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Mabel Arellano is in her final year at York University as an undergraduate student in Work and Labour Studies. She is currently the Treasurer of the Work and Labour Studies Student Association and is pursuing a career in Union and community organizing. She has experience in social work and labour related fields as a Housing Support Worker and Junior Member Organizer. She is interested in exploring ways in which legal, civil, political, immigration, and labour rights and protections can be extended democratically to excluded, marginalized and underserved communities as a path towards empowerment and integration.
Hasan Arshad is a York Alumni who focused on human resources throughout his undergraduate program. He was introduced to the Global Labour Research Centre when he partnered with them and Professor Pike under the DARE Program. During that time, he researched the World of Work and COVID-19. Aside from understanding and aiding to find solutions to improve workplaces, Hasan enjoys helping organizations improve their human resource systems including recruitment and selection.
My name is Isabel Di Luciano, I am a third-year student majoring in political science and minoring in philosophy. In particular, I am working towards attending law school and becoming a lawyer. Before that happens, I want to take the next couple of years not only to prepare myself academically to achieve this but also to learn and participate in other important political matters that will provide me with more knowledge and experience for my future career. I am looking to volunteer in research positions or anything similar to help me advance academically and intellectually. Looking forward to assisting in important projects.
Christina Love is an undergraduate student pursuing a Honors Double Major in Indigenous Studies and French. She is the current Equity Officer for the York Debating Society and was formerly the President of the YDS and the Director of Public Relations for the Palestine Solidarity Collective. She is a human rights activist who has translated labour praxis into a unionization attempt at her former place of employment, Shoppers Drug Mart. Christina's interests lie in direct action and community organization aimed at producing targeted and tangible results to peoples who face exploitation politically, economically, and socially. Her views firmly echo the position of Reni Eddo-Lodge that, "liberation for some is liberation for none," and she thus takes an intersectional approach to research and action. She is the 2020/21 undergraduate DARE student for the GLRC's 'Workers' Voices Interview Series,' a qualitative project investigating the impacts of COVID-19 on work and livelihood. Christina's ultimate goal lies in becoming an elementary school teacher, using her position on the inside of the state educational apparatus to subvert state-biased curriculum and to empower youth.
I am an undergraduate student at York University, Political Science. As a Turkish born Kurd, my research interests are Kurdish conflict, the condition of labour in areas of ethnic conflict, globalization and neoliberalism. Currently, for better addressing those issues, I am working on the subjects of the naturally of state apparatus, theories of development, and the nature of rational and collective action in society.
Shyamal Singaravelu is an undergraduate student in his final year at York University studying political science. Also completing a certificate in public administration and law, Shyamal has an interest in policy issues, concerning labour rights, employment, and citizenship. In regard to political science, he seeks to pursue graduate studies specializing in international relations and political theory. Taking globalization into consideration, Shyamal would like to explore the policies regarding global labour movements, and their changes in post-modern society both politically and legally.
Rawan Abdelbaki is a doctoral student at the Graduate Program in Sociology at York University. She holds a BA in Sociology and Political Science from the University of Toronto, and completed her MA studies at York University with a research review paper titled Neoliberalism and Canadian Immigration: Rethinking the Land of (In)Opportunity. Her research interests lie in the areas of transnational migration, citizenship, political economy, racialization, political subjectivities, and diaspora studies. Her work is inspired by a smorgasbord of theoretical traditions, namely marxist, feminist, anti-racist, and postcolonial approaches. Rawan is also a labour activist involved with the Fight for $15 and Fairness campaign at York.
Alaa Abdelhamid is a PhD student in Sociology at York. She has an MA in Social Justice & Community Engagement from Laurier and a BA in Sociology from McMaster. Her primary research interests include work and labour, social movements and activism, public policy, gender-based violence, and third sector organizations. Theoretical frameworks that guide her thinking and research include intersectionality, feminist political economy, and anti-oppression. During her MA, Alaa wrote her major research paper on how graduate worker unions address sexual violence using a critical discourse analysis methodology and socialist and intersectional feminist frameworks.
Samson Adewumi is a doctoral student in the discipline of Industrial, Organisational and Labour Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He submitted his PhD thesis in November, 2018 titled: casualization and trade union survival strategies in the Nigerian beverage sector, and he is due for graduation April, 2019. He has published three articles, where he was a lead author in one of these publications. He holds his Bsc in Psychology from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and completed his Msc in Employment and Labour Studies from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. His research interests span across contemporary issues in labour and employment studies. Chiefly, his interests include emergent issues in labour law, atypical employment, globalization and work, trends and structure of the informal economy, research methods, and the responsiveness of the labour unions to ascending growth of informalisation.
Kritee’s interests lie in the study of the dailiness of work in Toronto and London, UK public transport organizations, in which the importance of customer service is increasingly emphasized. To investigate how this organizational discourse influences the understanding of work that serves the public, he uses a broad theoretical approach that integrates governmentality studies, political economy and cultural studies. Kritee also has an evolving interest in race and racialization in the contemporary Canadian policy-making context.
Mishall Ahmed is a PhD Candidate (ABD) in the Department of Politics at York University. Her research focuses on the use and applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in North American immigration processes. She is interested in the challenges posed by the proliferation of AI in everyday life, the gendered and racialized effects of automation (as achieved through AI) on labour and labour organization, the processes of data abstraction, data imperialism, and the political economy of techno-scientific innovations.
Telma Alencar has an MA in Social Anthropology and is a PhD Candidate in Social and Political Thought at York University.
My work focuses on the labour recruitment systems that make use of Western Turkey's regional characteristics. I demonstrate how the agrarian labour and global production networks literature can benefit from a detailed study of region-specific labour intermediation and worker recruitment practices based in the Global South. Instead of homogenizing intermediators (labour contractors) as merely surplus extractors, I investigate how labour is assembled along lines of difference concerning gender, race, and citizenship status. The goal is to formulate a more context-based analysis of the structural constraints and social relations that shape labour’s potential for agency in one of the most precarious sectors, agriculture.
Benjamin Anderson is a PhD Candidate in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University (SFU) where he studies craft labour and worker organizing in creative industries. Specifically, his work interrogates the class dimensions of the recent uptick in interest in artisanry and making, particularly in the global north, and the potential for organizing in so-called craft industries. In addition to his studies, he teaches course in SFU's Labour Studies Program and in Communication.
