2025-2026 Plenary Sessions

PEN Writers in Exile Panel

Date: Sep. 17, 2025
Speaker: Luis Horacio Najera, Tala Moetazedi, Mostafa Al-A'sar
Moderator: Dr. Ira Wells 

An Alumni Journey: From Burwash Hall to the International Space Station

Date: Sep. 24, 2025
Speaker: Mark Pathy

Victoria College alumni are invited to an unforgettable event with Mark Pathy Vic 9T3—entrepreneur, philanthropist, and private astronaut—who made history on the first ever full private mission to the International Space Station. Join us for this exclusive interview as part of the Vic One Plenary Series, where Pathy, who is Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at Mavrik, a Montreal based family office, will share his remarkable journey from student life at Burwash Hall to launching aboard Axiom Space’s historic Ax-1 mission to the International Space Station.

The Black Archival Impulse 

Date: Oct. 1, 2025
Speaker: Lauren Cramer

Lauren McLeod Cramer is an Assistant Professor in the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. Her work focuses on the aesthetics of blackness and popular culture. Her forthcoming book A Black Joint: Hip-Hop Visual Culture & the Architecture of Blackness (Duke University Press) explores the black popular culture as a spatial practice. Lauren has published writing on a wide variety of “art objects” including WorldStarHipHop.com, the videos from Jay-Z’s 4:44, Peter Eisenman’s architectural designs, and Meghan Markle’s wedding. Lauren is a founding member of liquid blackness, a research project on blackness and aesthetics, and is the co-Editor of liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies (Duke University Press). Her writing has appeared in The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, The Black Scholar, Black Camera, Film Criticism, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Discourse and the edited collections Writing for Screen Media (Routledge, 2019) and Summer of Soul (... Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) A Docalogue (Routledge, 2023).

 

The Allure and Role of Conspiratorial Thinking Throughout History

Date: Oct. 8, 2025
Speaker: Alexander Mosa

 

2025 Oliver Smithies Lecture with Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Date: Oct. 15, 2025
Speaker: Jennifer Doudna

Biochemist and Nobel Prize-winning co-inventor of CRISPR technologyJennifer Doudna, PhD is a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley. Her groundbreaking development of CRISPR-Cas9 — a genome engineering technology that allows researchers to edit DNA — with collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier earned the two the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and forever changed the course of human and agricultural genomics research. She is also the Founder of the Innovative Genomics Institute, the Li Ka Shing chancellor’s chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences, and a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Gladstone Institutes, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a leader in the global public debate on the responsible use of CRISPR and has co-founded and serves on the advisory panel of several companies that use the technology in unique ways. Doudna is the co-author of “A Crack in Creation,” a personal account of her research and the societal and ethical implications of gene editing. Learn more at innovativegenomics.org/jennifer-doudna.

5 Films that Changed My Life

Date: Oct. 22, 2025
Speaker: Adam Nayman

 Adam Nayman is a critic, lecturer and author based in Toronto. He teaches courses at the Cinema Studies Institute at U of T and has written books on the Coen brothers, David Fincher and Paul Thomas Anderson, as well as a critical monograph on Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls. He is a regular contributor to The Ringer, The Toronto Star, Sight and Sound, Reverse Shot and the New Republic and has written on film for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Walrus, and other publications.

TBC

Date: Nov. 5, 2025
Speaker: Cyril Dimitris 

Cyril Dimitris is President & CEO of Toyota Canada Inc. (TCI). Cyril was previously Vice President of Sales and Marketing and prior responsibilities as Director of Lexus and Scion Divisions, responsible for all aspects including sales, parts and service, and marketing. He was also Director of Finance. 

Cyril began his career at TCI in 1988 and has worked and led several areas including, Finance and Accounting, Corporate Strategy, Information Services, Legal, Human Resources, Administration, Dealer Technology, and Business Innovation.   

Cyril serves as an Honorary Governor on the Board of Massey Hall & Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Economics degree from the University of Toronto and is a designated CPA, CMA.

Encountering Disability, Rethinking Normalcy

Date: Nov. 12, 2025
Speaker: Tanya Titchkosky

Dr. Tanya Titchkosky is Professor of Disability Studies in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, U of T. She is recognized globally for her leading work in the field of disability studies and social justice. Her graduate teaching includes courses such as “Disability Studies and the Human Imaginary” and “Encounters in Disability Studies.” In research, teaching and activism, Tanya regards the experience of disability as a good way to enhance conversations about marginality alongside Black, Queer and Critical Indigenous theorists. This is how she works to reveal how our lives are made meaningful in relation unquestioned versions of normalcy as this impacts everyday interactions, education, and health. This approach is reflected in her most recent co-edited with three new PhDs DisAppearing: Encounters in Disability Studies (2022) as well as in Rethinking Normalcy (2009) a disability studies reader co-edited with Dr. Rod Michalko. Her exploration of the power of normalcy to diminish disability-concerns in everyday life not only animates her many papers and books* but also animates her desire to build a less exclusive University by, for example, making the OISE washrooms and signage, the St. George Subway entrance, and University technological infrastructure (SLATE student admissions platform), as well as courses more welcoming toward a disability and other marginalized people. Her current work is funded, in part, by an Insight SSHRC grant, “Reimaging the Dis/Appearance of Disability in the Academy.” Tanya is also part of a major 6 year international research project, Disability Matters, and holds an Institute for Pandemics (U of T) research award focusing on educational and health archives as they make disability meaningful (usually only as disease). Tanya is recipient of the OISE 2019 Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award. She is also a founding member of the Doing Disability in Everyday Life Research and Activist group and the Toronto Disability Circle. 

 TBC

Date: Nov. 19, 2025
Speaker: Fraser Allan Best

TBC

Pelham Edgar Lecture

Date: Nov. 26, 2025
Speaker: Esi Edugyan

TBC