ETD SWORD Deposit

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10315/27543

ETDs in this collection are being checked for completeness and are in the process of being transferred to their respective collections under the FGS ETD collection umbrella.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 174

Access status: Open Access ,
Diasporic Civic Organizations (DCOs), cyberspace, and superdiverse places: Bangladeshi Canadians in Toronto
(2026-07-24) Rouf, Tahmid; Valerie Ann Preston
This dissertation examines how diasporic civic organizations (DCOs) navigate the intersecting dynamics of superdiversity, digitization, and urban inequality through a case study of Bangladeshi Canadians in Toronto. Drawing on mixed methods, including census analysis, institutional ethnography, and cyberethnography, the research investigates how DCOs respond to economic marginalization, intergenerational tensions, and shifting forms of civic engagement across both neighbourhood spaces and cyberspace. Grounded in critical human geography, this research examines superdiversity by foregrounding structural inequalities and civic invisibility within highly diverse urban settings. It situates DCOs within the third sector and interprets their practices through Polanyian concepts of reciprocity and the double movement, alongside Gibson-Graham’s framework of diverse and solidarity economies. The findings show that DCOs play a vital role in fostering social support, economic resilience, and cultural belonging, while simultaneously contending with resource constraints, labour precarity, and the uneven demands of digital transformation. The dissertation demonstrates that digitization has both expanded and complicated diasporic civic engagement, reshaping organizational forms, outreach strategies, and transnational networks. However, these transformations are deeply conditioned by existing social and spatial inequalities. By linking place-based experiences with digital practices, this research offers a multi-scalar understanding of how DCOs operate as critical forms of collective support and resistance. Ultimately, it contributes to scholarship on migration, diaspora, and urban studies by highlighting the adaptive capacities and limitations of grassroots organizations in building more inclusive and equitable futures in superdiverse places.
Access status: Open Access ,
THE CAGE OF MODERNITY: THE "RAT PARK" EXPERIMENTS AND THE HISTORY OF ADDICTION
(2026-07-24) Gibson, Jamie Lamontagne; Michael Pettit
This thesis reconstructs the cultural, political, and intellectual influences that made Rat Park conceivable for Bruce Alexander in 1970s Vancouver. Alexander’s research built upon a twentieth-century tradition of analogizing humans to rats, yet it reversed the assumption that learning occurs under deprivation by replacing laboratory cages with a rodent “utopia”: the enriched environment of Rat Park. Under these conditions, addiction appeared not as neuro-physiologically predetermined but environmentally constituted. I propose that Rat Park’s methodological divergence challenged punitive policy, as Alexander redefined addiction as an adaptive response to politically produced deprivation. Rat Park had limited uptake in its immediate aftermath until the experiments were canonized in the early twenty-first century leading to renewed interest in policy circles. This thesis argues that, despite Rat Park’s successes, Alexander ended his career dissatisfied because he understood Rat Park not as a politically operative model but a thought experiment demonstrating the futility of drug policy.
Access status: Open Access ,
The Armonia Effect: A Global History of Canada's State and Civil Society Responses to Afghan Refugees
(2026-07-24) Azadah, Kushan; Ethel Tungohan
This dissertation examines Canada’s response to Afghan displacement between 1979 and 2024. Despite constituting one of the world’s largest and most protracted displaced populations, Afghan refugees long occupied a marginal place within Canadian refugee governance, overshadowed by other humanitarian priorities and filtered through the geopolitical imaginaries of the Cold War and the War on Terror. NATO’s withdrawal and the collapse of the Afghan state in 2021 altered this landscape. Over the following three years Canada resettled more Afghan refugees than at any previous point in its history, seemingly reaffirming its reputation as a humanitarian leader. Yet the federal response also faced intense scrutiny as actors across state and civil society pointed to delays, restrictive eligibility criteria, complex application procedures, and extensive security vetting that obstructed access to protection. Canada’s response thus presents a paradox: an unprecedented expansion of Afghan admissions alongside heightened contestation. To account for this paradox, I advance the concept of the armonia effect in refugee governance. Drawing on the metaphor of the armonia—a hand-pumped instrument whose sound depends on both airflow and the configuration of stops and reeds—the concept theorizes how advocacy generates policy openings when it resonates with existing discourses of obligation, institutional precedents, and reputational commitments through which states imagine themselves in the international order. Protection expands when moral claims align with an inherited architecture of law, security, and political identity that renders certain demands legible to the state. Yet this configuration also produces dissonance. Competing interests, narratives of deservingness, and structural constraints introduce friction into the governance landscape even as pathways to protection emerge. Through a global-historical approach grounded in critical policy discourse analysis, the study traces three developments. First, it reconstructs the Cold War and post-9/11 institutional landscape that marginalized Afghan displacement while embedding refugee governance within a global counterterrorism regime shaped by racialized and civilizational logics. Second, it examines how Canada’s military engagement produced narratives of Afghan deservingness through frames of allyship, gendered rescue, and securitized suspicion. Third, it analyzes post-2021 advocacy by veterans and diaspora organizations, showing how these actors translated crisis into policy-legible demands that expanded protection in stratified and uneven ways.
