Our Campus

Haley Branch, a fifth-year PhD student, had an unusual road to academia. Now she is advocating for other disabled students' rights to be in academia

Since joining UBC Climate Hub Nafeesa Alibhai’s activism is “full steam ahead or full electric engine power ahead.”

“My default position for Board meetings would be that things should be open to the extent they can be,” McKenzie said.

“I think that the most important thing I do is teach … [and] what I hope that does is invite [students] into scholarship."

Starting in May, eyes will focus squarely on Evans as the campus waits to see how he — and his promises — fare as the head of the union.

Ghebremusse applied to a year-long visiting professorship at the Allard School of Law, got an interview and was hired. After that temporary position ended, she landed a tenure-track professorship and became the only Black woman faculty member at Allard.

“The thing that I do at UBC that, to this day, still terrifies me is to be really open and vulnerable about living with disability.”

Out on the Shelves was established on Davie Street in April 1983, at the heart of Vancouver’s burgeoning 2SLGBTQIA+ community, and is the city’s oldest queer library.

“It’s just such an emotional burden that it’s placed on you as someone with an invisible disability because you can’t outwardly show how you’re suffering.”

”Every student advising body on campus, every faculty, every department has their own list of these mental resources that they pass out to students who come asking for this kind of stuff ... So far the solution has just been to create a list, or a PDF, or a website with bullet points.”

Increasingly destructive hurricanes, raging wildfires and the sobering fact that Canada is heating up at twice the global rate all contribute to what Dauvergne and others refer to as “eco-anxiety” — a chronic stress about the climate crisis.

“I don’t think I would be happy with graduating if I don’t feel like I’ve made any progress, and making the dean aware and more professors aware of the power that they have in shaping how students feel."

“Working within the [in-care] system, it can be really hard to actually engage on that level of systemic change. It seems a little bit more feasible to do it from the outside, and more effective.”

During her studies, Lightfoot maintained “a lens that always looked at Indigenous political struggles, Indigenous rights struggles, global politics for Indigenous peoples.”

Replacing interim VP Students Andrew Parr, Dr. Ainsley Carry is ready to tackle the VP’s vast portfolio and the unique issues facing UBC.