Nat Begg

B.A. in Anthropology (Honours first class with Distinction)
Usamah Ansari Top Student Award, Outstanding Anthropology Graduand Award & Outstanding Honours Thesis Award

I鈥檓 beyond honoured to be chosen the recipient of these awards. As somebody who left regular schooling in what Canadians would call Sixth Grade, SFU has given me a second shot at institutional education on this wet, green-grey hilltop outcropping where the bark is peeled in the Spring.

Anthropology has changed how I think about everything. Growing up in a politically active immigrant family reading Tintin books and with a grandfather extolling the virtues of the Mughal Empire, I鈥檝e always had a strong sense of history and a curiosity about the sheer breadth of human possibility.

Anthropology has given me a systemic way to think through the great questions about what it means to be human, how we can cooperate and learn to live with each other, and what we are supposed to do during ecological and civilisational breakdown. We are constantly having arguments about human nature, but very few disciplines try to address about the breadth of the human experience with the seriousness, creativity, and compassion that anthropology does. There is no other tradition for me.

In an academic world that can be so competitive, I feel very grateful to have gotten the support that I have as somebody who鈥檚 interested in subjects and theory off the beaten path, poking around alleyways and writing about about refusal and the gift. Anthropology is the art of noticing everything, and I really do feel that everything is useful in academia as well.

The two people I have most to thank at SFU are my honours thesis supervisor Kathleen Millar and professor Michael Hathaway. I have learned so much in our conversations and in their classes, as well as those taught by Bascom Guffin, Yuan Wei, and Cristina Moretti. I am grateful for the collegiality shown to me by graduate students, especially Morgaine Lee. Among my fellow undergraduates, I鈥檝e been so fortunate to share dimly-lit classrooms with such bright and insightful fellow students as Anum Khalid, Eric Acland, and Xander Elstone. From being invited to help build the POLIS undergraduate journal (thanks Anum!) and working at the campus community radio station CJSF 90.1 FM, my time at SFU has been made much richer by these lively little worlds that exist all over campus.

With my MA ahead of me, I look forward to spending more time gazing out across the Inlet from this lush concrete labyrinth that has been so kind to me.

Kamran Houle

B.A. in Joint Majors - Sociology & Anthropology (Honours with Distinction)
Outstanding Sociology & Anthropology Graduand Award

I am humbled and honored to receive this award. When I started my university journey, the idea that I would one day be in a position to achieve this level of academic success and recognition would never have crossed my mind. The last few years have been some of the best of my life, and as I look towards the next steps in my life I know I will keep using these tools to unpack and understand human society and our world more broadly.

None of this would have been possible without the wonderful Sociology and Anthropology department here at SFU. Without their support over these last few years I would not have had the drive nor knowledge that lead me here. I love everyone I worked with, and special thanks go to Baran Fakhri, Dr. Bascom Guffin, Dr. Yildiz Atasoy, Dr. Travers and especially Dr. Kyle Willmott for all the support and guidance. This is one of the best environments for learning anyone could ask for, and it has hooked me completely and utterly on this field.

Nothing else quite tickles the brain the way sociology and anthropology do. These fields ask you to approach the world with a lens of fundamental curiosity and skepticism towards the functioning of social systems, a suspicious attitude that often overturns a more compelling reality. It鈥檚 something that has brought me immense joy and fulfillment, and I think that for anyone else attuned to this kind of thinking there is a lot to be found in this field. Going forward, I hope to continue to study in this area and to build on the research started in my honours thesis. Wherever my studies and life take me, I will also have the benefit of using what I鈥檝e learned to approach the world with a more critical and curious eye. I am grateful to have had this opportunity to discover and learn in this area of study, and am excited to delve deeper.

Emma

B.A. in Sociology (Honours with Distinction)
Outstanding Sociology Graduand Award

As a recipient of this award, and in authentic sociological fashion, I want to use my privilege and the opportunity of this public platform to shine a light on some extremely important social justice issues that need to be addressed urgently within so-called Canada. My academic background in sociology at SFU has ultimately taught me the importance of speaking out against oppressive systems of power that we live in and that many of us, including myself, actually benefit from. At SFU, I was lucky to have had the chance to learn about the early growths, historical contexts, and present day ramifications of systemic corruptions and power-over systems, many of which continue to aim to destroy the lives of marginalized communities, both on a local, national, and overseas context.

This degree has taught me how so-called Canada continues to exercise its colonial powers in a myriad of ways, ranging from small, day to day symbolic interactions (like ordering off Amazon or staying silent amidst racist comments from family members) to federal government proposed actions (like providing funding for humanitarian aid in Palestine whilst signing military contracts to fund the exporting of weapons to Israel). While learning about the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, I learned how often governmental claims to working in partnership with Indigenous Peoples are dented by capitalism (such as B.C鈥檚 recent Bill 15) despite the risk to Indigenous lives, land stewardship, sovereignty, and treaty rights. I acquired the skill to be able to distinguish between surface level and in-depth micro/macro solutions (ex: statutory holidays for minority groups, while potentially in good faith, cannot compare to direct public advocacy, support, and participation in critically important movements such as #MMIWG2S, #LANDBACK and #BLM). A keystone piece of this degree was learning the history of how colonial nations often hide their fascist practices (ex: censorship), and I feel lucky to have had the chance to learn how to spot the subtle but powerful signs of suppression.

In the future, my goal is to work in spaces of active social justice practice (ex: nonprofits, policy, unions). For my career, I envision using my degree, and the next step of a Masters Degree in Public Policy, to highlight how colonialism, capitalism, fascism, racism, performative allyship, white supremacy, imperialism, and monetized silence cannot continue to be the foundation of our social, political, economical, and communal institutions, governments, and movements. One of my central quotes as I navigate my career is:鈥淣obody is free until everybody鈥檚 free,鈥� 鈥� Fannie Lou Hamer.