Priya Chendke,

pchendke@yorku.ca

I completed my BA at the University of Toronto with a double major in Anthropology and Political Science in 2011. My MA research focuses on the surge in tourism to Peru after the period of political violence that affected the nation in the 1980s-1990s. I am interested in the national tourism project which has attracted millions of visitors to Peru, especially the ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, and how this project promoted a unified nation in the aftermath of violence. Therefore, I am interested in how Machu Picchu has become a symbol of Peruvian identity as part of a massive post-conflict nation-building project. My research also looks at the transnational encounters that have taken place as a result of this huge increase in tourism to Peru, that involve actors from the local (such as tour guides or artisanal sellers) to the international level (tourists themselves and international agencies). With the naming of Machu Picchu as a new Wonder of the World, I am also interested in the increased monitoring of the tourist site by outsiders, such as agencies like UNESCO, who have recently begun attribute tourism to the increasing environmental degradation of this World Heritage Site. Therefore tourism, which brings to mind leisure and vacationing on the one hand, is also inherent with power relations, which can also help shape the identities of Peruvians as well as influence nation-building projects in post-conflict settings. My favourite Peruvians: Paddington Bear, Mario Testino, and Alfonso Barrantes Lingan.

Alison Hill,

alisonh@yorku.ca

I completed my Bachelor’s degree at the University of Alberta in 2009 with a major in Anthropology and a minor in Native Studies.  Though my interest throughout my undergrad was primarily in archaeology and human evolution, I’ve come to York’s Master of Arts program to learn more about Medical Anthropology, specifically how it pertains to women’s reproductive and sexual health.  My research in the past has explored differing forms of maternal healthcare, and their effectiveness in meeting the needs of Status Aboriginal women; how advocacy organizations act as an intermediary between healthcare professionals and teenage mothers; and the portrayal of the pregnant body as a desexualized object.  Over the next two years I hope to analyze popular perceptions of pregnancy and motherhood, and examine how these affect the training and attitudes of caregivers, and ultimately therefore the quality of care provided to mothers.  When I’m not reading, writing, or thinking, I can usually be found in my kitchen, making pie. 

Gabor Jozsa,

gjozsa@yorku.ca

I like to laugh and I laugh often. Although a simple statement, this assertion
serves as a powerful motivating force for my interest in researching how
humourous performances are generated and modulated. Humour can be fun and distracting but it has always been a pervasive part of the human experience and as such it is worthy of our attention. Aside from humour I am interested in anthropological theory, pedagogy, and the public service. In 2006 I completed my BA in East Asian Studies at the University of Calgary, and prior to coming to York in 2010 I completed my second BA at U of C, this time in Anthropology.

Amrita Kauldher,

amritaka@yorku.ca

My proposed thesis, seeks to build upon the scholarly framework of Hip Hop culture as post- colonial site and scene of ethnic and racial reinventions, and exchanges. More importantly, I intend to contribute to Canadian scholarship on Hip Hop, by inquiring into the connections between Punjabi Hip Hop artists and youth-led social movements within the diasporic Punjabi-Sikh community through memorializing practices commemorating the 1984 Sikh genocide. I look forward to working under the supervision of Daniel Yon in grounding my research in elements of cosmopolitanisms, as well as discourses of race, ethnicity, and popular culture. .My thesis will investigate the movements within conscious, Canadian based Hip Hop communities, along with community organizations dedicated to arts, culture, youth and activism in Toronto (Sikh Activist Network and Manifesto Festival). In the post-9/11 world, when a “beard” and “turban” become signifiers for terrorism, the artists involved my research embody a sense of “global citizenship” in which they are not only part of the Hip Hop nation, but also are actively involved in eulogizing human rights injustices in Punjab, which have stemmed from the unacknowledged genocide of 1984. By analyzing their music as Hip Hop culture and diasporic commemorations of 1984, I intend to explore how their music participates in affirming (memorial practices) and destabilizing (Hip Hop music) identity politics. This is by no means a project of “South Asian Dance Music”, but one working to broaden the scope of Hip Hop studies through the cyphers of academia and notions of a "global race" consciousness.