Sean Antaya is a PhD student in the Department of Politics at York University. He holds an Honours BA in Political Science and History from the University of Windsor and MA in Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies from Trent University. His MA thesis examined the New Left and rank-and-file organizing in Windsor, Ontario during the 1970s. His PhD research will examine the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) during the 1970s and the union’s conflicts with the Canadian state during that period. Broadly speaking, Sean is interested in labour and working-class history, the history of the Left, and Marxist theory.
Asma's doctoral project seeks to use a capabilities-based approach to evaluate environmental justice issues faced by migrant workers. She is a PhD student at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. She holds a BA in International Relations from American University of Sharjah and an LLM in Environmental Regulation and Sustainable Development from Newcastle University. Her research interests include environmental law and policy, justice theory, human rights and development studies.
Chris Bailey is a PhD Candidate in the Graduate Program in Political Science at York University. His research interests focus on political theory, comparative politics, political economy, labour studies and education policy in Canada. Bailey's doctoral research compares the different strategies of neoliberal education restructuring in Ontario and British Columbia. Further, he examines teachers' union struggles against neoliberal education restructuring in those provinces. Bailey graduated with a Master's Degree in Political Science from the University of New Brunswick. He is also an active member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3903, representing York graduate students and contract faculty.
Martin Barakov is a Master's student in the Political Science program at York University. He completed his Bachelor's degree in Political Science (Global Citizenship) at McMaster University. Martin's research interests focus on critical approaches to international relations and political economy. In particular, this refers to analyzing public opposition to neoliberal practices in developing countries vis-à-vis the roles played by international financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, etc.) and both violent & non-violent resistance through urban & rural social mobilization. In addition, he also focuses on modern political history in Eastern Europe and Latin America, namely in regards to the Three-World Model during the Cold War and shifting IR dynamics post-1991. He plans on pursuing his PhD immediately after completing his Master's degree.
Shahab is a doctoral candidate in Humanities at York University where he has also completed an MA in Humanities. He holds an MBA and a BA in Economics from McMaster University. His additional qualifications are in commercial aviation. His current research interests examine human work interactions in the aerospace industry to investigate professional labour sustainability barriers. The critical importance of Canada’s expertise and competitiveness in aerospace merits proactive research. In this industry, pre-pandemic skilled labour shortages have challenged the recruitment, development and retention of the highly specialized, intellectual workforce it relies on. Strategic home grown partnerships and immigration policies have been devised to facilitate recruitment gaps, yet other factors continue to hinder retention scale of both domestic and foreign sourced professionals. Apart from recognized forms of dissention following migration, what is contributing to career changes, career exiting and voluntary expatriate assignments that is also draining industry talent? Mobilities of professional labour and emerging Asian capabilities challenge the traditional career migration patterns. An exploration of aircraft maintenance engineers and commercial airline pilots is scrutinized to determine what issues threaten to make Canada the gateway skill supplier to its competitors. Is there a need for re-evaluating the post COVID-19 industry recovery phase?
Drew Danielle Belsky is a PhD candidate in Science and Technology Studies (STS) at York University in Toronto. She also holds an MA from York University in Interdisciplinary Studies (combining Fine Art, Critical Disability Studies, and STS) and the Diplôme National Supérieur d’Etudes Plastiques (DNSEP) in studio art from the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (now Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin) in Strasbourg, France. Situated at the intersection of STS, disability studies, and visual arts, Drew’s current research focuses on the role of professional medical illustrators in the visual cultures of medicine and in the formation and maintenance of biomedical knowledge practices. Her dissertation, entitled "Making bodies, making kin: Story-telling and the professionalization of medical illustrators in North America," combines ethnographic and archival research to explore the professionalization of North American medical illustrators, most of whom are women, in order to provide new insight into both the gendered dynamics of scientific labour and the epistemic role of image-making in medicine. This work has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS) and Associated Medical Services (AMS) Doctoral Completion Award. Drew’s work has been published in several edited collections.
Aishwarya Bhattacharyya has completed BA Honours in Political Science (along with minors in Economics and History) from the Presidency College, University of Calcutta, and MA in Political Science from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. She has also completed her M. Phil (which is a pre-PhD degree) in Political Science at JNU. She is currently an MA student in Development Studies at York University, where she is a part of a team of scholars working on Professor Raju Das’ SSHRC Insight project on neoliberal-capitalist industrialization. Aishwarya will be examining how capitalist accumulation, wages, and trade union struggle are inter-connected in late-industrializing Indian cities. Staying affiliated with the leftist mass organization, Students’ Federation of India, she has been an elected Councillor (2016-17), Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union . She has also received many awards for her academic accomplishments, including the Lord Bhikhu Parekh Nirman Foundation Fellowship in 2014.
Doug Billyard is a PhD Candidate in the Graduate Program in Sociology at York University. He holds an Honours BA in Sociology & Labour Studies and an MA in Critical Sociology, both from Brock University. His primary research interests have been in the area of work and organization, focusing specifically on labour-management partnership arrangements in the automotive and manufacturing sectors. Future research will focus on the project of revitalizing the manufacturing sector in the Ontario marketplace.
Paul Bocking is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Program in Geography at York University. His research interests centre on labour movements, education policy and political economy in Canada, Mexico and the United States. His recent and continuing projects include studying union organizing and Canadian mining companies in Mexico, the development and transnational movement of neoliberal education policy, and teachers' unions in North America. He combined these interests in the independent feature-length documentary film 2 Revolución: Free Trade, Mexico and North America (2012). The film highlights the emergence and impacts of neoliberal policies in Mexico, particularly relating to migration, maquiladoras and the privatization of education, and was winner of the 2012 Documentary Bronze Palm Award at the Mexico International Film Festival. Bocking graduated with a Master's Degree in Work and Society from McMaster University, and worked for several years as an adult educator and high school teacher of literacy, geography and history with the Toronto District School Board. Bocking is an activist in the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation and in his community of Scarborough, Ontario. Recent publications include "Canadian Mining and Labor Struggles in Mexico: The Challenges of Union Organizing," WorkingUSA: Journal of Labor and Society 16 (13): 331-350.
Jana Borras is currently pursuing her MA in Sociology at York University. Jana's research areas of interest are migration, gender, work and transnationalism. She is particularly interested in Canada's Livein caregiver program, a temporary foreign worker program, that attracted Filipino women health care workers to work in Canada. She is interested in how the program uses the notion of citizenship and precarious migrant status to regulate the subordination of these workers. Furthermore, the program further exploits these workers by subjecting them to precarious employment and vulnerable economic status.