Access status: Open Access ,
Dust and Devils, Microbes and Mass Loss Radiative Transfer in the Atmospheres of Mars and Rocky Exoplanets.
(2026-07-24) Grace Ann Bischof; John Moores
Planetary atmospheres are fundamentally shaped by their interaction with stellar radiation, governing climate, atmospheric dynamics, and planetary habitability. This dissertation examines the role of radiative transfer in shaping the atmospheres of Mars and rocky exoplanets through four complementary projects: dynamics in the dust loading and lifting in Gale Crater, the survivability of Earth-based microorganisms on the Martian surface, and the escape of hydrogen from rocky exoplanets observable in the Lyman-alpha line. Airborne dust strongly modulates the Martian energy balance by altering the radiation budget at the surface. To reduce temporal constraints on previous observations of dust dynamics, a correction to the radiative transfer equation used in line-of-sight extinction measurements was applied. This modification revealed a diurnal cycle in dust opacity, with a peak in dust extinction near solar noon that is larger in amplitude during southern summer. Linking these results with an analysis of dust devil optical depth in Gale Crater suggests that dust devils produced under strong solar forcing contributes to the midday peak observed in dust loading, providing new insights into the dust cycle in Gale Crater. To estimate the potential forward contamination of Mars, the survivability of Earth-based microorganisms on the Martian surface was investigated. By combining laboratory results of Bacillus subtilis with forward models, it was shown that UVC radiation sterilizes exposed spacecraft surfaces within 24 hours on Mars, reducing bioburden by up to 15 orders of magnitude. However, regolith and dust strongly dampen UVC radiation, meaning buried microbes or those embedded within a spacecraft may persist for up to 25 Mars Years before succumbing to low-pressure effects. Finally, hydrogen escape from rocky exoplanets was modelled under Jeans and hydrodynamic regimes to quantify Lyman-alpha transit depths as a function of key planetary and atmospheric parameters. Results demonstrate that the hydrogen mixing ratio at the homopause is the main contributor to large transit depths, with temperature, planet mass, and photoionization introducing secondary variations. These results establish detectability thresholds for current and future UV telescopes. Ultimately, we find that Lyman-alpha transits can meaningfully constrain the atmospheric composition of rocky exoplanets, particularly when combined with multi-wavelength observations.
