Junior Fellow Lecture Series: Unequal Education
Much of Western democracy, meritocracy, citizenship, and education has positioned itself as arbiters of freedom and equality. Yet, what are the lived realities and shortcomings, the cracks and slippages of education and political systems? What are the inherent asymmetrical power dynamics at play?
This event will be moderated by Dr. Ruth Childs. Professor Childs conducts research on the design and effects of large-scale assessments, admissions processes, and other evaluation systems. Her most recent large research projects investigated how elementary students deal with uncertainty when answering multiple-choice questions and what Ontario’s universities are doing to improve access for underrepresented groups. Her research has been supported by SSHRC, as well as the Ontario Ministry of Education, the Education Quality and Accountability Office, and the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. She is a past president of the Canadian Educational Researchers’ Association and former Ontario Research Chair in Postsecondary Education Policy and Measurement.
With presentations from:
Margaret (Margie) de Leon is in her third year of her PhD in Higher Education at the University of Toronto. Her research examines college affordability, financial aid policy, and the experiences of historically underrepresented students in higher education, with a particular focus on how policy design shapes access, persistence, and outcomes. Drawing on behavioural economics and policy analysis, her work investigates how “nudges” and other low-cost interventions can improve engagement with federal financial aid programs. Margie’s research has been supported by the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship and the Fulbright Scholarship, and she is committed to bridging academic research and public policy to advance more equitable postsecondary systems.
Krish Bilimoria is a fourth year resident in Critical Care Medicine at the University of Toronto. He completed his undergraduate at McMaster University in Global Health, medical school at the University of Toronto, and completed his Core Internal Medicine training at McGill University. He served as an MCAT Tutor through the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine Community of Service for underprivileged students, Diversity Mentorship Program mentor to first-generation medical students at the University of Toronto, and with other first-generation medical trainees, wrote an editorial on this topic.
Research description:
Greater social responsibility in our medical schools requires us to look at how system of privilege lead to a playing field where class reproduction appears to be the rule, and not the exception. I seek to share personal reflection & present a review of relevant qualitative research on the challenges in improving fairness in medical student selection.
Keagan Rankin is a PhD student and Vanier Scholar at University of Toronto Engineering. His research investigates the material and energy demands of infrastructure systems, and how we can meet these demands within climate limits.
Research description:
Machine learning has taken over many fields of science and engineering research, and this adoption has caused an explosion of papers with irreproducible results. In this presentation, I explain why there is a ‘reproducibility crisis’ in machine learning science, how this crisis has shown up in my own field of climate change mitigation, and what higher education can do to help mitigate it.
Mark Ariba is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Toronto. His research examines the genealogy of meritocratic practices in the United Kingdom and the United States, with a particular focus on civil service reform, education policy, and the moral and political imaginaries that shape liberal governance.
Research Description:
I will present work from my dissertation tracing how modern meritocracy emerged from nineteenth and twentieth century anxieties about class, eugenics, and moral worth, and how these ideas continue to structure contemporary debates about equity in education. The talk will outline how policy regimes meant to guarantee fairness often reproduce subtle forms of exclusion and inequality.
Kaushar Mahetaji is a PhD student based at the Faculty of Information researching social media platform companies. Specifically, Kaushar examines how changes to hardware and software tools shape the power of platform companies. She is broadly interested in devising methods to understand how platform companies govern workers and are governed themselves.
Research Description:
This interdisciplinary research examines how the platform company Meta, most widely recognized as the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, strategically develops AI tools, specifically large language models (LLMs), to replace and expand critical infrastructure in the education sector. I reflect on the consequences associated with platform companies using tools to accrue infrastructural power—the power asymmetries and dependencies, to illustrate the disproportionate impacts of LLM development on education.
Jacob Pittini (he/him) is a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. Here, he is invested in developing research methodologies for ethically co-theorizing with audiences of contemporary Canadian theatre. His research explores how participatory performance can allow audiences to collectively and creatively engage with pressing social issues. Jacob is a research associate at the Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research and has shared his work at the Canadian Association for Theatre Research, Theatre and Performance Research Association and in the pages of Canadian Theatre Review.
Research Description:
In the field of audience studies, scholars urge for empirical research which can help highlight the underrepresented perspectives of audience members. I will present on how a methodology of ethical co-theorizing can help address the inherent asymmetrical power dynamics at play in empirical research encounters and offset the risks these dynamics can pose to both participants and results.
Jessica Bo is a 3rd year PhD student in the Department of Computer Science, working at the intersection of applied AI and human-computer interactions. Her research uses human-centered methods to investigate how end users interact with AI-driven tools like ChatGPT, with a focus on themes like transparency, appropriate reliance, and safety. Jessica is also a Vanier Scholar, a Graduate Affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, and an Affiliate Research at the Vector Institute for AI.
Research Description:
As general-purpose AI chatbots like ChatGPT become increasingly anthropomorphized, they are entering users’ lives not merely as tools, but as intimate and romantic companions. Drawing on interviews with self-identified “partners of AI” and discourse from online AI companion communities, we present a mixed-methods study examining the tensions within how users develop, maintain, and control their relationships amid social pressure, model instabilities, and corporate interference.
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