You are invited to the third session of the 2025–2026 edition of the CRÉ Graduate Fellows’ Seminar.

On this occasion, France Lacharité and Nohémi Bokuma will present their research projects. Each presentation will last approximately 20 minutes and will be immediately followed by a discussion of about 25 minutes.

The aim of the Seminar is to provide our graduate fellows with constructive feedback and critical input to help them strengthen their research projects. It also offers them an opportunity to practise delivering a presentation in a format comparable to that of academic conferences. We very much hope that many of you will take part in this activity, which we intend to be particularly valuable as a learning experience.

Program:

          1) 1:30–2:15 p.m. — Presentation by France Lacharité, PhD candidate in Contemporary Religious Studies at the Université de Sherbrooke, supervised by Bertrand Lavoie, Marc Dumas, and Louise La Fontaine

Coping with Finitude: Limits, Vulnerabilities, and Meaning in Pediatric End-of-Life Care

In December 2015, Québec’s Act Respecting End-of-Life Care came into force, recognizing medical assistance in dying (MAID) as a form of end-of-life care for certain individuals aged 18 and over. After more than ten years of implementation, growing social acceptance and a reduction in resistance within the medical community have prompted discussions about extending MAID to other groups, including certain minors. More broadly, the question of MAID raises a number of issues, notably concerning our relationship to life and death.

Confronting death is difficult in itself, but it becomes even more complex when it concerns a child. In this context, the death of a child leads healthcare professionals to experience intense emotions and to face various limits (legal, professional, moral, or ethical). They are thus confronted with their own vulnerability, which can give rise to ethical, moral, and existential questions.

This presentation aims to share preliminary findings from a qualitative study conducted in a Québec pediatric hospital, based on shadowing observations of five healthcare professionals and approximately fifty semi-structured interviews with different types of caregivers.

Initial analyses highlight interactions with families and the challenges that arise when questions of time, hope, and meaning emerge as the end of life approaches. They also bring to light certain needs of healthcare professionals when providing pediatric end-of-life care.

          2) 2:15–3:00 p.m. — Presentation by Nohémi Bokuma, MA student in Political Science at Concordia University, supervised by Dr. Stephanie Paterson and Dr. Jonathan Martineau.

Examining and identifying the gaps in Canadian policies and how they respond to digital gender-based violence

Digital gender-based violence in Canada is increasing and even materializes beyond the internet and into our real world. Alek Minassian was found guilty of the “2018 Toronto van attack, […] the deadliest incident linked to the incel movement” (Beckett 2021), a sub-culture of men who believe “that women use their sexual power to dominate [them] socially” (Basu 2020). Thus, through an analysis of this emerging dimension of misogynistic digital violence, this master’s thesis will examine how Canadian policies interact with digital gender-based violence, with the sexist radicalization of young men online, and will also critique the technologies that facilitate this precise and gendered violence. The central question arises from the following observation: the feelings shared amongst internet users, namely the sense of belonging to a community, freedom and anonymity, in addition to the “differences between web hosts” (Ganesh 2018, 38) and the lack of unified regulations, all lead to the undermining of women’s cybersecurity. As a result, as groups such as those from the manosphere are allowed to migrate from one platform to another, further escaping the threat of their online community being shut down and maximizing their promotion of a misogynistic digital culture, women’s digital security is weakened and is made even more vulnerable.

Through this analysis, the following questions emerge: the ethics behind the current practices (and the policies that govern them) of platforms such as Reddit, 4Chan, Meta and X (Twitter), the governance and ethics advanced technologies and artificial intelligence within these platforms, and finally, the question of the power acquired and the profit generated by these companies at the expense of women.