Access status: Open Access ,
EXPLORING THE EXPERIENCES OF MENTAL HEALTH SERVICE USERS ADVOCATING FOR CHANGES IN MENTAL HEALTHCARE AND POLICY IN ONTARIO
(2026-07-24) Bhatti, Ayesha Mumtaz; Marina Morrow
This dissertation focuses on the experiences of mental health service users who have engaged in advocacy work in Ontario to improve mental healthcare and policy. Mad Studies was used as a theoretical lens to center the experiences of mental health service users. Semi-structured interviews through Zoom were conducted with 20 mental health service users who engaged in advocacy work in Ontario to improve mental healthcare and policy to learn about their experiences. They also completed an online demographic survey through Qualtrics. The dissertation has been divided into seven chapters. The first chapter introduces the Mad Studies lens. The second chapter discusses biomedical dominance in mental healthcare and policy. The third chapter reviews mad resistance, initiatives, and organizing. The fourth chapter outlines the qualitative research design. The fifth chapter discusses the findings from demographic surveys and interviews. The sixth chapter is a discussion of the major themes from the findings, implications for practice and policy, and future directions. The seventh chapter is the conclusion. Findings reveal that participants were motivated to do advocacy work because of their own lived experience and desire to help others. Their advocacy work focused on education, peer support, increasing collaboration across sectors, and policies. Participants’ advocacy work has made impacts through policy change, service creation, organizational change, awareness raising, and helping others. Participants said that promising approaches for improving mental healthcare and policy are increasing funding, increasing supports, greater collaboration in the sector, and including people with lived experience in decision-making. Participants encourage people who want to do advocacy work to practice self-care, have their voice heard, and build relationships. This dissertation contributes to Mad Studies scholarship by creating knowledge that privileges the experiences and wisdom of people who have used mental health services. It also challenges biomedical narratives and outlines promising approaches for improving mental healthcare and policy in Ontario.
Access status: Open Access ,
Bridging Baseline Assessment and Injury Surveillance: A Three-Study Examination of Sport-Related Concussion Monitoring in Canadian Post-Secondary Sport
(2026-07-24) Michael Jason Modica; Loriann M. Hynes
Background: Sport-related concussion (SRC) surveillance in Canadian post-secondary sport remains fragmented, limiting the ability of institutions to accurately characterize injury risk, recovery trajectories, and academic consequences. Existing systems tend to emphasize isolated components of concussion monitoring, such as pre-season baseline assessment or injury documentation, without integrating athlete-exposure (AE) data or educational outcomes, constraining epidemiologic interpretation and institutional decision-making. Purpose: This dissertation examined how differences in concussion surveillance structure influence the interpretation of SRC risk, recovery, and academic impact within Canadian post-secondary athletics. The three-study program aimed to (1) characterize baseline and historical concussion features among university athletes, (2) quantify exposure-adjusted incidence and post-injury outcomes in post-secondary sport, and (3) synthesize findings across systems to inform a harmonized concussion surveillance framework. Methods: Study 1 analyzed pre-season baseline data from university athletes participating in the Varsity Student-Athlete Data Analytics Research (VADAR) program, examining concussion history, baseline symptom presentation, and self-reported recovery duration. Study 2 evaluated retrospective injury surveillance data from Ontario Colleges Athletic Association (OCAA) athletes, incorporating AE-adjusted incidence rates, recovery duration, and documented academic accommodations. Study 3 employed a comparative analytic approach to examine differences in exposure measurement, recovery tracking, and academic outcome reporting across post-secondary surveillance systems. Results: In Study 1, 43.1% of female and 30.9% of male athletes reported a prior concussion, and female athletes were more than twice as likely to experience recovery lasting longer than 28 days (OR = 2.29, 95% CI [1.26, 4.18]). Study 2 demonstrated that sport-specific risk interpretations shifted substantially when AE denominators were applied, particularly among contact sports. Although female athletes represented 58.2% of diagnosed concussions, no significant sex difference in recovery duration was observed, and nearly half of documented concussions required formal academic accommodations. Conclusion: Surveillance design is a primary determinant of interpretability in post-secondary concussion research. Integrating baseline measures, exposure-adjusted incidence, and academic recovery indicators enhances understanding of SRC and supports decision-making across institutional, clinical, and team-level contexts. These findings inform evidence-based recommendations for a unified concussion surveillance framework tailored to Canadian post
Access status: Open Access ,
Nene (Little Girl)
(2026-07-24) Ferderber, Vann William; Moussa Djigo
Nene (The Tagalog term for “little girl”) is a genre-bending narrative short film, blending Filipino family dynamics and 1970s horror cinema aesthetics. This film utilizes both contemporary digital imagery and analogue 16mm film stock to “reanimate” a 1970s low-budget Canadian vampire film through the story of Emily, a young neurodivergent Filipino girl, and her struggling single mother Josie. As the 12-minute narrative unfolds, Emily’s hyperactive imagination triggers surreal paranoia, and the celluloid nightmare begins to bleed into reality through a diasporic lens. This film represents my inward exploration of personal themes, including second-generation diaspora, urban childhood upbringing, and folklore as a lens to explore the liminal dimensions of diaspora.
