The Faculty of Arts has announced Dr. Pauline Ripat and Dr. Julie Chamberlain as recipients of the 2023 Faculty of Arts Excellence Awards.
Dr. Pauline Ripat, Associate Professor in the Department of Classics, is the recipient of the 2023 Faculty of Arts Excellence in Teaching Award.
The Committee was particularly impressed by Dr. Ripat’s thoughtful assignments in her Disability in Greek and Roman Antiquity course. Using feedback from a former Classics student who is visually impaired, students made detailed audio recordings of an artifact describing its physical aspects and social-historical context. As Dr. Ripat explains, students learned various skills through this assignment, including thinking about what it means to be visually impaired when accessing museum exhibits.
Dr. Ripat’s status as a recognized authority in her fields of teaching and study is further demonstrated by her role as coauthor of two undergraduate course books on ancient Roman society with Oxford University Press, one of them a primary source book that has gone through three editions. She also co-developed two game apps for students of Latin (2015) and ancient Greek (2020). For these apps, Dr. Ripat and her co-developer received a Public Engagement award from the Classical Association of Canada in 2021.
Department of Classics Instructor Dr. Natalie Swain, who was Dr. Ripat’s student 15 years ago and is now her colleague, nominated Dr. Ripat—whom she regards as “a career-long inspiration”—for the award. According to Dr. Swain, Dr. Ripat’s “hands-on learning activities would have us folding togas, writing on replica Roman tablets, and recreating curse tablets, assignments that took her students beyond texts and lectures.” Dr. Ripat’s commitment to students, novel uses of technology, and attunement to the materiality of the past (and how this informs our present) make her a most worthy recipient of this year’s teaching award.
Dr. Julie Chamberlain, Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban and Inner-City Studies, is the recipient of the 2023 Faculty of Arts Excellence in Scholarly/Creative Activity Award. This award recognizes a singular achievement in the form of a single contribution in research or creative activity during the past academic year (September 2021 to August 2022).
Dr. Chamberlain was nominated for her book, Wilhelmsburg is our home! Racialized Residents on Urban Development and Social Mix Planning in a Hamburg Neighbourhood (Bielefield, transcript, 2022).
Expanding on her PhD research, Dr. Chamberlain’s book brings attention to the lived experiences of racialized people in neighbourhoods facing extensive re-development and disruption. It explores how racism is fundamentally part of structures and policies that shape their everyday life.
The Committee was impressed by the breadth and depth of research required to bring the project to fruition and noted the international reach of the publication.
As Dr. Shauna MacKinnon, Chair of Urban and Inner-City Studies, wrote in her nominating letter, “This book, published by an independent academic press based in Germany, represents an important singular scholarly achievement for Dr. Chamberlain. It is also significant for the University of Winnipeg to have scholars publishing through an international press. Finally, it is significant for University of Winnipeg students to be exposed to scholarship examining the experiences of racialized groups beyond Canadian borders.”