Honours student profiles: Research projects in history and physics depts

Stephen Bennett. Savannah Mileen Harris/Argosy

Stephen Bennett is a fourth year honours student in the physics department.

“I’ve been a research student in the Mt. A Medical Physics Lab for the past two summers. My work focuses primarily on detecting zinc in artificially fabricated human nail samples, with the ultimate goal of assisting in the global zinc deficiency problem – one that affects approximately two billion people. Zinc deficiency is the leading cause of toddler mortality in the world, and causes impaired immune function. We use a very cool form of physics called x-ray fluorescence to assess many elements in our samples, and our technology is a safe, fast and relatively inexpensive method of doing this when compared to the chemical analysis methods that exist in the medical field today.”

 

Kiera Stel. Savannah Mileen Harris/Argosy

Kiera Stel is a fourth year honours student in the history department.

“My research is about the charitable efforts of women’s organizations in two different communities: Sackville, N.B. and Penticton, B.C. from the 1910s to the 1930s. During this period, women’s role in the public sphere expanded as they gained limited access to the franchise. This is also a period characterized by first-wave feminism. Through my research, I found that the issues that the women cared about in these two places were shockingly similar. In both my archival research and my secondary research, it has been inspiring to investigate how women throughout Canada used ideals that normally confined women to the private sphere, such as female religious morality, to instead actively participate in the public sphere by improving their communities for the better.”

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