Royal Society of Canada honours five UVic researchers

Ryan Rhodes (Education), Janelle Jenstad (Humanities), Carey Newman (Fine Arts) and Lin Cai (Engineering) are newly elected Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC), while Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark (Human and Social Development) is the newest member of the RSC’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.

Fellows are Canada’s most eminent scholars who make remarkable contributions in academia and Canadian public life. Members of the College are academics less than 15 years from the date of their PhD. There are currently 2,524 Fellows and 436 members of the College of New Scholars in Canada.

UVic is continuing its strong representation of scholars recognized by the Royal Society of Canada. Since 2020, 32 UVic professors have been elected as Fellows or members of the College of New Scholars.

New Fellows

Ryan Rhodes, Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education

Ryan Rhodes is an international leader in the field of exercise and health psychology, whose research advances our understanding of early family development of physical activity. Rhodes is at the forefront of theoretical health psychology – he developed a theoretical model to understand and intervene upon the intention-behaviour gap in physical activity and other health behaviours. This approach blends theories of motivation with self-regulation tactics to assist people following through on their good intentions, which helps develop habits and identity to continue the behaviour.  

For 20 years, my research has focused on ways to overcome the physical activity intention-behavior gap, made popular by New Year’s resolutions that people struggle to enact every year. My research has focused on promoting family physical activity through strengthening motivation, and then using innovative tactics to turn good intentions into sustained healthy behaviors.

—Ryan Rhodes, professor and Director of the Behavioural Medicine Laboratory

Janelle Jenstad, English

Janelle Jenstad is a founding member of the Endings Project at UVic. She founded and directs The Map of Early Modern London (MoEML) and Linked Early Modern Drama Online (LEMDO), and co-coordinates  The New Internet Shakespeare Editions (NISE), Digital Renaissance Editions (DRE) and the MoEML Mayoral Shows (MoMS) digital anthologies. Jenstad’s current research brings together an international team of editors, students, digital humanists, book historians, theatre practitioners and educators who are collaboratively creating Endings-compliant, performance- and pedagogy-informed digital, open-access editions of over 500 plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

Working with scholars and students, my team and I are recovering and editing over 500 plays by Shakespeare’s contemporaries, making them available for performance and advanced study via robust, open-access digital editions. We are mentoring the next generation of editors and establishing new models for digital publishing and global collaboration.

—Janelle Jenstad, professor

Lin Cai, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Lin Cai is a world-renowned expert in wireless networking, dedicated to advancing network reliability, scalability and quality of services. She collaborates beyond the traditional engineering communities to address practical societal challenges. Her work includes extending the lifespan of sensor networks for wildlife surveillance, ensuring widespread coverage for large-scale vehicular networks, enhancing reliability in remote first-responder communications, implementing contactless and privacy-preserving sleep activity monitoring, and achieving mobile node localization in shallow and deep-sea underwater environments.

As an engineer, I enjoy solving practical challenges that make a real impact, always striving to find the simplest solutions. To me, simplicity is beautiful and elegant. As an educator, the most rewarding moments come from hearing alumni share how their work is making a positive change in the world.

—Lin Cai, professor and graduate advisor

Carey Newman, Visual Arts

Artist and scholar Hayalthkin’geme – Carey Newman, makes regional, national and international impact by combining art and Kwakwaka’wakw Knowledges to address Indigenous and environmental injustice. His projects, like The Witness Blanket and Seedling, transform conversations around reconciliation and decolonization across social, institutional and political paradigms, driving innovation and collaboration that challenge status quo approaches to research in the arts, climate, leadership, transsystemic law, collections management, conservation, technology and more.

Transformative change involves reaching hearts and minds. So, when I make artwork about specific issues, rather than telling people what to think or how to feel, I want them to engage with it on their own terms and take ownership of their thoughts and realizations. When something becomes personal it becomes important, and once it is important we are more willing to change our ways. Art has this power.

—Hayalthkin’geme – Carey Newman, Impact Chair in Indigenous Art Practices

New Member of the College of New Scholars

Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, Indigenous Governance

Stark’s innovative approaches to Indigenous law and governance have advanced the restoration of Indigenous political authority and jurisdiction. Centering Anishinaabe political thought, her work transforms our understandings of treaty and promotes a radical ethic of relationality for how we live together as treaty partners, as communities within which conflict and harms arise, and as humans in relation with the environment.

Indigenous law and governance are uniquely suited to take up the most vexing issues facing our world. They guide us away from rights-based models that are too often individualist, extractive and capitalist driven and toward deeply relational modes that center our responsibilities to one another and the lands and waters.

—Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, associate professor

Learn more about the Royal Society of Canada and this year’s new Fellows.