Student & Faculty Research at King's

Over the past century, chemistry has played a central role in the anthropogenic transformation of matter into materials that improve quality of life; and yet, the scale and rate of that transformation has led to unintended consequences that pose serious sustainability challenges. This paper uses a chemistry sustainability pyramid to map the multiple levels at which chemistry can contribute towards greater sustainability.

Researchers at the King’s Centre for Visualization in Science collaborated with Dr. Sarah Cornell from the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden to create a peer-reviewed interactive learning tool based on the Planetary Boundaries framework. This resource help users better understand Earth sustainability challenges and helps chemists and educators connect substances, reactions, and chemistry concepts to sustainability science.

This paper details the work of twelve undergraduate chemistry and environmental studies students who collaborated with Dr. Peter Mahaffy to create a rich set of resources and activities that will help other educators and students connect the learning of chemistry to climate change.

Solutions to global food insecurity can threaten cultural and biological diversity. This paper explores how "global" solutions may in fact be more local, varied, and specific, and how insects in particular may provide a solution toward local sustainable food production.

This book invites Christians to see, engage with, and re-envision all that God says through Christ's parables, creation, and science. Chapter 5 invites readers to observe the complexity of plant structures, and to explore the deeper instructive and metaphorical ideas that can teach Christians to be more dependent on God's provision for us.

Cancer-related dyadic efficacy is what represents a couples' confidence in their ability to manage the effects of cancer. This paper draws from case studies and professional panel expertise to describe cancer-related dyadic efficacy, consider the current state of reporting procedures, and call for more research on this topic.

The spatial and temporal behaviour of animals may be determined by interactions with competitors, predators, and humans. Human disturbance, even from recreational activity, may result in behavioural changes similar to the risk effects presented by predators. By using time-to-event analysis of remote camera images, this study found that the mere presence of humans was the most important determinant of deer return times in spring and autumn, whereas in summer, competitor presence (i.e. moose and elk) was more important.

Wildlife must adapt to human presence to survive, so it is crucial to understand species responses to humans in different contexts. This study uses camera trapping to view mammal responses to changes in human activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This experiment compares elemental mapping techniques to determine how they differ in terms of methodology, sensitivity, and image resolution. This study specifically considers synchrotron radiation micro-X-ray fluorescence and plasma mass spectrometry to determine how these techniques can be used in studying the distribution and accumulation of tungsten in bone.

Early transition metals (ETMs) have unique properties and are used in a variety of applications, including bone implants. Studying the effects of ETM distribution in bone is essential to understanding potential toxicological implications of metal accumulation in bone. This review examines the existing relevant literature and identifies the need for further study on this topic.

The "ecology of fear" framework was developed to describe the negative effects of predators on their potential prey. This study explores the relationship between predators amd prey and suggests that parasitic NCEs (nonconsumptive effects) can suppress host populations in varying ways.

This book introduces readers to the concept of the Axial Age and its relevance for a world in crisis. Axial spiritualities offer humanity a practical wisdom, a profound psychology, and deep hope: to transform despair into resilience, helping us face with courage the ecological and political challenges confronting us today.

This 16-episode podcast series discusses COVID-19, global climate change, and other crises while applying psychology and history to gain insight and decrease anxiety while living with these difficult issues.

Dr. Christopher Peet began this non-profit organization in 2021 to be a land-based education, research, and retreat center. The work done at this center is applied to the research efforts of the Institute and both supplements and informs Dr. Peet's ongoing research into the connections between ecology and psychology.

Issues of sexual and gender diversity (SGD) appear to generate a disproportionate amount of controversy and emotional intensity compared to other issues of moral concern, particularly among Christians. This paper discusses some of the key psychological barriers to constructive conversations and decisions about SGD among Christians.

Reading the Rainbows is a podcast that explores how we navigate the bewildering and rapidly-changing rainbows of sexual and gender diversity, and the rainbows of responses to this diversity.  In each episode I guide you through research and stories in a spirit of curiosity, compassion, humility, and hospitality. The goal is to provide accessible and digestible information to support your own journeys through this landscape.

