IHPST is proud to announce that seven of our graduate students have been awarded major external scholarships for 2025–2026, including Ontario Graduate Scholarships (OGS) and Canada Graduate Scholarships (CGS) for students in the Master's and Doctoral Program. With these new awards, IHPST continues to demonstrate one of the highest levels of external graduate student funding in the humanities sector at the University of Toronto—48% of our students receive external support, the second-highest rate across the university.
The projects supported by these awards highlight the wide-ranging and interdisciplinary character of research at IHPST. Students are investigating topics that span the history of disability and race-making in the Kingdom of Kongo, the philosophy of neural networks and connectionist science, the politics of digital technologies in China, the history of medical interventions on intersex individuals in Europe and North America, and youth mental healthcare. Together, these projects demonstrate how IHPST scholars are pushing the boundaries of history and philosophy of science while engaging pressing social, cultural, and political issues.
We invite you to learn more about some of the 2025–26 scholarship recipients in their own words:
Myriam Iuorio – OGS
“I am very honored and grateful for the invaluable support that the Ontario Graduate Scholarship will provide in the final stage of my research, allowing me to focus on the writing process. My project examines 17th- and 18th-century Italian missionary accounts from West Central Africa to investigate the role of people with disabilities and the meaning of bodily impairments in the Kingdom of Kongo. I also analyze how European perceptions of bodily differences shaped the encounter between Italian missionaries and African people and contributed to Renaissance processes of race-making.”
Kye Palider – OGS
“Modern AI is based on an adaptive algorithmic architecture: neural networks. Neural networks are not just algorithms used in computer science; they model the emergence of orderly properties through the interactions of myriads of simple connected entities—what I term connectionism—in a variety of complex systems. They serve as models of the brain, models of statistical structures, models of materials, and models of cognitive processes. This makes them a historically interdisciplinary and philosophically rich object of study within science writ large, and not just computing. I study the history and philosophy of neural networks as a connectionist science, intersecting physics, biology, psychology, and computer science. With the help of the OGS award, I hope to extend my research from published sources to the archives.”
Ling Ding – CGS (Doctoral Program)
Ling’s PhD research investigates the relationship between state policy and the rise of Chinese digital conglomerates from 1991 to 2015, a transformative period when the government shifted from principal actor to strategic platform builder. “This award enables me to fully dedicate myself to this research while also expanding academic networks, supporting knowledge mobilization, and advancing my career through international collaboration and dissemination.”
Alice Pask – CGS (Master’s Program)
“During my time in the IHPST graduate program, I want to engage in an archival examination of surgical procedures conducted on intersex/hermaphroditic individuals in 18th–19th century Europe and North America. We are currently witnessing intense violence against divergence from the sex/gender binary, and I hope to create work that pushes for critical thinking about the construction of bodily experience. I am extremely grateful to be a recipient of a CGS award, as it allows me to focus entirely on this goal and take on more independent research.”
Sydney Potts – CGS (Master’s Program)
“My work critically examines youth mental healthcare, focusing on how psychiatric diagnoses are constructed and how treatment practices reinforce these constructions. I approach psychiatry as a culture, tracing how patients, clinicians, families, policymakers, and funders interact to shape notions of mental health and illness. I am especially interested in how these processes influence young people’s identities, sense of agency, and possibilities for healing. I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for entrusting me with a CGS-M, providing me the funding necessary to pursue this work.”
We also congratulate the following students on their awards:
Rebecca Muscant – CGS (Master’s Program)
Hongyu Chen – OGS
In addition to these new recipients, several IHPST students continue to hold CGS Doctoral Program awards in 2025–26:
In total, IHPST students are receiving $366,000 in external scholarships and fellowships for 2025–26. This remarkable level of support underscores both the strength of our graduate community and IHPST’s standing as one of the leading units for external funding in the humanities at the University of Toronto.
We congratulate all our awardees for their achievements and contributions to the vibrant intellectual life of the institute.