Anneka Bosse is a PhD student in the York University/X University Joint Program in Communication and Culture. She holds an MA in Cultural Analysis and Social Theory from Wilfrid Laurier University, a certificate in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Management from X University, and a BA in Popular Culture with a minor in Dramatic Arts from Brock University. Her research interests include migration and labour rights, food justice, social movements and resistance, and media and cultural analysis. Anneka is also a member of the Niagara Migrant Workers Interest Group which provides essential support services for migrant agricultural workers living and working in the Niagara Region.
Vincent Bozic is a Masters student in the Department of Politics at York University. He specializes in political theory and international relations. His areas of interest include the history and politics of social property relations, critical and continental theories of power, and Latin American political economy in the 21st century with a focus on tourism, extractivism, and mass social movements. He plans to pursue his PhD after completing his Masters.
Peter’s research focuses on the revitalization of working class movements in the context of the relationship between transformations in urban space, capitalism, and the rescaling of the state. His research flows from fourteen years of activist experience in a wide range of social justice struggles and organizations, including as a union activist and staff organizer. This practice has, from beginning to end, informed his dissertation, which is entitled Our Union, Our City: The Geography of a Rank and File Teachers’ Rebellion. Taking a critical ethnographic approach that draws on heterodox approaches in urban political economy, antiracist and feminist scholarship in labour studies, education policy, and human geography, it examines the relationship between global city development in Chicago and New York and the nexus of education policy and teacher unionism. In it he unravels the unique constraints and possibilities that exist in global cities for the revitalization of working class power.
David Bush is a PhD student in the Social and Political Thought program at York. He is also an editor at RankandFile.ca, a Canadian trade union news website.
Gizem Cakmak is a PhD Candidate in the Graduate Program in Sociology at York University. Her research interests focus broadly on political economy of gender, work and labour, feminist political economy, and social policy analysis. As an intersectional feminist labour activist, she is interested in studying various forms of organizing in the context of social movement unionism, and how these organizations draw upon, are limited, and transformed by the legal environment defined by the state and the capital under neoliberalism. Her dissertation research focuses on privatization and healthcare restructuring in Ontario (1995-2018) with a focus on changing workplace practices and their impact on workers, and collective labour responses.
Andrea Campbell is a PhD Candidate in the Graduate Program in Sociology at York University. Her research interests focus broadly on the political economy of gender, work, and health. Campbell's doctoral research examines the occupational health and safety of front-line long-term residential care workers in the new global economy. In particular, her dissertation research explores the health hazards frontline long-term residential care workers face in the context of their care work; care workers experiences and/or perceptions of care work, working conditions, workplace safety, including risk and violence in long-term care settings; how the hazards front-line long-term residential care workers face are related to larger structural factors and actors, and what front-line workers are doing to shape/influence/resist/challenge the conditions of their work.
As a graduate researcher at York University, Victoria conducted an eight-month study analyzing the Ontario government’s responses to COVID-19 in long-term care and wrote a corresponding 80-page paper. Designed as a tool for advocacy, her research informs public health practices and policies while promoting structural changes. She is also currently researching for and designing the university’s risk assessment tool informing sexual violence response and assisting in developing a community resource guide for survivors, which includes her research on the neurobiology of the brain and trauma’s impacts.
Vincent (Vinnie) Collins is in his third year of his PhD in Political Science at York University. He completed his Masters in Political Science from York University, Toronto in early June 2020. He is originally from Glasgow, Scotland where he gained a BA in Social Sciences from Glasgow Caledonian University. Having grown up in a working class household and worked many precarious jobs before returning to university, he has developed a passion for social and environmental justice, and particularly how working-class communities can be centred in transformative policy. Vinnie’s masters research analyzed the Green New Deal, in particular the Just Transition aspect and whether it offers the potential to deliver an unco-opted, truly grassroots framework that can not only avert climate catastrophe but can redress the systemic inequalities that exist in society today. Vinnie’s PhD dissertation follows on from this to focus centrally on the role of labour unions and labour coalitions organizing amidst the climate crisis who aim to build power that delivers substantial climate action that materially improves the lives of their members' and the broader working-class.
Yvonne Connage is a PhD student in the Graduate Program in Social & Political Thought at York University. She Holds a Honours Bachelor of Arts with a major in Equity Studies and a Specialist in Women & Gender Studies from the University of Toronto and completed her M. Ed at Ontario Institute of Studies in Education at the University of Toronto in Sociology and Equity Studies. Her research interests lie in the areas of precarious labour, immigration, race, and gender. I will combine ethnographic fieldwork of migrant Workers who works on the back stretch of race tracks within North America and in Dubai.
Lacey Croft is a PhD Candidate in the Graduate Program in Sociology at York University. She holds an Honours BA and MA in Psychology from Wilfrid Laurier University. Broadly, her research interests include workplace restructuring, employment standards, and workplace health and safety. More specifically, Croft’s doctoral dissertation examines the use of Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) for deterring risk in the workplace following job loss, mass layoff, or company closure. It chiefly considers the varied articulations of workplace critical incident and traces the role of CISD in defining employees as potential victims that in turn justify forms of psychological intervention. Lacey is also the winner of the Canadian Association for Work and Labour Studies' 2016 New Voices in Labour Studies paper prize.
Arunita Das is a masters student in Socio-Legal Studies at York University. She holds an Honours BA in Sociology from York University. Das’ current research interests lie in the race and gender relations in criminalized work environments, specifically in perceptions of sex work, and human rights. She is also interested in historical sociology, colonialism; race and racialization, historical injustice, and criminalization.
Véronique Émond-Sioufi is a doctoral candidate in Geography at Simon Fraser University (SFU). Her SSHRC-funded research centers on microtasking, the hidden and diffuse ‘clickwork’ of the data economy. She works as a sessional instructor and teaching assistant in the Labour Studies program at SFU and previously worked as the research coordinator of a year-long critical data studies project on the social challenges of ‘Big Data’ (2018-2019). She has a Master’s degree in Communication from SFU (2018), where her SSHRC-funded research investigated the operative tensions for Canadian unions in the use of privately owned social media platforms as places of collective organizing."
Bicem Erkovan (she/her) is a Master's student in the Graduate Program in Political Science at York University. She completed her Bachelor's Degree in Political Science and Psychology at MacEwan University. Her research includes migration, refugees, and marginalized groups. Her interests include corruption, media capture, women’s rights issues, and migration concerns explicitly in the region of Turkey, specifically the push and pull factors for immigration to other countries and the elements that drive professionals to migrate from their home country into a host country.
