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.

Lessons in Leadership: A Working Man's Journey

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.

Accidental Activism: A Gay Dad’s Introduction to Systemic Struggle

Date: Nov. 12, 2025
Speaker: Ken McNeilly

Dr. Ken McNeilly is a part-time Assistant Professor in the Education & Society program at Victoria College, where he teaches Equity & Diversity in Education and School & Society seminar courses. He has also lectured at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Ontario Tech University, and Wilfrid Laurier University, bringing more than three decades of experience across K–12, postsecondary, and postgraduate education into dialogue with pedagogical and developmental theory. Having viewed education from many angles—as a student, teacher, lecturer, and practicum coordinator—he added “parent” to that list only a decade ago. As a proud, single gay dad to two young sons, Ken finds renewed purpose in preparing future educators to act as agents of change and voices for justice.

"It's you against the world": 4 Lessons from Jewison to Feature Documentary

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

Fraser Allan Best is a documentary filmmaker and former broadcast journalist. His debut feature, Thanks for the Liver, chronicles his experience receiving a life-saving transplant from a fellow U of T student, and explores themes of family and meaning. After leaving legacy media, Fraser has carved a path as an independent filmmaker committed to telling stories with hyperrealistic intimacy.

Pelham Edgar Lecture

Date: Nov. 26, 2025
Speaker: Esi Edugyan

Esi Edugyan is one of Canada's most celebrated writers. She has won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for Fiction twice, for her novels Half-Blood Blues and Washington Black, which was recently adapted into an eight-part Hulu series. She has twice been a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and has been shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, among others. Edugyan delivered the 2021 CBC Massey Lectures—published as Out of the Sun: On Race and Storytelling—and chaired the 2023 Booker Prize jury. She has held fellowships in the US, Scotland, Iceland, Germany, Hungary, Finland, Spain, and Belgium. Edugyan lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Life on Other Worlds - And Other Stories from the Front Lines of Science Journalism

Date: Jan. 7, 2026
Speaker: Ivan Semeniuk

Pelham Edgar Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities

Date: Jan. 14, 2026
Speaker: Esi Edugyan

Esi Edugyan is one of Canada's most celebrated writers. She has won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for Fiction twice, for her novels Half-Blood Blues and Washington Black, which was recently adapted into an eight-part Hulu series. She has twice been a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and has been shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, among others. Edugyan delivered the 2021 CBC Massey Lectures—published as Out of the Sun: On Race and Storytelling—and chaired the 2023 Booker Prize jury. She has held fellowships in the US, Scotland, Iceland, Germany, Hungary, Finland, Spain, and Belgium. Edugyan lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Philosophy as Medicine: Reveries of a Solitary Anishinaabe

Date: Jan. 21, 2026
Speaker: Dale Turner

Professor Dale Turner is the author of This is not a peace pipe: towards a critical Indigenous philosophy (University of Toronto Press, 2006). Professor Turner publishes on Aboriginal rights in Canada and contemporary Indigenous intellectual culture. Recent articles focus on the role of Indigenous spirituality in contemporary Indigenous politics. He is a citizen of the Temagami First Nation in northern Ontario from his father’s side of the family and a citizen of the United Kingdom on his mother’s side of the family.

Programs Plenary

TBC

What is Computer Security About?

Date: Mar. 11, 2026
Speaker: David Lie 

David Lie received his BASc from the University of Toronto in 1998, and his MS and PhD from Stanford University in 2001 and 2004 respectively. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. He is known for his seminal work on the XOM architecture, which was an early precursor to modern trusted execution processor architectures such as ARM Trustzone and Intel SGX. He was the recipient of a best paper award at SOSP for this work. David is also a recipient of the MRI Early Researcher Award, Connaught Global Challenge Award and previous holder of a Canada Research Chair. He developed the PScout Android Permission mapping tool, whose datasets have been downloaded over 10,000 times and used in dozens of subsequent papers. David has served on various program committees including OSDI, Usenix Security, IEEE Security & Privacy, NDSS and CCS. Currently, his interests are focused on securing mobile platforms, cloud computing security and bridging the divide between technology and policy.

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work - What’s the Right Role for Public Policy?

Date: Mar. 18, 2026
Speaker: Sunil Johal