Two Philosophy undergraduate students, Petrina von Nieuwstadt and Kira Jensen, each received a 2025-2026 Undergraduate Fellowship at the Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI), allowing them to advance work on projects under the JHI’s Dystopia & Trust theme for the coming year. The JHI offers six such fellowships per year.
Petrina von Nieuwstadt
Petrina, a Philosophy specialist on the St. George campus, received the James Fleck Undergraduate Award in the Humanities and will be working on a project titled “Algorithmic Conditioning, Cinematic Form, and the Data Subject” under the supervision of Katherine Blouin (UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies). Petrina’s research looks at how predictive algorithms and engagement-optimized platforms mediate our aesthetic experience, specifically in cinema, and how these systems reshape the conditions under which we can re/imagine politics, relate to each other, and make sense of the world around us. Petrina is “honoured and excited” to join the JHI Circle of Fellows in the coming year, she says, and looks forward to engaging with an accomplished group of scholars around her. She adds, “For me, the fellowship is not only an opportunity to pursue philosophical research that I’m deeply interested in, but also to do so within a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment.”
“Algorithmic Conditioning, Cinematic Form, and the Data Subject”: Project Details
This project examines how algorithms transform cinema from a space of reflection into a system of behavioral conditioning. As short-form algorithmic platforms fragment films into engagement-optimized clips, viewers are shaped into predictable, emotionally legible subjects whose responses align with commercial imperatives. Here, technological advances that could have fostered utopian imagination instead undermine democratic potential. Algorithmic media doesn’t merely reflect our social dystopia—it actively produces it by eliminating ambiguity and replacing shared meaning-making with isolated feedback loops. Drawing on the works of Comolli, Adorno, and Chun, this research explores how the collapse of cinematic meaning into algorithmic response compromises our capacity to envision alternatives to current social arrangements.
Kira Jensen
Kira is pursuing a double major in Philosophy and Political Science at UTSC, with a minor in Statistics. She received the Zoltan D. Simo Undergraduate Award in the Humanities to work on “Rights of Nature, Wrongs of Power: The Dystopia of Eco-Constitutionalism,” supervised by Katharine Rankin (A&S Geography & Planning). In her interdisciplinary, theoretically grounded applied work, Kira tries to approach climate and environmental problems in ways that take both their systemic complexity and societal consequences seriously. She looks at how systems—legal, educational, technological—shape what people believe is possible, what they think counts as harm, and who they feel responsible for. She says, “To me, this JHI Fellowship makes it possible to think across fields while remaining grounded in the urgency of the issues. It matters to me that the theme is Dystopia and Trust, because those are the conditions under which many of us are trying to learn how to respond to environmental crises.” Looking ahead, she hopes to translate the opportunity of the fellowship and the mentorship and invested scholarly community it provides into “interdisciplinary research in environmental governance that bridges ethical reasoning, policy design, and institutional accountability.”
“Rights of Nature, Wrongs of Power: The Dystopia of Eco-Constitutionalism”: Project Details
Eco-constitutionalism promises a reimagined relationship between law and the natural world—yet often reveals a deeper dystopia. Rights-of-nature frameworks, though framed as moral progress, can expose the erosion of trust in institutions that invoke justice while enabling harm. Through the cases of Ecuador and New Zealand, the research examines the values used to legitimize environmental protection and the worldviews that are excluded. At its core is a question central to environmental ethics: can law shaped by colonial, anthropocentric, and speciesist assumptions truly reflect ecological care—and what does its often symbolic realization reveal about the dystopian character of our legal and political moment?
Congratulations to both fellows! We look forward to seeing the fruits of your ongoing research.
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