Search Projects

In collaboration with my colleague, Marie-Christine Leps, I am developing a book-length study, of Foucault, Woolf, and Ondaatje.

Community Based Natural Resource Management: Research Capacity Development and Promotion at the NUOL, funded by IDRC. With Peter Vandergeest. Phase 1 completed December, 2002; phase 3 in proposal form.

"A New Approach to the Popular Press in China: Gender and Cultural Production, 1904-1937""

The primary objective of the project is to restore complexity to early-twentieth-century Chinese history by liberating that history from its own reductive discourses on the failings of tradition and the promise of modernity. The database has been created to facilitate research on the project's instrument and object of investigation: the commercial periodical press, a new medium that dominated the contemporary print market and became one of the prime sites for the dissemination of knowledge and the production of culture in early twentieth century China. In particular, our focus is on four seminal women's or gendered journals-a key genre of the new media-published between 1904 and 1937. They include Nüzi shijie (Women's World, 1904-07), Funü shibao (The Women's Eastern Times, 1911-17), Funü zazhi (The Ladies' Journal, 1915-31), and Linglong (Elegance, 1931-37).

"Early Chinese Periodicals Online"

This project is an expansion of "A New Approach to the Popular Press in China." Building on the database constructed for that project, it will include up to 100 periodicals of various genres including entertainment journals and literary journals.

"Fiddling with the Arts"

(2001) "Fiddling with the Arts". I wrote, directed, shot and edited this video with the support from the Centre for Art Tapes, Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was screened at the CFAT scholarship award evening.

"Hopkins's Macabre Imagination"

My current Hopkins project concerns “Hopkins’s macabre imagination.”

"Quotidian Concerns: Everyday Knowledge and the Rise of the Common Reader in China, 1860-1940"

This project examines the processes of knowledge production and circulation that shaped modern China. The crucial eight decades it investigates encompassed China's protracted transition from Imperial to Republican rule, and from insular dynasty to global nation. They also witnessed an explosion of print arguably comparable in its social impact to the current Internet age. This project, an international collaborative effort that includes researchers in Europe, East Asia, and North America, is the first to devise methods for studying this burgeoning world of print that will allow us to penetrate the level of everyday knowledge, access the habits of mind that underpinned these historic and global shifts, and relate the lessons of China's early information age to today.

"Return"

(2000) "Return". I wrote, directed, shot, and edited this film with the support from the Atlantic Filmmakers’ Cooperative, Halifax, Nova Scotia. This short was screened at the AFCOO’s one-minute film award evening.

"Students' Voices for a Sustainable Future"

This anthology will be comprised of the writings of graduate and recent graduate students on Contemplative education with a focus on mindfulness as it relates to developing a sustainable future. Note that the book title has been changed to more accurately reflect its focus.

"Talking to You with Mouth Full"

(2006) "Talking to You with Mouth Full". Co-produced with Shanti Macfronton, Cassandra Savage, Benjamin Woo. Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia. I participated in planning the documentary, shooting, and editing.

"The Flip Side: A Global Circus Story"

(2018) "The Flip Side: A Global Circus Story". I co-produced this film with Val Wang and participated in the planning and shooting. Winner of “Best Short Documentary” at the DisOrient Asian American Film Festival. Facebook @thefilpsidedoc

Film Festival Screenings
· The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival 2018, New York City, USA
· Asian American International Film Festival 2018, New York City, USA
· Boston Asian American Film Festival 2018, Boston, USA
· DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival 2018, Washington, DC, USA
· DisOrient Asian American Film Festival 2018, Oregon, USA
· Seattle Asian American Film Festival 2018, Seattle, USA
· Thunder Bay Vox Popular Media Arts Festival 2018, Thunder Bay, Canada

Conference and University Screenings
· Canadian Association for Theatre Research, Queens University, Kingston, ON, Canada (2018)
· Circus and Its Others, CIRQUEON – Centre for Contemporary Circus, Prague, Czech Republic
(2018)
· Circus Histories and Theories, Centre for Indian Studies in Africa, University of the
Witwatersrand, South Africa (2018)
· The Global Circus,
Social Science Festival, Vanier College, Montreal, Canada (2018)
· Bentley University International Film Series (Fall 2018)
· Tufts University Asian American Studies Series “Expression Across Boundaries: Asian American Women and the Multimedia” (2019)

"The Good Capitalists": John Holt & Co. in Western Africa, 1862-1914

This project uses the company John Holt & Co. to explore broad economic changes in west-central Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

"Women in Film Education: Participatory Photography at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema"

(2019) "Women in Film Education: Participatory Photography at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema". I produced and curated this digital exhibition in collaboration with ten women students from the film production program. https://www.concordia.ca/finearts/cinema/research/women-in-film-education.html

"Youth and Community Development in Canada and Jamaica: A Transnational Approach to Youth Violence" ("Project Groundings")

Principal Investigator - Andrea Davis

'Critical Methodologies, Narrative Voice, and the Writing of the Political: The Limits of Language'

2012-2013. Principal Investigator: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Connection
Grant for the project entitled ‘Critical Methodologies, Narrative Voice, and the Writing of the Political:
The Limits of Language'.

'Scarce Women' and 'Surplus Men'

An examination of the social transformation underway in response to female deficit and surplus men in China, India and Vietnam. The India study focuses on the states of Punjab and Tamil Nadu.

'Talented' citizens?: study-migration policies in traditional immigration and higher education destinations

This is the preliminary phase of a larger project on high skilled labour migration (including postsecondary international student migration), and the shifting nature of national membership in our world dominated by knowledge economic discourses. In this phase a comparative review of various study-migration policies of Canada, Australia, USA, UK and Germany, all introduced in response to the global race for professional talent, will be conducted. This review will build the foundation for the second phase of the study where I plan to explore postsecondary international students’ experience of navigating and making sense of the increasing entanglement between higher education and immigration policies of the aforementioned states, which construct them as 'knowledge diplomats' and 'ideal immigrants' but also maintains a gap between their economic welcome and political disenfranchisement.

'Worked to Death:' Gendered-Racialized Dimensions of Economic Security For Later Life Canadians

2011-2014 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grant (Collaborator). “From Migrant to Citizen: Learning from the Experiences of Former Filipina Live-in Caregivers Transitioning out of the Live-In Caregiver Program.”

2011-2014 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grant (Collaborator). “From Migrant to Citizen: Learning from the Experiences of Former Filipina Live-in Caregivers Transitioning out of the Live-In Caregiver Program.”

2013-2015 Grant Notley Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (Principal Investigator). “The Temporary Foreign Worker Program: A Critical Analysis of Temporary Foreign Work from the Perspectives of Migrant Workers, Civil Society, and Policymakers.”

2013-2015 Grant Notley Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (Principal Investigator). “The Temporary Foreign Worker Program: A Critical Analysis of Temporary Foreign Work from the Perspectives of Migrant Workers, Civil Society, and Policymakers.”

2016-2017. Fulbright Canada. Research Grant. Inaugural Chair in Arctic Studies at Dartmouth College

2016-2017. Fulbright Canada. Research Grant. Inaugural Chair in Arctic Studies at Dartmouth College

2016-2018. SSHRC. Insight Development Grant. Co-applicant: Indigenizing the First Nations Land Management Regime (PI: Deb McGregor)

2016-2018. SSHRC. Insight Development Grant. Co-applicant: Indigenizing the First Nations Land Management Regime (PI: Deb McGregor)

2018 Homeward Trust Edmonton (Principal Investigator). Examining Precarious Migrants’ Experiences with Housing and Homelessness in Edmonton through Participatory Action Research

2018 Homeward Trust Edmonton (Principal Investigator). Examining Precarious Migrants’ Experiences with Housing and Homelessness in Edmonton through Participatory Action Research.

2018 SSHRC Insight Development Grant (Principal Investigator). “Permanently Temporary? An Analysis of Discourses and Policies on Temporary Foreign Work in Canada from 1973-2016.”

2018 SSHRC Insight Development Grant (Principal Investigator). “Permanently Temporary? An Analysis of Discourses and Policies on Temporary Foreign Work in Canada from 1973-2016.”

2018-2019. SSHRC. Indigenous Research Capacity and Reconciliation - Connection Grants Canada. Principal Investigator. Spirit and Intent: The Yukon Umbrella Final Agreement Today and Tomorrow

“Spirit and Intent: The Yukon Umbrella Final Agreement Today and Tomorrow” (SP&I) is a knowledge mobilization project that consists of two phases: Phase 1 (November 2018-May 2019) is the focus of this grant application because it involves community outreach and engagement within the Yukon in the form of workshops and meetings to ascertain what Yukoners (in particular the parties to the agreements along with implementers and youth) want to know about the agreements, the challenges they have experienced and best practices. Phase 2, which will occur following the end of the grant period (May 2019-November 2019) sees this knowledge mobilization project culminate in a two and a half day conference in the Yukon that will bring together and feature original and current day negotiators, government leaders, Elders, youth and local experts – along with professors and students, investors and industry leaders – to explore, examine and explain the Umbrella Final Agreement (the UFA was the framework for negotiating individual Yukon First Nations Final and Self-Government Agreements), and the resulting Yukon First Nations Final and Self-Government Agreements. The lead Yukon-based organizer is Judy Gingell (Kwanlin Dun First Nation) and the applicant and institutional lead is Gabrielle Slowey (York University Robarts Centre). In addition to a focus on education and working in collaboration with Indigenous knowledge holders and Elders in this project, this project and team aims to identify new challenges and share best practices and lessons learned in the process of implementing the terms of the Umbrella Final Agreement.

2018-2021. SSHRC. Partnership Development Grant. Co-Applicant: Aandse: Anishinaabe Ways of Knowing and the Transformation of University-based Knowledge (PI: Carolyn Podruchny)

2018-2021. SSHRC. Partnership Development Grant. Co-Applicant: Aandse: Anishinaabe Ways of Knowing and the Transformation of University-based Knowledge. (PI: Carolyn Podruchny)

2SLGBTQ+ Ontarians’ Experiences with Social Assistance: Conducting Preliminary Research to Nurture Partnerships in the Area of 2SLGBTQ+ Poverty and Health

Two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (2SLGBTQ+) people experience both health
disparities and economic inequities relative to their heterosexual and cisgender (non-trans) peers.
Although poverty is widely understood to be a critically important determinant of health, few studies
have investigated the relationships between poverty and health in 2SLGBTQ+ populations, or the
possible social and structural relationships that sustain these inequities. Our project will address this
research gap, and in doing so will build an emerging multidisciplinary network, the Canadian Coalition
Against 2SLGBTQ+ Poverty (CCA2P). The research team is led by representatives from 2SLGBTQ+
community organizations and academic researchers from Canadian universities, and includes
community advocates and research trainees. Project activities will aim to a) support coalition-building
between academics, organizations and community members working on issues of 2SLGBTQ+ rights
and poverty, working to build a national multisectoral partnership; b) collaborate on communitydriven
research that examines 2SLGBTQ+ peoples’ experiences accessing social assistance in Ontario,
a community-identified research priority; c) meaningfully engage 2SLGBTQ+ people who identify as
having lived experience of poverty throughout research and coalition-building activities; and d)
collaborate on a funding proposal, informed by our preliminary data, to support national research and
partnership-building on this topic. By enabling a more fulsome understanding of 2SLGBTQ+ poverty
from diverse stakeholders, these partnership activities ultimately aim to address the economic and
associated health inequities currently experienced by 2SLGBTQ+ people in Canada.

2SLGBTQ+ Poverty in Canada: Improving Livelihood and Social Wellbeing - Stage 1

This research project is premised on both the Insight and Connection Programs of SSHRC funding as this study seeks to explore, develop understanding and mobilize knowledge regarding the lived experiences of poverty among 2SLGBTQ+ people in Canada. This research will, for the first time in Canada, comprehensively examine the 2SLGBTQ+ populations in relation to the serious issue of poverty, undertaken by a multi-disciplinary team of academics that will include training and mentorship, and with the integral involvement of anti-poverty and 2SLGBTQ+ non-profit organizations. The knowledge acquired from this research will be mobilized to positively impact 2SLGBTQ+ people affected by poverty and influence research, policy, funding and programming.

2SLGBTQ+ Poverty in Canada: Improving Livelihood and Social Wellbeing - Stage 2

Poverty among two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (2SLGBTQ+) people is under-studied and urgently requires attention given that these populations are disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Our cross-disciplinary team inclusive of community partners will be the first to assess the impact of low income on the health, wellbeing, and socio-economic inclusion of 2SLGBTQ+ people using focus groups, interviews, and a nationally representative survey. This study will rectify 2SLGBTQ+ invisibility in mainstream anti-poverty work and develop a cross-sectoral community-based action plan to reduce 2SLGBTQ+ poverty in Canada.

Goal:
To create evidence-based knowledge on how and why poverty affects 2SLGBTQ+ communities in Canada to inform policy and community-based action to address existing inequities.

Objectives:
1. Documenting the lived experiences of poverty among 2SLGBTQ+ communities and creating a unique nationally representative dataset allowing for an intersectional examination of 2SLGBTQ+ poverty rates, poverty risk, and associated causes and consequences.
2. Meaningful collaboration between community and scholarly partners by including 2SLGBTQ+ people with lived experience of poverty across the research process, for continuous knowledge transfer.
3. Mobilizing knowledge on poverty through a 2SLGBTQ+ lens to inform innovative responses in research, policy, funding, and programming within academia, government, and the community.
4. Developing an informed Action Plan, usable by governmental agencies, NPOs, and private organizations, to address 2SLGBTQ+ poverty in Canada.

National Network for Aboriginal Mental Health Research

A bilingual study of the institutional resources that promote persistence and academic success among first generation graduate students

Drawing from organizational theory, this qualitative inquiry will examine if and how institutional resources facilitate first ­generation graduate students’ academic success and persistence and how these students negotiate the challenges and expectations of graduate programs. It will address 3 specific objectives: 1) assess the scope and nature of existing institutional resources that support first­ generation graduate students through a content analysis of 22 Ontario universities’ official policies, and grey literature about student services and programs; 2) explore how first­ generation graduate students use institutional resources and perceive their experiences as they navigate graduate school; and 3) examine how belonging to a Francophone minority community affects graduate education experiences.

A Canadian Refugee Research Network: Globalizing Knowledge

A Canadian Refugee Research Network: Globalizing Knowledge.

Strategic Knowledge Cluster Grant, 2008. ($2.1M over 7 years) . Applicant: S. McGrath with 10 co-applicants and 17 institutional partners.

A community based approach to improve weather-related warnings in Ontario

To explore the public perception of weather-related risk communications issued by the Meteorological Services of Canada (MSC) and their effectiveness in Ontario. To develop an effective severe weather public alerting tool based on people’s perceptions and the severity of the impacts of these events.