Thibault Kervarech,

thibault@yorku.ca

Born in France, and growing up in Taiwan and Japan, I arrived in Canada in 2005 as a foreign student and completed an Honours BA at York University before enrolling in the MA program to continue my studies.  Broadly speaking, my research interests are focused on treatments of the Occupy movement in Toronto, particularly with local popular media such as corporate-owned newspaper and television coverage, and how these could construct or encourage particular dialogues and mentalities around what is fundamentally an anti-corporate protest movement.  The portrayals of local events on a scale and a scope which far outstrips those events creates particular power dynamics that I am interested in exploring further through ideas about discourse, power, and
resistance.

Nicole Pariser,

npariser@yorku.ca

I began my MA at York in 2010, following the completion of a combined honours degree in Global Studies and Anthropology in 2009 at Wilfrid Laurier University.  While pursuing my undergraduate degree, I was fortunate to spend a term at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.  In broad terms, my research focuses on migration and mobility; who is allowed to move and who is not, and how these choices are justified, particularly by nation states to their citizenry.  As a human in the world I like to move and explore.Recognizing that access to safe and legal routes of migration are not universally available, despite the ease with which capital and goods, as well as specific bodies like mine, can flow across borders, I aim to interrogate the ways in which discriminatory migration policies are maintained and strengthened, specifically the ways in which disparities over mobility are obscured, embedded and justified within discourses of security and human rights.  My research has primarily focused on human trafficking, however following experiences in Vancouver’s downtown eastside, as well as San Francisco, specifically relating to homelessness and the passage of ‘no-sit-no-lie’ policies, my research interests have expanded to include the ways in which migration and mobility come to be constrained not only across national borders, but within them as well.  My feminism informs my work and I believe no one is illegal as well as in the transformative power of engaged anthropology and activism to expose, contest and change that which is unjust.  To maintain my sense of delight and wonder with the world I find comfort in my yoga practice, and seeking out opportunities to play.  Swing-sets and hula hoops are not just for kids.

Nayrouz Abu-Hatoum,

nayrouz@yorku.ca

My area of interest is drawn from my personal experiences with movement, fragmented belongings, bordered spaces, violence and conflict. In my Master thesis I dealt with the notion of ‘home’ and ‘exile’ through the experience of diasporic Muslims in Toronto. Drawing on that I intend to investigate for my PhD ideas and notions of belonging in constantly transforming border zones spaces. My empirical encounter will take place in Palestine around the Israeli-built apartheid wall in Palestinian lands, where I intend to explore creation of new spaces of belonging and resistance to state power.

Anisa Anwar,

ananwar@yorku.ca

Medical Anthropology becomes a major focus of my research interest through my M.Phil. research among the Santals of Northern Bangladesh where I examined Santal reproduction practices, specifically women’s perspectives on their body, pregnancy, childbirth, infertility, and postpartum experiences. From 2000-2002, I completed M.Phil degree in Social Anthropology from University of Bergen, Norway. For PhD my current research interest lies in exploring the community and cultural understanding of preventive health care practices regarding breast health care among the first generation newcomer Bangladeshi immigrant women in Toronto. I plan to build on this research by exploring attitudes towards health care specifically breast cancer prevention and to investigate changes, if any, in past and present attitudes towards breast cancer awareness and available treatment. I started my career in teaching Social Anthropology at SahJalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh in 1999. Later on I worked as a contract faculty in Anthropology Department at Cosumnes River College, LosRios Community College District of California (2005-2007) and at California State University, Sacramento (2006-2007).

Melissa Atkinson-Graham,

matkigra@yorku.ca

Anthropologies of bodies, technologies, and affect in science and
medicine; mind-body medicine, psychoneuroimmunology, cellular
ontologies, and craniosacral therapy. experimental research
methodologies; moving and still image making.

Umit Aydogmus,

uaydogms@yorku.ca

My area of interest lies at the intersections of neoliberalism, employment, citizenship, religious movements, politics and changing discourses of adult education, urban governance, poverty, social policies and constellations of new govern mentalities in Turkey. Specifically, I am interested in the enhanced role of Istanbul metropolitan municipality led institutions, and their particular discourses of citizenship, employment and society, from the mid-1990s onwards under neoliberal globalization. I developed particular interest about these issues during my graduate (MA) education at Bogazici University in Department of Sociology (Istanbul/Turkey) and 2nd Masters Study at Lund University in the Program of Development Studies. I took my undergraduate degree in Sociology at Bogazici University. In addition to these issues, I am interested in social and political theory, civil society organizations, creative industries and communities, urban politics, social movements, gender, affect and masculinities, action research and participatory ethnographies, political anthropology and visual/media anthropology. In my spare time, I usually work on my latest translation; wander in the streets of Toronto, exercise, read, cook and travel.