Texts by young conflict survivors, including the children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are worthy of historical and literary consideration on many fronts. How did young people experience, understand, and cope with damage to their bodies? How did they translate their experiences into prose? This essay suggests that their writing offers a deep well for other fields—trauma studies, the history of childhood, and even disability studies—to consider.

This essay surveys the history of disability in the United States, from pre-contact Indigenous histories to the present. It gives particular attention to the ways that disability has intersected with other categories of discrimination, like race, and points out how disability activists have worked for positive change.

In 1867, controversy erupted when Jean-Anne-Henri Depaul, a Paris accoucheur, tested Justus von Liebig’s new “food for infants” on four newborns, all of whom died within days. This paper examines the origins of Liebig’s food, the debates in the French Academy of Medicine after Depaul’s experiment, and how the events were discussed in the medical and popular presses. I argue that the controversy was shaped by a number of interconnected concerns, including the product’s impracticality, disagreements within the field of chemistry, the riskiness of Depaul’s experimentation, and Liebig’s problematic celebrity. 

The Panama Canal Zone’s American administration established Palo Seco Leper Colony in 1907 in order to contain individuals with Hansen’s disease, but containment was never a simple strategy. This article argues that the administration intentionally used rhetoric to alter their fear of Hansen's disease to promote pity and the view that using isolation was a form of care, which supported the United States' claim that incarceration was curative and part of a global project of humanitarianism, civilization, and modernity. At the same time, residents at Palo Seco often reworked or simply rejected these affective claims and close attention to the archival record finds examples of their anger, love, and hope, as well as pain, stigma, and loneliness.

This essay uses three case studies to explore the history of artificial limbs in Indigenous communities in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century United States. It argues that US settler colonialism used concepts of disability to discriminate against Indigenous bodies, cultures, and lands, and technologies like artificial limbs exemplified American efforts to "fix" these perceived shortcomings and assimilate Indigenous peoples.

In this work, we present a set of comprehensive experimental studies on Hyperledger Besu in private blockchain. We aim to exhibit its performance characteristics through a carefully designed set of comparative experiments, including transaction send rate, network size, node flavor, load balancing, consensus, and block time. Our findings shed some light on further performance improvement of Hyperledger Besu. 

Recent years have witnessed a significant dispersion of renewable energy and the emergence of blockchain-enabled transactive energy systems, but developing such a system is challenging and time-consuming. In this paper, we propose and develop a novel unified blockchain-based peer-to-peer energy trading framework, called BPET. 

Machines and artificial intelligence continue to improve and do tasks that previously could only be done by humans. What is the value of a person if machines can do all the work? This paper argues that humans still have value for three main reasons: firstly, that machines may never truly take over all human jobs. Second, that we may not want machines to do all jobs, such as those in pastoral or therapeutic fields. Lastly, that humans have inherent value separate from their ability to do work, which can never be taken away by machines.

Camera traps are becoming ubiquitous tools for ecologists. While easily deployed, they require human time to organize, review, and classify images. This paper describes our development of an automated computer program, EventFinder, that reduces operator time by pre-processing and classifying images using background subtraction techniques and color histogram comparisons. 

Remote cameras are an increasingly important tool for ecological research. This paper describes our development of a stand-alone, semi-automated computer program that aids in image processing, categorization, and data reduction which allows for faster ecological and statistical analysis. 

Recent research suggests that non-religious businesses are more open than we might expect to their employees bringing their faith – often conceptualized as “spirituality” – into the workplace. This is an opportunity the kingdom of God should not be slow in recognizing and responding to. At the same time, secularized understandings of “spirituality” can exert a deformative influence on Christian faith if we embrace them uncritically.

A reflection on the realities, challenges, and opportunities of workplace ministry in Canada.

Satiation of predispersal seed predators by mast years has been demonstrated in many intact ecosystems. When disease causes mortality of seed-bearing trees in an ecosystem, the abundance of food sources may alter seed predator behavior and abundance, and the ecosystem services derived from mutualistic seed dispersers. We used the endangered limber pine (Pinus flexilis) to examine whether the benefits of interannual variation in cone production vary depending on the severity of white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola) infections, the abundance of seed predator populations, and stand characteristics(...)