A community-based approach to improve weather-related warnings in Ontario to reduce the impacts of severe weather risk

The Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) puts out weather-related advisories and warnings, but the uptake of the communication is quite low in communities. So, there is a keen interest among such public agencies to review and reflect on the current knowledge base, policies, practices, and tools and adopt a new future public alerting system that is simple and effective. Useful weather-related risk communication is key to alleviate the damaging impacts of extreme weather and storm events. To fulfil the need of the industry and to mitigate the devastating impacts of severe weather events, we propose to take a deep dive into understanding public perception of weather-related risks and quantifying it to identify gaps with reality. We will achieve this by engaging the public as well as experts and gauging their insights through survey questionnaires and interviews. Potential beneficiaries of the research outcome would include agencies responsible for weather warnings, emergency managers, first responders, policymakers, educators, researchers, and most importantly, the public.

A community-based mental health intervention for maternal mental health in Rwanda.

Grand Challenges Canada Mental Health Grant, 2013-15. ($250,000) . Applicant: M. Hynie, co-applicants: Y. Bohr, S. McGrath, Benoite Umubyeyi, Marie Claire GASANGANWA, Regine King.

A Comparison of Contemporary Students to Those in the 1960s

On the basis of, among other sources, a replication of surveys conducted in the 1960s at Glendon College York University a comparison of the impact of the liberal arts experience on politics, religion, and the female experience of students in 1963-67 and 2013-17.

A Comparison of Development Worker Narratives: Late 1980s-Early 1990s vs. Post-2000

A Data-driven Study of the Concept of Dialect

Supported by a SSHRCC Insight Grant $79,318. Co-applicants: Dorin Uritescu* and Eric Wheeler

*now deceased

A helmet riddled with holes

A book reflecting the experiences of an Austro-Hungarian soldier during the First World War.

A History of Peshat (Jewish 'plain-meaning' Bible Exegesis)

A multimethod study of the management and prevention of medical errors in Canadian hospitals

A Path Forward: Report on the York Regional Police Services Board Anti-Black Racism and Building Community Trust

The York Regional Police Service Board (YRPSB) requested a proposal for consulting services with regards to building and improving relationships with Black, Indigenous, and other racialized communities in the region, including to conduct an in-depth review and analysis, based on community feedback and recommendations presented to the Board, and to prepare a final report including recommendations and best practices.

A Retrospective Review of Women’s Psychiatric In-Patient Charts for Sexuality Content: a Pilot Study

A Romantic Natural History

My SSHRC Insight Grant, A Romantic Natural History, explores the relationships between material entities and cultural transformation. The Romantic period was a time of tremendous changes in both the natural and human sciences that shaped many of our views of the modern world. In its attention to material entities, the proposed research project addresses tensions in modern scholarship in the humanities and social sciences between recent concerns with the material and the non-human world, on one side, and long-standing concerns with historical, social, and cultural framings of human understandings of the world, on the other. It questions oppositions between material objects and subjective perspectives, the nonhuman and the human. The project focuses on material entities newly encountered through natural historical inquiry in the Romantic period that cannot be simply individuated as objects and that cannot be understood as distinctly natural, artificial, or cultural. Examples include: the infusoria found in experiments and speculations on the origins and elements of life; sensitive plants crossing the plant-animal divide; living instruments such as frog legs and human sensory organs; racialized “Caucasians” and their others; hieroglyphs as natural languages. At the time, such hybrid material entities were regarded as crossing the boundaries of kinds of things, as at once unsettling and exciting, and as thus opening broad historical, cultural, and epistemic questions. Case studies will act as sites for fostering interdisciplinary research, examining the interplay of the study of material entities, cultural values, scientific inquiry, philosophical problems, and literary genres. Case studies of material entities provide a means to stage encounters between the different modes of inquiry, the different perspectives, the different kinds of texts and creative works seeking to comprehend them, reading each through and against its others.

A Situation Analysis of Residential Facilities for Working Women at/near their Work Places

A smart approach to build resilience to climate change induced disasters in Canada

To better understand the complex systems at play that contribute to the frequency and severity of disasters that are induced by climate change in Canada. In a haphazardly changing climate, decision-makers need new insights into identifying underlying causes, reconciling with them, and developing effective resilience-building measures and strategies.

A study of Canadian mining engineers in Australia and the Middle East

A Study of Folk Discourse Processes in Three Acadian Communities in Eastern Canada

Act up: From managing LGBTQ2S+ identity to changing workplace discrimination

This project brings together a group of established and emerging scholars, a LGBTQ2S+ advocacy organization leader in Canada, and two leading LGBTQ2S+ advocacy organizations in China (LGBT Rights Advocacy China and Diversity & Inclusion Consulting). The overall goal of this partnership is to develop strategies that LGBTQ2S+ employees can use to cope with and fight against workplace discrimination. A partnership between academics and non-academic partners in Canada and China is of critical and valuable. Having non-academic partners not only provides us the most relevant knowledge and the lived workplace discrimination experiences LGBTQ2S+ employees have but also helps to formulate effective, practical strategies that LGBTQ2S+ employees can use to cope with and fight against discrimination. Examining workplace discrimination against sexual minorities in both countries can offer richer and deeper understanding of this important and urgent issue, discover nuances between two countries, and develop “universal” strategies that help to reduce workplace discrimination. Most importantly, this partnership provides valuable opportunities for exchange of knowledge and experience between academics and non-academic partners to better understanding LGBTQ2S+ employees’ experiences in Canada and China.

Adapting Drama-Based Methods for Research with Children and Youth (SSHRC-funded)

The overall aim of this research project is to identify best practices for using drama-based methods in participatory research with children and youth, using a rights-based and critical child and youth studies approach.

Addressing trauma and fostering resilience in El Salvador

This project brings together scholars, researchers, students, professionals community leaders and members to explore "trauma" and "resilience" as organizing frameworks for violence prevention and intervention in El Salvador, and more broadly Central America.

ADOPIA: Atlas Digital Onomastique de la Péninsule Ibérique Antique / Atlas digital onómastico de la Península Ibérica Antigua / Atlas digital onómastico da Península Ibérica Antiga / Digital Onomastic Atlas of the Iberian Peninsula in Antiquity

A digital atlas of all personal names attested in the three Roman provinces (Lusitania, Baetica, Hispania Tarraconensis) in the Iberian Peninsula in Antiquity. A collaborative project involving partner institutions York University, Institut Ausonius (Université de Bordeaux - Montaigne, France), Centro CIL II (Universidad de Alcalá, Spain), Archivo Epigráfico Hispánico (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) and researchers in Canada, France, Spain and Portugal. http://adopia.huma-num.fr.

Advanced Disaster, Emergency and Rapid Response Simulation Facility, Ontario Research Fund (ORF), ORF Research Infrastructure

Advanced Disaster, Emergency and Rapid Response Simulation, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)

Advancing Agency in Language Education

This SSHRC-funded project Advancing Agency in Language Education project examines language teacher beliefs and situated language education practices in relation to plurilingual, action-oriented, and technology-mediated approaches across three Canadian provinces (Ontario, Quebec, Alberta). It is being led by Dr. Enrica Piccardo (OISE, University of Toronto) in collaboration with Drs. Geoff Lawrence (York University), Aline Germain-Rutherford (University of Ottawa), and Angelica Galante (McGill University). There are also collaborators and graduate students supporting this project.

Advocacy and Democratization: Permissiveness of Voices in Canada's Voluntary Sector

A study of how advocacy activities by charities and nonprofit organizations are regulated by the Canadian federal government.

African Extractivism and the Green Transition

Surging global demand for minerals used in renewable energy technologies represents unprecedented opportunities and challenges for Southern Africa, home to substantial concentrations of these materials. Experts anticipate that rising international consumption will sustain demand and prices until mid-century due to the impact of the “Green Transition”, the strategic shift led by industrialized countries towards the replacement of carbon-based fuels and energy generation with renewable energy sources and technologies. African exports of these “mineral energy materials” (MEMs) have increased seven-fold in the past two decades, with a forecast rise in demand of nearly 600% by 2050 for key exports like cobalt. Yet as Southern Africa emerges as a priority destination for global MEM miners and traders, there are growing concerns about the capacity of African governments to regulate the foreign-dominated industry and ensure their countries share equitably in the benefits of its unparalleled growth. Recent African iterations of “extractivism” – national development strategies that rely heavily on revenues derived from mineral exports – produced disappointing results in the 2010s, delivering weak economic growth, few opportunities for local miners, businesses and workers, and poor fiscal support for the strengthening of state social services. Contributing factors in these negative and politically destabilizing outcomes, including weak state capacity, the disproportionately influential role of mining companies in policy implementation, and the marginalisation of key domestic mining and social interests from policy-making processes, remain in place. They now threaten the potential of future MEM-driven growth in the region.

Afrofuturism as Future Imagineering

The project investigates afrofuturism as genre, and as a project in future imagineering. Investigating questions around self-determination in an age of Artificial Intelligence, ethics of decolonial reclamation projects.

Agent-based and multi-scale mathematical modelling of COVID-19 for assessments of sustained transmission risk and effectiveness of countermeasures

The project brings together Canadian mathematics institutes, national and international co-investigators, collaborators, and team members, to mobilize a network of infectious disease modellers who will assess transmission risk, predict outbreak trajectories, and evaluate the effectiveness of COVID-19 countermeasures.

Alternative approaches to HRM

Alternative careers of skilled migrants & SME diversity

MITACS funding – Alternative careers of skilled migrants & SME diversity (co-applicants: PhD students Soodabeh Mansoor and Marlee Mercer) (2022-2023)

Alternatives memories in Post conflict and authoritarian societies (SSHRC)

This project addresses the question of public memory in post conflict and authoritarian . Visual studies and digital media studies are its main research directions.

An Actor Network Study of Fingerprinting in Canada

An Analysis of Equity Issues in Public Spending on Mother and Newborn Child Health in Pakistan.

An analysis of fund-raising in disaster and emergency context

Current funding systems for disaster relief are considered to be one of the causes of inefficiencies in humanitarian operations. Aid agencies are currently facing multiple changes and challenges in their environment. I propose to engage aid agencies in a survey that will provide insights into the current state of their prevalent fundraising modes.

An analysis of impacts of downstream infrastructure on environmentally friendly product designs

This project has two long-term objectives: 1. To develop models that address the impacts of downstream infrastructures in recycled end-of-life product operations on a number of important variables, including manufacturers’ investment in product design changes, manufacturers’ and recyclers’ profits, prices that end-users face, and social welfare. 2. To develop models that address the interaction between downstream infrastructures and different product generations associated with product design changes. The development of environmentally friendly product designs is widely recognized as an important characteristic of an environmentally sustainable economy. In achieving this goal, effective incorporation of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is expected to lead to product design improvement and effective recycling, especially in complex and durable products such as electrical and electronic equipment and vehicles. The potential benefits associated with EPR laws are well understood in the EU and in Japan. Unfortunately, governmental institutions and industrial companies in Canada seem to be lagging behind in implementing EPR laws. Concerning the implementation of EPR, a fundamental question arises: How can policy-makers create incentives that encourage product design changes? To answer this question, one cannot ignore the impacts of downstream infrastructures on manufacturers’ operations as a whole. The suggested research framework will take into account important characteristics of recycling activities of end-of-life products that have not been included in previous work. Examples of these characteristics include economies of scale in recycling costs and existence of a non-profit organization that allocates products to recyclers.

An Examination of Racial Disparities in Use of Force and Strip Searches in the Toronto Police Service

In 2019, the Toronto Police Services Board (TPSB) approved the Race-Based Data Collection, Analysis and Public Reporting Policy (Policy) to identify, monitor, and address systemic racial disparities in policing. The Policy builds on Ontario’s Data Standards and was guided by recommendations of its Anti-Racism Advisory Panel (ARAP). In alignment with the provincial Standards, the purposes of the Policy are to:
• use race-based data collection, analysis, and public reporting to identify, monitor, and eliminate potential systemic racism and racial bias;
• improve the delivery of police services;
• preserve the dignity of individuals and communities; and
• enhance trend analysis, professional development, and public accountability.

Employing a phased approach, the Toronto Police Service (TPS) will examine race data collected as of January 1, 2020 for two interactions: Use of Force (as per the Province’s regulation) and Strip Searches (in response to findings in Breaking the Golden Rule: A Review of Police Strip Searches in Ontario, 2019 (Office of the Independent Police Review Director, OIPRD).

An Experimental Investigation of the Demand for Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS)

Looking at behaviour attitudes and other factors affecting demand for vaping and other electronic nicotine delivery systems.

An Experimental Investigation of: Effects of Ethical Distance, Perceived Fairness, an Techniques of Neutralization On Accounting Students’ Likelihood to Whistle-blow

This study aims to increase our understanding of how to promote the likelihood that students will whistle-blow (during their academic and professional careers).

An investigation of alternative emissions trading policies under demand growth and volatility

Investigating cap-and-trade and baseline-and-credit performance standards emission trading schemes when demand is volatile.

Anglo-Burmese Culture

Book outcoming 2024 Anglo-Burmese Culture: Letters from my mother from Vernon Press

Animal assisted interventions in the Nova Scotia health service sector

This study investigates current practice of animal-assisted interventions (AAI) in the province of Nova Scotia from the perspective of practitioners in the five health care professions, including occupational, recreational, and behavioural therapists, psychologists, and social workers. The purposes of this study are: 1) to gain a better understanding of how AAI are conducted in the province, the types of health concerns addressed, and the relationship between AAI services and other health services; 2) to develop a conceptual framework for best practices of AAI within the context of NS and 3) to bring curricular change initiatives using the research findings. We proposed to achieve the purposes through conducting constructivist grounded theory based in-depth interviews with practitioners and through advisory workshops.

Animals and Moral Practice

An examination of the nature of normative cognition and the evolution of moral cognition across species.

Ansar Allah, the military intervention in Yemen, and the crisis in the Red Sea

This project engages in a critical inquiry into the military intervention in Yemen that began in 2015, and the current politics that surround the Red Sea crisis that developed in October 2023. Who are Ansar Allah, why were they the target of an illegal bombing campaign and how do both matters relate to the crisis in the Red Sea and the situation in Gaza? The endeavour is to foster research interest in the topic among undergraduates, graduates, post-doctoral researchers and visiting scholars, to develop an interdisciplinary approach to the themes and problematics identified, and to expand and refine them. It aspires to contribute to the network of national and international researchers, and particularly to engage those who are Yemeni or who live in Yemen, who are working on the complexities of the situation in Yemen and the region by bringing to bear on the existing literature different perspectives on a situation that requires urgent analytical, political and humanitarian attention.

Ansar Allah’s Rule in Yemen: Zaydism, Houthism and the Anti-Imperialist Wager

The proposed study focuses on the emergence of the Houthi movement in Yemen, known officially as Ansar Allah. Assuming that the developments in the Middle East/West Asia tied to Ansar Allah’s position toward the Israeli genocide in Gaza will produce profound effects far beyond the foreseeable future, I contend that the current situation cannot adequately be understood or addressed without apprehending what took place in the far northern governorate of Yemen during the 1990s to 2010 (the year before the Youth Revolution in Yemen that was part of the wider movement the west calls the Arab Spring). Also critical to analyzing the current situation is a grasp on the profound implications the 1962 defeat of the Zaydi Imamate have had on the politics and ideology of Ansar Allah’s domestic policies, given that Ansar Allah's ideology is informed by Zaydism and Zaydi elites populate Ansar Allah. What is their vision of how Yemen’s north should be socio-religiously constituted and politically ruled? How is this related -- or not -- to the kind of theocracy in Iran?

