Undergraduate student Sabrina Isabelle McLennon, has been awarded the Patricia and Peter Shannon Wilson Undergraduate Research Prize by the University of Toronto Libraries, in recognition of her outstanding interdisciplinary research.
Pursuing a Focus in Law & History Specialist, McLennon was recognized for her paper, “From Rapanui Ancestral Medicine to Rapamycin: Biopiracy, the Canadian-led M.E.T.E.I. Expedition, and the Socio-Legal Legacies of Chilean Transoceanic Colonialism (1888–1988),” completed under the supervision of Professor Alexandre Pelegrino in HIS488: The Politics of Race in Latin America.
Her project traces the history of rapamycin, a drug with major significance in contemporary biomedical sciences, back to its origins in Rapa Nui (Easter Island), situating its development within broader histories of colonialism, scientific extraction, and Indigenous knowledge systems. Drawing on archival materials from a Canadian medical expedition to the island in the 1960s, as well as Canadian newspaper coverage, McLennon examines how Indigenous medicinal knowledge has been appropriated, erased, and commercialized. As Professor Alexandre Pelegrino notes, “Sabrina McLennon’s outstanding paper frames a Canadian medical expedition to Rapa Nui in the 1960s as part of a broader history of colonialism and resource extraction, including Chile’s annexation of the island in the nineteenth century. The paper forces us to reckon with the long-lasting legacies of colonialism, bridging Latin American and North American contexts.”
The project grew out of McLennon’s interdisciplinary academic path. “The drug rapamycin, its history, its significance in the scientific field and to the history of science, was inadvertently planted two years ago during Dr. Leonardo Salmena’s mTOR Signaling in Cancer lecture in PCL386H1: Pharmacology of Cancer Signaling,” she explains. “With the kind-hearted support of Professor Pelegrino I was inspired by a case study or microcosmic approach to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Chilean annexation due to a parallel study I had done on Hawai'i and U.S. annexation.”
For McLennon, the recognition carries both personal and academic significance:
As a student of Afro-Indigenous descent having previously pursued a double major in History and Pharmacology for four years, this recognition is quite meaningful as it validates my decision to pursue history and law, illustrates the feasibility of cross-disciplinary studies, and hopefully is the beginning of a dialogue within academia at U of T of the entwined relationship between science and biopiracy, science to indigenous ancestral medicinal knowledge and intellectual property rights (IPR) worldwide.
McLennon’s achievement highlights the strength of undergraduate research in the Department of History and the importance of mentorship in fostering innovative, interdisciplinary work. As Professor Pelegrino adds:
The fact that History students have received this award two years in a row is evidence of the Department’s commitment to undergraduate research and mentorship
Prize recipients will be celebrated at an event on April 17 at Fisher Library.