Access status: Open Access ,
Who Gets the Floor? Gender Differences in Speaking, Influence, and Egalitarian Preferences in Groups
(2026-07-24) Drisdelle, Emily Anne; Joey Cheng
A growing body of research suggests that volubility—how much a person speaks during a social interaction—is linked to leadership attainment, such that those who speak more are more likely to emerge as leaders. Some evidence also indicates that women speak less than men in group settings, raising the possibility that gender differences in volubility contribute to women’s lower representation in leadership roles. Across five studies (N total = 1,931), I examined gender differences in volubility, informal leadership, and preferences for how voice is allocated within groups. Study 1 found that women spoke less than men and that this disparity mediated the relationship between gender and leadership attainment. Studies 2a-2b showed that women were more likely to prefer egalitarian voice allocation and viewed ability-aligned arrangements less favorably than men. Studies 3a-3b found that a hybrid speaking structure balancing equality and performance received the strongest support across gender.
Access status: Open Access ,
A NOVEL COMPUTATIONAL ETHOLOGY FRAMEWORK FOR STUDYING ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR UNDER CLIMATE CHANGE (CEFABC2): A CASE STUDY OF LITTLE PENGUINS ON PHILLIP ISLAND
(2026-07-24) Camelo Guerrero, Abraham Isaac; Peter A. Khaiter
Animal behaviour is a biological indicator that provides insight into a species’ interaction with its environment. Long-term records of animal behaviour form time series containing rhythms, anomalies, and trends in the activity of a species. Numerical and machine learning (ML) methods provide tools to automate the investigation of large amounts of data to detect patterns in complex behavioural time series. This thesis uses the little penguin colony on Phillip Island, Victoria, Australia as a case study, where the behaviour of this species has been recorded and analyzed over decades. To further support these studies, this thesis introduces a novel computational ethology framework on the study of animal behaviour under climate change (CEFABC2). This framework extracts and forecasts the dynamics of nightly penguin count time series, breeding success, and mean egg-laying date (MLD). CEFABC2 is built on four modules: the first module uses singular spectrum analysis (SSA) to process and reconstruct the nightly penguin count time series. From the SSA-reconstructed time series, the peaks are extracted and Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) is implemented to estimate the peak width. The second module examines the correlations between the extracted peaks, the MLD, and breeding success. Gaussian process (GP) is applied to forecast the peaks of the nightly penguin count time series. Additionally, the performance of structural time series (STS), ARIMA, LSTM, GP, LightGBM, and Ridge models is evaluated for forecasting nightly penguin counts. The third module describes the climate of Phillip Island, using principal component analysis (PCA), K-means, and GMM to identify meteorological seasons. The fourth module integrates biological and climate variables, analyzing their correlations and forecasting breeding variables using ElasticNet, Ridge, Random Forest, and Gradient Boosting ML models. Finally, the CEFABC2 management system incorporates these components into a single tool aiming to support monitoring, forecasting, and future conservation management efforts towards the Phillip Island little penguin colony.
Access status: Open Access ,
Emotional Bonds: A New Lens on the Role of Parent-Adolescent Relationship Quality in Adolescent Well-Being
(2026-07-24) Rarrbo, Nour-El-Houda; Madison Aitken
Parent-adolescent relationships are traditionally assessed through dimensions such as warmth, conflict, and support, but the emotional experiences within parent-adolescent interactions remain understudied. This study examined adolescents’ emotional experiences during interactions with a parent, their association with relationship quality, and their role in predicting well-being over time. A sample of 96 adolescents (Mage=15.6 years, 43.3% boys) reported on the emotions they experienced during interactions with their parent, parent-adolescent relationship quality (connectedness and hostility), as well as on their well-being monthly over 6 months. Adolescents reported more positive than negative emotions. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that positive emotions were associated with greater connectedness and lower hostility. Negative emotions were not significantly associated with relationship quality. Longitudinal analyses showed that positive emotions predicted higher overall well-being but not changes in well-being over time. Interventions targeting parent-adolescent relationships may benefit from nurturing positive emotional exchanges to strengthen relationship quality and support well-being.