Anti-Racism Directorate and the Government of Ontario Anti-Racism Act

Under the authority of The Anti-Racism Act, 2017, the Government of Ontario is committed to maintaining an anti-racism strategy that aims to eliminate systemic racism and advance racial equity.

The strategy includes the following:
1. initiatives to eliminate systemic racism, including initiatives to identify and remove systemic barriers that contribute to inequitable racial outcomes;
2. initiatives to advance racial equity; and
3. targets and indicators to measure the strategy’s effectiveness.

Application of machine learning algorithms to hydrological forecasting

Accumulated volumes of data on water quantity and quality coupled with meteorological data make data-driven analyses of water related problems an effective decision support tool for water resources management. The project is aimed at developing a framework for water resource assessment and management based on machine learning techniques. The framework relies on data which are routinely collected on stream watershed and become available to users almost in real time regime, e.g. water level or precipitation. The study will enhance the methodology and will form a basis for knowledge transfer activities by providing scientifically valid recommendations for improving black box models which can be integrated into early warning systems and used by local authorities for flood management, particularly, in watershed with rapidly changing land use.

Archival Research

Archival Research, Callaway Centre, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. Research conducted with the John Blacking Collection on the study of Venda children’s music held by the Callaway Centre for Research in Music Education. June - September 2003.

Asia-Pacific Dispute Resolution Project: Understanding Integrated Compliance with International Trade and Human Rights Standards from a Comparative Perspective

This international collaborative research project — involving Canada, Japan, Indonesia, and China — examines legal consciousness and legal culture in human rights and international trade disputes.

Asian International Students in Canadian Universities Examining Racialization Processes of/by Chinese, Indian and South Korean Students in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg

The main objective of this research project is to shed light on the experiences of international students as migrants to specific communities, beyond their academic affiliation, by using the ways in which racialization affects them on and off-campus, and has repercussions on their migratory experiences and trajectories as a whole.

For more detailed summary, see here: https://ycar.apps01.yorku.ca/rais/

Assessing and predicting health science projects and collaboration

Assessing Sexual Harassment Prevention Training in Nicaragua, Indonesia, Jordan and Vietnam

This study follows the implementation and evaluation of initiatives to prevent sexual harassment in four garment-producing countries. The first wave of research was conducted in 2022. A follow-up impact assessment is being conducted in 2023. THe project examines both traditional methods of training across the countries, as well as a virtual reality pilot project in Indonesia.

Assessment of Lexicostatistical Accuracy at Large Time Depths

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Assets Coming Together for Youth: Linking Research, Policy and Action for Positive Youth Development

The Assets Coming Together for Youth Project (2009 – 2014) is a community-university research alliance that is focused on developing a comprehensive youth strategy that will outline how urban communities like the Jane-Finch community can build assets for youth.

Assets for Youth

Asylum-seeking in the Epicentre of COVID-19 - The Social Impact of COVID-19 on Venezuelan LGBTQI+ Asylum Seekers in Brazil

As COVID-19 causes nations to close their borders, asylum seekers are trapped and becoming targets of violence. A particularly precarious group are Venezuelan LGBTQI+ asylum seekers in Brazil, a global epicentre for COVID-19 with the highest infection rate and the second highest coronavirus deaths. Since 2015, more than 5 million have fled Venezuela and 264,000 have applied for asylum in Brazil. Under COVID-19, Venezuelan LGBTQI+ asylum seekers now face more challenges, including the loss of livelihood and an increased risk of gender-based violence, exploitation and abuse. Thus, research on the social impacts of COVID-19 will be important so policy makers can understand the protection gaps that existed for these asylum seekers during the pandemic.

This project builds on an existing partnership with Casa Miga, the only LGBT refugee centre in Brazil and one of the only centres in Latin America. Casa Miga is a LGBT-run non-profit shelter that is located in Manaus, one of the hardest hit city in Brazil by the coronavirus. The situation is increasingly dire as the public health care system in Manaus is completely over capacity with a shortage of ventilators, medical supplies and COVID-19 tests.

As the first foreign researchers to study Casa Miga, we can make novel and timely contributions to help Casa Miga address the challenge of a lack of capacity to undertake research to produce policy recommendations for politicians and humanitarian actors to help their residents. The sensitive nature of research on vulnerable groups is what has made this an understudied subject, but this is why this research needs to be done. At a time when vulnerable populations like Venezuelan LGBTQI+ asylum seekers are falling through the cracks, it is important to bring attention to the protection gaps that exist and the assistance that they need to survive, be healthy and feel safe.

At the Edge of Safety: Comparing Responses to Venezuelan LGBT Refugees in Brazil and Colombia amid COVID-19

LGBT Venezuelan refugees are one of the most vulnerable and overlooked groups in one of the largest and most underfunded crises in modern history. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), over 5.4 million people have left Venezuela due to violence, persecution and poverty, and the number of Venezuelans seeking refuge worldwide has increased by 8,000 per cent since 2014 (UNHCR, 2020). Many have fled to neighbouring Colombia and Brazil, which automatically grant refugee status to Venezuelan asylum seekers. However, protection gaps, poor funding as well as political and social tensions mean LGBT folks face unprecedented levels of homophobia, xenophobia, extreme violence and exploitation in their place of refuge (IOM, 2020; Valiquette, Su and Felix, 2020). Yet, an unlikely beacon of hope lies in the middle of the Amazon, at Casa Miga, Brazil’s only LGBT refugee centre. And in the border city of Cúcuta in Colombia, where La Casa que Abraza (The House that Hugs), provides a safe space for Venezuelan LGBT refugees in a region still facing insecurity from the country’s internal armed conflict. Both centres are run by LGBT people for LGBT people with the aim to provide services and assistance to LGBT refugees. But despite the significance of the essential service these institutions are providing, they remain scarce, underfunded and understudied. The aim of this study is to shine a light on the significance of peer-to-peer support for Venezuelan LGBT refugees in Brazil and Colombia.

Atkinson Junior Faculty Fund

Becoming White, urban, and working class: Clinton Claus and the Migration of Six Nation People, 1870-1920

Before ‘Farm to Table’: Early Modern Foodways and Cultures

From 2017-2021 I was one of three co-directors for the inaugural project of the Mellon initiative in collaborative research, based at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.

Being a Mother in Academia

Beyond Remittances: Croatian ‘expert expatriates’, ethnic citizenship and post-socialist strategies of diaspora enticement

Biopolitics and Negative Power

In Fall-Winter 2014-2015 my focus is on social theory and biopolitics, exploring negative power and sacrificial practices.

Biosecurity and Genomics

1. I am continuing with my research and writing trajectory on biosecurity and genomics, projecting 2 articles during 2015 on synthetic biology and classified scientific research.

Blackness in Canada: Transforming the Nature and Not Just the Face of Social Science Research

The “Blackness in Canada” research project examines Black Canadian identity, practice, and experiences with the intent of building networks aimed at equity policy development, implementation, and outcomes.

Book in press

Child and Adolescent Migration, Mental Health and Language: Effects of Foreign Language Immersions. Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press.

Book Project

Book Project

Book Project: Henry James and the Ladies: Female Imagination in James’s Fiction

Book Project: Ulysses Unchained: Wander-lust in the Works of Hédi Bouraoui

BOOK: Pursuing Engagement: Indigenous Reconciliation in Canada

BRICS, Rising Powers, and New Southern Multilateralism

Research, Publications, Communications Project

Buddhism Across Boundaries: Subaltern, Plebeian and Peripheral Networks in Colonial Southeast Asia

Across Southeast Asia, Buddhist nationalism is on the rise, presenting Buddhist identity in exclusivist ethnic and national terms. Nowhere is this more apparent at the moment than in Arakan state in Myanmar, where hope of new political freedoms immediately gave way to violence against Muslims fueled by Buddhist nationalist rhetoric. The current identification between Buddhism and nation in Southeast Asia, however, emerged under colonialism out of a more diverse milieu of Buddhist identities at the turn of the twentieth century. In colonial Southeast Asia multiple transnational and multi-ethnic Buddhist identities flourished and, moreover, Buddhism was a medium of connection across boundaries. “Buddhism across Boundaries: Subaltern, Plebeian, and Peripheral Networks in Colonial Southeast Asia” will explore the history of Buddhism as a medium for identity, engagement, and collaboration beyond the late modern limitations of nation and ethnicity, through the study of disparate but effective networks of Buddhist patrons, organizers, and supporters between 1880 and 1920. It promises to open up a new understanding of the complexities of Buddhist transnational organizing and the ways in which religion served as a means for collaboration and affinity. This two-year collaborative project with Brian Bocking, University College, Cork and Laurence Cox, National University of Ireland Maynooth works from the margins and fringes, rather than the colonial and Buddhist centres, starting in the outlying port cities that saw great flux and interactions of cultures: Akyab in Arakan, Tavoy in Tenasserim and Penang in the Straits Settlements, and in minority and mobile cultures: Chinese in Rangoon, Shan in Bangkok, Sinhalese in Penang, Irish in Southeast Asia. This project steps back from the focus on monks to look at networks that facilitated the travel of ideas and gave birth to new identities and associations. The practice of Buddhism represented the visions of those who made it financially possible—the networks of sponsors, each with their own interpretations of what it should mean to be Buddhist and modern. Investigating the changing role and meaning of Buddhism in the colonial world allows us to ask: How did religion function as a vector of connection outside of the centralizing forces of colonial subjectivity and subsequent nationalism? How did promoting Buddhism make connections across ethnic, class, and cultural boundaries and between those on the various margins of empire—even as they continually reinvented what “Buddhism” and “religion” would mean in practice? How did Buddhism become a medium for resisting both colonialism and the centralizing forces of burgeoning nationalism and official monastic orthodoxy?

Building a New EU Citizenship: Migration and Integration in Germany and the European Union

Building a novel interactive platform and recommendation system for creative learning

Building Bridges across Social and Computational Sciences: Using Big Data to Inform Humanitarian Policy and Interventions

Building Community Resilience, Access to Education and Economic Self-Sufficiency Through the Arts in Jane-Finch

Action research project will inform the development of a Community Arts Hub on Metrolinx property across from Yorkgate Mall.

Building Migrant Resilience in Cities/Immigration et résilience enmilieu urbain(BMRI)

SSHRC partnership grant $2.5 million. PI: Valerie Preston

Building Partnerships and Trust: Labour-Management-Inuit Relations, Unionization, and the Goals of Reconciliation

"Building Partnerships and Trust: Labour--Management--Inuit Relations, Unionization, and the Goals of Reconciliation" is a knowledge exchange and mobilization project examining the relationship between southern trade unions and northern Indigenous workers in Nunavut in the context of resource extraction. 

Building “Animals and Social Work”: Incorporating ¬Trans-Species Social Justice

Business Strategy, Deferred Compensation and Organizational Performance

Calibrating Livelihood and the Gut: Australian Metabolism Science in Papua New Guinea (1960-1971)

Pacific Islanders have some of the highest rates of metabolic disease in the world. Often scientists attribute this to genetics and a transition to a processed food diet. My project presents another element in the regional and global history of how researchers understood metabolism at a time when global hunger, not obesity, was a concern. This metabolism research was also a precursor to microbiome research today.
In the 1960s, a team of Australian nutritionists travelled to Papua New Guinea (then an Australian colony) and compared the metabolisms of people who lived a subsistence lifestyle with those who worked for wages in towns, as well as White Australians in Australia. Subsistence livelihoods were of particular interest during the Cold War, as regional institutions, like the South Pacific Commission hoped that Pacific Islanders could transition to wage earners in capitalist economies.

As part of their research, these researchers collected and compared urine, expired air, breast milk and feces. The samples they could not analyze in the field, were sent back to a government lab at the Australian Institute of Anatomy (a leading national institution of the Australian Department of Health) in Canberra for analysis. These researchers cautiously published that in people practicing subsistence livelihoods, they had located gut microflora that would metabolise protein from nitrogen in the air. Their claims suggested that WHO universal standards of protein consumption might need to be changed to allow for differences between populations.

The objective of this research is to use historical methods and social theory to analyze metabolism research in Australian colonial nutrition science in the south western Pacific Islands. Within this 1960s research, I will document the scientific practices of the collection, storage and analysis of Pacific Islanders’ biological materials. I want to understand these technologies measuring metabolism as a means of how scientists calibrated the sexed, raced and age-related embodiment of food and waged or subsistence labour.

Canada Watch: The Politics of Evidence

Annual publication of Canada Watch, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, 2014

Canada's Approach to China: The Chrétien Years

Contributing author for the Project, "Chrétien's World", on Canada's foreign policy during the period of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, 1993-2003.

Canada-China Forum on Industrial Relations and Employment Standards

Establishment of a cross-sectoral/community engagement partnerships with the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) and the Capital University of Economics and Business (CUEB), Beijing China.

Canadian Foundation for Innovation, John Evans Leadership Opportunity Fund Grant, “Canada Labour Code Data Analysis Infrastructure (CLC-DAI),” Principal Investigator, January 2018

Canadian Foundation for Innovation, John Evans Leadership Opportunity Fund Grant, “Canada Labour Code Data Analysis Infrastructure (CLC-DAI),” Principal Investigator, January 2018

Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Leadership Opportunity Fund Grant, “Global Employment Standards Database (GESD),” Principal Investigator, January 2012-December 2016

Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Leadership Opportunity Fund Grant, “Global Employment Standards Database (GESD),” Principal Investigator, January 2012-December 2016

Canadian Mining and Resource Nationalism in Africa: Contestation and Developmental Implications

In the 2000s Canada developed legislative and regulatory measures to enhance transparency and encourage corporate social responsibility by national mining firms overseas. Recent initiatives, including Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act and the Canadian Ombudsman for Responsible Enterprise, have promised to improve financial and contract transparency, strengthen miner-host country trust, and open paths to constructive engagement with host governments, communities and civil society organisations. These moves come at a time when many mineral-rich developing countries are experiencing a wave of 'resource nationalism', in which local governments, businesses, mining communities and policy activists are demanding greater local distribution of benefits from foreign mining. This project investigates the convergence of these two trends -Canadian regulatory innovation and rising host country demands on mining investors - in the context of Southern Africa, a key destination of recent Canadian offshore mining activity and a region currently enmeshed in resource nationalist mining reforms.

Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy: Publishing for the Future

This project is the next step in a long-term initiative to create an indie publishing press that is connected to York's Professional Writing and Creative Writing programs. In a previous project, I laid down the funding and budgetary framework for this company and made some early promotional decisions, while this new research effort will tackle the creative solutions, social connections, and market interventions that will bring that initial research to life.

Capital risk management

Career Success of Migrant Professionals

SSHRC Partnership Grant (Migration and Resilience) (co-applicant) – Project chosen & awarded competitive GA-ship for 2017-2018 for Career Success of Migrant Professionals project.

Cataloguing Protest

How best do we track the landscape of protest. This project evaluates the distinct picture generated via newspapers, social media and aggregators .

