SFU Global Humanities

Thanks to all current, incoming, and prospective Global Humanities students for sacrificing a portion of their Saturday to stop by our booth at this year's event! It was a tremendous pleasure for our undergraduate chair (far left), undergraduate advisor (far right), and members of HUMSU to meet and chat with you all, and we are excited to welcome you to the department this fall!

In the meantime, if you would like to learn more about our courses and programs, please contact our advisor, Elina Jin, at [email protected].

James Horncastle, McWhinney Professor in International Relations, on how the war in Iran has influenced Ukraine's tactics against Russia:

"But even though shifting international attention is to Ukraine’s disadvantage, a key aspect of warfare is that all participants generally play a role in its outcome. Ukraine, rather than idling, has increased its targeting of Russia’s energy infrastructure during the war in Iran."

The Conversation Canada

Read more:

Ukraine is countering the impact of the war in Iran by attacking Russian energy facilities Increased and effective Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure have prevented Russia from effectively exploiting higher oil prices.

Adrian Ivakhiv, J. S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities, publishes new essay marking 40 years since the Chornobyl disaster:

"The accident that took place at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant on 26 April 1986 was not just an event, not merely something that happened. It was a hyper-event. In its confluence of trajectories and flows, a hyper-event delivers an unpredictable manifold of novelty, with reverberations ringing far beyond the scope of its origins, permanently rupturing the ontology of a social order and expanding the circle of affective horizons by which its effects resonate into the world. The hyper-event of Chornobyl implicated us—those who have lived to make sense of it—in the folded fabric of a space-time that has changed as a result of that event. It did this on multiple levels. I will focus on four of them."

Read more:

Chornobyl at 40: Times and Spaces of a Hyper-Event Chornobyl was a hyper-event that ruptured Soviet reality, ending the USSR’s cosmo-industrial dream of conquering the cosmos through nuclear power. This essay traces how one disaster reverberates across multiple dimensions – geopolitical, ecological, ontological – asking what it means when ...

James Horncastle, McWhinney Professor in International Relations, talks with to explain the implications of the recent Hungarian elections for Canada's foreign policy:

加西-政論縱橫 ...

Assistant Professor Spyros Sofos’ HUM 347: Religion, Culture, and Society (“Intersecting Cultures: Islam in Europe and North America”) class visit to the Ismaili Centre and Jamaatkhana Vancouver on March 12th offered students a rare opportunity to encounter, in a lived and dialogical setting, the interconnections between faith, aesthetics, and community practice within the Ismaili tradition.

The group was warmly received with the Centre’s renowned masala chai and refreshments. This was followed by an engaging introduction from Feezah Jaffer, Member for External Relations of the Ismaili Council for British Columbia, who situated the Centre within both local and global contexts, highlighting its role as a space of encounter, education, and interfaith dialogue.

Read more: https://ow.ly/AcuW50YJ6WC

Assistant Professor Spyros Sofos speaks to CBC News's BC Today about the US/Israel-Iran ceasefire (interview timestamp: 10:36–32:18):

BC Today - April 08, 2026 BC Today is where British Columbians connect on issues facing their lives and their community with host Michelle Eliot.

Do you have a passion for writing? Have you crafted an exceptional essay in a Global Humanities course at SFU? Then make sure to apply for our Dutton Essay Award!

Applications must be submitted via web form to the Department of Global Humanities by May 9th, 2026, and must include an essay (at least 1,500 words in length) written as part of any Global Humanities course at SFU.

Note: You do not need to be Global Humanities major to apply.

AWARD DETAILS

One or more awards, valued at a minimum of $1,000 each, will be awarded to an undergraduate student who meets the following criteria:

✅ enrolled full-time in a degree program at SFU in Fall 2026;
✅ in good academic standing; and
✅ have written an exemplary essay in any Global Humanities course at SFU in Fall 2025 or Spring 2026.

For more information, please contact our Undergraduate Advisor, Elina Jin ([email protected]).

Apply now: https://ow.ly/GMBU50YGhLO

Congratulations to our director Sasha Colby for winning the Shevchenko Foundation's 2026 Kobzar Book Award for her book: "The Matryoshka Memoirs: A Story of Ukrainian Forced Labour, the Leica Camera Factory, and N**i Resistance," a work of creative nonfiction that explores the experiences of her grandmother, a forced labourer in N**i Germany: https://ow.ly/ZXzo50YzZVr

ABOUT THE AWARD

Presented biennially, the $25,000 KOBZAR™ Book Award recognizes outstanding contributions to Canadian literary arts by authors who write on a topic with a tangible connection to the experiences of Ukrainian Canadians. Genres include literary non-fiction, fiction, poetry, young readers’ literature, play, screenplay, and musical.

McWhinney Professor in International Relation James Horncastle on how intelligence was politicized in the US-Israel war in Iran:

"In her congressional testimony, Gabbard avoided the topic of whether intelligence agencies agreed that Iran posed an imminent threat to the U.S. Given that Gabbard was under oath, her evasion suggests the White House interpreted information differently or dismissed intelligence reports."

Read more:

U.S. actions in Iran are politically motivated, not the result of intelligence failures The Donald Trump administration has politicized intelligence on Iran and ignored various agencies in the lead-up to the war in Iran.

Join our J. S. Woodsworth Chair on April 7th @ 12:00–1:30PM PDT for the next installment of the hybrid webinar series on "Radical Hope in Feverish Times." Registration required for Zoom webinar access.

ABOUT THE SESSION
“Finding Psyche in Feverish Times”

Are we anxious enough yet? In the firehose of current crises and challenges—from Trump and the Epstein Files to Iran, Venezuela, Gaza, and Ukraine, to climate change, conspiracy cults, the weirdness of AI, and all the rest—is there any place where we might find ourselves, or the agency to resist, or something solid and comforting behind or beneath the onslaught? Or is there too much of ourselves already, and not enough opening to the otherness that we fear or resist? Where in the maelstrom is ‘nature,’ or God, or our common humanity?

Speakers will include ecopsychologist Andy Fisher, author of "Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life" (2013); Lacanian psychoanalyst Hilda Fernandez-Alvarez, co-founder of the Lacan Salon and president of Corpo Freudiano Vancouver; and psychological anthropologist Josh Brahinsky, author of "Tongues of Fire: How Charismatic Prayer Changes Evangelical Brains and Inspires Spirit-Filled Activism" (2026). They will be joined in conversation with poet Clint Burnham. Hosted and moderated by Adrian Ivakhiv.

Register now: https://ow.ly/Mrfc50YwBIg