MAIS News: Student Awards

March 30, 2021 —
MAIS Student wins UPEI Faculty Association Master’s Medal

Congratulations to Master of Arts in Island Studies (MAIS) student Joyce Ferguson for winning this year’s UPEI Faculty Association’s Master’s medal for her work on “Prince Edward Island and Renewable Energy: The Preconditions for a Sustainable Future.” The thesis, with co-supervisors Drs. Jean Mitchell and Udo Krautwurst, examines the relationship between energy policy and community in her home province of PEI through a case study of the wind farm expansion controversy in eastern Kings County.

ABOUT JOYCE
Joyce Ferguson graduated from UPEI with an Honours BA in Sociology, where she was on the Dean’s Honours List, and received one the Ambrose Kwok-Yau Lee Awards for 2018-19, the Roderick Stirling MacDonald Scholarship, and the Dr. Satadal Dasgupta Memorial Award. She was awarded a Future Prosperity Scholarship when she entered the MAIS program and has since received a Canada Graduate Master’s Scholarship from SSHRC. Joyce and her family live in Rustico and she is the very proud mother of nine-year-old Leo.

COVID-19 ISLAND INSIGHTS SERIES: Iceland, Newfoundland & Labrador, and Prince Edward Island

March 22, 2021 —
COVID-19 ISLAND INSIGHTS SERIES:
Iceland, Newfoundland & Labrador, and Prince Edward Island

The latest installment of the COVID-19 Island Insights Series features insights from Iceland, Newfoundland & Labrador, and right here on Prince Edward Island and discusses how these island regions have responded to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and the extent to which their recovery plans are able to promote long term resilience and sustainability.

Click here to read more

[Press Release] What Newfoundland and Labrador can learn from Iceland’s financial crisis


For Immediate Release


Charlottetown, PEI (March 15, 2021) —
What Newfoundland and Labrador can learn from Iceland’s financial crisis

UPEI’s Institute of Island Studies hosting free virtual event Tuesday, March 30th, 2021 featuring researchers from Newfoundland & Labrador and Iceland. More here

A Stella’s Circle building in St. John’s, shown
in the spring of 2020, carries a message of hope.
Source: The Canadian Press.


As cold-water islands with a shared history, Newfoundland and Labrador and Iceland are often compared. This time researchers are looking at what one island can learn from the other about getting through a financial crisis. They will be sharing their findings at a free, online, public event on Tuesday, March 30th at 1:00 pm ADT, hosted by the Institute of Island Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI).

While the financial catastrophe in Newfoundland and Labrador and the 2008 banking crisis in Iceland both seemed to happen suddenly, this study shows they both had deep roots. “Neither government heeded warnings before their crisis and both had poor communications throughout their crisis,” explains one of the researchers, Mark Stoddart of Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. “In Iceland however, public outrage created a turning point that we haven’t yet seen in Newfoundland and Labrador.”

This research undertaken by Professor Stoddart and Dr. Ásthildur Elva Bernharðsdóttir, an independent research scholar at ReykjavíkAkademían in Iceland, is a part of the Sustainable Island Futures project being coordinated by Dr. Jim Randall, the UNESCO Chair in Island Studies and Sustainability at UPEI. The project aims to develop a better understanding of the sustainable development practices and potential of small islands and is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

For more information and to register for the event, visit islandstudies.com/islandlectureseries-march2021.

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Media contact:
Dave Atkinson, UPEI
(902) 620-5117, datkinson@upei.ca

Event contact:
Maggie Henry, Institute of Island Studies, UPEI
mjhenry@upei.ca


Island Studies Journal moves to new institutional home

March 15, 2021 —
Island Studies Journal moves to new institutional home

The Institute of Island Studies is grateful to have been the founding institutional home of Island Studies Journal (ISJ), which has grown over the past 15 years to become an internationally recognized journal of great repute. We look forward to continuing to support ISJ as it embarks on this new chapter at its new institutional home of Fróðskaparsetur Føroya/University of the Faroe Islands, and congratulate Executive Editor Adam Grydehøj and the ISJ editorial board for their hard work and continued dedication to the study and discussion of conditions and issues impacting islands and island life.
Click here for full announcement