Laurie Baker,

lbaker@yorku.ca

My current research interests include the appearance and use of audio/visual technology by mega churches primarily in the southern United States. Amongst other aspects of ritual and religion, I am interested in looking at the ways that narratives of conversion are displayed via large screens at the head of the congregation and the affect this display may have on new attendees, sometimes referred to as seekers. The relationship between an affective and somatic religious engagement that is mediated through audio/visual technology figures prominently.

Heather Barnick,

hbarnick@yorku.ca

Currently, my intellectual interests circle around the anthropology of media, visual culture, and the intersections between science, technology, and the imagination. I am fascinated by the ways in which scientific narratives of “sensory systems” become templates for the hardware and software design of virtual spaces (simulators, video games, online Role Playing Games) which aim to train, condition, and captivate bodies. My PhD research at York University concentrates on Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) in Shanghai, China as sites of nation-building, pedagogy, and entertainment. As China attempts to grow its domestic online gaming industry, I am curious about how the processes and intended outcomes of game design transpire and transform in a variety of contexts including: universities, Internet entertainment providers, and among players themselves. As much as I think there is room for critical reflection of virtual gaming technologies, I am also a fan and so much of my “non-academic” time is spent playing World of Warcraft and keeping up to date with the latest news in Second Life.

Jessica Caporusso,

jesscapo@yorku.ca

Inspired by embodiment, sensation and affect, my research investigates pedagogies and practices of self-making in the context of audio engineering and sound recording in the Greater Toronto Area. I am particularly committed to exploring the establishment of multi-sensory ways of acquiring knowledge, through engaging modalities of the senses, affect and through phenomenological experience. My current research in sound production is principally concerned with various dimensions of performance, "serious play" and tacit knowledge. Other interests include science & technology studies, videogames and loitering in various Toronto bookstores and cafes.

Nelson Ferguson,

nfergus@yorku.ca

Nelson Ferguson is currently completing his dissertation which examines emerging circular labour migration patterns between the Atlantic Provinces and the Northern Alberta Oil Sands region. He has recently concluded a year of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in a former coal-mining town in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and in Fort McMurray, Alberta. During this period, he interacted with and spoke to long-distance commute workers, their families, community leaders, and members of industry in order to evaluate the impacts of this “commute” on family, community, and economy in both sending and receiving locales. Ferguson has also undertaken previous research on the lived experiences of Mexican migrant workers, living and working on a Southern Ontario farm and sojourning with migrant workers and their families in four Mexican villages. With interests in labour migration, neoliberalism, global changes in industrial relations, and, more generally, anthropological research methods, Ferguson has published and presented the results of his research projects on migrant agricultural workers and Atlantic Canada / Oil Sands long-distance commute workers in a variety of academic and policy-based forums.

Lynette Fischer,

volksi@yorku.ca

Very broadly, my research looks at what it means to live after socialism. My doctoral work is engaged with the study of post-socialism, and reconstruction efforts in the former-socialist areas of southeastern Europe. With the end of socialism and the continued attempts to develop independent/functioning capitalist democracies, the political era of 'post'-socialism becomes an ever more protracted middle space between these two political spheres. Focusing on how individuals find alternative coping strategies in the form of long-established social welfare organizations, my research looks at the everyday social structures that did not cease simply because the political ones did. In the simplest way, I am interested in what it feels like to live through a political era conceived of as a 'transition'.

