This year’s celebration honoured 10 exemplary individuals, including a Chancellor Emeritus and a Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

Congratulations to all the 2025 honourees.

Chancellor Emeritus

Chancellor Dave Angus and President Michael Benarroch present Anne Mahon with certificate for Chancellor Emeritus.

Ms. Anne Mahon served with distinction as the University’s 14th Chancellor from 2019 to 2025, where she brought compassion, wisdom, and a deep commitment to community to her role. A bridge-builder and philanthropist, Ms. Mahon is known for connecting people and inspiring positive change. Her work at the intersection of storytelling, community-building, and education has amplified the voices of those marginalized and often unheard.

Ms. Mahon has dedicated herself to volunteerism and advocacy, including working closely with United Way Winnipeg, founding and facilitating the Bookmates Book Club at the Women’s Correctional Centre, and volunteering with the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba, Humankind International, and Palliative Manitoba. Her leadership and compassion have left an enduring mark on the University of Manitoba, thereby earning the title of Chancellor Emeritus.

Distinguished Professor Emeritus

Chancellor Dave Angus and President Michael Benarroch present Leslie Roos with certificate for Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

The University of Manitoba was honoured to confer upon Dr. Leslie Roos the title of Distinguished Professor Emeritus. An influential scholar and innovative leader in population health and health policy research, Dr. Roos joined the University of Manitoba in 1973. Over the course of his distinguished career in the Faculties of Administrative Studies (now the Asper School of Business) and Medicine, he helped establish the university as an international centre of excellence in health services research and data-informed policy.

As a founder of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, Dr. Roos led the creation of its internationally respected population health database, enabling groundbreaking studies on the health and well-being of Manitobans. He has played a central role in training and inspiring a generation of researchers whose work continues to shape Canadian health systems and stands among the most influential contributors to health policy research globally.

Professor Emeriti:

• Dr. Harold Aukema
• Dr. Ying Chen
• Dr. Kevin Coombs
• Prof. Herbert Enns
• Dr. Elissavet Kardami
• Dr. Eberhard Renner
• Dr. Wayne Simpson
• Dr. Qiang Zhang

To learn more about the 2025 honourees, please visit the Emeritus/Emerita Titles webpage to read their individual citations.

Emeriti titles are one of several awards given annually by the university in celebrating and recognizing the success of colleagues and other distinguished individuals. Learn about the university awards nomination process.

“In general, I would say 30 days is not a whole lot of time, and for big, big export volumes and big projects, it’s nowhere near going to be close enough,” said Fletcher Baragar.

To read the entire story which includes comments from UM Director of the Transport Institute, Barry Prentice, please follow the link to CBC Manitoba. 

“On one hand, they talk about food affordability, and (on) the other hand, they have a government-sanctioned cartel in staple foods,” Cardwell said.

“So, it’s talk. I don’t give it much credence.”

Canada’s supply management system sets prices for products and puts controls on production and imports to protect domestic farmers from foreign competition, guard against price volatility for their products and stabilize production levels.

First introduced in the dairy industry in the 1960s before expanding into eggs and poultry, the system exists in lieu of subsidies, which are common in the agricultural sector around the world.

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“The success of these projects speaks highly of the quality of new and emerging research at UM,” said Mario Pinto, vice-president (research & international). “I congratulate these twelve researchers on seeking new and cutting-edge ways to address the challenges faced by society.”

The 2023 UM Insight Development Grant recipients are:

Margherita Cameranesi

Margherita Cameranesi, postdoctoral researcher/fellow, Department of Food and Human Nutritional Sciences: Finding Your Resilience (FYRe): Listening to the Voices of Racialized Refugee Youth to Learn About Their Multisystemic Resilience Using a Participatory Action Research Approach

By listening to the voices of racialized refugee youth who resettled in Winnipeg, Margherita Cameranesi seeks to better understand the mechanisms that contribute to their resilience, mental health, and overall wellbeing. She also aims to develop culturally appropriate and trauma-informed resources for racialized youth seeking asylum in Canada.

Sarah Ciurysek

Sarah Ciurysek, associate professor, School of Art: Navigating a land gift as a settler committed to decolonization: a photographic research/creation project

This year Ciurysek (a settler artist) will be gifted a section of land in northwestern Alberta. Being committed to decolonization and reconciliation between settlers and Indigenous Peoples, Ciurysek seeks to examine decolonizing land use options for privately-owned farmland through a photographic interrogation of self, history, and contemporary land use.

Benjamin Collins

Benjamin Collins, assistant professor, Department of Anthropology: Narratives from Fragments: Re-Thinking Narratives of Manitoba’s Archaeology

Indigenous researchers Kayla Shaganash and Brandi Cable, co-applicant Laura Kelvin, and Collins will study archaeological materials from six sites across Manitoba to help inform how Indigenous peoples engaged with landscapes across the past 8,000 years. This project will provide further training for Indigenous researchers and facilitate engagement with Indigenous communities.

Merissa Daborn

Merissa Daborn, assistant professor, Department of Indigenous Studies: The Food Police: Carceral Food Spaces in Winnipeg

In response to recent increased security and policing at grocery stores, Daborn seeks to better understand the impact of surveillance on Indigenous people in Winnipeg, especially as it relates to their ability to achieve food security. This research will document how systematic surveillance practices result in criminalization of racialized communities.