Demet Evrenosoglu is a 5th year PhD candidate. Demet's research project focuses on the roles of intellectual property regimes (more specifically, patents on basic medicines and food crops) in the historical development of capitalism with a particular emphasis on the neoliberal regime of accumulation and its framework of global governance. Demet explores the impact of IP on public health and the food security of the working and non-working poor in the Global North and the South.
Chris Fairweather is a PhD Candidate in the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University. He holds a BA in Political Science from York University and an MA in Political Economy from Carleton University. His research examines nationalism in the Canadian labour movement, with a specific focus on the responses of industrial unions to the consequences of globalization. Chris is interested in both the possibilities and the limitations of various approaches to unionism that seek to build solidarity across borders at a time when nationalism seems to be particularly salient as a framing and mobilizing tool for unions. His current dissertation project compares various responses to deindustrialization by U.S.-based firms, comparing Unifor/Local 222 at General Motors' Oshawa assembly plant and USW/Local 1005 at Hamilton's Stelco operations.
Joseph Fantauzzi is a doctoral student in the Department of Politics at York University. He holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy and Administration from Ryerson University. His master’s major research, entitled Ontario’s Coercive Neoliberal Experiment, concerns Ontario government spending priorities in the midst of neoliberal economic and labour restructuring. Before that, he graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from York University, where he majored in political science. Joseph has worked as a research assistant for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Ontario office and as a newspaper journalist in southern Ontario covering politics and justice. His research interests include critical political economy, Ontario politics, political theory, labour rights and activism, and public policy & administration in the neoliberal era.
Marisa is an Argentinean scholar doing research on the not-so-neat division between work/non-work from a socio-legal perspective. In particular, she focuses on claims for labour recognition of sex workers and waste pickers in Córdoba-Argentina. Marisa is currently an advanced PhD candidate in the Law and Society International Program at the Università degli studi di Milano. She graduated with a Master’s degree in Sociology of Law from the IISJ-Oñati and has a Law degree from the National University of Córdoba, Argentina. She takes an active research approach in her work.
Dilshan Fernando is a PhD researcher in Sociology and International Development at the University of Guelph. His research focuses on disability and work, industrial relations, and social policy, and his PhD project investigates hospitality sector workplace regimes in Sri Lanka to make sense of work inclusion and policy outcomes for people with disabilities. Previously, he has conducted disability research in Myanmar, India, and Sri Lanka. Currently, he is a researcher at Live Work Well Research Center at the University of Guelph, and a Research Fellow at LIRNEasia, Colombo.
Lynette Fischer is a PhD student in the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at York University. Her research combines ethnographic fieldwork with the anthropology of policy and practice to explore how immigration professionals negotiate and implement recent changes to Canadian immigration policies. Focusing, in particular, on how the Provincial Nominee Program significantly narrows previous eligibility requirements, and increasingly defines an immigrant’s “suitability” through labour market logic. This research looks at how local administrators “make policy” by translating policy changes into everyday practice, and explores how these changes affect the political subjectivities of those in administrative roles who are positioned to radically transform the lives of prospective immigrants, and the impact that this has on economic immigrants
Priscilla Fisher is a PhD student in economic sociology from the University of New England, Australia. She holds a Masters degree in Economic and Regional development and a Bachelors degree in Economics, both from the University of New England. She also completed a semester abroad at the University of Copenhagen, completing a seminar paper in the field of behavioral labor economics. Priscilla’s research interests are centered around women’s work in the coffee global value chain, with a particular focus on the division of labor among smallholder coffee farmers in Central America and Africa. Priscilla founded an all-female coffee roastery in Australia in 2017, which guided her Master’s research into women’s land rights in coffee producing countries.
Victoria Fleming is a first year PhD Student in York & Ryerson’s Communication & Culture program. Her research interests include media histories, political economy and labour, aesthetics, as well as surveillance studies. She recently completed her MA in Communication & Culture where she completed a Master’s thesis. Her master's thesis, entitled "Representing Labour: Mass Media’s Portrayal of Amazon Warehouse Workers During Covid-19," interrogates contemporary media portrayals of Amazon warehouse workers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kelly Flinn is a PhD student in the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought at York University. Her interests include the politics of work in contemporary capitalism and labour movement renewal. Her current SSHRC funded research examines artistic and craft-based working identities, economies, and collective organization in Canada and the United States.
Casper Gelderblom (1995) is a PhD-researcher at the European University Institute's Department of Political and Social Sciences. His work centers on the theory and practice of solidarity in transnational labor politics. He holds degrees in Governance, Economics, and Development (LUC The Hague), History (Leiden, Panthéon-Sorbonne, and Oxford) and Political Thought (Cambridge). Casper has held Visiting Fellowships at Cornell University's Worker Institute (2018) and, as a Fulbrighter, at Harvard Law School's Labor & Worklife Program (2021-2022). He previously worked as a policy trainee in the Dutch and European Parliaments, and as a researcher at the labor rights NGO Kav LaOved in Tel Aviv. As a trade unionist, Casper has served in various positions in the Netherlands (FNV) and at the EU-level (ETUC). Alongside his studies, Casper coordinates the global Make Amazon Pay campaign on behalf of Progressive International.
Niloofar Golkar is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Politics at York University. Her Ph.D. research working title is "Conflict and solidarity between the labour movement and anti-colonial environmentalism concerning land and direct action: The case of Unist’ot’en camp." Her Master's research and MRP is on "Rethinking the Centre: Critique of the Theory of the Primitive Accumulation and the Situation of the Temporary Working Women In Ontario." She is an editor of the Upping the Anti, Journal of Theory and Action.
Julia Goyal is pursuing a Joint Interdisciplinary PhD at the University of Waterloo between the School of Public Health and Health Systems and Department of Mechatronics and Mechanical Engineering. She is a student member of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation and a member of the Canadian Association for Research on Work and Health Conference Board of Directors. Though her research interests are inherently broad ranging and expanding, her research interests lie at the intersection of work, health and technology. Her Master’s research focused on the health and safety situation of Airbnb, particularly on the risk perceptions and risk management of users. Her current work focuses on how front-line care workers and long-term care homes timely, accurate and appropriate feedback to enable them to plan and provide care to elderly populations in situations where care provision is often stressful.