Alicia Grimes,

amgrimes@yorku.ca

In the broad field of economic anthropology, my research concentrates on the complex and often paradoxical articulations of ‘consumer responsiblization’ within the American Fair Trade Towns movement, as expressed within the contours of market-based social justice and the normative orders of contemporary neoliberalism. Having conducted fieldwork at Fair Trade Towns USA in 2009 and 2010, I examine how efforts by network administrators to render the national consumer outreach program amenable to ‘rationalization’ and ‘accountability’ intersect with attempts by area campaigners to make the initiative
commensurable with locally meaningful strategies of Fair Trade advocacy. Combining theoretical contributions from governmentality and social audit literatures, my research also explores the concept of consumer responsiblization as an exercise in ethical and economic accounting, as well as an ambivalent yet socially relevant domain of value transference in an era of intensified and accelerated global economic integration. I am a PhD student studying under the supervision of Teresa Holmes. My extra-curricular interests include photography, dance, regular dental hygiene, and savouring a variety of delectable cheeses.

Michael Connors Jackman,

samizdat@yorku.ca

My doctoral dissertation focuses on the afterlife of The Body Politic, a Toronto-based lesbian and gay liberation magazine published by Pink Triangle Press from 1971 until 1987. The research explores how people involved with the magazine remember the gay liberation movement, as well how they understand transformations in queer public culture since the 1970s. By attending to issues of memory and public commemoration, my project examines how former contributors and editors remember the magazine, how it is written about and documented by journalists and artists invested in the preservation of LGBT history, as well as how it continues to inform the work of queer activism in Canada.

Wangui Kimari,

wkimari@yorku.ca

For my MA research I examined how both formal and “informal” Afrocentric pedagogy in Bahia, Brazil was, in multiple ways, working to challenge the omnipresent racism and coloniality of knowledge and power in Bahia, and more extensively in Brazil. My doctoral research will be continuing with this engaged anthropological approach, and with my interests in youth and social justice. Towards these pursuits, I am hoping to do research in Kenya on the violence of everyday life in Kenyan slums, and how community youth groups come together to negotiate these violence’s. This project will be building on organizing that I have been part of in Kenya since 2007.

Rehaana Manek,

rmanek@yorku.ca

My MA research focused on twice migrancy and second generation youth identity within the context of Canadian Multiculturalism. My PhD research still focuses on youth and identity but has shifted towards the relationship between precarious or violent space/places and youth identity, migrants and borders, and indigeneity and sovereignty, and belonging.. Specifically, my research focuses and explores how processes of American imperialism and emerging sovereignty movements have affected how racialized Hawaiian youth negotiate their identities through their activities around beach space.

Siobhan McCollum,

mccollum@yorku.ca

Water security -indigeneity - gender. I began the PhD program in 2008, researching how identity politics help to secure access to scarce resources in the context of a struggle for safe water by Maya women in  Toledo District, Belize. I am interested in the co-construction of society and nature, and the political ecology of water in Central America and the Caribbean.  My MA work examined discourses of poverty in a Belizean village undergoing an abundance of development interventions, examining how villagers conceptualized poverty despite the textual representation of the entire village as "poor."

Rhiannon Mosher,

rmmosher@yorku.ca

Working under the supervision of Daphne Winland, I completed my fieldwork in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (August 2009 to August 2010; May 2011). My research investigates questions of citizenship and national belonging through the lens voluntary Dutch language coaching partnerships in Amsterdam. Language coaching volunteers are uniquely positioned within the broader landscape of immigrant integration as exemplars of 'Dutchness', communicating not only the Dutch language but ideas about how to live in Dutch society and Amsterdam. Through interviews with these informants, as well as through participation in various public, national events in Amsterdam, I examine how multiple, shifting signifiers of belonging and exclusion - ranging from citizenship status, to language, religion, race and culture - are imagined and reconciled by these individuals, through their discussions and views of an immigrant presence and the question of immigrant integration in the Netherlands.

Wesley Oakes,

wes123@yorku.ca

“They’re here, clandestine and on a single mission: to pull the rug from under us!!” Strangers, irregulars, kwerikewri, terrorist, mojados, scroungers, fobs, leaches, sans papier, degenerates, vucumpra, fanatics… are but a few of the xenophobic names used to describe unwanted immigrants.  It’s undeniable, the twenty-first century is experiencing increasing population movement with alarmist fears linking security and immigration. My current research raises several questions, like, how can anthropologist make sense of migrant experiences and public debates on pluralism and assimilation? My research takes forward academic debates on pluralism and explores the crossroads where
‘multicultural’ policy and implementation fracture. Moreover, it provides a
detailed analysis of the ways in which black Muslim youth in England negotiate their ethnic and racial identities in various hybrid urban localities and spaces. I’m interested in Islam and Islamophobia, youth, gang culture, race thinking and racism, diaspora, transnationalism, refugees and post 11 September 2001 discourses on security. I hold a BA in sociology and political science from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and MRes in anthropological research methods from the School of Oriental African Studies (SOAS). I'm a Graduate Fellow at the York Centre for Refugee Studies. I joined the PhD program in 2009.