Challenges of Regulatory Compliance in the Long-Term Care Sector in Ontario

It is hard to ignore the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the long-term care system in Canada. In Ontario, the COVID-19 pandemic draws attention to long-standing issues with the funding, regulation and oversight of long-term care homes (nursing homes). It is probably not controversial to suggest that long-term care is highly regulated in Ontario and elsewhere. Rules in the form of formal law (e.g. provincial statutes and regulations) are intended to protect the human rights of residents, reduce safety risks to residents and workers and promote accountability in the long-term system. However, a highly prescriptive regulatory regime alone is not enough to protect long-term care residents and workers. Compliance with regulatory requirements is also an important component. Rules that are not followed rarely achieve their public policy objectives.

Challenging inequalities in Peru: Learning from human rights-based approaches to health over time.

Funded by SSHRC Insight Development Grant.

Changing Places: Unpaid Work in Public Places

The goal of this project is to identify promising practices for family engagement now and in the future, with a view that includes but goes beyond safety to make care as good as it can be and brings joy to families, residents and staff.
This goal of identifying principles and processes for family engagement in the post-COVID-19 environment is shared with our partner Family Councils Network Four and collaborating organizations.

Changing the Narrative: Bringing Indigenous History to Black Creek Pioneer Village

“Changing the Narrative: Connecting Indigenous and Settler Histories at Black Creek Pioneer Village” is a two-year public history project between York University researchers, Jumblies Theatre, and Black Creek Pioneer Village (BCPV), a museum owned and operated by Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. The project’s overarching goal is to bring Indigenous content, perspectives, and voices to the interpretation of early non-Indigenous settlement of the region at BCPV.

Charting the course for inclusive services: Perspectives from the differently-abled consumers

Funded by AIM-Sheth Foundation, the study focuses on identifying the characteristics of service inclusivity from the perspective of consumers with locomotor disability

Childcare Co-ops and Participatory Community Planning in South Korea

This project interrogates the transformative possibility of childcare co-op projects that some progressive faction in South Korea have developed as part of their community based activism. I will examine how issues of social reproduction and gender division of labor are contested and reconciled in these projects.

Children, Youth and Performance Conference V: Creative Collaborations (SSHRC-funded)

This conference focuses on developing connections and collaborations between researchers, artists, educators and practitioners who engage in performance work with, for, and about children and youth. The broad themes of this event include: [1] devising performances with/for/about children and youth; [2] strengthening equity in performing arts initiatives and spaces; [3] puppets, props, and performance objects by/with/for children; [4] advocacy and activism through performance; and, [5] exploring culture through performances by/with/for children and youth.

Chinese Grocery Store Worker Project – Improving Work in the Ethnic Economy

Chronically Ill Research-Creation: Engendering Experimentations in Form and Content

Illness narratives present a challenge to readers when they are championed primarily for what they can teach us about a patient's experience (Woods, 2011). Such personal stories, when written in a linear narrative form, unwittingly become entangled in larger issues with which all life writing projects must contend: questions about the veracity of memory, representation of self and responsibility to community (Bolaki, 2016; Jurecic, 2012). Too often, those outside the disabled and chronically ill communities judge these same illness narratives strictly along the lines of factual accuracy or inaccuracy; a memoir of illness can be invalidated if its author misrepresents or misremembers the minutiae of their diagnosis, treatment, convalescence, or rehabilitation. This research-creation project will use experiential knowledge, critical theory, and creativity to address complex questions of truth-value, form and structure, as well as the personal politics at the heart of researching and writing compelling illness narratives.

Civil Society and the Global Refugee Regime (LERRN), SSHRC, 2018-2025

LERRN aims to better understand and enhance the role of civil society in responding to the needs of refugees in the global south. Civil society plays a large role in developing innovative responses to refugee situations and has the power to be a driver of change within political communities.

The Partnership’s goal is to enhance the understandings of the global refugee regime and empower society to directly contribute to the improved function of the regime, thereby ensuring more predictable protection and solutions for refugees and enhancing their lived experience. The project officially launched in October 2018 and will run until December 2025.

https://research.info.yorku.ca/2018/07/york-researchers-partner-in-3-5-million-refugee-study/
https://carleton.ca/lerrn/

Climate Change and Subjectivity: Transversal Ecologies

Climate change and the Rideau Canal Skateway

To establish a comprehensive understanding of the effects of climate change on the Rideau Canal Skateway of Canada, the longest natural skating rink in the world.

Clocked In – Work, Time, and Technology in the Digital Economy

Working time patterns in contemporary labour markets. The ways in which new technologies are reshaping the organization of working time. Currently funded through a SSHRC Insight Grant.

Co-editor, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin canadien d'histoire de la médecine (2015-19)

Co-editor of CBMH/BCHM (with Erika Dyck)

Collaboration between Competitors in Product Innovation

Product innovations significantly enhance society at the expense of firms’ lengthy, costly, and risky investments. The intrinsic risks in innovation drive firms that may even be competitors to collaborate in innovation. The recent pharma industry is not the exception. One remarkable example is Pfizer’s partnership with BioNTech to create a vaccine based on BioNTech’s revolutionary mRNA technology, which had never been used for vaccines. Our research aims to further enhance health and economic well-being by promoting more such collaborations, focusing on industries with collaboration between rivals in innovation, limited substitutability of components, and legal barriers to collaboration, .

While “collaboration in innovation” is a well-explored field of research, significant gaps between theory and practice still necessitate further investigation. One such issue, which drives our research program, is the recent emergence of collaborations between rival pharma firms in product innovation. This is not just a potential game-changer, but a potential catalyst for urgent policy change in the pharmaceutical industry. In many high-tech industries, relatively standardized interfaces in different product varieties enable firms to collaborate in product innovation because a distinct co-developed component does not jeopardize product differentiation between partner firms. However, this is not the case in the pharmaceutical industry. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, collaborations between rival pharma firms in product innovation were rare. Two major reasons for their rare collaboration in innovation are: the limited substitutability of therapeutic formulas in drugs; and infringement on antitrust laws. Indeed, radical drug innovation has declined since the second half of the twentieth century despite increasing pharma research and development investment. Although we will focus on the pharmaceutical industry, our research outcomes about key economic and policy levers for firms’ innovation collaboration can be applicable to industries with similar attributes, such as aerospace and defense industries, where firms face constant technological advances, rare innovation collaboration between rivals, the limited substitutability of components, and legal barriers to cooperating in the commercialization stage.

The overarching objectives of our research program are to develop an analytical framework and verify it using the data to provide Canadian policymakers and companies with valuable insights. To this end, we propose a research program that comprises three phases. In Phase I, we will focus on patent and management data collection and data analysis to guide analytical model building in choosing relevant assumptions for Phase II. Our ongoing research indicates great potential for collaboration between rival firms in innovation, but they still need further assistance and guidance in developing innovations. In Phase II, we plan to derive boundary conditions that influence firms’ decisions on forming collaborations in innovation along with their sales formations. In developing and refining the stylized mathematical model, we will pay particular attention to the representation of market, legislative, and knowledge exchange factors. In Phase III, we test the validity of the theoretical hypothesis through the process of deriving the boundary conditions in Phase II, employing data collected in Phase I.

Our research program will address an essential gap in the academic literature by surfacing the key economic and policy levers that can enhance radical product innovations in innovative industries. Presumably, our research will lead to circumstances that foster more radical product innovation, thereby contributing to the entire wellness of society.

Collection system design, strategy choice and financial incentives for product recovery

Collection represents the first phase of product recovery operations. This research project addresses a methodology for selecting collection strategies by simultaneously optimizing the service area of each collection facility and the financial incentive provided by the collector for each returned product. We represent the collection system via a continuous model, and use a stochastic utility choice model to incorporate the customers’ return decisions. This enables us to model and analyze the collector firm’s profit function under drop-off and pick-up collection strategies, and establish the analytical properties of the optimal collection area and subsidy decisions under each strategy. We show that higher subsidies induce the collector to install less collection facilities under the drop-off strategy, but more facilities under the pick-up strategy. The impact of cost, product and market parameters on the financial subsidy and collection area size, as well as on the choice of the collection strategy is also haracterized. We identify the variable collection cost parameters and the amount of used products in the market area as the main determinants of the collection strategy choice, and illustrate our results with numerical examples.

Commentary on the Book of Chronicles

A commentary on the biblical book of Chronicles for Das Alte Testament Deutsch (the Old Testament in German).

Communicating across ideological differences: Theory and practice

Community Science and Accountability for Canada's Colonial Genocide Past and Present

Tri-Council of Research Canada, New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) – 2021 Innovative Approaches to Research in the Pandemic Context. Co-PIs Heidi Matthews (Osgoode Hall Law School); and Yuzhi Joel Ong (School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design), York U.

Community-University Research Alliances (CURA) Assets Coming Together for Youth (ACT for Youth) with university and community partners

Community-university research partnership with PEACH (Promoting Economic Action and Community Health)

Competing or complementary?: A study of Indigenizing and internationalizing initiatives in key Canadian postsecondary institutions

This project is part of a larger, multi-sited project on the role of the postsecondary education in facilitating reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada, USA and Australia. It builds on my scholarly interest in two apparently disparate but deeply conceptually connected developments in postsecondary education in these countries – international student recruitment, and enhancing Indigenous content in teaching and learning.

Competitive Award to Lead and Organize Cross-cultural Symposium between Canada & Germany: Is Canada a model immigration nation?

European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology (EAWOP) – Competitive Award to Lead and Organize Cross-cultural Symposium between Canada & Germany: Is Canada a model immigration nation? Bamberg, Germany (Dec. 15-16, 2016)

Conditions of Work and Equality Department (Labour Migration Division), International Labour Organization, “Valuing the essential: Building resilience in the world of work.” Country study on Canadian Agriculture to inform WESO Thematic Report 2022-23, Principal Investigator

Conditions of Work and Equality Department (Labour Migration Division), International Labour Organization, “Valuing the essential: Building resilience in the world of work.” Country study on Canadian Agriculture to inform WESO Thematic Report 2022-23, Principal Investigator

Conference: Adversarial legalism à l’Européen, April 28-29, 2011

On April 28 and 29, 2011, EUCE York, in cooperation with York’s Centre for Public Policy & Law (YCPPL), Office of the Principal, Glendon College, the Office of the Dean, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, the Office of the Vice-President Academic and Provost and the Law and Society Program in the Department of Social Science, are pleased to present “Adversarial legalism à l’Européen”, a two-day conference which will bring together younger and more established scholars from the EU, the United States and Canada who are working on law and politics in a comparative context.

CONFERENCE: Encounters in Canada: Contrasting Indigenous and Immigrant Perspectives

Indigenous peoples are the original caretakers of Canada, but their encounters with settlers have been marred by assimilation and territorial dispossession over hundreds of years. The result has been significant alienation between Indigenous peoples and Canadian governments. Conversely, immigrants to Canada, which for the purposes of this conference include early colonists, recent immigrants, refugees and displaced persons, have often viewed the country as a haven or land of opportunity. However, many are sorely unaware of Indigenous history, rights and contributions to Canada’s development. No people or community can speak for another; individual and group knowledge is intrinsic and internal. However, in keeping with the ideal of “mutual sharing” emphasized in the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, respect and trust can be fostered through shared difference. While the specific experiences of Indigenous peoples, immigrant communities, refugees and Canadian-born citizens are very different on many levels, connections can be developed through dialogue and reciprocity. Indigenous peoples as well as immigrant and refugee communities experience discrimination, racism, stigmatization and marginalization. These encounters represent a wider systemic problem in Canadian political, legal, sociocultural and historical contexts. Efforts to overcome exclusion can be built through increased awareness and knowledge-building, with support from allies. This conference aims to fill this gap in knowledge and will bring together leaders from government and the judiciary, legal scholars, academics and practitioners to formulate practical solutions. The primary objective is to build bridges – cultural, political, intellectual and social connections – between those who share the lands of what is now Canada. The underlying rationale of the conference stems from the fact that Canada is now shared by Indigenous peoples, descendants of early settlers and more recent immigrant and refugee communities. These communities encounter Canada in very different ways based on racial identity, ancestral heritage, cultural background, community belonging, language and spiritual practice. Bridging the chasm that exists between Indigenous peoples and all newcomers, whether early or contemporary immigrants or refugees, is urgently needed in order to end discrimination and achieve equitable quality of life for all who live in this country. To this end, the objective is to understand how Indigenous peoples and various immigrant groups experience their lives in Canada. How are the challenges they face different? Are there shared goals and experiences upon which to build future alliances to achieve improved quality of life in Canada?

Confronting Global Capital: Strengthening Labour Internationalism and Transnationalism Today

In October 2017, I served as one of the principal organizers of a community-engaged, union-supported conference entitled “Confronting Global Capital: Strengthening Labour Internationalism and Transnationalism Today,” for which I was awarded a SSHRC Connection Grant of $24, 973.

Conjugal Slavery in War: Partnerships for the study of enslavement, marriage and masculinities

This SSHRC-funded Partnership Grant (2015-2020) documents cases of so-called forced marriage in conflict situations, places this data in historical context, and impacts the international prosecution of crimes against humanity as well as local reparations programs for survivors of violence. See: csiw-ectg.org

Constitution-Making and the Emergence of the British North America Act, 1867

Although there is a considerable body of scholarship that focuses on Canadian Confederation, there is relatively little research on the making of the BNA Act, 1867. This project remedies this gap in the literature by undertaking the first comprehensive analysis of the emergence of the BNA Act, 1867. More specifically, it draws upon historical institutionalism to help explain the nature, origins and processes that led to its adoption. This study considers not only the architects' interests and goals in drafting Canada's first constitution, but it also assesses the institutional influences and constraints affecting its development in the decades prior to its adoption.

Contemporary Canadian Literary Biography: Gender and Genre

A SSHRC Insight Grant project (awarded 2021-2025) for a four-year research that aims to take stock of the field of literary biography in Canada in the past forty years.

Contemporary issues in higher education policy, particularly comparative study or involving internationalization

Exploration of contemporary issues in higher education policy, with a particular emphasis on comparative studies or those involving internationalization.

Content recommendations in a live customer environment

Context-aware information retrieval and semantic text analysis for very large unstructured data

Controlling excessive and destabilising arms: A comparative analysis

Controls to Coordinate or to monitor: an empirical assessment of their impact on performance

Management control systems are mainly used to reduce the uncertainty in highly uncertain environments such as joint ventures, providing evidence on how management control systems are used and contribute to improve organization's performance.

Copula Model with Autocorrelated Discrete-Continuous Mixture Margins with Application in the Uns of Indices of Climate Extremes in Climate Change Detection Studies

Corrections Canada: Looking at Experiences of Risk and Masculinity among Corrections Officers

Countermeasure to supply chain disruptions in medical and pharmaceutical industries associated with COVID-19

The intended research project focuses on the supply chain disruptions that medical/pharmaceutical industries are currently facing in the Novel Coronavirus Outbreak, due to the suppliers’ strategic hoarding and consumers’ panic buying behavior under psychological and behavioral uncertainties. Specifically, this proposed research project explores: factors that delay the resilience of medical/pharmaceutical industries’ supply chain disruptions caused by the Novel Coronavirus Outbreak; and the feasibility of two countermeasures that we propose: (1) establishing a collaborative stock sharing/transshipment system; and (2) making an incentive contract with a potential second source that can produce highly customized medical/pharmaceutical items (e.g., ventilators, protective clothing for or a new drug for novel viruses).

