The 2026 Royal Society of Canada Eastern Ontario Symposium is a free event open to anyone from the Kingston community and beyond, interested in hearing four experts talk entertainingly about their research. There will be a short period for questions following each presentation.
Tickets are required and can be obtained in advance from the IBCPA Box Office. Seating is assigned so getting tickets early will ensure a good seat. The link for tickets will be available soon. The cash bar opens at 5:30 pm.
This event will be available for livestream viewing using the link on this page and later posted on the RSC YouTube channel.
In presenting this event, support is gratefully acknowledged from the Royal Society of Canada, Queen’s Vice-Principal Research Portfolio, and the IBCPA (Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts).
Speakers
LORI BURNS, FRSC | Claiming Sonic and Cultural Space: Women’s Voices in the Genre of Metal Music
Metal scholars point to the preponderance of patriarchal values and hypermasculinity, acknowledging how these values contribute to the aesthetic production of misogyny and sonic power. Although female participation began to grow around the turn of the new millennium, the participation of women in metal scenes remains undertheorized and is often tokenized and critiqued according to sexist ideologies. If we are to build an understanding of the musical agency of female artists, it is important to examine their contributions within the compositional and performative conventions of the genres in which they work, and to illuminate the specific ways in which they occupy sonic and cultural space.
This presentation focuses on female artists from a range of metal music subgenres. Interpreting the multimodal aesthetics of words, music, and images within the affordances of metal music subgenres, demonstrating how vocalists operate both within and against genre conventions to offer unique messages within an industry that is still often resistant towards anything but the hegemonic masculine.
To reshape the discourse on women in metal, this research asks how artists unsettle and complicate conventional understandings of subjectivity in metal genres through nuances of gendered and intersectional musical expression: What cultural messages are delivered by the contemporary women of metal? How does their expression uphold genre discourse? How might they negotiate that discourse to offer expressive alternatives? Ultimately, the presentation shows how these artists communicate urgent stories about female experience in the subgenres of metal music and in society at large.
Dr. Lori Burns (PhD, Harvard; FRSC) has published an extensive body of work in the fields of popular music research and gender studies. She was among the first to study popular music from an intersectional feminist perspective, bringing to light issues of gender, sexuality, race, class, and ability and shining a spotlight on equity, diversity, and inclusion. Throughout her work, she unveils the complex ways in which music challenges discourses of power and dominant representations of cultural identities, deepening our understanding of popular music expression and demonstrating how music can speak to and for human subjects.
Her writings are published by top-tier journals and publishing houses. The award-winning Disruptive Divas: Feminism, Identity and Popular Music (2002), recognized for its rigorous theoretical approach and sensitive analysis, paved the way forward for scholars researching identity in music. A recent study of female vocal expression in progressive metal won two Outstanding Publication Awards in 2024.
Dr. Burns has co-authored and co-edited many publications, evidence of the ways in which she has positioned her ideas in dialogue with researchers from other perspectives. She has co-edited six essay collections which advance research across a vast range of topics: intertextuality, popular music video analysis; record production and interpretation; literary influences upon progressive rock and metal; metal composition structures, expressions, and productions; and the popular music cover as an interpretive study. She has been deeply involved in the work of several scholarly societies and continues to serve as co-editor of the prestigious Ashgate Popular Music and Folk Series (Routledge Press).
CAO THANG DINH, RSC College | From Fossil Carbon to Managed Carbon: The Future of Sustainable Fuels and Chemicals
Fossil carbon has long been the foundation of modern society, providing not only the fuels that power transportation and industry but also the feedstocks for plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, and countless everyday products. As the world transitions toward a low-carbon economy, a critical challenge emerges: how can we sustainably produce fuels and carbon-based chemicals without relying on fossil resources?
This talk introduces the concept of managed carbon, in which carbon is sourced from renewable biomass, recycled waste, and captured carbon dioxide rather than extracted from fossil reserves. Emerging technologies, including carbon capture and utilization, renewable hydrogen, and circular carbon systems, are enabling the production of fuels and chemicals while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The presentation will discuss the opportunities and challenges of this transition and highlight how managing carbon in a circular economy can support a sustainable future without eliminating the carbon-based products essential to modern life.
