SACKVILLE, NB — Four Mount Allison University professors have been named the 2021 recipients of the Paul Paré Excellence Awards, recognizing their contributions in research, scholarship, and creative activities.

The 2021 recipients are:

• Dr. Christina Ionescu (Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and Visual and Material Culture Studies)
• Dr. Nathaniel Johnston (Mathematics and Computer Science)
• Dr. Renata Schellenberg (Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures)
• Dr. David Thomas (Politics and International Relations)

“This year’s Paul Paré Award recipients are wonderful examples of the innovative research and creative activity seen across the Mount Allison campus,” says Mount Allison Provost and Vice-President, Academic and Research Dr. Jeff Hennessy. “I congratulate Christina, Nathaniel, Renata, and David on their awards and look forward to learning more about their research and scholarship programs in the future.”

Dr. Christina Ionescu is Professor of French Studies and Director of the Visual and Material Culture Studies Program, a new program launched in 2019 that has grown significantly in the last year. With internal and external funding, she has completed a number of interdisciplinary and collaborative projects involving an international network of researchers, including editing a double issue of the Journal of Illustration (forthcoming in 2021). She is also the architect of a Certificate in Visual Literacy and Culture, an embedded certificate that aims at visual literacy skills through interdisciplinary and cross-cultural study.

Dr. Nathaniel (Nathan) Johnston has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals over the past six years in Mount Allison’s Math and Computer Science Department, including three with student co-authors. His work has been cited nearly 700 times on Google Scholar over the past three years. Along with his contributions to mathematics-based academic journals, Johnston is also the author of two textbooks for Linear Algebra, to be published this year. This area of study has seen an increase with his guidance, welcoming more than 100 students in Mount Allison’s Linear Algebra classes.

Politics and International Relations professor Dr. David Thomas has published in leading academic journals and authored two books in the past three years, Bombardier Abroad: Patterns of Dispossession (2018) and Capitalism and Dispossession: Corporate Canada at Home and Abroad (forthcoming). Thomas has also collaborated with Mount Allison students as well as colleagues at the University of Ottawa and Ryerson University on research initiatives and publications. He is the faculty supervisor for both the Model United Nations (MUN) and Atlantic International Studies Organization (ATLIS) student clubs, and serves as the program advisor as well as a supervisor for the LR Wilson Interns in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program.

Dr. Renata Schellenberg teaches German in the department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and also serves as program advisor. Her primary research focuses on 18th-century German literature, but more recently she has developed research interests in 20th-century memory studies and cultures of remembrance. She has authored 11 publications over the past three years and presented at multiple international conferences. Since 2019 she has been working on a SSHRC-funded project on post-colonial commemorative practices in Namibia, a former colony of the German Empire in Africa. Schellenberg brings this record of achievement into her teaching, both challenging and supporting her students to understand the language and cultural context of German-speaking countries, taking great care to adapt these courses for remote delivery over the past year.