Opening Reception Keynote
Following the Bison: Western Science and Indigenous Insights into Migration, Hunting, and Human-Animal relations
August 18, 2024 @ 17:45
Open to the Public
Dr. Jessica Metcalfe
Jessica Metcalfe has an MA in Biological Anthropology and a PhD in Earth and Environmental Science from the University of Western Ontario. She is currently an assistant professor of Anthropology at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Her research focuses on using biogeochemical methods to reconstruct large mammal diets, migration, and human-environment interactions. As a settler anthropologist, she believes she has a responsibility to contribute to restorative justice for Indigenous people in Canada. Her work with Tsattine knowledge-keeper Victoria Wanihadie on the SSHRC-funded ‘Dene Bison Hunting and Migrations’ project is a first step in that direction.
Daily Keynotes
Informing Water Resource Management and Constraining Climate Model Projections
Dr. David Sauchyn
Dave Sauchyn is Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at the U of R and Director of the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative. His research interests are variability in prairie hydroclimate over the Common Era, and planned adaption to minimize the adverse impacts of climate change. Dave has given more than 500 invited talks on aspects of climate variability and change. He can trace his prairie roots back to the 1910s when his grandparents arrived from eastern Canada and from Ukraine.
Deglacial Ice Sheet Dynamics Associated with Abrupt Climatic Change
Dr. Sophie Norris
Sophie L. Norris is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria. She received her PhD from the University of Alberta and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Dalhousie University. Her research interests combine geochronological and geomorphic methods to study past ice responses to global climatic change throughout the Quaternary period. Most recently, her research has been focused on Western Canada, reconstructing the response of the Laurentide Ice Sheet to rapid warming during the last deglaciation and the impacts the ice sheet had on landscape evolution and global sea level.
Ancient DNA: Recent Advances and Near Term Prospects from a Canadian Perspective
Dr. Tyler Murchie
Tyler J. Murchie is a palaeogenomics research scientist at the Hakai Institute in British Columbia studying palaeoecology in northwestern North America during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Other ongoing research efforts of his are focused on ancient environmental DNA from the Canadian high arctic, and southern Ontario, with previous research in Mediterranean archaeology, the northern Canadian plains, and subarctic Yukon. Tyler completed his doctorate and post-doctoral research at McMaster University, along with master's and bachelor's degrees in archaeological science at the University of Calgary.