Ali is a PhD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. His dissertation examines the imperial and legal history of Iraq through the lens of labour struggles and strikes, specifically of the oil, railway and port workers (circa 1921-1963). His broader research interests are in Middle East history, legal theory, Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and Marxist theory. He holds an LL.M from the University of Leeds and a B.A. in philosophy and political science from the University of Toronto. Prior to pursuing doctoral studies, he articled at the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the Ontario Human Rights Legal Support Centre.
Keah Hansen is a PhD student with in the Communications and Culture department at York University. She holds an MA in English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, and an Honours BA in English Literature at McGill University. Her doctoral research focuses on exploring the relationship between the growth and evolution of finance, and the development of finance-influenced practices in public culture. Her research interests generally lie within finance studies, infrastructure studies, critical theory and the implications of neoliberalism for culture.
John Hayes is a Master's student in the Department of Political Science at York University. He holds a B.A. from the University of British Columbia in Latin American Studies. His research interests include the mining industry and extractives, developmental states, migration and forced displacement, and political economy. His MA research examines the role of the mining industry in challenging local governance structures and changing demographics in select communities of rural Oaxaca, Mexico.
Munjeera has worked as an ESL Instructor and supervisor at a school board. She has a MEd from Brock University and is currently a 4th year PhD student in Social and Political Thought. The combination of her education and experience sparked an interest in migration, labour rights and anti-oppressive management. After hearing for many years from newcomer voices, Munjeera is interested in advocating for change in immigration education management and policies.
My doctoral project is a direct result of my life experiences as a rainbow mother, an Indian mother and a first-generation immigrant to this land. I explore unpaid care performed by mothers in a pandemic through Indigenous-immigrant relationalities. I adopt the theoretical concept of grounded normativity and place-based solidarity, advocated by Indigenous academicians like Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Glen Coulthard. They recognize how human and other life forms can have reciprocal and non-exploitative relationships. Even though gender-disproportionate burden on unpaid care giving has been highlighted through decades , racial precarity has only increased the detrimental emotional health effects on mothers in this pandemic. As a first-generation immigrant settler, acknowledging the privilege of being a cis-gendered heterosexual mother, I explore mothering through the lens of race, caste and Indigeneity. My research situates motherhood and pandemic as a new dimension within dynamic conversations of various settler scholars in highlighting entangled experiences of various immigrant and other marginalized communities in the context of genocides faced by Indigenous populations across the lands across decades. My pandemic autoethnography is a part of an e-book on Covid-19 and migration.In future, I want to amplify my learning by engaging with community within and beyond academia.
Hilal is a doctoral student in Geography and Planning at Queen's University. Hilal has an MS in Urban Policy Planning and Local Governments and a BS in Political Science and Public Administration from Middle East Technical University. Her research interests lie at the intersections of informality, precarious work, social reproductive work, gender, urbanization, and spatial mobility. After working as a research associate on the issues of displacement, migrant’s work, disaster management, and local government in international and national organizations, she conducted and published her academic research on precarious work, gendered mobility, youth labour and unemployment in both Turkish and English. Outside the academic work, she is co-hosting and co-producing a multicultural and multigenre radio show called Flânuer at CFRC radio in Kingston.
Alia Karim is a Ph. D candidate at the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. She earned a Master of Environmental Studies from Dalhousie University and Honours Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Mount Allison University. Her research interests include Indigenous and non-Indigenous alliances, labour-community coalitions, labour geography, decolonization, land-based direct actions, Marxist, anti-racist and feminist political economy, and ecosocialism. She is currently a coordinator of the Fight for $15 and Fairness campaign at York and co-chair of Accessibility, Community, Equity (ACE). Additionally, she is a member of Real Food Real Jobs, Toronto Worker’s History Project and the Toronto Youth Food Policy Council. You can follow her on Twitter.
Bruce Kecskes is a Masters student in the department of political science. His research interests concern the relationship between the global political economy and labour politics. Specifically he is concerned with the effect that ongoing neoliberal marketisation has had on the precariatization of the working class. His Masters research project is intended to analyze the variegated modes of resistance to neoliberal globalization pursued by precariatized members of the labour community. He is particularly interested in the relationship between globalization, precarious labour, and the resurgence of atavistic forms of nationalist politics.
Konstantin Kilibarda is a PhD candidate in Political Science at York University. His dissertation addresses neoliberal restructuring in Montenegro and its impact on working lives and notions of citizenship in the newly independent state. The project is based on interviews with local workers and organizers. His research interests include processes of neoliberalization; labor market reforms; gendered and racialized labour market segmentation; globalization; precarious work; deindustrialization; informal economies; post-socialist transitions; transnational criminal networks; social movements; post-colonial theory; international relations; settler-colonialism; and the political economy of new media. Kilibarda currently teaches in the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University.
Candies Kotchapaw is a Master of Social Work student at York University. She is an emerging researcher whose interest looks at the issues of race relations in Canada. Her current research paper submission is a pre-cursor to the Major Research component of her Master of Social Work degree, looking at how social work education has been constructed to inadvertently replicate colonial practices that the profession itself fundamentally opposes. Candies’ aim is to further study the absence of social work in the practice space of Canadian Public Policy. In so doing, create a space for racialized social workers to see public policy as a legitimate place for social work practice as opposed to determining that direct social work practice is the only way to further social justice, advocacy and education within the Canadian society.
Kait Kribs is a Ph.D. Candidate (ABD) in the York University/Ryerson University Joint Program in Communication and Culture. She holds an MA in Popular Culture and a BA in Communications Studies from Brock University. Kait’s dissertation, From Piracy Panic to Platform Praise (& Back Again): Digitization’s Impact on Making, Moving & Monetizing Music in Canada, assesses the extent to which digital distribution platforms – from Napster to Bandcamp to Spotify – have changed or reshaped musician labour, the methods for distributing and consuming music, and the discourses, practices, and policies that have emerged in response to these platforms.
Laura Lam is a PhD student at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto and researcher with CERC. She completed her Master of Arts in Immigration and Settlement Studies at Ryerson University, and her research interest is at the nexus of migration, employment and gender. She completed her Bachelor of Commerce from the University of British Columbia with a specialization in marketing and sustainability. She has previously worked in a marketing capacity with various startups and technology accelerators. She currently serves as co-editor for open-access publishing platform, The Migration Initiative.
