From cloud computing to Métis rights: 44 Concordians at Acfas

The topics Concordians are presenting at the 85th congress of l’Association francophone pour le savoir (Acfas) demonstrate the breadth of research on campus — from helping the deaf be heard to investigating software-reliability improvements.

The 2017 edition of this landmark conference takes place on May 8 to 12, at McGill University. It is the largest multidisciplinary gathering of research and knowledge in the French-speaking world.

Over five days, academics and other experts will unpack current topics in the fields of science and creativity, nature and culture, imagination and innovation. This year’s lineup includes 44 Concordia researchers.

Concordia hosted Acfas in 2014, welcoming 5,100 scholars and 173 colloquia. In total, more than 3,000 papers explored “Research: Zones of Creativity and Convergence.”

Points de rencontre : Acfas 2017

For this year’s theme, “Vers de nouveaux sommets,” Acfas is hosting approximately 6,000 speakers from 40 countries. The week will see a total of 213 colloquia, all in French.

Eight of Concordia’s participating researchers offer a taste of their upcoming Acfas presentations.

Elizabeth Fast is an assistant professor of applied human sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Science. She will preview a new project that raises awareness of the importance of the history and contemporary realities of Métis people in Quebec.

Through her research, Fast challenges the belief that there’s an absence of Métis peoples in Quebec and explores how personal definitions of mixed ancestry differ from legal definitions.

Samuel Gaudreau-Lalande, a PhD candidate in art history, will take part in a multidisciplinary colloquium organized by the Association internationale des études québécoises.

In his presentation, Gaudreau-Lalande will address the use of photo propaganda in Quebec between 1941 and 1961. He will investigate the methodology behind analyzing images in the absence of an explicit archival system. Gaudreau-Lalande describes his research as photo-archaeology at the crossroads of art history, cultural geography and economic history. 

Pierre Gauthier is an associate professor of geography, planning and environment in the Faculty of Arts and Science. Together with MSc student Jing Xie, he will present the results of a study on the location and accessibility of stores selling fresh produce in Montreal.

They will demonstrate how food retail is informed by the built environment’s conditions such as residential density, road network connectivity and transportation infrastructure.

Ferhat Khendek is the NSERC/Ericsson Senior Industrial Research Chair in Model-Based Software Management and professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

His research explores how complex software reliability can be improved. At Acfas he’ll be looking at how a model-driven paradigm can be applied for configuration and upgrade of cloud systems.

Véro Leduc, a Horizon Postdoctoral Fellow and member of the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology, investigates the intersections between research-creation, social innovation and critical disabilities studies.

At Acfas, she is going to explore how the voices of deaf and hard-of-hearing people can be understood. Leduc’s presentation will touch on negative associations with deafness in terms of knowledge creation in sign language and its dissemination.

Natalie Phillips is a professor of psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Science and member of the Centre for Research in Human Development.

She plans to present a new research study she conducted in conjunction with several collaborators and students to determine how background conversation noise can affect speech processing in bilingual listeners, and the factors that relate to better performance. 

Daniel Salée is a professor in the Department of Political Science and the School of Community and Public Affairs.

He is going to participate in a conversation with Irène Bellier of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris about shared rights and struggles of Indigenous peoples.

Salée's research in recent years has focused on the politics of ethnicity and citizenship in the Canadian and Quebec contexts, with a particular emphasis on the marginalization racialized minorities.

Finally, Jean-Philippe Warren, Concordia University Research Chair for the Study of Quebec and professor of sociology and anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Science, will share his investigations of how Quebec society has changed over a century.

He plans to look at how academic texts in humanities and social science disciplines have been translated, and if the existence of bilingual literature encourages dialogue between French- and English-language communities.

Additionally, Rebecca Duclos, dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, is leading a panel discussion about the convergence of science and art at a concurrent event on May 5, also organized by Acfas.

Find out about other Concordia presenters at the 85th congress of l’Association francophone pour le savoir (Acfas).