Country Image Measurement and Its Implications for Country Branding

Court-based Family mediation with South Asians in Peel

COVID 19: Building Economic Inclusion and Food Justice

“COVID 19: Building Economic Inclusion and Food Justice” is a two-year community-based project co-led by Luann Good Gingrich (York University), Collaborator Omar Khan (Engaged Communities), and The Neighbourhood Organization (TNO). This collaborative project aims to document and mitigate the immediate and long-term “viral inequality” of the pandemic. The specific objectives are: 1) to understand and chronicle experiences of economic insecurity and food insecurity, and the relationship between them, since the onset of COVID-19, with the intent of establishing a robust base of evidence to inform further development of food justice and inclusive economic development initiatives in Flemingdon Park and Thorncliffe Park; 2) to evaluate the TNO Food Collaborative and other COVID-19 emergency food delivery services initiated to address immediate food security and health concerns; 3) to collaborate with community organizations, local businesses and farmers, and municipal staff to share information related to resources, data, needs, and initiatives related to food security; and 4) to engage in an assessment of community-level resources in order to build an inventory of individual and collective skills, interests, experience, and education in support of refining and expanding community food justice initiatives in the face of COVID-19, and beyond.

covid and families

The goal of this project is to identify promising practices for family engagement now and in the future, with a view that includes but goes beyond safety to make care as good as it can be and brings joy to families, residents and staff.
This goal of identifying principles and processes for family engagement in the post-COVID-19 environment is shared with our partner Family Councils Network Four and collaborating organizations.

COVID-19 and Punjabi Migration

In partnership with Punjabi Community Health Services (PCHS), this project’s goals are to discover the shifting needs, obstacles, concerns and coping strategies around settlement among young newcomer Punjabis (ages 18–35) in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) arising as a result of COVID-19.

COVID-19 pandemic – A paradigm shift from response to adaptive capacities

To offer evidence-based new insights on the risk of coronaviruses and recommendations for a paradigm shift towards adaptive strategies for multi-faceted disasters such as COVID-19. The response to COVID-19 in Canada and worldwide will be critically examined through the lens of disaster theories to support the study's outcome and validity.

COVID-19: Building disaster preparedness and resilience via analytics of a fire department's responses to emergency incidents in a pandemic—Case of Vaughan, Ontario

The research project applies data analytics to enable evidence-based planning and decision-making with respect to disaster and emergency mitigation, preparedness, and response strategies and initiatives, which may potentially be applied as further stages/waves of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis unfold, as well as when new pandemics arise in the future. This knowledge mobilization project has the Vaughan Fire and Rescue Service (VFRS) as partner organization.

COVID-19: Mapping Canada's potential to shift to a cycling nation post-pandemic through a Canada-Wide, coordinated bike count

Collaborator with Sara Kirk, Dalhousie University, Alexander Soucy, St. Mary's, Meghan Winters, SFU, Karen Laberee, Victoria, Anders Swanson, Winnipeg Trails Association, Kate Walker, Velo Canada Bikes.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted contemporary life globally. It is also exposing inequities within communities, disproportionately impacting women and racialized communities. Current physical distancing measures have forced us to acknowledge the limitations of our existing transportation modes, and we are seeing a "bicycle bump" as people reliant on public transit, who are also often those from low income neighbourhoods, look for different ways to safely move around.

The response to the pandemic has opened up an opportunity to re-imagine what Canadian cities can look like. It has also identified a need for better data on cycling across Canada, as a mode for everyday transportation, for post-pandemic planning purposes and because cycling is also a viable means to address climate change. The goal of this Partnership Engage Grant is to connect researchers and cycling advocates from across Canada to better understand these cycling trends regionally and nationally in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The partner organization is Vélo Canada Bikes (VCB), a national non-profit organization, established in 2012 to provide a strong national voice for everyday cycling in Canada.

Our goal in this partnership is to establish cordon counts in 12 communities across Canada, selected based on region (Western, Central, Eastern, Northern and Atlantic Canada), size and potential for accelerating cycling. There are two objectives: 1) To collect objective data on cycling in 12 cities across Canada, with a focus on measuring cycling rates in pop-up cycling lanes, on closed streets, and along transit routes, and 2) To catalyze citizen engagement, by mobilizing citizens from diverse communities across Canada and promoting cycling as one solution to the dual, and related, threats of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.

Cordon counts provide useful information about trips from and to zones within a community based on a specific geographic boundary, or screen line, as well as providing greater detail on the spatial distribution of cycling in a city. Volunteer cordon counts already take place in cities around the world, but only take place in a handful of cities in Canada. We will use an established protocol to ensure that communities undertake the same process for data collection. We will include a particular focus on collecting data on gender and race. Participating communities will implement a standard protocol to generate data that will allow for comparison nationally and with the potential for application internationally. Count data will be collected using the CounterPoint mobile application. CounterPoint is an award-winning app that is free to use and designed to leverage the power of citizen science and
crowdsourcing to help the world understand how people move.

This VCB-academic partnership will enhance the quality and quantity of data that can be collected and ensure that a standard protocol is applied to data collection and analysis. Analysis will be facilitated through the academic team associated with this partnership. These represent diverse disciplines and expertise, including experience in conducting and analyzing cycling counts, citizen science, gender-based analysis and population health. The data collected will be made available to academic teams across Canada through a data-sharing agreement. The proposal directly addresses the objectives of the SSHRC Partnership Engage Grants COVID-19 Special Initiative by focusing on understanding the differentiated social impacts of the pandemic, building longer-term resilience and rethinking communal approaches to mobility for Canadians.

COVID19: Exploring the Experiences of Anti-Chinese/Asian Racism in the GTA

This pilot study proposes to examine the experiences of anti-Chinese/Asian racism and racialization during the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of the Chinese in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) using a sociological framework of analysis. We will be partnering with community agencies to help achieve our objectives for this study. The preliminary findings from this proposed study will deepen the understanding of racism and racialization against Chinese/Asians in Canada, and will help to mitigate its effects on the social, economic, and cultural well-being of these communities.

Covid19: Fostering Child, Youth, and Family Resilience

This 4-year study examines the impacts of the Covid19 pandemic on the resilience of Canadian children, youth, and families. A comparison will be conducted between Québec and Ontario as distinct socio-economic and political contexts. The study uses a modified community-based participatory action research approach and a mixed methods design. The research questions are: 1) in what ways are Canadian children, youth, and families in specific socio-political contexts "responding to" Covid19 pandemic-related adversities based on the resources available to them, and 2) what are the Covid19 pandemic-related experiences of children, youth, and their families that contribute to the reasons for which they access mental health services?

Covid19: Impacts on the Provisioning and Resilience of Youth Living in Poverty

Using a remote photo voice method we explore the impacts of the Covid19 pandemic on the provisioning and resilience of youth from lone mother households living in poverty.

CREATE AWARENESS ON THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION THROUGH RESEARCH AND TEACHING

This study intents to advance our knowledge base on global fraud, money laundering and corruption practices that affect Canadian companies and professionals. Given the importance of educating current and future professional accountants in the fight against corruption, we believe this research can help to understand how practicing accountants, and other Canadian professionals view/use research.

Creating Children's Theatre in a Digital World (SSHRC-funded)

The overarching goal of this project is to address a touring theatre organization's challenge of developing live performances for children in an online setting during the pandemic.

Creating Global Citizens? The Impact of Learning/Volunteer Abroad Programs

Creating Space: Precarious Status Women Leading Local Pandemic Responses

Creating Space is a collaborative project co-directed by seven research directors from five faculties and six Organized Research Units (ORUs) at York U, with 11 community partners. Funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada's Feminist Response and Recovery Fund, this two-year collaboration will advance a feminist response to the current impacts of COVID-19 through systemic change. The project centers precarious status women’s experiences to support self-determination and accelerate systemic change to address economic insecurity, promote frontline workplace safety, and reduce systemic gender-based violence in the context of COVID-19.

Crisis Management: Case of School Shooting

Crisis responses, policing and police encounters with psychiatrically "at risk" children and youth

This project focuses on the lived experiences of children and youth diagnosed with mental health issues who have encounters with police services.

Crisis responses, policing and police encounters with psychiatrically "at-risk" children and youth

The purpose of this 2 year, community-university partnership is to pilot a study - its methods, questions, and theoretical orientation - to explore crisis responses, policing, and police encounters with children and youth in need of, or involved with the child and youth mental health system.

Critical transitions in the English writing development of multilingual writers in English-medium universities

This exploratory cross-sectional study aims to examine multilingual international students’ experiences and the factors that promote or hinder their appropriation of genre-specific skills/knowledge taught in three instructional contexts: low pre-admission, advanced pre-admission, and post-admission ESL courses .

Cross-cultural mentoring relationships

SSHRC Research Opportunity Grant (York U) – Cross-cultural mentoring relationships, (2016-2017)

Cross-Ideology News Consumption and Public Trust in COVID-19 Vaccines: A Canada versus the U.S. Comparative Study

This project aims to compare how news outlets in Canada and the U.S. communicate COVID-19 vaccines and the risks of the Coronavirus to the public, and the extent to which cross-ideology news consumption shapes public trust in vaccines.

Crossmedia Economies of Ethnic Media in Canada, 1975-1990

This project examines the development of third-language media in Canada and the ways in which it made use of multiple forms of media to reach communities across Canada.

Cultivating a Critical Social Work Habitus: Understanding the Role of Emotion in Translating Critical Social Work Knowledge into Practice

This study explores the use of two tools to help undergraduate social work students identify, express and respond to emotion in relation to critical theory. It is hypothesized that students who become more adept at recognizing and expressing emotion will develop a critical social work habitus that enables them to translate theoretical knowledge into practice across a wide range of situations.

Cultural Adaptation and Retention: The African-Caribbean Narrative Tradition in Toronto

Cultural Assimilation and Dissimilation: The African-Caribbean Narrative Tradition in Toronto

This project traces the tradition of oral narrative from its roots in West Africa to the Caribbean (in particular, Trinidad & Tobago). It focuses on how the elements of this traditional culture had evolved in the new urban context of the Caribbean community in Toronto.

Cultural Representations of Gender in Psychiatric Narratives

The proposed 3-year study examines representations of femininities and masculinities as they exist within the contemporary psychiatric medical chart. The objectives of the proposed research include: 1) Exploring how psychiatric narratives (re)produce and sanction particular femininities as idealized /marginalized and particular masculinities as hegemonic /marginalized; 2) Exploring how psychiatric discourses organize gender relations between women and men; 3) Investigating the role of psychiatric institutions in organizing gender relations among women and men; 4) Empirically grounding psychiatric consumer/survivor (C/S) movement critiques that challenge institutionalized oppressions related to mental distress and gender, sexuality, race and class.

Curating the story museum: Transmedia practices, participatory exhibits, and youth citizenship

You can learn more about our Curating Story project at curatingstory.com

Current research

Current Research Projects

Practice: Efficacy of ePortifolio and ChatGPT as technological tools in language education.

CURRENT RESEARCH: Indigenous Transformative Justice to Reduce Incarceration and Recidivism in Canada

The research examines how and why Indigenous incarceration rates remain startlingly high across Canada, both federally and provincially. Emphasis is placed on criminal court procedures and judicial decision-making. Principles of Indigenous justice are evaluated for their inclusion in the criminal justice system to reduce incarceration and recidivism rates.

CURRENT RESEARCH: Upholding the Spirit of the Royal Proclamation: An Analysis of Canadian Government Policy on Indigenous Land Negotiations

CURRENT RESEARCH: “Growing Public Awareness of Indigenous Criminal Injustice?: Implications for Institutional Legitimacy and the Indigenous-Canada Relationship"

Curriculum Assessment & Planning, Salahaddin University- Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq April 10 – 21, 2013

The primary objective of the project was to explore potential collaboration between the School of Social Work and Salahaddin University’s Social Work Education Department.

Customer relationship management using machine learning and statistical approaches

This research will be applicable to Canadian small business owners. Customer Relationship Management has become a vital function to business operations nowadays and there is ever increasing demand for Canadian business owners to have accurate classification models to precisely predict customer behaviors in order to increase businesses’ profits.

DARE Study: Detransition Analysis, Representation, and Exploration

Funded by a SSHRC Insight grant, this mixed-methods study will examine experiences of detransition in Canada and the United States.

Dark Tribe: Subaltern Gay Male Sex

This study looks at male-to-male sexual activity in the subaltern world of male sexual spaces. The importance of such spaces is examined regarding opportunities, safety, etiquette, status, safer sex practices, negotiation and navigation of sexual expression through sexual activity and time-limited communal engagement for sexual pleasure and affirmation, and how all of this contrast normative societal expectations.

Data analytics and Information Systems (DAIS) and Tax

Research into the use of technology by taxpayers, advisors and the Canada Revenue Agency to contribute to learning materials on data analytics and information systems (DAIS) competencies that apply to tax.

Data analysis of R&D partnerships to design a decision ­making support system for use in alliance formation

Innovation is widely recognized as a highly important consideration for many firms. Studies indicate that innovation and new product development often help to retain customer interest while having positive effects on both the financial and market position of firms. Process innovation can also lead to an increase in efficiency of operations and production. However, despite the potential advantages of innovation through research and development (R&D), attempting innovation can be risky. There is potential that firms will not be successful in their attempts to develop new solutions. There is also risk associated with competitors copying new ideas and with the fact that partners may be uncooperative or opportunistic.

In the face of pandemics such as COVID-19, unusual and unprecedented circumstances may influence the outcomes of an R&D partnership. Travel restrictions can prevent firms from meeting international partners, supply shortages can lead to delays in the research process, and economic hardships can result in funding changes. However at the same time, pandemics can enhance the cooperative attitude of firms in working together to develop new medical solutions, leading to an increase in knowledge sharing. Via connections to R&D research groups, we study both the positive and negative effects of COVID-19 on the R&D process, and we use the results of this study to create an additional R&D partner selection model for use in pandemics. Further, we investigate the managerial implications of our results, and use them to develop strategies for R&D project management during pandemics. By gaining a better understanding of the antecedents for successful R&D partnership, we establish results that will prove to be of interest to both academics and practitioners alike.

Dawnside

A book of poetry that uses the language of space science to explore the nature of fatherhood.

Decent Work Regulation in Africa

The project on Decent Work Regulation in Africa is a collaboration between Durham University (UK), the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and York University (Canada). DWR-Africa is led by Professor Deirdre McCann of Durham Law School and funded through the UK Global Challenges Research Fund. A central aim of the Project is to establish a Regional Network of researchers and policy-makers with an interest in effective labour regulation. DWR-Africa responds to UN Sustainable Development Goal 8: to promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all. To achieve this objective, effective labour regulation is crucial. Strong labour laws are a vital component of development policies, capable of supporting inclusive growth, sustainable prosperity, and the wellbeing of workers and their families. Yet the regulatory strategies that can effectively achieve decent work – especially in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) – have yet to be designed.