Janice Yue-Yan Lam (she/her) is a PhD student in Organization Studies at the Schulich School of Business, York University. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, her work broadly considers equity, diversity, and inclusion in the workplace. Her current research considers how the role of different group identities (e.g., gender, racioethnic) may impact perceptions and reactions of and towards an individual.
Danielle Landry is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at York University. Landry's SSHRC-funded doctoral research focuses on the activist knowledge-practices of psychiatric consumer/survivor businesses in Ontario in the 1990s. Most recently, her work has been published in Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations, Curriculum Inquiry, Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Disability & Society, and Studies in the Education of Adults. She has taught a variety of in-person, online and hybrid courses in both Mad Studies and Disability Studies at Ryerson University. She was the 2020 recipient of the Wilhelm Cohnstaedt Social Justice Award.
Seulsam Lee is a PhD student in Sociology at York University. She holds a BA in Sociology from Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea and MA in Sociology from York University. Her research areas include social class, gender, race/ethnicity, and im/migration. She is interested in Canada’s Foreign Worker Programs and particularly the transnational experiences of young South Korean migrants on the so-called “Working Holiday” Program, one of Canada’s International Mobility Programs. Her research project explores how these youths’ mobility and experiences are ethno-racialized and gendered, what role language (i.e. English) plays in shaping their experiences, and how they are subject to, maintain tensions with, and/or challenge the neoliberal capitalist order and temporary immigration regime.
Chris Little is a doctoral student in the Department of Politics at York University. His research is on the political economy of labour migration and dispossession, with a focus on how regimes of accumulation interact with migration in a process of class formation that is fundamental to the structure of the global economy. He is interested in understanding how unequal development and exchange shape the lives and journeys of people who migrate for labour-related reasons, their changing and expanding role in the global economy, and the prospects for migration justice and systemic transformation engendered by these movements.
Catharina Lopes Scodro started her doctoral studies as CNRS PhD Candidate in January 2023, at Université de Strasbourg (UMR 7354) (France). She is part of the research project « European Birds of Passage – An Empirical Legal Theory of Temporary Labour Migration in Europe » (ERC Starting Grant, 2022-2027), where she develops her PhD Thesis. This will focus on the regulation of au pairing in the European Union, by investigating the impact of gender and citizenship status in the normative structure. She is a Master of Science from the University of São Paulo (Brazil), where she was funded by CAPES. During her past studies, she obtained experience in empirical legal studies, international labour law, and discussions on domestic and care work.
Dani Magsumbol is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at York University. She holds a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship for her research in care work, citizen/ships, nation/alisms, and the political economy of emotions in the Filipino labour diaspora.
Christopher Mastrocola is a graduate student in Social and Political Thought at York University. His broad research interests include political economy, political theory, labour relations, technology and labour, participatory economics, and the concept of alienation within the labour process. His most recent SSHRC funded research focuses on the theory and practice of cooperatives with the field of social economy. More specifically, it seeks to situate this theory and practice within a broader historical context in order to critically examine its limits and potentials.
Tinu Koithara Mathew is currently a PhD student with the School of Human Resource Management, York University. He holds a Master’s degree in Labor Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India (through Global Labor University, ILO). He was also a DAAD Scholar in the Labor Policies and Globalization program with the University of Kassel, Germany. He has an under graduate degree is in Engineering. He has work experience in the field of Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations with multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations and trade unions. He worked as a research intern with a non-governmental organization and a trade union during his Master’s program and the full text of his research is available here [PDF]. His areas of interest in Industrial Relations include precarious work in informal economy, unionization of informal sector workers, collective bargaining and tripartite set up, decent work in informal economy, labor laws and informal sector workers and the contribution of education and skill development to the overall growth of human capital in informal economy.
Carli Melo is a Ph.D. student in York University’s Graduate Program in Geography. Her doctoral research addresses questions of workers’ struggles, migration, and uneven development, which she is pursing through fieldwork in Myanmar (Burma). Carli holds a Master’s degree in Planning from the University of Toronto and an Honours Bachelor’s degree in International Development Studies from McGill University. Carli’s doctoral study emerges from her prior involvement in a three-year research and advocacy project on the working conditions of migrants employed in special economic zones across Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia, as a project coordinator for the Mekong Migration Network – a network of civil society organizations and research institutes working to promote the rights of migrant workers and their families in mainland Southeast Asia.
Steven Mesaros is a Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Politics at York University. His work focuses specifically on neoliberalism failures and the rise of the Far-Right authoritarian movements.
Rupinder is a third year doctoral student in the Graduate Program in Geography at York University. She holds a HBA in Political Science and Philosophy from the University of Toronto, and completed her MA in Political Studies from Queen’s University in Kingston. Her dissertation examines the relation between the political economy of uneven development and its political implications - opportunities and challenges for mobilization - for communist parties. She is examining this in the specific context of India, which is home to a large number of communist parties and has seen communist party rule at the sub-national scale. Her research interests, more broadly, converge around revolutionary movements and their histories, as well as gender dynamics within these movements and their component parts.
Alexandra Mirowski Rabelo de Souza is a PhD student in Sociology and the Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS) Graduate Diploma program. She completed her MA in Public Issues Anthropology and International Development Studies at the University of Guelph and received an Honours Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Trent University. Prior to beginning her graduate studies, she spent two years living and working in central Brazil. Alexandra's main research interest is in (im)migration, with a focus on topics related to pathways to permanent legal status, precarious work and status, student-migrant turned (im)migrant experiences, immigrant service provision, immigrant integration, social inclusion and exclusion, transnational migration, as well as citizenship and belonging. Her dissertation research examines pathways to permanent legal status, the inherent precarity in this process, and the ways in which legal service professionals use their positionality to help or hinder individuals seeking permanent residency in Canada.
A Queen’s University business graduate, holding a Master of International Business degree with over ten years of international experience in the Business industry. Throughout my career, I helped multinational corporations in Client Servicing, Sales, Marketing and Human Resources. My passion goes for academic research, assisting professors and the research community in various research areas related to Human Resource Management. Additionally, presenting research topics at different conferences and finding solutions to the industry challenges is where I see myself growing and developing. Currently, I am a Ph.D. student in Human Resource Management at York University.
Alex Moldovan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Politics at York University. His research is focused on the intersection of informal sector and landless worker movements and insecurity, in particular the role of communes in Venezuela’s multifaceted crisis. By using ethnographic and archival methods, Alex’s research aims to shed light on the tactics and strategies social movements deploy to alleviate the pressures of food scarcity, political violence, and economic collapse. Central to his doctoral work is a critical investigation of self-defence, self-government, and self-management practices by grass-roots worker organizations.