Dr. Cao Thang Dinh is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Sustainable Fuels and Chemicals at Queen’s University. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Laval University in 2014. From 2014 to 2019, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. Dr. Dinh’s research focuses on developing electrochemical processes to convert CO2, water, and renewable electricity into fuels and chemicals. He has published over 120 peer-reviewed articles, including several publications in Science, Nature, and other Nature family journals. His work was recognized by the Falling Walls Foundation with the Science Breakthrough of the Year 2023 award for contributions to carbon capture and conversion. He was also honored with the 2021 WIN Rising Star Award, the 2022 Queen’s Prize for Excellence in Research, the 2025 Canadian Chemical Engineering Lectureship Award, and the 2025 Ontario Researcher Award. Since 2021, Dr. Dinh has been recognized annually as a Highly Cited Researcher in Chemistry by Clarivate. He is also the founding Editor-in-Chief of Cambridge Prisms: Carbon Technologies, an interdisciplinary journal published by Cambridge University Press.
STEPHEN SCOTT, FRSC | In a Blink of an Eye: Fast Feedback Processing for Goal-Directed Motor Actions
Sports such as football or hockey highlight our amazing ability to move and interact in a complex world. A player can skate past a defensemen and shoot a puck over the glove side of a goalie. Even if the defensemen knocks the player while going past, great players quickly adjust or even change where they shoot the puck to his or her advantage. This presentation will highlight the use of Kinarm to apply small mechanical disturbances to the arm to probe how the motor system deals with a variety of behavioural contexts, such as the shape of a spatial goal or the presence of obstacles in the environment. These studies demonstrate goal-directed motor corrections to mechanical disturbances can be generated in as little as 60ms, faster than the time required to blink your eyes. Parallel studies in non-human primates highlight the role of brain circuits in these fast feedback processes. Finally, the talk will also highlight how Kinam can be used to assess brain dysfunction following stroke or other neurological diseases and injuries.
Dr. Stephen Scott is Vice-Dean Research for Queen’s Health Sciences, and Professor in the Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences at Queen’s University. He received a BASc and a MASc in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo, and a PhD in Physiology from Queen’s University. His research explores the neural, mechanical and behavioural aspects of voluntary motor control including studies on human and non-human primates. His clinical research explores the use of interactive robots for neurological assessment. He is the inventor of Kinarm, interactive robotic technology, and co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Kinarm that commercializes these robotic platforms for basic and clinical research. In 2022, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
STÉFANIE VON HLATKY, RSC College | Gender, Security, and Societal Resilience: NATO in an Era of Contestation
Gender has become a central yet increasingly contested dimension of international security. Over the past two decades, NATO has integrated gender perspectives into military planning, operations, and institutional reform, while member states such as Canada have championed the Women, Peace and Security agenda as part of their broader foreign and defence policies. Yet this consensus has come under growing pressure from geopolitical rivalry, democratic backsliding, anti-gender movements, and disinformation campaigns that challenge both gender equality initiatives and the institutions that support them.
Drawing on research on NATO military operations, alliance politics, and civil-military relations, Professor Stéfanie von Hlatky examines how gender has evolved from a normative commitment to a strategic consideration within contemporary security governance. This presentation explores how allies navigate tensions between operational effectiveness, democratic values, and political contestation, while assessing the impact of anti-gender backlash and information manipulation on security institutions.
Dr. Stéfanie von Hlatky is the Canada Research Chair in Gender, Security and the Armed Forces and Associate Vice-Principal (Research) at Queen’s University, where she is also a Full Professor in the Department of Political Studies. A Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, she is an internationally recognized scholar of security, defence, military affairs, and gender. Her academic appointments and fellowships have included positions at Georgetown University, Dartmouth College, ETH Zurich, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a Fulbright Visiting Research Chair at the University of Southern California’s Center for Public Diplomacy.
Professor von Hlatky is the author of two Oxford University Press monographs: American Allies in Times of War: The Great Asymmetry (2013) and Deploying Feminism: The Role of Gender in NATO Military Operations (2022; paperback edition, 2025). She has also co-edited several influential volumes, including Total Defence Forces in the Twenty-First Century, Transhumanising War: Performance Enhancement and the Implications for Policy, Society, and the Soldier, and Countering Violent Extremism and Terrorism: Assessing Domestic and International Strategies.
Beyond academia, she is the founder of Women in International Security - Canada (WIIS-Canada) and serves as Honorary Colonel of The Princess of Wales’ Own Regiment. Her work bridges scholarship, policy, and public engagement, with a particular focus on advancing understanding of security challenges in democratic societies. She has been a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists since 2025.