Karen O’Connor,

koconnor@yorku.ca

My doctoral research examines how unstable electrical service powerfully shapes the everyday lives of rural women in the Dominican Republic.  It explores changing formations of power and violence in the Dominican countryside, drawing on a year of ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, life histories, and archival research.  My M.A. research in coastal Ecuador explored police raids against sex workers during an urban regeneration campaign.  This fieldwork traced complex relationships between sex workers, police officers, and government and NGO bureaucracies. I live in Toronto with urban anthropologist Ryan James and our five year old daughter, Nia.

Jillian Ollivierre,

jilli@yorku.ca

I am interested in the South-South movements of goods, images and ideologies that connect India with the island of Trinidad in the Southern Caribbean.  There, Trinidadians, particularly but not exclusively those of Indian descent, consume a ‘modern,’ globalized and mediated ‘Indianness’  (especially in the form of ‘Bollywood’ film, film music and fashions) in ways that are complexly articulated to the island’s ethno-political context.  I am particularly interested in the gendered, sexualized and racialized implications of this consumption.   Located at anthropology’s critical intersection with Media Studies, Caribbean Studies and South Asian Studies, my work aims to contribute to a growing literature complicating dominant ‘West-to-rest’ framings of globalization in contemporary times.

Aruna Panday

panday@yorku.ca

In my work I research concepts and concerns of identity making,
colonialisms, consumption, performance, management practices, water
tensions, environmentality and labour processes in Guyana’s rice
fields. I am also a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on
Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) and a Graduate Associate at
the York Centre for Asian Research (YCAR). 

Michelle Switzer,

mswitzer@yorku.ca

I’m currently conducting fieldwork in Mercedes, Soriano, Uruguay, where my research is focused on changes to rural life since the establishment of a foreign-owned pulp mill and eucalyptus plantations in the area over the last twenty years.  Specifically, I’m interested in the dialectical relationship between humans and their physical environment and how and why “nature” emerges as a site of resistance at the moment when the left-wing coalition has come to national power. Soriano department, an agriculture and ranching region in Uruguay’s interior, is currently home to 40,000ha of water-intensive plantation “forest,” which has impacted the way people live and work on the land and literally altered the region’s landscape. Broadly speaking, my research interests include environmental politics and development. I completed my B.A. and M.A. in Geography at Queen’s University (2001; 2005).  Prior to starting my studies at York, I worked as the Community Outreach and Communications Coordinator for a small Canadian international development agency with a regional focus in Mexico and Central America. When I’m not doing interviews or making farm visits, I enjoy drinking mate with friends, cheering for La Celeste, running an English conversation club, swimming with the Mercedes Masters’ team, and taking short trips to Montevideo to visit friends and lie on the beach.

Niki Thorne,

thornecs@yorku.ca

I believe in an engaged and critical anthropology, a radical, decolonizing anthropology—one that works to change the world, not just through observing, analyzing, or writing, but through concrete action.

I’m into activist research that works with post colonial social movements.  My masters project involved a prefigurative experiment in liberatory schooling (Hamilton FreeSkool), and my undergraduate field research looked at colonialism, racism, nationalism around the reclamation of Kanonhstaton.  Whenever possible, I combine my grounded, engaged anthropological research with my engagement and organizing in and with a variety of groups and communities.  I'm involved in Hamilton FreeSkool, CUPE 3903’s First Nations Solidarity Working Group, the Six Nations Solidarity Network, and more.