Georgette Morris is a PhD Candidate in the Doctoral Program in Public Administration at the University of Ottawa. She holds an Honours BA in Human Rights and Equity Studies, a BA in Social Science and an MA in Public Policy Administration and Law, all from York University. Her primary research interests have been in the area of labour, policy, equity, human rights and citizenship, focusing specifically on labour-conditions for those employed in precarious areas (Live in caregiver). Future research will focus on the experiences of racialized Jamaican women in service based work in the GTA.
Maisha Mustanzir (she/they) is an M.A. student at York University's Social Anthropology department. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto with double majors in Socio-Cultural Anthropology and English, and a minor in Art History. Mustanzir's research interests are rooted in feminist anthropology, the anthropology of violence and pain, digital anthropology, bodies, biotechnology, and labour, particularly labour conducted by female bodies. Mustanzir's current research is concerned with rethinking labour in the context of maternal bodies who have faced abuse. Her research stems from thinking about the various dimensions the body and the mind engaged in labour. Mustanzir is interested in historical and contemporary labour discourses rooted in feminist research and feminist literature that looks to recount and rethink the labour of female bodies, and she wishes to contribute more to such discourses.
Zahra Nader is a Ph.D. student in Gender, Feminist & Women’s Studies at York University. Her research focuses on the political history of Afghan women from the 1960s to the 1990s. From 2011 to 2017, she has worked as a journalist with local and international media—including The New York Times—in Kabul, Afghanistan. She has also published in the Guardian, ABC News, Deutsche Welle, and Huffington Post.
Amadeus Narbutt is an MA student in Political Science at the Department of Politics at York University in Toronto. He graduated from the University of Guelph with a BA in Political Science and is focused on intersections of global political economy and conflict. His proposed Major Research Project addresses the viability of worker cooperatives as a strategy for post-conflict development and peace-building in the Global South. Amadeus’ aim is to shine light on potential new foreign aid strategies, as well as investigate the emergence of digital networks of worker cooperatives and solidarity economies as a form of resistance to neoliberalism.
Trung Ngo is a PhD Candidate in the Graduate Program in Social & Political Thought at York University. He holds a MA in Philosophy and MBA from York University, and a Bachelor in Engineering from McGill University. His research interests are in business and society with focus on the intersection between international labour movement and the future of work in the digital age. He brings extensive international management experience in his research.
Jennifer O'Connor is a student in the Social and Political Thought program at York University. In her research and practice, she focuses on feminist theory, health humanities, ecology, and political philosophy. A writer, artist, and activist, her writing has been published in the Toronto Star, Chatelaine, BUST, Bitch, Turbo Chicks:
Talking Young Feminisms, Feminist Theatre and Performance, and Women’s Health: Readings on Social, Economic, and Political Issues, among others. She has held residencies with the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Feminist Art Collective. She currently sits on the board of the Red Maple Foundation, publisher of This Magazine. Jennifer is a graduate of Queen's School of Policy Studies. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts from Queen's and a journalism degree from Ryerson. In her spare time, she knits, gardens, sews and cooks.
Frank is a doctoral researcher at the University of Lapland. His research interest is in the application of Artificial Intelligence in accelerating integration of immigrants from the global south
Nick Palombo is a doctoral student in Political Science at York University. He is currently working on his Ph.D. thesis, titled: Digital Labour in the Political Economy of Platform Nano-Influencers. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Western University and completed his M.A. in International Affairs (specializing in Global Governance) from the New School University in New York, USA. His primary research interest involve contemporary work and employment issues. His key interests include emerging problems in digital labour markets, new modes of employment driven by digital technology, the digitalization and datafication of work and leisure, the gamification of labour, subaltern, hidden forms of digital value-production, globalization and digital work, and the emerging informal political economy of digital information.
Rohini is a history PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. She is researching the political and environmental history of agrochemical and Agent Orange manufacturing in southern Ontario during the 20th century. She is interested in histories of colonialism, industrialism and ecological change, science and technology studies, and military geographies. Rohini completed a BSc in engineering from the University of Toronto and an MA in history from the University of Warwick.
Charvaak Pati is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at York University. Pati's research interests are in the areas of Marxism, labour movements, and state theory. The doctoral dissertation looks at the dialectic of trade union ideology and class consciousness among autoworkers in India.
Kaitlin is a PhD Candidate in the department of Sociology. She is studying coalition-building between trade unions and the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care.
Kam Phung is a PhD candidate in organization studies and SSHRC Vanier Scholar at the Schulich School of Business, York University. His research focuses on how we organize and innovate for social change in the face of pressing societal challenges, and includes work on issues such as modern slavery and forced labour as well as stigma and marginalization in the workplace. Some of his published empirical research has included an examination of the business models of modern slavery in the UK's food, construction, and cannabis industries and a 4-year study on the impact of Uber's entry into Toronto on the stigmatization of the local taxi driving occupation. Prior to pursuing his PhD, Kam earned his MSc in sustainable development (HEC Paris), MSc in economics and business administration (Norwegian School of Economics), and BCom in international business (University of Victoria), and spent several years in industry working with various organizations around the world tackling social and environmental issues.
Nausheen Quayyum is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at York University. She holds an MA in Development Studies from York University and an Honours BA in Political Science from the University of Toronto. Her dissertation, tentatively titled “Women Workers in Bangladesh’s Garment Industry: Class Consciousness, Agency and Organized Dissent,” investigates the changing geographies of capitalist production and its impact on labour activism in the export-oriented, ready-made garment industry in Bangladesh.
Sanjana Rahman is pursuing an MA in Political Science at York University, specialising in International Relations and Political Theory. She completed her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) at Queen’s University majoring in Global Development Studies with a minor in Economics, where she utilized Marx’s historical materialism in a Major Research Paper to place Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers constructing the FIFA 2022 World Cup within its longstanding history of labour exploitation. She is interested in studying the class and power dynamics, political action and inaction, and migration policies that perpetuate the exploitation and subjugation of migrant workers. Specifically, she hopes to pursue empirical research on Bangladeshi migrant workers in the Middle East, and the existing policies as well as lack of mechanisms to protect labour rights that maintain the reproduction of a precarious workforce.
