leading expert on Les Automatistes, a group of Québécois artistic dissidants that included Paul-Émile Borduas and Jean-Paul Riopelle.

Carmela Cucuzzella, an assistant professor in the Department of Design and Computation Arts, launched a new book on May 27 at the Maison de l'architecture in Paris. Co-edited with Jean-Pierre Chupin, Architecture Competitions and the Production of Culture, Quality and Knowledge, explores the impact of international competitions.

Ricardo Dal Farra, an associate professor of music, and three electroaoustics studies students – Tyler Lewis, Reginald Kachanoski and Peter van Haaften – presented pieces at the IIII Rencontres Internationales de Musique Électroacoustique (RIME). Dal Farra premiered his new visual-music work ORGANIC for algorithmically-generated images and 24 audio channels. The III RIME was held in Monaco from May 28 to 30.

Professor Loren Lerner from the Department of Art History chaired a panel at the Sustainable Israel conference entitled "The Ethics of Sustainability in Israeli Art and Architecture" on June 1. Featured panelists included independent scholar Itai Peleg-Pilozof and Carol Zemel, a professor at York University. Lerner also gave a lecture about Knafo Klimor Architects’ “The Fields of Tomorrow” Israel Pavilion at Milano Expo, 2015: The Challenges of Embodying Agricultural Sustainability in an Architectural Concept”.

Josée Leclerc and Stephen Snow from the Creative Arts Therapies Department participated as guest faculty members at the Advanced Study Institute of McGill University’s Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry conference on June 1. Leclerc presented her work on “Response-Art as a Reflective Inquiry: Raising Awareness of Racism” and Snow presented "Ethnodramatherapy: Performance Ethnography Combined with Drama Therapy in the Framework of Theatrical Performance.”

An essay by part-time professor Laura Endacott from Studio Arts, that looks at the mother image in contemporary art, was included in a new anthology entitled Performing Motherhood. Artistic, Activist and Everyday Enactments (Demeter Press, 2014). Endacott presented her work via a narrated visual presentation at the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences' congress event, May 30 to June 5.

Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science

Osama Moselhi, a professor in the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been inducted as a fellow into the Canadian Academy of Engineering. 

Moselhi has made significant contributions to practice and research in engineering and construction in Canada, the United States, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as to the training of leaders in industry and academia. He has authored and coauthored over 350 scienfic publications and received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Walter Shanly Award of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering. 

At the special induction ceremony on June 4, Pierre Lortie, president of the Academy said the 50 fellows and one honorary fellow had demonstrated a capacity "to go beyond the normal practice of engineering and contribute in exemplary ways towards their fields and to their communities."

Faculty of Arts and Science

The Canadian Historical Association has awarded Steven High's most recent monograph, Oral History at the Crossroads: Sharing Life Stories of Survival and Displacement (UBC Press, 2014) with the Clio-Québec Prize for the best book published on Quebec History.

High is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Oral History and the co-director of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling. He was principal investigator of the Montreal Life Stories project, which is the basis for Oral History at the Crossroads. 

William Hébert (BA ’09, MA 12) has been selected as a 2015 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Doctoral Scholar. Currently, Hébert is a PhD student in social-cultural anthropology at the University of Toronto. He is researching how Canada can learn from Brazil to better protect transgender prisoners’ rights and life conditions—within prison walls and beyond.

Trudeau Doctoral Scholarships are awarded to exceptional Canadian students who have “distinguished themselves through academic excellence, civic engagement, and a commitment to reaching beyond academic circles.”

Student Services

Gordon Dionne, manager of the Access Centre for Students with Disabilities (ACSD) was honoured with the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services (CACUSS) 2015 Leaders in Learning Award. This award recognizes outstanding individual contributions to professional development activities (e.g. online course, conference presentation, workshops etc.) and/or service to a Community of Practice.

Do you know of a Concordian worth celebrating? Send your accolades to now@concordia.ca.