It was a delight to host Nandini Das of the University of Oxford for the W. J. Alexander Lecture in English — the last public lecture of the 2025-26 year 📖🎉
Thank you to all who attended and our colleagues in the department of English for co-organizing and facilitating the graduate masterclass. We look forward to seeing everyone at next year’s lectures!
Introducing Behind the Blues: a new series spotlighting our work study team. 💙
First up: Hugo Nguyen - the creative force behind Varsity Blues volleyball content (and one of the best to do it)!
Read the full story at varsityblues.ca ✍️
🎬 Experience ‘Aki’ (2025) live with University College, Cinema Studies and the Canadian Film Forum. Meet the director Darlene Naponse at the ensuing panel discussion and Q&A with Julia Pegahmagabow and the 2025-26 Barker Fairley Distinguished Visitor Wanda Nanibush.
📆When:
Sunday, April 26th, 2026
Doors open at 2:30 pm ET
Programming starts at 3:00 pm
📍Where:
Innis Town Hall, Innis College
2 Sussex Ave., Toronto, ON
M5S 1J5
The event is free, and all are welcome, though registration is required. Learn more & register via the QR code in post or the UC website!
Darlene Naponse is an Anishinaabe Kwe from Atikameksheng Anishnawbek, Northern Ontario. She is a writer, film director, and video artist. Naponse completed a Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts and was the 2017 Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize Finalist. Her features include ‘Cradlesong’ (2003), ‘Every Emotion Costs’ (2010), ‘Falls Around Her ‘(2018) and ‘Stellar’ (2022). ‘Aki’ (2025) is her latest film.
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Wanda Nanibush is the 2025-26 Barker Fairley Distinguished Visitor at University College. She is an Anishinaabe-kwe image and word warrior, curator and community organizer from Beausoleil First Nation. She is the Helen Frankenthaler Visiting Professor in Curating in the PhD Program in Art History at CUNY in 2025 in the Graduate Department of Art History. Nanibush is part of the curatorial team for Counterpublic 2026, St.Louis’ Triennial. She is also the founder of aabaakwad, an international yearly gathering of over 80 Indigenous curators, writers and artists.
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Julia Pegahmegabow is the founding executive director (eniigaanizid) of Akinoomoshin Inc. an anishinaabe being (aadiziwin) education organization situated in the community of adikamegshiing (Atikameksheng Anishnawbek). The work of Akinoomoshin Inc. is dedicated to transforming the learning experience for anishinaabek through Anishinaabemowin (language) immersion, anishinaabe kendasowin (knowing), and aki kendaman (earth learning) in a teaching lodge learning environment called akinoomoshin wiigwam.
Nice to ‘C’‘U’ at UConnect 2026 ✨💼🔗😎🫰
UC students and the Office of the Dean of Students hosted the annual student-run UConnect Student Leadership Conference. The day-long event featured a full roster of programming, including information panels, a keynote presentation, and workshops to help attendees learn practical tools and skills to further their leadership goals.
Learn more via the link in post or on our website.
HEY UC!! Despite Fireball being a bit over a month ago, these photos are bringing it back to life! Thank you so much for everyone who attended Fireball 2026, for the event could not be as FIRE without the UC community. Whether you partied away on the dance floor, visited our activity rooms or found our magician, the spirit of Fireball was surely captured 🌹🐇🕰️
Fireball 2026: Down The Rabbit Hole was a night to remember and we hope to see you all next year for Fireball 2027!
🔗Giving Day link in bio🔗
Support students like Agnesa at University College by giving back.
A third-year Immunology and Health & Disease student and this year’s UC Giving Day Ambassador, Agnesa says scholarship support eased financial stress and allowed her to focus on academics, leadership, and building community at UC.
From March 1–26, every gift to featured funds is matched dollar-for-dollar (up to $1,000 while funds last) — doubling your impact on #UofTGivingDay.
Join us as The University of Oxford’s Nandini Das presents ‘On Belonging’. Belonging is commonly understood as a matter of identity, attachment, or legal recognition. The 2025-26 Alexander Lecture approaches it instead as a precarious public condition: the capacity to appear, act, and be judged within a shared world. Drawing on sixteenth and early seventeenth-century England, a society simultaneously obsessed with borders and shaped by movement, ‘On Belonging’ argues that belonging was neither natural nor secure, and examines literature as a site where it was tested under pressure. The figures and texts at its center reveal belonging as a reversible position, shaped by language, faith, usefulness, and narrative continuity, and always vulnerable to withdrawal.
📅 When:
Tuesday, March 31st, 2026
4:30-6:00 p.m. ET
📍Where:
Paul Cadario Conference Centre at Croft Chapter House
University College
15 King’s College Circle, Toronto, ON,
M5S 3H3
Featuring Nandini Das, Professor, Early Modern English Literature and Culture
Exeter College, University of Oxford
The Alexander Lecture is being held in person at University College with live online streaming for home viewers. Faculty, students, staff, and the public are cordially invited to this hybrid lecture.
💡The event is free and all are welcome, though registration is required and seating is limited for in-person attendance.
Please let us know if you require accessibility accommodations upon registration. For more information, contact [email protected]
Learn more & register on the UC website via our Instagram story link or through the event post QR code.
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#EnglishLiterature #EarlyModern #England #Travel
Step inside University College, #UofT’s founding college and one of its most historic spaces. Opened in 1859, this Romanesque Revival landmark is now designated a National Historic Site of Canada.
Inside, you’ll find reading rooms, lecture halls, an art gallery and signature dragon and owl motifs throughout. From cloistered walkways to the central quad, University College blends tradition with modern campus life. Take our #UofT Tiny Tour for a closer look.
This morning presented many fascinating insights from very impressive research conducted by #uc_uoft ’s own Cognitive Science program students and the broader #uoft cognitive science community. From #uofthackathon -winning mobile learning applications to the deployment of research findings in practical settings, these students are already making measurable positive changes in our world! 👏
A special thanks to program director Dirk Bernhardt-Walther and the @casa.uoft student union team for organizing today’s Cognitive Science undergraduate research symposium.
#cognitivescience #linguistics #appliedscience #undergraduateresearch
University College students, staff, and faculty came together with good cheer and delicious food at the college’s annual holiday party. ✨
Professor Maria Papaconstantinou was also honoured for her service as the acting director of the Public Health Program throughout the last year. 👏
“It’s wonderful to see such energy and connection in our shared spaces,” said Principal Markus Stock, “We’ve had a very good year at the college, and this is the case because all students, faculty, and staff are making it such a good place.”
A big ‘thank you’ to everyone who make UC such a special place, and best wishes to all of our amazing students during their winter exams. 🔥🙌
Here’s to another great year at UC! 💫 🦉
Celebrating 50 Years of Canadian Studies at University College 🍁
On October 14th, 2025, friends, faculty, students, and alumni of the Canadian Studies program gathered to commemorate fifty years of leading critical scholarship on the study of Canada at the 2025 Mel Watkins Lecture.
“The fact that the program was so interdisciplinary had an amazing positive impact on my life,” wrote a former Canadian Studies student, “that type of perspective has been extremely valuable, whether thinking about Canada, in specific, or how societies function in general.”
The 50th anniversary lecture was named after Professor Mel Watkins, one of the founders of the Canadian Studies program in 1975, and the evening’s proceedings featured the lecture and an ensuing reception.
Read more about the history and impact of UC’s Canadian Studies program at the link in the post or on the UC website.