Access status: Open Access ,
INVESTIGATING ILLUSORY MOTION PARALLAX VIA VISUAL CUE DECOUPLING AND FORWARD MODELS IN VR
(2026-07-24) Kordmodanlou, Daniel; Nikolaus Troje
Under natural viewing, stereopsis and motion parallax provide consistent information about three-dimensional structure, but stereoscopic displays can decouple them: observers moving before a stereoscopic display that lacks viewpoint-contingent updates perceive illusory parallactic motion. This thesis investigates that illusion in head-mounted virtual reality and tests whether it arises from predictive mechanisms that use stereoscopic depth to generate expectations about motion parallax. Across five two-interval forced-choice experiments, the illusion required binocular disparity, and its perceived direction aligned with negative parallax, consistent with a signed prediction error rather than an unsigned cue conflict. Its magnitude was modulated by scene context, downward viewing angle, and observer distance. These findings support a forward-model account: binocular disparity specifies depth and predicts head-coupled motion parallax, and the absent expected parallax yields a prediction error experienced as scene motion. The results inform how the visual system integrates conflicting depth cues and the design of stereoscopic displays.
Access status: Open Access ,
Exploring Women's Experiences in a YMCA Health and Wellness Program for Mothers of Newborns
(2026-07-24) Shimmerman, Abby Kaitlyn; Jessica L. Fraser-Thomas
The postpartum period is a transformative time marked by significant physiological, emotional, and psychosocial changes. Although physical activity (PA) supports recovery and well-being, many mothers face barriers such as fatigue, childcare demands, time constraints, and financial limitations. This study explored the lived experiences of mothers in the YMCA Northumberland Mothers of Newborns (MON) program, examining how this community-based, mother-centered program supports postpartum adjustment. Guided by Self-Determination Theory and Becoming a Mother framework, a qualitative phenomenologically-informed approach was used. Seven participants engaged in semi-structured interviews, analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Four themes were identified: reclaiming identity by prioritizing the self beyond caregiving; building community through connection, support, and belonging; (re-)integrating physical activity into postpartum life; and designing mother-centred programming. While the program aimed to reduce barriers to PA, participants also described benefits, including reduced isolation, meaningful social connections, and renewed sense of self, highlighting the value of mother-centred community-based postpartum supports.
Access status: Open Access ,
Investigation of Small Molecule Inhibitors Targeting βCatenin/TCF4 Interaction in Ovarian Cancer Cell Lines
(2026-07-24) Yan, Rufei; Yi Sheng & Chun Peng
Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the deadliest gynecological malignancy. The development of chemoresistance and relapse is a major challenge in treating ovarian cancer. The Wnt/β-catenin pathway plays critical roles in embryonic development and adult homeostasis. The aberrant activation of β-catenin and its interaction with its co-activator TCF4 is implicated in the progression of EOC; therefore, targeting and inhibiting this interaction is desirable for the development of targeted therapies. Previous studies have identified a small molecule inhibitor of β-catenin known as C10, and novel analogues of C10, C45-C62 have been synthesized in-house. In this study, C45-C62 have been characterized through structure-activity relationship analyses and functional assays to determine their direct binding to β-catenin and antitumour effects. Optimization of C10 and its analogues could lead to potential development of a novel β-catenin/TCF4 inhibitor for ovarian cancer treatment.
Access status: Open Access ,
DESIGN AND VALIDATION OF AN INSTRUMENTED KNEE BRACE WITH ADJUSTABLE RESTRICTIONS FOR MACHINE LEARNING-BASED GAIT ANALYSIS
(2026-07-24) Dhupalia, Rahim Hussainali; Gerd Grau
Gait data can be analysed to classify which activities are performed and gauge the gait-related health of the performer. We consider health in the context of knee osteoarthritis and gait-afflicting conditions. This work captures gait from sixteen healthy participants who performed walking and sit-to-stand activities in a lab while artificially restricted at four severities, using a custom collection device and instrumented brace. A convolutional neural network classified activities with participant-averaged accuracies of 65.61% ± 8.85% and 67.21% ± 9.06% on two well-performing hyper parameter sets. Analysis found time-series features that differentiated between some restriction levels for each of the activities. Significant difference was found between swing phase of unrestricted walking activities and all other restriction levels, and for toe-off of unrestricted walking activities and moderate and severe restrictions. For sit-to-stand, significant difference was found between jerk standard deviation of negotiating sitting edge of unrestricted data and moderate and severe restrictions.