Most recently I’ve been thinking about power and the production of knowledge/silence, epistemic violence, as well as supporting, sustaining and building healthy communities and regional networks of resistance.  I also have a blog: curiouspraxis.wordpress.com

Laura Waddell

waddell@yorku.ca

My work combines a curiosity with the anthropology of emotion with educational ethnography and grows out of my experiences of working at a teacher’s college and junior high school in France in 2009-2010. Interweaving ideas about the production of social knowledge, education and training, emotion, and citizenship in Europe, my doctoral research investigates the emotional lives of teacher candidates as they grapple with the reforms to their training and their arrival in laïque and increasingly multicultural classrooms.   I am interested in what ways this 'emotion work' and training are impacted by recent reforms to teacher education by the state, as well as what it means to provide intimate labour in an increasingly neoliberal, secular, and multicultural context. Through this research, I hope to explore various forms of emotional narrative, life in the classroom and investigate the various social and political entanglements that are reshaping what it means to live and work in France. Along with my doctoral work, I am also a diploma student in the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies.

Karen Walmsley,

kangus@yorku.ca

Broadly speaking, I am interested in the affective and embodied dimensions of productions of scientific “knowledge”. My Masters degree, also undertaken at York University, explored sites of difference as they intersect with the affective aspects of dance.  My PhD research will expand on this by exploring these dimensions as they contribute to attempts to produce “human-like” artificial intelligence.  What is the template for thinking about humanity that is informing these efforts?  What kind of understandings of humanity are projected onto and derived from artificially intelligent beings?  How are these ideas transformed through processes of trial and error?  How are inequalities and categories of difference being reproduced and how are they being subverted in attempts to mechanically produce a human-like machine? As intelligence is commonly cited as the singular factor that separates humanity from non-human animals, I aim to glean insight from this project into the changing understandings of human cognition, and therefore, of humanity.

Amiee Whitefoot,

aimee1@yorku.ca

I joined the PhD program in 2005. Since then, I have become a mother to two little boys (2006, 2008) and have changed my field of interest from microcredit and international development issues, to a concern with the ways in which the breast pump is changing the ways mothers interpret and enact breastfeeding in their everyday lives. Specifically, my research asks: What are the biopolitics of the breast pump? How are women rethinking and renegotiating the classic dilemmas of motherhood through breast pump use? Have breast pumps depoliticised breastfeeding as a public policy issue? I plan to investigate the relationship between breast pumps being used by mothers to negotiate the demands of various kinds of work placed on them and how this relatively new biotechnology affects not only breastfeeding practices, but also the policies enacted to promote breastfeeding during upcoming fieldwork in southwestern Ontario. More broadly speaking, I am interested in the biopolitics of gender and reproduction, and the ways in which these two areas intersect (or don’t). Combining academia and motherhood is an ongoing challenge for me, but I am passionate about both and couldn’t imagine my life without either anthropology or my children.

Alex Wilson,

alexw@yorku.ca

My research interests include the symbolic urban landscape paying particular attention to the practice of “place/destination branding”. With Toronto as my primary site of analysis, I am interested in the multiple political and economic techniques used at both public and private levels to create a distinct and identifiable city “brand”. My current research considers the cultural and economic implications of the upcoming 2015 Pan/Parapan American Games hosted in the Greater Toronto Area. Theoretical concerns revolve around the perceived necessity of such a branding strategy as urban identities are re-articulated within a global discourse of neoliberalism.  Further, I am interested in the particular aspects of the city that are represented in the branding process and those left out of the picture altogether. My research also re-examines the notion of “city limits” taking into consideration the potential global breadth of the neoliberal city’s symbolic, cultural, political and economic landscapes. I am also a big Raptors fan…go Raps!

Maria Jose Yax-Fraser,

mjyaxfr@yorku.ca

Inspired by the cross-cultural mothering experiences I had when my first child was born, I enrolled in the inter university master’s program in Women and Gender Studies at Dalhousie University to learn how migrant women negotiated their identifications; their beliefs, values and practices of rearing and socializing children; and how they negotiated the social, cultural, economic and political environment in which they settled. I am interested in expanding upon these questions to unravel how migrant mother’s social and cultural identities are marked, articulated and transformed while crossing national and provincial boundaries; how they, as social agents, negotiate their social, cultural and political positioning as well as their civic participation within multiple spaces as women and as mothers. I am also interested in further understanding the ways in which women’s maternal practice, as a form of bodily performance, may contribute to opening gaps for new forms of individual and groups identities and hybrid cultures.