Are our subalpine forests in crisis? What would that mean for western Canada's alpine environments? This article explores the man-made and natural threats to these unique forests and their inhabitants and shares some of the scientific research driving a recovery plan.

Faith communities are increasingly recognized as an important component of civil society that can contribute to addressing difficult sustainability and environmental problems. This paper traces the evolution of environmental engagement among a diverse, multi-faith group of communities, beginning with the entry into environmental work by some groups in the 1960s and 1970s. The paper also analyses contemporary activities, which can be divided into formation activities, advocacy and activism, and practical actions.

Scholars have long debated the issue of quietism and radicalism in John Bunyan’s prose and poetry. What is one to make of a minister who exhorts Nonconformists to non-violence in his prose writings yet pens imaginative fictions—one titled The Holy War (1682)—that seemingly glorify bloody acts of social and political radicalism? This chapter looks at the extensive corpus of works published by Bunyan in the 1680s, over the course of the last eight years of his life. This chapter does this through the lens of narrative theology, arguing that an appreciation of Bunyan’s pre-critical biblical hermeneutic helps to reconceptualize the apparent contradictions in his perspectives on violence, especially during the era of renewed oppression that occurred in the early 1680s.

This book chapter discusses an early short story (“The Resplendent Quetzal,” Dancing Girls,1977) and a recent graphic novel series (Angel Catbird, 2016-17) to demonstrate how Atwood’s focus on birding cultivates an ecological awareness that moves beyond literary representations to punctuate her activism and to advocate for a biocentric, sacramental understanding of creation—rather than an anthropocentric one. In terms of conservation, of particular note is Atwood’s emphasis on intergenerational collective action and youth as sources of possibility, change, and hope for the future.

An overview of Atwood's life and works.

Contemplative spiritual music for piano and saxophone. Professional recording.

Cutting-edge contemporary classical music for instruments and electronics. Professional recording.

Contemporary classical saxophone music by one of France's leading composers. Professional recording.

The contemporary Dutch broadcasting system is impossible to categorize according to standard models of broadcasting systems. It crosses the boundaries of public and private, non-profit and for-profit, neutral and value-laden, and secular and religious. This book explains the origins of this unequivocally unique pluralistic system.

Drawing on Quaker history, the Bible, philosophy, and his own experience among Friends, Dudiak advocates thinking the relationship between Quakerism and Christianity in parallel with the relationship Jesus took with respect to Judaism, that is, as an attempt at “fulfillment,” which requires both fidelity and transgression.

In a unique narrative approach, Sprinkle begins by looking at how the story of God as a whole portrays violence and war, drawing conclusions that guide the reader through the rest of the book. With urgency and precision, he navigates hard questions and examines key approaches to violence, driving every answer back to Scripture. Ultimately, Sprinkle challenges the church to "walk in a manner worthy of our calling" and shape our lives on the example of Christ.

The Intrigue of Ethics: A Reading of the Idea of Discourse in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas explains how human beings can live more peacefully with one another by understanding the conditions of possibility for dialogue. Philosophically, this challenge is articulated as the problem of: how dialogue as dia-logos is possible when the shared logos is precisely that which is in question.

Faith Negotiating Loyalties draws readers into the world of Christian faith in South Africa and the question of loyalties in the new post-apartheid state. It carries out its investigation in two parts. Part one examines Christian faith and loyalty during the first nation-building exercise following the South African War, positioning the creation and contestation of three Christianities corresponding to three nationalisms, each of which imagined South Africa in a particular way, shaping faith accordingly.

The theme of justice pervades the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Many turn to Old Testament laws, the prophets, and the life of Jesus to find biblical guidance on justice, but few think of searching the letters of Paul. Readers frequently miss a key source, a writing in which justice is actually the central concern: the book of Romans.

Does the discipline of history need a reformation? How should Christian faith shape the ways historians do their work? This book, written for students, considers the “how” of doing history.

Why did communism grow so quickly? Why did it spread to turn almost half of the world red by the mid-1970s? What impact did it have upon capitalism and capitalist society?