Access status: Open Access ,
Playing House
(2026-07-24) Presutto, Andrew Robert; Joy Wong
Playing House is a research-creation project that examines how masculinity and queerness are shaped through the aesthetics, objects, and spatial codes of the domestic interior. Stemming from memories of growing up in a home structured by traditional gender expectations, this thesis asks how an illustrative and material practice might negotiate masculinities and reimagine the childhood home as a site of softness, impartial play, and queer possibility. Drawing from feminist and queer theory, autotheory, object theory, and craft studies, it considers how objects and rooms orient bodies toward—or away from—ways of belonging. This project reconstructs memory as a speculative environment through a series of three works: Birch Vignettes, a collection of laser-cut installations that reconstruct childhood rooms; Tufted Troves, hand-tufted objects which transform fragile decor into plush forms; and Suminagashi Schematics, a synthesis of ink marbling, floor plans, and textiles used to speculate on how gender can be reorganized within space. In the process of making, identity is understood as continually renovated, memory as re-codable, shame as capable of softening, and inadequacy as becoming a tool for heutagogy and play.
Access status: Open Access ,
Far Beyond the Oceans, O Sa Mga Ibayong Dagat: Terraformations of National and Diasporic Belonging in Filipino Canada
(2026-07-24) Magsumbol, Nadjie Danielle Mediavilla; Ethel Tungohan
This dissertation develops the theory of terraformation, which I define as a contested and co-constituted process of change that occurs at the political-affective terrains of belonging experienced at the scales of the nation-state and the diaspora. As this research project’s case study is the Filipino diaspora in Canada, I therefore examine the ways in which terraformation as a process occurs across three scales. Mirroring the journey of the Filipino migrant to Canada, I begin in the Philippines through a critical discourse analysis of the annual State of the Nation Addresses from 1965 to 2025, before the point at which Filipino citizens-migrants depart the homeland. I argue that the Philippine state has terraformed Filipino citizenship from a belonging into a possessive in its commodification of Filipinos in Overseas Filipino Workers. I then follow the migrants in their move to Canada and the Filipino diaspora as they become migrant-citizens; I contend that families and individuals experience legal terraformations of belonging not only in accessing permanent residency and citizenship to Canada, but also in how the migrant-citizen’s legal-affective relationship with the new home nation is influenced by the ways in which they are received into its social and cultural fabric. Finally, I examine how the diaspora challenges the terrains of diasporic and national identity within Canada as its new home nation. Particularly, I argue that through fictive works, the Philippines as a minoritised and racialised diaspora resists and unsettles the sedimented mainstream Canadian notion of Filipino identity in Canada as labourer, but that in doing so, it terraforms not only the ways in which the diaspora sees itself, but also how Canada as the new home nation understands itself vis-à-vis the diaspora. I conclude that terraformation as a theory of change and as a heuristic, with its insistence on remembering what has been invisibilised, has allowed me to explore the experience of the diaspora as a group that exists in contestation with political and cultural hegemony across the long span of political time.
Access status: Open Access ,
Autistics in (educational) space: building our own futures.