Zhenzhen Fan

Zhenzhen Fan, Assistant professor, Department of Accounting and Finance: Market Crash Risk: Fact or Artifact?

This project seeks to address whether the risk of financial crash is inherent in the market, or if they result from subjective perceptions of investors. By exploring probable triggers for market turmoil, Fan seeks to better inform investors and policy makers and reduce the risk of crash in the future.

Hikmet Gunay, professor, Department of Economics: Anticipated Regret in Second-Price Auctions

Some bidders go bankrupt after winning an auction due to overbidding. In this research, we aim to understand how emotions cause overbidding, and offer solutions to correct it. Governments can use this research when auctioning infrastructure projects which will prevent bankrupts so that the projects will be completed on time.

Gayle Halas

Gayle Halas, researcher, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences: Homeless, Recovering and ‘Back to the Street’: Identifying the Support Network

Partnering with community agencies and individuals with lived experience of homelessness, the Halas research team seeks to bridge the gap between availability and access to resources/supports needed by individuals experiencing homelessness and discharged from hospital. This project will identify challenges and inform ongoing efforts to launch a Support Hub to facilitate navigation.

Sreemali Herath

Sreemali Herath, assistant professor, Curriculum, Teaching and Learning: Towards inclusive and reciprocal pedagogical practices for all learners: Insights from refugee journeys

Set against unprecedented forced migration, this study aims to document narratives of the refugee journey to Canada. Focusing on refugee families, it aims to develop asset oriented, inclusive and reciprocal curricula that will benefits all learners and provide a broader and more nuanced understanding of refugeeism.

Stephanie Hladik

Stephanie Hladik, assistant professor, Centre for Engineering Professional Practice and Engineering Education: The Impact of Facilitating STEM Outreach: Perceptions, Identities, and Other Impacts

This project works in collaboration with WISE Kid-Netic Energy, a nonprofit STEM outreach organization that recruits undergraduate students from underrepresented groups as facilitators. Hladik seeks to investigate how planning and delivering STEM education impacts how these facilitators perceive STEM fields, develop STEM identities, and gain new skills and career interests.

Jeongmin Kim

Jeongmin Kim, assistant professor, Department of History: Unseemly Military: The Undocumented Workers of U.S. War and Military Occupation in Cold War Asia

This project will engage labor injustice in war and military occupation by offering historical perspectives on contemporary issues of gendered and racialized militarization of everyday life. To understand how local people respond to unfavorable employment in times of war, Kim will investigate cases from 1940s and 50s Cold War Asia.

Suzanne McLeod

Suzanne McLeod, assistant professor, School of Art: Early Distortion: Pinturicchio and the Genesis of a Constructed Image

Possibly the earliest depiction of North American Indigenous people in European art, a recently cleaned Vatican fresco reveals a destructive embryonic stereotype developing alongside Columbus’s 1493 voyage report and the “Doctrine of Discovery”. This project will close an art historical gap by reinterpreting the visual record through an Indigenous perspective.

Virginia Tze

Virginia Tze, associate professor, Educational Administration, Foundations and Psychology: Identifying Systemic Barriers Among People of Colour Entering in Professional Psychology

Canada is experiencing a mental health crisis, and People of Colour looking for a psychologist who is also a Person of Colour can expect to wait up to a decade.  This project seeks to understand how to better support People of Colour in becoming professional psychologists, through a mixed methods design.

Public funding for such innovation in Canada has fallen to seventh in the world at 0.046 percent of gross domestic product, down from 0.1 percent, said Jared Carlberg, professor of agribusiness and agricultural economics at the University of Manitoba.

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The gas-tax holiday is a “wasteful” way to help those who most need it, said Hajer, who is opposed to extending it.

Historic data on average distance travelled and average fuel economy show the typical driver can be expected to save approximately $15 per month from the gas tax cut, he said.

“This is not nothing, but it’s unlikely that a $15 savings has made a big difference when it has come to dealing with the rising cost of living,” Hajer said.

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On Thursday, the city announced that it has issued $200 million in new bonds, which have already been purchased. The money will go to projects including the South End Water Pollution Control Centre, the north district police station, and the St. James Civic Centre.

The bonds were issued on a 40-year term at an interest rate of 4.65 per cent. The city notes that unlike federal and provincial governments, it can’t legally borrow to balance operating budgets.

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“When you make a formerly exorbitantly expensive service affordable, more people will try to use it. Economists call this induced demand,” Prentice said in an interview.

“Some families are lucky and they’re getting into these $10-a-day spaces but many more families are shut out because we do not have enough services.”

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The Manitoba government is missing out on $1.6 billion in annual revenue after seven years of cuts to income tax, sales tax, education property tax and business tax by the previous PC government, says a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report titled, Funding Our Way: Rebalancing Revenues and Spending for a Fair and Prosperous Manitoba.

That’s close to what Manitoba spends on post-secondary education and training in a year, and more revenue than was collected last year from corporate, fuel, land transfer, health and education payroll and tobacco taxes combined, according to the report.

“The NDP election commitments to keep nearly all these tax cuts, suspend the gas tax and balance the budget place serious constraints on Manitoba’s ability to repair the damage of seven years of cuts and underfunding of health, education and other public services,” said University of Manitoba economics Prof. Jesse Hajer, one of three authors of the 43-page document.

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