A Pilot Project on Enforcing Labour Laws in Southern Africa is being led by Dr Shane Godfrey of the Institute of Development and Labour Law, University of Cape Town and Professor Kelly Pike of the School of Human Resource Management, York University, Toronto. The project aims to better understand the limitations and strengths of multi-stakeholder models in South Africa and Lesotho. The focus is on whether these models provide a better way to enforce labour rights. To investigate this question, fieldwork was carried out in the garment sectors in South Africa and Lesotho during 2018. This research involved interviews with stakeholders in both countries including government officials, employers, unions, NGOs and other local initiatives, and workers themselves.

Decolonial solidarity and social change in the context of xenophobic nationalism: Dialogues and deliberations in the postsecondary educational site

The project aims to engage student voices and perspectives on the deeply entangled political phenomena of migration (e.g., via dominant and subaltern, “outside-of-state” forms), various disparate diasporic formations (e.g., non-status workers, asylum seeker and international students), and xenophobic white nationalism (a reactionary force). A series of conversations on global social movements and transnational solidarity are organized to both enhance student learning about the application of critical social work tools in responding to reactionary forces, and engage student perspectives on critical decolonial solidarity.

Deferred Compensation and Organizational Productivity

Dependable Internet of Things Applications (DITA): An NSERC CREATE Program

More info at

Designing and Operationalizing Geographical Indications as Tools for Differentiating Origin-linked Products in Ethiopia (GIs for Origin-linked Products in Ethiopia--GOPE)

The project expects to deliver results in two main domains: the national Geographical Indications (GIs) system – to introduce GI legislation and to strengthen the existing legal and institutional GI environment in Ethiopia, and the technical domain at a pilot product level, to transfer the required know-how for GI implementation at a GI product level.
In the legal domain, the project will result in a draft Proclamation and regulation and reinforce the capacities of the public and private actors to manage GI applications, i.e., evaluation, registration, control, and legal protection. It will thus create favorable conditions for stakeholders from various value chains to detect or select production of interest with potential for GI certification and to develop a marketing strategy for coffee types.
In the technical domain, the project will focus on the coffee production sector to showcase GI implementation at national and local levels. Activities will lead to the constitution of a GI collective management organization at a coffee production level in charge of the coffee terroir characterization and delimitation (including coffee quality mapping).

Designing public vaccine procurement contracts to secure a socially optimal level of vaccination

The proposed research seeks to supply guidelines for public vaccine procurement contracts that incentivize vaccine manufacturers’ production capacity building and align the interests of government vaccine buyers and vaccine manufacturers to increase the availability of vaccines in any possible future outbreaks. The outcomes of this research aim to support building
Canada’s advanced vaccine production capabilities.

The low vaccine coverage rate, below the socially optimal level of vaccination, has been a severe concern internationally. For example, Canada recently reported shortages of the new shingles vaccine, hepatitis A and B shots, and rabies vaccine. It was also reported that manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines established inadequate capacity before regulatory approval. Reasons for the insufficient capacity include the risks in vaccine development, regulatory approval, high demand uncertainty, and manufacturers’ fear of losing the capacity-building cost.

Government agencies play a crucial role as buyers of vaccines from private vaccine manufacturers. However, there is a conflict of interest between government buyers and vaccine manufacturers in the procurement contracts. Government buyers usually bargain down the procurement price to control their financial expenditure, which hurts the manufacturers’ profit margin and results in insufficient capacity building.

Although it has long been argued that economic incentive contracts between government buyers and vaccine manufacturers should be implemented, many governments, including Canada, have not carried out necessary sweeping reforms to vaccine procurement contracts.

The proposed research seeks to shed light on the optimal government vaccine procurement contracts in an infectious disease outbreak. The proposed research aims to find contract terms that align the objectives of the two players and achieve the socially optimal level of vaccination.

Designing Sound Futures

Designing Sound Futures is an interdisciplinary research cluster that seeks to explore sound, inclusive learning, engineering, critical disability studies, and the arts through theoretical and material engagements with modular musical synthesis. Members of the research cluster are drawn from the Faculty of Education, the School of Arts, Media, Performance and Design, and the departments of Humanities, Electrical Engineering/Computer Science and Communications.

Desire for Development Research Project

Determinants of Business Continuity Planning in Canada: Estimating Business’ Willingness to Pay for Power Outage Mitigation and Preparedness Using Stated Choice Analysis

Determinants of the Use of Management Control Systems in Companies Operating under Turbulent Conditions

This study investigates the role that management control systems (MCS) play in the performance of the organizations operating under turbulent conditions. Two sets of companies are studied as turbulent conditions: international joint ventures (JVs) in the auto and motor industry and manufacturing companies located in a regional economy of a less developed country (LDC).

Developing a comprehensive understanding of elder abuse prevention in immigrant communities

Older adults are the fastest-growing age group in Canada. In 2011, an estimated 5 million
Canadians were 65 or older, and by 2050, about one in four Canadians is expected to be 65 or over. Elder abuse is already a growing problem with significant societal implications and, given these demographics, is critical to address. Scholars are increasingly focusing on elder abuse, but little is known about the risk factors -- which include complex social variables -- for elder abuse within immigrant communities or what interventions might best prevent elder abuse in these communities.

Purpose: The purpose of this multidisciplinary study is: first, to develop a comprehensive classification of risk factors for elder abuse in immigrant communities: because immigrants represent an increasingly large proportion of older adults in Canada, it is critical to clarify these complex variables and how they combine to increase older immigrants' risk of elder abuse; and second, to identify the most appropriate and culturally relevant strategies to address the risk factors in immigrant communities in Canada. The study builds on the literature and our own work in this area, and addresses a knowledge, policy, and practice gap identified by various stakeholders across Canada.

Theoretical approaches: Theoretically, our study is guided by the intersectionality perspective and an ecological framework, allowing us to critically examine the complexity surrounding multiple dimensions of social identity (e.g., gender, race, class, culture, immigration status) and how these interrelate at the micro (individual and family), meso (community), and macro (societal) levels.

Consistent with this theoretical framework, we will use a collaborative, community-based,
mixed-methods approach to enable stakeholders to actively determine where research should be
conducted, which factors are relevant to abuse, and strategies consistent with cultural beliefs, values, and preferences of the immigrant communities.

Research plan: We will conduct structured group interviews with older women and men who have experienced abuse, family members, and formal and informal leaders from immigrant communities, and social and settlement service providers in the Greater Toronto Area. We will include two established and two recent communities from both the East Asian and South Asian immigrant communities: Chinese, Korean, Punjabi, and Tamil. Our team has expertise conducting research on elder abuse in immigrant communities in Canada, has well-established working relationships with these communities, and has conducted research of this scale on related topics. Quantitative and qualitative data collected via structured group interviews will be analyzed at the level of particular group interview, subgroups, and communities, and will be integrated across communities to identify common and unique risk factors and intervention strategies. We will pay particular attention to various social dimensions including gender,
age, culture, length of stay in Canada, fluency in English, employment and income, and extended familyco-residence.

Potential impact: The proposed approach is comprehensive in that it will incorporate local knowledge and expert contributions from immigrant women and men, family members, community members, and service providers and policymakers at each phase of the study. As a result, the findings will be relevant so as to contribute to the well being and social needs of older men and women in immigrant communities. The findings will contribute empirically and theoretically, as well as to policy debate and practice change, which will have local, national, and international significance.

Developing a framework of best practices for multi-sector collaboration fostering integration in child and youth mental health systems

Mitacs-funded research fellowship. This project examines collaborations between health care , social care, and education service providers involved in the delivery of mental health care for children, youth, and families to identify practices that lead to effective inter-sector partnerships.

Developing a framework of best practices for multi-sector collaboration fostering integration in child and youth mental health systems

Post-doctoral Visitor: Dr. Renée Sloos

Developing Critical Thinking in Accounting Education

This project involves the development of an accounting skills workshops for accounting students to assist them in developing their critical thinking and specific job skills.

Developing data-driven and community-engaged supports for detransition and other non-linear gender transitions

Funded by a SSHRC Connection grant, our team objectives are to share recent research, engage in dialogue, and to develop a community-engaged and data-driven support resource on detransition/retransition. This resource will offer information to support care providers, organizations and people with experiences of detransition. Our goal is to translate and mobilize data-driven knowledge to understand and to address this gap in gender care.

To achieve this goal, we held a public symposium and community consultation at York University in November 2022. We disseminated and discussed the results of two discreet studies conducted in 2021-2022—led by different Canadian research teams—the Re/DeTrans Canada study and the Detrans Discourses study. We gathered and analyzed feedback from detrans/retrans, trans, nonbinary, and other gender minority groups, along with other end knowledge users such as care providers and 2SLGBTQ organizations.

As demonstrated by both studies’ results, people need more supports when shifting or reversing a gender transition as they negotiate complex social/community relations, health and/or legal systems, misunderstanding and stigma surrounding detransition. Some detransitioners have complicated feelings such as regret about past medical decisions or medical/surgical complications, grief about their transitioned body, and new forms of gender dysphoria (e.g., “reverse dysphoria”). Individuals may require a mixture of psychological and community-based social supports (e.g., a therapeutic environment to explore and clarify identity), as well as primary healthcare (e.g., support in stopping or changing hormones), together with nuanced appreciation for the experiences of detransition.

Our symposium presentations are available here: https://www.youtube.com/@redetranscanada

Development of a Rule-Based Structural Fire Threat Assessment System for Canadian Fire Departments

Differential Use of Controls Between Firms Pursuing Fusion Strategies and those Pursuing Integration Strategies

Digital Animalities: Media Representations of Non Human Life

An interdisciplinary collaborative study of animals in digital media in the context of environmental risk with 10 co-investigators and collaborators.

Digital Interactive Environments and New Curriculum for Schools

Disaster and Emergency Management Systems in Canada: Taking Stock

To assess how disaster and emergency management institutions perceive their importance in terms of Canadian society and the emergency management community. We propose to engage emergency management institutions in a survey that will provide insight into the current state of disaster and emergency management in Canada and answer questions such as: are there issues within the system that affect disaster management? Are the majority of emergency managers satisfied with their institution’s mandate and performance? Is the level of education and training of emergency managers adequate? If not, is there a demand to acquire higher education and/or training? Is there disconnect between policy decisions, research and practice?

Disasters and their impact in Canada – a smart approach to build capacity

A better understanding of the complex relationship between disasters and the human population is vital for bringing change in the current system of disaster and emergency management in Canada. We explored past events of select disaster types and their impact on people, the economy, and the environment since the 1900s. We set out to examine the movement of the population in disaster-prone areas in order to better understand the long-term consequences of major disasters. The aim is to advance knowledge in this area to assist practitioners in developing effective policies and measures to mitigate the adverse impact and build capacity.

Dispatches from Eastern Europe: The Correspondence between Myrna Kostash and Nancy Burke

A book project that involves transcribing and editing of a collection of letters exchanged between Canadian writer Myrna Kostash and Professor Nancy Burke, who pioneered the discipline of Canadian Studies at the University of Warsaw, Poland, where she had lived from the mid-1980s to her death in 2006. Their rich correspondence begun in 1988 and covered a crucial period of Poland’s transition to post-communism. To be submitted to WLUP's Life Writing Series.

Displaced, Resettled and Isolated - Impact of COVID-19 on Disaster-affected Households in Resettlement Sites in Tacloban, Philippines

As Southeast Asia’s COVID-19 hot spot, the Philippines has implemented one of the world’s strictest lockdowns. The highly urbanized city of Tacloban, home to 250,000 people, has enforced strict community quarantine measures that has greatly limited the ability of citizens to work, travel and access their basic needs. Tacloban is also still recovering from Typhoon Haiyan’s destruction in 2013, the strongest storm ever recorded. With tens of thousands of people displaced to resettlement sites on the city’s outskirts with limited access to health services, livelihoods, transportation, COVID-19 is a clear threat to their lives and livelihoods.

The vulnerability of disaster-affected households is exacerbated by the double isolation of being forcibly displaced as well as COVID-19 quarantine measures. Working closely with the Church, this study is the first and only formal academic study so far, to examine how COVID-19 has deepened disaster-affected households’ vulnerabilities. Researchers will conduct key informant interviews, surveys and focus group discussions across four COVID-19 affected resettlement sites. This research will contribute to the advancement of knowledge and produce social benefits by collecting timely data on marginalized resettlement communities. Specifically the short-term outcomes are: 1) rapid research on the most pressing needs of disaster-affected households in resettlement sites amid COVID-19, 2) identification of how COVID-19 has deepened pre-existing vulnerabilities faced by these households and 3) the co-creation of recommendations for how to prioritize limited resources to mitigate the impact of subsequent waves of the virus. The potential long-term benefits and outcomes as a result of the knowledge mobilization activities are 1) a stronger understanding of the impacts of COVID-19 and how it has deepened the existing vulnerabilities faced by on disaster-affected households in resettlement sites by politicians, humanitarian actors and the general public, 2) a consideration of the co-created recommendations by local, national and humanitarian actors, and 3) more media and academic interest in studying and assisting this precarious and neglected population.

Disproportionality of African-American children in the U.S. child welfare system: Implications for foster care placement and permanency

Diversity and Inclusion: Case studies of skilled migrants in Hamilton/Halton Region in collaboration with United Way Hamilton

MITACS funding – Diversity and Inclusion: Case studies of skilled migrants in Hamilton/Halton Region in collaboration with United Way Hamilton, (co-applicant Viktoriya Voloshyna, Phd student) (2018-2019)

Diversity and Leadership in Canada

This manuscript will show the statistical profiles of corporate executives and board directors and identify barriers to leadership for women, racialized minorities, persons with disabilities and Aboriginal peoples.

Divided Province: Ontario in the Age of Neoliberalism

2018 ‘Divided Province: Ontario in the Age of Neoliberalism’
Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme
Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
$8000

Doctoral field research, Limpopo, South Africa.

Research on the musical cultures of children in South Africa and the use of music in children’s media and educational programs. Funded by SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada) Doctoral Fellowship. February 2005 - July 2007.