(2026-07-24) Collis, Ryan Bradley; Steve Alsop
Autistic students in inclusive classrooms are often judged by their in/ability to adhere to neurotypical norms while affordances they create to survive and succeed often go unacknowledged. An affordance describes a sociomaterial approach by an individual to increase the number of possible actions available to them when in environments where their presence was not anticipated and when that environment is passively or actively hostile to their participation. I, an autistic teacher, student, and researcher, led a participatory research study of affordances with four autistic adults who attended secondary schools in Ontario, Canada. We ask, how can public, inclusive secondary schooling be improved by better understanding and responding to autistic affordances? In response, our study develops and critically evaluates new research methods. These methods challenge conventional qualitative research forms by actively recognising and embracing autistic ways of being, learning and relating. The methods are cultural probes (physical items and tasks participants respond to), shared reading (reading a novel and meeting one-on-one to discuss how it reflected the participants’ life) and speculative fiction and world building (a collaborative writing exercise involving an imaginary future). Thematic analysis of the cultural probes data reveals affordances of over/under-achieving and hyper-empathy. Participants were unsupported/misunderstood when they needed help, and all appeared to experience extraordinary empathy (especially for other autistic people). Data from the shared reading of Sønderby’s 2017 science fiction novel Failure to Communicate highlights affordances associated with responses to autism, education, identity, and others. In speculative fiction and world building, participants rejected approaches to adding inclusivity to existing school structures and created a world where autistic people together create futurities where acceptance of differences is foundational to society. Many affordances relate to resisting school structures systematically misrecognising autistic ways-of-being, worldviews, and futurities.
Access status: Open Access ,
Interpretable Deep Tabular Learning for Fraud and Phishing Detection in Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
(2026-07-24) Ameri, Ava; Arash Habibi Lashkari
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has introduced new security challenges due to its open, permissionless, and pseudonymous nature, which has increased the risk of fraud and phishing activities. This thesis first presents a comprehensive study of 284 DeFi platforms to examine their architectural, functional, and security-related characteristics. Building on this ecosystem-level analysis, the thesis develops a behavior-centric multiclass detection framework using Ethereum transaction data. The framework integrates legitimate, fraud, and phishing activities into a unified dataset and evaluates several traditional and deep tabular learning models, including TabNet, GANDALF, and NODE. The results show that deep tabular models outperform conventional baselines, with NODE achieving the strongest overall performance. Feature importance analysis highlights gas usage, nonce behavior, transaction frequency, and wallet activity as key indicators of malicious behavior. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that behavior-based Ethereum transaction features combined with deep tabular learning can support more effective and scalable DeFi threat detection.
Access status: Open Access ,
Kikisokemowin1: Pawatamowin in nehiyaw Legal Procedures
(2026-07-24) McAdam, Sylvia; Jeffery G. Hewitt
This master’s thesis explores nêhiyaw (Cree) and Anishinaabe legal orders, methodologies (Indigegogy), and epistemologies, emphasizing matrilineal systems within the language as well as kinship, and dreaming as law. It centers on the concept of kikisôkêmôwin—a process of spiritual and ancestral remembrance—and uses personal narratives, ceremonies, and linguistic analysis to decolonize and disrupt colonial manifestations and frameworks. This thesis also critiques colonial structures like the Doctrine of Discovery and calls for Indigenous resurgence rooted in original laws, kinship, and matrilineal knowledge. keywords: nêhiyawêwin language and knowledge, Indigegogy methodology, Indigenous, nêhiyaw laws, anti-colonial analysis, First Nations and Indigenous brilliance, matriarchal knowledge and governance systems, epistemology, ontology.
Access status: Open Access ,
READING ROMANCE FICTION:ASSOCIATIONS WITH SEXUAL BELIEFS AND SELF-ESTEEM
(2026-07-24) Shoemaker, Lilly Hope; Raymond A. Mar
Romance novels generate billions in annual revenue and account for over a quarter of all the books sold in the United States in recent years (Doherty, 2023). Romance novels often contain explicit sexual content, which may shape sexual beliefs and attitudes. Given that women are the predominate readers of romance novels, we asked undergraduate women to complete two surveys. Both studies included measures of exposure to romance, beliefs in sexual growth (i.e., that sexual compatibility can be developed), sexual destiny (i.e., that sexual compatibility is pre-ordained), and components of sexual self-concept (i.e., sexual self-esteem, preoccupation, and depression). Reading romance novels for many years was associated with stronger sexual growth beliefs and current frequency predicted lower sexual self-esteem. The influence of sexual experience, perceived realism, and motivations are discussed. Overall, reading romance novels is associated with women’s sexual beliefs and self-concept, both of which are tied to sexual health, and satisfaction.

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