Seeking Stillness or The Sound of Wings pays tribute to Lambert Zuidervaart, one of the most productive Reformational philosophers of the present generation, by picking up the central concerns of his philosophical work—art, truth, and society—and working with the legacy of his published concern to see what more can be understood about our world in light of that legacy.

This new study draws upon a wide variety of sources East and West, textual and visual, newspaper and memoir, academic and popular to try and understand the reasons why Gorbachev remains such an enigmatic figure.

This book reads Ernest Becker both as a prophet of modernity and as a sensitive observer of its decline. Situated within the disciplinary approach of 'theology of culture,' the book discerns in dialogue with Becker the contours of modern vision in its depth-dimension.

The unique desire of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to turn its back on revenge and to create a space where deeper processes of "forgiveness, confession, repentance, reparation, and reconciliation can take place" reflects the spirit of some churches and faith communities in South Africa.

In Post-Truth? Facts and Faithfulness, Jeffrey Dudiak explores the fissures and fractures that vex our so-called “post-truth” era, searching for a deeper, dare we say truer, understanding of the cultural forces that have led North American society to become so polarized.

Featured in International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry 100 stories for their Centenial.  IUPAC 100 Stories.

Co-edited volume addressing a variety of issues involving Indigenous peoples in Canada.

This study examined expatriates’ organizational commitment by focusing on how willingness to accept an international assignment, training for an international assignment, expatriate empowerment, perceived organizational support, and demographic variables in order to predict the Korean expatriates’ organizational commitment in India.

Indigenous scholars argue that reconciliation requires educators to make space for Indigenous perspectives in the curriculum. This paper agrees, arguing that Christians who are committed to Wolterstorff’s concept of “educating for shalom” must work towards decolonization of the educational system.

Scholars have become increasingly interested in philosopher Karl Jaspers’ thesis that a spiritual revolution in consciousness during the first millennium BCE decisively shaped world history. Axial ideas of transcendence develop into ideologies for world religions and civilizations, in turn coalescing into a Eurasian world-system that spreads globally to become the foundation of our contemporary world.

This survey study examined predictors of the task performance of Korean expatriates in India, while considering their globalization status. Task performance was significantly influenced by opportunities for career development and satisfaction of global human resource management practices.

This report considers the ways recombinant peptide is produced and finds that common methods such as cloning and fusion can lead to degradation and instability. To prevent this, this study creates and tests a new expression system to make a "sandwiched" form of recombinant peptide that is more stable, protected against degradation, and results in improved yield.

The ever-increasing probability of a global ecological collapse in the near future has hitherto not made a dent in the continued expansive drive of global development. While the need for far-reaching societal transformation becomes ever more apparent as a condition to achieve sustainability, agents and structures of governance, as well as individual and collective practices at both the global and local levels, seem to remain trapped in a fundamental dilemma: managing the ecological crisis, in order to keep its disruptive effects in check when possible, while simultaneously guaranteeing the continuity of the capitalist consumer society and pursuing the universalization of inherently unsustainable ways of life.

Researching local environment struggles as they relate to political processes allows us to reflect on how socio-ecological movements impact sustainability governance. This article seeks to test Sebastien's framework through four case studies from Chile, while also exploring the ability of political movements to contribute to systemic sustainability.

Undertaking environmental assessments for small, rural development projects has proven to be both vexing and essential. Our research considers one approach to assessing such projects, community-based environmental assessment (CBEA). The purpose of our work was to gauge current CBEA practice and consider next generation approaches in the face of challenges such as lack of adequate capacity, resource and power imbalances, achieving meaningful participation, narrow conceptions of sustainability, and weak follow-up and monitoring.

This report provides a characterization of carnobacterium divergens, a species commonly found in refrigerated foods like meat, seafood, and dairy. While there is substantial interest in using C. divergens as preservatives, some strains are known to be fish pathogens, and the uncontrolled growth of C. divergens has been associated with food spoilage.

This article explores what it means to be called by God and determines that when God invites someone to step into leadership, he rarely explains why; instead he gives a much more satisfying answer.

This article considers the relationship between change and change agents, and explores the idea that it is with God’s blessing that we, a people who have been entrusted with dominion over every aspect of creation, are privileged to make changes in our lives and the lives of those around us.