Doctoral Supervisor - Dorian Deshauer

Primary supervisor (Science & Technology Studies) of Dorian Deshauer: "Inventing Psychiatric Drug Maintenance" (defended 2018)

Documenting Africans in Trans-Atlantic Slavery (DATAS)

“Documenting Africans in Trans-Atlantic Slavery (DATAS)” (www.datasproject.org) develops an innovative method to explore African ethnonyms from the era of trans-Atlantic slavery, circa 1500-1867. Ethnonyms index African identities, places and historical events to reconstruct African culture that is linked to a history of slavery, colonialism and racism. The project centres on the need to understand the origins and trajectories of people of African descent who populated the trans-Atlantic world in the modern era. The development of a method for analysing demographic change and confronting social inequalities arising from racism constitutes a social innovation. The team’s methodology implements a research tool developed in Canada for handling ethnonyms that can be applied in a trans- Atlantic context from France and the United Kingdom to Brazil, the Caribbean and Africa. This innovation confronts methodological problems that researchers encounter in reconstructing the emergence of the African diaspora. A methodology for data justice is salient because ethnonym decision-making used in our digital platform, requires a reconceptualization of the classification systems concerning West Africans. This methodology depends on an open source relational database that
addresses important decisions that researchers face in the field about how to develop best practices and a controlled vocabulary for four reasons. First, scholarly expertise on West Africans is scattered globally. Second, the slave trade was transnational, rarely limited to one country or population, and the transfer of Africans across borders reflects this global relationship between colonial and colonized. Third, DATAS makes available a vast amount of information of immense value to marginalized communities deprived of information on their own history. Fourth, the trans-Atlantic and trans-national nature of this project complements the aims of a platform predicated on global collaboration. The project treats ethnonyms as decision making tools as a method whose concepts require rethinking entrenched assumptions about demography, data justice and research transparency.

dushani project 1

test summary

Dynamic Pricing of Perishable Items Under Competition

E-commerce revenue management realistic and practical models for multiple products

Eating for Trillions: The Social Lives of Direct to Consumer Microbiome Tests

This project looks at how Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) microbiome test users in an urban post-industrial context understand their bodies. Analyzing their experiences is significant as a way of understanding the accelerating biologization of human relations in the “postgenomic condition” (Reardon 2017). The microbiome is a term that scientists use to refer to the combined genetic material (the genome) of the microbes in a human body. DTC microbiome tests examine a tiny fraction of the trillions of cells in a human body that belong to microscopic microbes, like bacteria, fungi and viruses (e.g. Paxson 2008; Yong 2016). The tests can be seen as an example of precision medicine, a form of medicine that offers therapeutics optimized with genomic profiling. DTC test companies’ marketing strategies hinge on convincing consumers to purchase their analysis in order to optimize personal wellness. The project combines online ethnography with participant observation with food fermenters in Toronto, as well as interviews with naturopaths and other health professionals, DTC testing company, health food marketers.
The project will also situate DTC test users’ lived experiences of their bodies and frequent experiences of precarity and uncertainty in a wider social and political context o in political economies of North American biotechnology and biomedicine (Lorimer 2017).

Economic Consequences of AS 18: Related-Party Transactions with Principals vs. Non-Principals

Under the 2nd round Revise & Resubmit with the Accounting Review.

EDITED BOOK: Encounters in Canada: Comparing Indigenous, Settler and Migrant Perspectives

Edited Volume (Toronto: University of Toronto Press) (under contract)

EDITED BOOK: Pressing Problems and Changing Challenges: Examining the Most Significant Issues Facing Indigenous Peoples in Canada

Edited Volume (Toronto: University of Toronto Press) (under contract)

EE With, Not In: Respectful and Reciprocal Experiential Education with Jane and Finch Community Partners

EE With, is based on consultation and collaboration with various JF community partners honouring the knowledge and expertise of community leaders, organizations and the JFCRP (Jane Finch Community Research Partnership https://janefinchresearch.ca/). With the goal to better inform the processes and manner in which EE activities take place within the JF neighbourhood to ensure the well-being of the community, as well as to support York students in engaging with the community in ways that are respectful, sustainable, reciprocal and just.

Effects of Informal Online Regulatory Regimes on Privacy

The goal of this project is to examine the potential effects on Canadians’ privacy of non-legally binding or ‘informal’ regulatory regimes that are undertaken by globally operating Internet firms and online payment providers. In particular, the project explores risks to Canadian’s privacy resulting from the involvement of Internet companies in informal regulatory agreements with intellectual property rights holders. The expansion of e-commerce facilitates the ability of consumers to acquire counterfeit goods and copyright infringing content such as unauthorised downloads of music, film, and software. To address this behaviour, multinational rights holders, such as Nike, Gucci, Proctor and Gamble, and Microsoft are forming enforcement partnerships with large, mostly U.S.-based Internet firms and payment providers like Google, PayPal and Visa. Instead of using legislation or judicial remedies like litigation or court orders, however, these rights holders are increasingly using non-legally binding regulatory agreements. These agreements, which do not have the force or legitimacy of law, are composed of broadly worded minimum guidelines to direct Internet firms’ enforcement efforts. Under these agreements, Internet firms and payment providers act voluntarily to remove Internet content from websites determined to be illicitly distributing counterfeit products or copyright-infringing material.

Efficiency analysis and prediction in the financial services industry

Elder Abuse in the Chinese Canadian Community in Toronto

Eldercare Within Chinese Immigrant Families

sshrc small grant

eLearning & General Education Course Design

The goal of this project was to develop a blended eLearning course to serve as a Humanities General Education course offered through York University's Writing Department. The new blended course reflects the university’s emphasis on enhancing the first year experience through “attention to the development of fundamental and transferable skills including effective communication, critical thinking, research and information literacy, and collaboration” (Building a More Engaged University: Strategic Directions for York University 2010-2020). Our challenge was to determine how online learning technology will best serve the goals of our specific course while enriching the learning experience of our students.

Electron and Positron Impact Collisions with Atoms and Molecules

Embodying the Tween: Living Girlhood in Global and Digital Spaces

The purpose of this project is to explore the tensions between the commercial constructions of youth cultures and the lived experiences of the embodied young person. It will address how the tween girl is framed by and how she engages with such framings. This research has two foci. The first is an exploration of how the cultural industries of girlhood, including digital media and global transmedia properties contribute to the synergistic forces of global capitalism to produce the tween as a global assemblage. The sites of this research include online advergames such as Moshi Monsters and Movie Star Planet, and the websites of media companies such as Disney and Nickelodeon, and digital market research companies such as KZero. The second foci is to explore what girls do with the tween cultures that are produced for them but rarely by them by asking how they negotiate these resources of subjectivity in their everyday lives by looking at the immaterial labour of their participation in digital media and social media networks.

Emerging Global Governance (EGG)

The Emerging Global Governance (EGG) Project is a collaborative research initiative led by Gregory Chin at York University (Canada) and Eva-Maria Nag at Global Policy journal, Durham University, as the principal partners, and The Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Foreign Policy Institute as a legacy partner. The EGG project profiles new evidence-based research and analysis of distinguished thinkers and practitioners on emerging issues, actors and arrangements in global governance.

Empire’s Ally: Canada and the War in Afghanistan

2011 ‘Empire’s Ally: Canada and the War in Afghanistan’
Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme
Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
$8000

Empowering Next-generation Researchers In perinatal and Child Health (ENRICH)

The next generation of researchers in human development, child and youth health research must be equipped to lead the creation and application of knowledge across all sectors to achieve the best reproductive, infant, child, and youth health outcomes. To address this need, we designed a unique national training and mentoring platform -Empowering Next generation Researchers In perinatal and Child Health (ENRICH). We are an interjurisdictional, interdisciplinary,intersectoral, and bilingual team of 193 experienced applicants, mentors, collaborators, partners, and patients. Building on our collective national expertise with research training, we developed strategic partnerships with 16 Canadian pediatric academic health centres and established a unified platform spanning eight Provinces and one Territory.

Engaging global dialogue: decolonizing pedagogy and partnerships. LA&PS Grant for International Collaboration.

This collaborative research project between York University (YU) and Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) aims to explore two critical areas of development for internationalization agreed upon at the first Global Inclusive Dialogue, South Africa, January 2014. http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20140118132339578
1. ‘the creation of equal and ethical higher education partnerships.’ York and JMI have a signed agreement for research collaboration, student exchanges and collaborative partnerships. We will explore the partnership thus far to analyze the process, ethics and equity in the planning, and partnering for education. Research continues to reveal that imperialism often pervades Global North/South encounters and exchanges. Our goal is to identify and grapple with obstacles, which get in the way of achieving respectful and ethical North/South collaborations.
2.”… increasing focus on the internationalization of the curriculum and of related learning outcomes”. In this era of globalization and internationalizing higher education, many professionals are finding it necessary to rethink research, pedagogy and practice to be especially mindful of diversity among our student body. Many social work educators are responding to these changes by paying attention to the international in the curriculum. The aim is to review and discuss how our curricular is educating students for social work practice in a globalized and transnational age.

English for Academic Purposes across Canada: Charting the Post-Secondary Landscape

Mixed methods investigation into the diverse English as an additional language programming taking place at Canadian colleges and universities. This investigation also endeavours to better understand the lived experiences and professional satisfaction of EAP administrators and instructors at Canadian post-secondary institutions.

English for Research Publication Purposes: The Longer Term Impact of Pedagogical Interventions

A qualitative investigation of the longer term impact of a particular intensive pedagogical intervention on plurilingual scientists' research writing beliefs, practices, and outcomes.

Ensuring Social Reproduction: A Longitudinal Study of Households and Social Policy in Three Ontario Centres

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Entrepreneurial research case

Research case about a business start-up, with a marketing colleague. Moving towards electronic marketing for the business, including development of a revised business strategy.

Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights

Envisioning Global LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Human Rights is an international research project that fosters links between Canada and the Global South and will document and analyze i) criminalization of LGBT people, ii) flight from violence and persecution, iii) resistance to criminalization, and iv) the interaction between International Treaty Body Human Rights Mechanisms and LGBT rights initiatives.

Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights (LOI)

Envisioning Global LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Human Rights is an international research project that fosters links between Canada and the Global South and will document and analyze i) criminalization of LGBT people, ii) flight from violence and persecution, iii) resistance to criminalization, and iv) the interaction between International Treaty Body Human Rights Mechanisms and LGBT rights initiatives.

Equitable Child Health: Enabling broad ethical inquiry in pediatric care by understanding the parameters of social license for reuse of clinical data

A large amount of digital information is now documented during regular clinical care. This information, or data, could be used to better understand what makes people sick and how to make them better. The data could also be used to create artificial intelligence algorithms which help care providers during their work. When the data pertains to children, we do not know the circumstances under which it is acceptable to use it for research. Our project will figure out the context under which research using this data is acceptable to the public, and how people's opinions vary according to their identity. We believe there are many circumstances in which everybody is supportive of research using this data, but it can be hard as the data were not collected for research. To fix this, we will build a special data format with software that makes it easier to use the data for research. We will build an actual dataset from patients at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) to test out our new data format and show that it works well. Finally, we will work with the groups which oversee ethical research at SickKids to create a new process for using our dataset in research. We hope our process makes it safer for already collected data to be used in improving the care of future patients.

Equity through reaching white allies

Ethical Alternative Social Media studies

This project engages with activists building ethical alternative social media, social media that are more democratically run that their corporate counterparts.

Ethical, Accessible Research Data Management for the Jane Finch Community

The Jane Finch Community Research Partnership (JFCRP) is a collaborative endeavor between York university and community members of the Jane Finch Community. The goal is to produce the Community Research Portal called Jane Finch Collections (JFC) that can be accessed by the Jane Finch community. https://janefinchresearch.ca/

Ethics in Conditions of Disaster and Deprivation: Learning from Health Workers' Narratives

Ethnicity, Diaspora, and Ethnographic Culture in the Greco-Roman World (SSHRC Insight Grant, 2019-2024)

The overarching goal is to understand how hegemonic ethnic stereotypes and prejudice relate to minority perspectives and experiences in an eastern Mediterranean diaspora context (ca. 450 BCE-212 CE).

European Centre of Excellence

The European Union Centre of Excellence (EUCE) was established at York University in the Fall of 2009 with the receipt of a grant from the European Commission in Brussels.

European Migrant "Crisis," Refugee Integration, and the Neo-Nationalist Right

Evaluation of ILO Workplace Cooperation Program

The Workplace Cooperation Program is an initiative of the International Labour Office (ILO) and a major retailer in the global garment industry. The program aims at training workers and managers to more effectively address and resolve non-compliance issues. This project serves as an evaluation of the program.

Evangelisms, Entanglements and Superfans: Young People’s Creative Labour in the Visibility Economy

The goal of this project is to explore how young people’s creative labour (both online and offline) is becoming entangled with the promotional activities of children’s media and entertainment industry. This project will seek wider clarity on the commercial epistemologies that ideologically define childhood through the logics of marketplace, the immaterial labour of young people’s fandom, and the fetishization of authenticity in the visibility economy.

Everyone Accounts: A revisit of LGBTQ2+ Employees Workplace Behavior of Disrupting Workplace Heterosexism and Advocating Equal Treatment in China

To understand the motives, processes, and behaviors LGBTQ2+ employees exert toward disrupting
workplace heterosexism and advocating equal treatment in China

Evidence-based Learning and Mining from Educational Resources

The goal is to develop a framework for selecting online course materials that are compliant with both Ontario curriculum standards and recognized pedagogical theories using text mining techniques. The project is aimed at helping students to achieve high levels of understanding of the covered materials.

Examining Language Teaching Technology Use in Post-Secondary English for Academic Purpose (EAP) Programs

This 3-year SSHRC-funded project examined how educational technologies were being used in post-secondary EAP programs across North America.

Examining pathways to effective depression treatment for sexual and gender minority women in Ontario.

Epidemiological studies demonstrate that sexual minority women (including lesbian and bisexual women) are at high risk for depression, lifetime suicidality, and other mental health problems. Although no population-based data are available regarding gender minority women (including transgender and transsexual women), the available research suggests that they too are at high risk for depression. Results of the few studies to examine patterns of mental health service utilization among lesbian, bisexual, and trans (LBT) women indicate that despite elevated rates of mental health service use, LBT women report very high rates of unmet need for mental health care (in a recent survey, over 50%). However, it is unknown whether this unmet need is explained by levels of need that exceed the capacity of services, or lack of effectiveness of services. Research is therefore needed to understand the barriers to effective depression treatment for sexual and gender minority women in Ontario. This project will improve understanding of the barriers to effective depression treatment for sexual and gender minority women in Ontario and ultimately facilitate the removal of barriers, improving access to prompt and effective diagnosis and treatment. A combination of qualitative, quantitative, and community-based research approaches will be used to: describe the barriers to effective depression treatment encountered by LBT women in Ontario; compare the mental health service utilization patterns of LBT and heterosexual women in Ontario; and use the knowledge gained to inform service delivery.

Examining the Extrapolation Inference of the Duolingo Test of English at Two Canadian Universities.

Examining (1) the predictive validity of DET as evidenced in the relationship between students’ DET scores and their GPAs at the end of the first year of study and (2) test takers’ and score users’ perceptions of the DET and its test tasks.

Examining the support needs of people who detransition: A trans-inclusive constructivist grounded theory

This project responds to care providers' needs for information on detransition. The objectives of this project are as follows:

• To identify the psychosocial support needs of people who detransition;
• To develop recommendations for care providers who work in gender-affirming care (e.g., physicians, psychologists and social workers).

Experiments on Majority-Rule Voting over the Public Provision of Private Goods

Investigation of the public provision of private goods such as health care and education using financing schemes allowing individuals to top-up, opt-out or exit public provision.

Exploring and enhancing access to home care services for LGBT communities in Ontario.

This research project is the second phase in a comprehensive research program that explores access and equity related to in-home care for diverse members of Ontario’s LGBT populations with a focus on Community Care Access Centres and their role in coordinating care through contracted service provider agencies. The first phase of this study explored the literature on access to home care and collected interview and documentary data from key informants on processes that foster the development of LGBT-positive health care provision with a goal of creating an organizational tool on access and equity for home care agencies. This arm of the research program will provide baseline data, an environmental scan, which offers insight into the current state of home care for LGBT people in Ontario from the perspective of service users, direct service providers and provider organizations with a focus on developing strategies for change.

