As communities around the world face increasingly complex emergencies, the demand for disaster and emergency management expertise continues to grow. Addressing population displacement, public safety risks and long‑term recovery requires approaches grounded in research, policy and community engagement.
At York University, the Master of Disaster & Emergency Management (MDEM) program supports graduate‑level study focused on preparedness, response and recovery across diverse contexts. This September, the program welcomes Tommy Taylor, recipient of the $20,000 Chancellor Bennett Master’s Scholarship for Liberal Arts.
Administered through the Faculty of Graduate Studies (FGS), the scholarship recognizes incoming graduate students with strong academic achievement and research potential. For Taylor, entering the MDEM program reflects a long‑standing commitment shaped by lived experience and community‑based emergency response work.
Photo of Tommy Taylor
“The honest answer is that I didn’t find this field – it found me, twice,” Taylor says.
His first encounter came in 2010 during the G20 Summit in Toronto, where he was a part of the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. The experience, which later informed his solo documentary performance You Should Have Stayed Home, shaped his understanding of disasters as events influenced by policy and power. “They are shaped by decisions about whose safety counts and whose doesn’t,” he says.
Taylor’s second formative experience emerged during the COVID‑19 pandemic, when he spent several years working on the frontlines of crisis response for unhoused community members, including in shelter and harm‑reduction settings. Witnessing systemic gaps in emergency response prompted him to pursue graduate study. “I needed to understand these systems from the inside,” he says, “so I could help rebuild them.”
Through its interdisciplinary approach, the MDEM program enables students to examine emergencies through social, economic and policy lenses. Under the guidance of York faculty members, Taylor will focus his research on how emergency management systems can better account for social vulnerability and lived experience.
Receiving the Chancellor Bennett Scholarship provides Taylor with the stability to fully engage in his studies. He says the recognition affirms the value of professional and community‑based experience in shaping effective research and policy.
“My goal is to help build emergency management frameworks that take social vulnerability seriously, not as an afterthought, but as the organizing principle,” Taylor says.
As he begins his studies, Taylor joins a community of graduate students and researchers working to strengthen preparedness and inform policy that supports communities when they need it most.