Dean & Professor
Credentials
PhD in Geography, Clark University
MA in Geography, Carleton University
BA Honours, Queen's University
Research Keywords
Human-Environment Geographies; Animal Geographies; Gender & Environment; Urban Geography.
Contact Information
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
416 736 2100
https://www.yorku.ca/research/project/livesofanimals/
Research Interests
My research advances animal geographies and posthumanist thought by foregrounding animals as subjects, agents, and co‑producers of space rather than passive backdrops within human society. I theorize how animals are discursively and materially positioned by humans within landscapes of value, care, and neglect, and how animals shape environments in ways that challenge anthropocentric planning and governance. In turn, I explore how human narratives and practices shape animal health, wellbeing and welfare (and vice versa). Projects led by my Lives of Animals Research Group have featured chickens, cattle, donkeys, community dogs, coyotes, road-killed animals, African wild dogs; lions, elephants, and monkeys. I am now focused on primatology with my SSHRC Insight Grant 2026-2032 on animal performativity and 'becoming primate' within human society.
An earlier strand of my work explores urban agriculture, food security, and livelihood in rapidly transforming cities, especially Gaborone, Botswana. Through mixed‑methods studies, I show how men’s and women’s socio‑economic positions, spatial locations, and everyday interactions with urban environments shape inequitable access to agricultural resources and food systems. Building from and contributing to feminist political ecology, my conceptualization of feminist foodscapes unpacks how gendered relations of power permeate all scales of the urban food system, informing policies and programmes from local governments to international development agencies.