Exploring employer and individual perspectives on alternative careers

Future Skills Center (FSC) Grant- Ryerson University (principal applicant) – Exploring employer and individual perspectives on alternative careers (with Dr. Jing Wang) (2022-2023)

Exploring Foundational Public Health Programs and Policies for SOGIE (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression) Diverse People in Ontario

SOGIE (sexual orientation, gender identity and expression) diverse groups are people with similarities in experiences of shared stigma and discrimination with a higher frequency of adverse health outcomes compared to heterosexuals and/or cisgender people. These findings are similar to studies around the world, highlighting a need for a health equity approach relevant to SOGIE diverse people in conceptualizing, programming, and delivery of health services. Ontario has 34 public health units offering health promotion and disease prevention programming related to healthy “lifestyles”, communicable disease control including education in STIs/AIDS, immunization, healthy growth and development, and selected screening services, among others. Guideline documents from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care specify that information related to sexual orientation and gender identity should be collected in a timely manner and that programming should consider these unique identities. The Chief Public Health Officer of Canada’s 2021 Report on the State of Public Health in Canada emphasizes the need for upstream action and mobilizing community involvement; the need for qualitative and mixed-methods research approaches; the need for disaggregated and equity-oriented data (including by sexual orientation and gender identity). This project will: 1) explore public health policies, documents, standards, and data related to SOGIE diversity; 2) collect perspectives from SOGIE diverse communities about experiences with public health services; 3) identify experiences of public health representatives about connecting with and including SOGIE communities in their work; and 4) make recommendations about public health practice inclusion of SOGIE diverse communities in Ontario. Findings will be shared with several groups (e.g., SOGIE communities, public health researchers and practitioners) to highlight how Ontario’s public health system addresses SOGIE diverse health needs.

Exploring Innovative Approaches to Islamic Education: Fostering Understanding, Dialogue, and Community Co-existence in Canada

The focus of the project was exploring Identity Discourses of the Muslim Diaspora in Canada. The research covered Muslim Diaspora youth in Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and Montreal.

Exploring meanings of caring among health care professionals providing cancer care.

This study uses guided meditation, art and small group discussion to explore meanings of caring among health care providers within a Regional Cancer Centre. The study consists of two phases. In Phase 1, profession-specific focus groups will be conducted each with nurses, radiation therapists, physicians, social workers, pharmacists and dietitians within an Oncology Program at a Regional Cancer Centre. In Phase 2, findings from Phase I will be presented to interprofessional focus groups to explore similarities and differences in meanings of caring. The purpose of the proposed study is to develop an understanding of the similarities and differences in the meaning of caring among health care providers working in an Oncology Program of a Regional Cancer Centre and to develop educational initiatives by which interprofessional groups can learn with, from, and about each others' perspectives on caring.

Exploring multilingual assessment in the educational context

This project investigates approaches to multilingual assessment in the secondary educational context in order to address varied teaching and learning needs of bi/multilingual students from immigrant and refugee backgrounds enrolled in Ontario schools. Reflecting the complex, dynamic language practices of bi/multilingual speakers and communities, this approach recognizes the rich linguistic resources of bi/multilingual students, providing them with an opportunity to demonstrate their academic knowledge and literacy skills using the full range of their linguistic repertoire. SSHRC Insight Development Grant.

Extreme Love: Young People's experiences at the intersection of intimacy and violence in urban India

The project “Extreme Love: Young People’s Experiences at the Intersection of Intimacy and Violence in Urban India” explores young people’s experiences of violence in premarital dating/courtship processes in India. The context of the project is a globalizing and rapidly modernizing India where intimate culture is changing for young people. For modern youth in urban spaces, the importance of obtaining premarital relationship experience sits in contrast with continued social stigma around mixed-sex dating. As a result, young people participate in the world of youth romance in secret. Secret relationships, however, are complicated by particular types of violence endemic to the relationship process. While research on married couple’s experiences of violence in relationships is rich, little is known about young people’s experiences. Thus, the key issues to be addressed in the research are: mapping the various types of violence endemic in youth premarital relationships and documenting young people’s lived experiences of violence within the context of premarital relationships.Knowledge about how young people experience violence, how they manage violence in the context of secret relationships, and their understanding of gaps in support, create new knowledge about youth culture in India. The research, then, speaks to the recent “youth turn” within the field of Children’s Studies, and specifically addresses the call within the field for more diverse understandings of childhood and youth from the Global South.

FAR

FAR is a feminist art project situated on 64 acres of conservation-protected, organic farmland in rural Ontario, Canada.

FAR is an expansive site for queer and feminist artists to come, to live, to conceptualize and produce land art projects alongside the 12 principles of permaculture: observe and interact, catch and store energy, obtain a yield, applying self-regulation and feedback, value renewables, produce no waste, design from patterns to details, integrate don’t segregate, use small slow solutions, use and value diversity, use edges and value the marginal, creatively use, and respond to change (Waddington, ethical.net, 2019). FAR will also serve as a sanctuary and respite for artists and activists wishing to simply develop ideas, plan, write, research, rest and recharge.

Fashion, Photography and Female Agency in Iran

For more than a century in Iran, the female body has been the site for authorities to assert and exercise their political and ideological control over half of the population. This project explores how women in the Islamic Republic of Iran re-imagine and enforce their agency in the virtual space and redefine their identity by creating distinctively individualized styles in garments in the 21st century. While the representation of women and outfits used in photographs in the virtual space do not always take up the dress code boundaries formulated by the Islamic government, they are deliberately depicted by citizen journalists to contest the ‘image’ of the Muslim woman that was favored and propagated by theologians.

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Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Impact Award (Insight Category), 2019

Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Impact Award (Insight Category), 2019

Feminist Reflexivities

This project, undertaken with Amber Gazso, examines various analytic strategies for being reflexive, i.e., for considering how, as knowers, we are implicated in the knowledge that we produce. These examinations have included (1) in Analyzing Talk in the Social Sciences, looking at how narrative, conversation, and discourse analysts each conceive of reflexivity, (2) in a chapter in press, contrasting how standpoint theory and discursive positioning analysis help to make sense of an awkward moment in an interview, and (3) in a forthcoming article, reflexively analyzing the relation of emotions to ethics.

Finally a National Childcare Program for Canada: Part I The Creation of a Public Policy Entrepreneurship Eco-System, The GBA+ Bedrock?

One of the most common approaches to the study of public policy is the multi-stream framework. Actors known as "policy entrepreneurs" play an important role in this approach. The idea of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship is borrowed from the world of business. In the public policy literature, policy entrepreneurship is primarily seen as actions by actors to bring about change in policy by navigating policy proposals through institutions, not as involving efforts to change institutions. This is despite the well-developed position in the business and economic development literature that sees entrepreneurship as being the result of actions by business people and institutions that support those efforts. As a result, governments, including those in Canada, have devoted significant resources to building “eco-systems” of institutions that support innovation and entrepreneurship by businesses. In other areas of the public policy literature, there has long been recognition that public policy requires support in terms of intellectual resources and institutions. Much of this policy capacity literature seeks to evaluate whether or not states have the institutional capacity to generate the evidence that they need to engage in policy-making, evaluate that evidence, and then apply it to the task of policy-making. This project brings the literature on policy entrepreneurship together with the literature on policy capacity, arguing that when policy actors work to create an institutional eco-system capable of generating the evidence necessary to further policy-making on a given issue, to evaluate the evidence and then to put it to work in policy-making, it is policy-entrepreneurship on a meta scale. The present HPRC ethics application deals with the first part of a larger project that will put this theoretical structure to work, by studying the creation of The Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Program (introduced in the 2021 Federal budget). The hypothesis of the entire project is that the successful creation of this program can be explained by the meta policy entrepreneurship undertaken by the Trudeau government in its first six years in power to build a gender-conscious policy entrepreneurship eco-system within the federal government. The first part of the project looks at the creation of the above noted gender-conscious policy entrepreneurship eco-system. The Second part of the project will look at how bureaucrats and politicians used the gender-conscious policy entrepreneurship eco-system, to advance the proposal for the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Program.

First Steps for Building a New Canadian Book Press

This project involves researching and putting into practice the early stages of founding an independent book publishing press, with a special focus on upmarket genre fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, thrillers). This is part of a long-term initiative to create a boutique publishing space that will be connected to York University's book stream.

Folkloristics and Conversational Discourse in Acadian Culture

Foragers of a Modern Countryside: Honeybees, Agricultural Modernization and Environmental Change in the Great Lakes Region

This transnational study explores the effects of agricultural modernization and the corresponding transformation of rural and suburban ecosystems upon honey bees and their keepers. My research to date has concentrated on the evolving relationship between fruit growers and beekeepers surrounding the advent of insecticide spraying legislation in Ontario in the early 1890s; and beekeeper and state responses to the emergence of American foulbrood, a bacterial disease that decimated apiaries from the 1880s to the 1940s.

Forced Migration in Latin America: Networking for Regional and Policy Responses, 2010. ($15,000).

Forecasting the Break

Community and Capacity for Large-Scale, 2013-2014. ($309,000) . Data-Intensive Research in Forced Migration Studies. Applicant: S. Martin, co-applicants: J. Collman, S. Berkowitz, L. Singh & S. McGrath.

Fostering Latinx Resilience to Trauma between El Salvador, Canada, and the United States

The aim of this international, community-university partnership is to conduct a landmark study of resilience to ongoing and historical trauma as an organizing framework for violence prevention and intervention in El Salvador, and broadly, Central America.

Freeing Public Transport: Progressive Transit Struggles in Europe & North America

2014 ‘Freeing Public Transport: Progressive Transit Struggles in Europe & North America’
Rosa Luxemberg Stiftung Conference Support, Toronto
$20000 approximate

From China to the Big Top: Chinese Acrobats and the Politics of Aesthetic Labor, 1950–2010

Dr. Zhang’s second major project uses “acrobatics” as an entry point to investigate the body as both a subject of labor and a cultural medium in the processes of nation-state building, international diplomacy, and cultural trade. This research has produced multiple presentations, two book chapters, and articles in academic journals, such as “The Journal of Early Popular Visual Culture”, “The Journal of International Labor and Working-Class History”, “The International Journal of Cultural Policy”, and “Feminist Media Studies”. Currently, she is working on a book project, investigating the intertwined politics of gender, race, precarious labor, and performing bodies by tracing the global circulations of “Chinese circus” across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

From Territorial Security to Human Security: The Role of Public Health in National and Global Security Frameworks.

In this research project, I aim to answer the following questions:
1) Why has the human security paradigm with its emphasis on public health not been institutionalized in the national and global security frameworks?
2) The Covid-19 pandemic is a stark reminder of the fact that the nature of threats to security has changed. What is the scope of institutionalizing health security in national and international security paradigms today?
3) What is Canada’s role in the context of shifting global order to institutionalize global health security?

Further development of dialectometry, with application to dialects of England, Finland, Romania, China, and later to other languages.

Funded so far by a series of five SSHRCC grants.

Gender and Reconstruction in Eritrea

Gender Equality and Democracy in Iranian Cinema

This project examines Iranian films produced since 1990 in order to explore the way cinematic productions created a democratic and pluralistic aura in the representation of gender. It employs a comparative study of Iranian movies made in the 20th century, before and after the Islamic revolution in 1978-9, with the films produced in the past twenty years. It will shed light on the aesthetic redefinition of gender identity that has deconstructed the conventional gender roles in Iranian cinema. The history of Iranian cinema depicts that modernity, democracy and gender equality are increasingly becoming more visible and a thorough study of these concepts would be of great cultural value.

Geoinformation based disaster & emergency management

The project has two main objectives: i) to set-up a prototype training facility which will allow students to be trained in simulation of emergencies and the on-scene response and evacuation; ii) use spatial analysis and modeling leading to effective communication for situation visualization awareness, understanding, decision making, and resource allocation.

Global Girlhoods: From Imaginings to Embodied Experiences

A symposium that seeks to reposition, relocate, and reframe girls within the context of both girl and child studies by asking: How do we delineate the boundaries of girlhood? Which girls are visible and which are invisible in these boundaries? What are the everyday practices of actual girls that work to challenge these narrow definitions and representations? How do girls themselves negotiate, engage, take up, resist, or reassemble the cultural frames of girlhood offered to them? What do girls’ responses reveal about this contemporary moment of girlhood?

Global leadership: rhetoric and reality

Governing Knowledge and Data in Smart Cities

Natasha Tusikov is the principal investigator of a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2019-2022) entitled “Governing Knowledge and Data in Smart Cities,” in cooperation with Dr. Blayne Haggart and Dr. Nicole Goodman (Brock University), and Dr. Zachary Spicer (University of Western Ontario). This project investigates the central role that the control of data plays in smart cities. The project examines the interaction between state and non-state actors in regulating the creation and use of information within the knowledge-based economy. The project will assess the choices, practices, and norms that shape data collection, analysis, and use, the devices that capture data, and the relationships among government, private sector, and civil society in these processes.

Governing the Social in Neoliberal Times

Edited Volume

GRAND

GRAND, Network Centre for Excellence Network Investigator, NI: Barbara Crow, PI: Diane Gramola, “Confronting Pain, Redefining Mobility,” and PI: Catherine Middleton, “Digital Infrastructures: Access and Use in the Networked Society”.

Grandmothers and Grandmothering Conference

Growing Up Graphic: The Comics of Children in Crisis

My monograph focuses on graphic narratives for and about children and youth, from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, varied regions of the world, wide-ranging gender identities and levels of ability. All of the graphic texts that this project analyzes feature particular predicaments and challenges experienced by young people that can deepen young readers' sociopolitical understanding of the world and move them towards an awareness of social justice.

Growth, Employment and Poverty in Current Financial Crisis in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh: Exploring the Nexus and Estimating the Impact of the Crisis

Hannah Josephson: Translating Gabrielle Roy's Bonheur d'occasion

This project seeks to re-contextualize Hannah Josephson's translation of Bonheur d'occasion within a comprehensive vision of the translator as active cultural agent. In the fields of Canadian literary translation and Canadian literary institutions, this project offers a well-researched case study of the complex inter-connections between Québécois, Canadian, American and French literary circles that continue to affect Canadian-Québec letters. Finally, through its methodology, it makes a contribution to the emerging field of translation agency within the international discipline of translation studies.

he Borders of Knowledge: An Analytical Study of the Intersection of Community-based Oral History and the Written Records Regarding the Life and Writings of William A. Elias (1856-1929)

Herbs, Stars, and Amulets: Interconfessional Health and Healing in Ottoman Bosnia

"Herbs, Stars and Amulets: Interconfessional Health and Healing in Ottoman Bosnia" investigates the theories and practices of healing in Ottoman Bosnia as they intersect mainstream healthcare practices, religious beliefs, and folk customs. Medical pluralism that we see nowadays existed in premodern times as well, but the hierarchies of authority were allocated in different ways, allowing knowledge to slip through various forms and practices. The study gives this issue a more detailed cultural lens as it examines what kind(s) of medical knowledge circulated in Ottoman Bosnia, and how different medical practitioners benefited from and competed with each other. Deeply steeped in the region's cultural history, this study counteracts the region's current political climate that systematically endangers social intimacy among different ethnoreligious groups through the campaigns of ethnic division and exclusivist discourse.