Trinity Comprehensive Paper APPLICATION FORM 2026-2027

You can undertake a student-led project instead of a faculty-led project. In the student-led projects you generate your own idea for a topic, and you find a member of U of T faculty to be your supervisor.

If you pick the student-led project also send a separate e-mail to the TRN 377 faculty coordinator leslie.boehm@utoronto.ca. 

It should contain the following information:

a) your topic title (this does not need to be the exact, final title),

b) a brief description of your research idea,

c) the name and email address of your supervisor (including the college or department they teach in).

d) a copy of your transcripts.

The student will work on an agreed upon topic in Canadian foreign or defence policy since 1945.

There is getting to be a rich academic literature on sustainability and health. What we are finding is that sustainability, health, and some of our most pressing social issues are all intimately linked.

This topic is going to explore the linkages between sustainability and health, particularly universal health care, public health (meaning population health), and publicly delivered healthcare.

We will explore that sustainability is more than a set of ecological actions, it is also an ethic, a source of values. These values link to ideas such as universal health care, the welfare state, and the care economy. They involve decommodification (particularly in health), combatting inequality, building out the public sphere, and constructing a human and also a planetary commons.

Sustainability is a pressing ecological issue. Lesser known is that it is also a pressing social and health issue. It is also the source of some of the most exciting and creative ideas coming out of academia. You’ll become a part of this.

Recent simulations of mass casualty events have prompted increased attention to civilian-military cooperation in health care. The student will review simulation efforts, the resulting mass casualty plans, and other policy documents from the US, Canada, the UK, Europe and Australia/New Zealand to provide policy recommendations.

The student will work on an agreed upon topic involving a comparative analysis of two identifiable refugee movements, one from before 1800 and one from after that date. The study will aim to compare who was targeted and why, whether state power was involved, whether refugees eventually returned ‘home', and what the broader cultural impact of the upheaval was on the refugees themselves, on the societies that expelled them, and on the societies that hosted them. Through this comparison we’ll seek to determine whether and how refugee movements of the past have shaped those of the present.

Universal health care (UHC), of which our medicare is an example, is one of the most important accomplishments of the 20^th century. What it did was establish healthcare as a right and make it accessible to everyone.

Medicare changed Canada’s health trajectory. But unlike other countries we implemented only two basic services (doctors and hospitals) and we’ve remained there since. Why is this and what services should we add to update it.

We are also expecting more out of medicare in the 21^st century. It is becoming more than the resource for an individual’s own health treatment. It’s now seen as part of a country’s vitality enhancing productivity and quality of life.

All of this requires cutting-edge healthcare systems. Who has these and what can Canada learn from them? Sussing these out requires your input. It will require you looking at the literature, but also seeking out the publications of leading academics, journalists, and think-tanks.

So, let’s look for answers. Let’s look for these best practices. Let’s look for nations who are pushing the envelope. Let’s posit solutions.

Health has come to be seen as being at the core of a nation and has become associated with national security and sovereignty.

This involves our response to the pandemic, particularly when compared to certain countries in East Asia. Another is that health is very much linked to what is going on the society at large. There is much research to indicate that overall health decreases when there are high levels of inequality.

Similarly, good health means not only available food, it is available nutritious food. Employment means not only having a job but a job with a livable wage.

A recent idea is building resilient health systems. We need to arm our health systems against things like pandemics and climate change.

What do you think? Is health a matter of national security and sovereignty? What are the basic ingredients? Choose which areas you would like to focus on and build for us the ideal system.

This project addresses the variety of top-secret programs developed by American and British government agencies at the end of WWII to identify Germans and other nationals suspected of war crimes. While some of the programs focused on bringing those responsible to some sense of “justice” through post-war tribunals, others were more nefarious: designed to ‘turn’ those deemed ‘useful’ in the event of any conflict with the USSR. In effect, that meant hiding, abetting, and exonerating those who helped commit some of the worst atrocities of the war. 

The main programs, Operation Crowcass and Operation Paper-Clip, were kept secret for decades after the war, concealed by a host of measures including the ‘whitewashing’ or destruction of investigation files. Notwithstanding scholarly research over the past twenty years, a host of questions about the design and intent of the programs – not to mention the ethics - remains. Moreover, many of the secondary programs remain largely unresearched and shrouded in secrecy: in part due to government classification restrictions, and in part due to a general lack of awareness about the extent to which the American and British governments used them.