Sarah Redikopp (she/her) is a PhD Candidate in the Graduate Program of Gender, Feminist & Women's Studies at York University. Her research undertakes an intersectional analysis of self-harm and access to existing mental health supports in contexts of southwestern Ontario. Sarah's research interests include political economies of mental health and madness, social reproduction and health, violence and mental health care, Mad Studies, and feminist, queer, and Mad epistemologies.
Jacqueline Ristola is a PhD candidate in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University, Montreal. She received her Master’s degree in Cinema and Media Studies from York University in 2017, where she also received a Graduate Diploma in Asian Studies from the York Centre for Asian Research. Her research areas include animation/anime studies, media industry studies, and queer theory. Her work is published in Animation Studies Online Journal and Con A de animación. She co-edited a special issue LGBTQ Animation for Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies, and has a forthcoming chapter in the edited collection Representation in Steven Universe (Palgrave 2020).
Sarah is a PhD Candidate in the Graduate Program in Sociology at York University. She holds an MA in Sociology from York University and an Honours BA in Sociology and Women’s Studies from the University of Western Ontario. Rogers' current research interests include union renewal, workplace restructuring, labour standards, women and work, and youth and employment. Her dissertation examines trade union responses to declining labour standards in Ontario’s unionized food retail sector.
Salil R. Sapre is a PhD student in the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State University. Prior to joining the PhD program at MSU, he received a master’s degree in Human Resources and Labor Relations from MSU in 2016. As a doctoral student, he is interested in gender and work; comparative employment relations; informal work; worker mobilization and organization; and labor implications of global supply chains.
Siobhán Saravanamuttu is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Politics at York University. She holds an MA in Political Science from York University and an Honours BA in Community Development and Policy Studies from Ontario Tech University. Her doctoral research examines employment and labour policy for intellectually disabled workers in Ontario from materialist disability studies, feminist political economy, and anti-work perspectives. She is broadly interested in questions of work, social reproduction, and institutional violence.
Melanie Scott is currently in her second year at York University in the DVST Graduate Program. As an undergraduate student at Queens University in Global Development Studies, Melanie has always had a keen interest in the field of development. This interest was heightened through her participation in initiatives such as an Indigenous Expedition, as well as her involvement in organizations such as Relay Education and Sick Kids. While at York University, Melanie continued to engage in the field of development. As the co - chair for the Centre for Refugee Studies she has actively participated and immersed herself further in the field of migration. This, as well as Melanie's academic background has informed her research, as she examines labour - capital relations, specifically in the context of the seasonal agricultural worker program in the Okanagan Valley.
Marlene Seiffarth is a doctoral student at University of Bremen, Germany. She completed her MSc in Labour, Social Movements and Development at SOAS University, London, UK. During her Masters, she specialized in domestic work issues, which she also pursued professionally while working at the International Labour Organization (ILO, Geneva) in the project “Decent Work for Domestic Workers” and the international research project DomEQUAL. Her PhD research project concerns the regulation of migrant domestic and care work in Italy. She is a part of a comparative research project within the Collaborative Research Center on Global Dynamics of Social Policy.
Lisa Seiler is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at York University. She holds a BMath from the University of Waterloo and a BA and MA in sociology from McMaster University. Lisa has worked in the corporate sector and the non-profit sector, and has worked on committees and events with municipal and regional government employees, enabling her to observe a range of employment environments. As a member of the environmental movement, she experienced a puzzling disconnect between that movement and the labour movement. Her studies in political economy have led to an interest in a shorter work week.
David Semaan is a PhD student in the department of Politics at York University. His work focuses on social movements, critical race and gender theory. He takes primary interests in political formation of subjectivity engaging with histories of political thought that inform developments of property, whiteness, racialization as well as sexual and gender social organization. Some recent research interests turn towards the racial ramifications of technological developments adopted by policing and surveillance to protect the the preservation of 'private property'.
Priyanka is a current JD student at Osgoode Hall Law School, with an interest in workers’ rights, discrimination law, union-side labour law, and constitutional litigation. Prior to law school, Priyanka completed a MA and BA (Hons) at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto. Priyanka is a caseworker at Parkdale Community Legal Services in the Worker’s Rights division, working on individual cases of employment standards violations for non-unionized, migrant, and low-income workers, and also aiding to build worker power with those who come to PCLS with the Workers’ Action Centre, $15 & Fairness, and the Caregivers Action Centre. Priyanka hopes to always ground their work in the lived experience of workers disenfranchised by colonial, capitalist, and hereto-patriarchal systems and follow their leadership.
Karina Shnaiderman is currently pursuing her Masters of Environmental Studies at York University. Focusing on co-operative business models within agriculture and farm incubators for her Major Research Project, her research interests include improving opportunities for new and upcoming farmers, agricultural policies, and labour movements within the farming sector. Having several years of experience working as a farm labourer and community garden supervisor, Karina is passionate about combining academic innovation with on the ground field work to create long term and sustainable changes within the agriculture sector. She is an Associate Member of the National Farmers Union, and an avid film photographer with aspirations of photo-documenting the next generation of Canadian farmers. You can see her photography at www.karinashnaiderman.com.
Kanishka Sikri (kanishkasikri.com) is a writer and theorist thinking about violability: the practice that marks certain lives, bodies, and lands to the possibility of violence. They are currently a PhD candidate at York University speculating on the ways violence becomes synonymous with and inhabits the flesh. Kanishka asks how we may speak about violence, lay it bare, grieve, and mourn its many insidious faces without replicating the notion that certain lives are violable and capable of being violated.
Michael Smith is a doctoral student in Sociology at York University. He was previously the Deputy Director of the Institute for African Alternatives (IFAA), a progressive research institute based in Cape Town, South Africa. His research has spanned the political economy of extractivism in Africa, inequality in South Africa and “decolonisation” and reform of higher education. His work has been published by the United Nations University Wider, Trade and Industrial Policy Solutions, South Africa, the Development Bank of Southern Africa. In 2019 he edited a book volume titled Confronting Inequality: The South African Crisis. Michael previously served as Deputy Editor of New Agenda: South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy. He is currently an editorial assistant for the same journal. He is a member of the editorial collective of Amandla! Magazine, a popular South African activist magazine. Michael was a founding member of the steering committee of the Rethinking Economics for Africa (REFA) festival. REFA is a student-led movement challenging neoclassical orthodoxy in the teaching of economics in Africa.
Cynthia Spring is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at York University. She holds an MA in Politics from York University. Her MA thesis focused on health care reform, the privatization of social reproduction, and a landmark pay equity case involving Ontario midwives. Through the lens of feminist political economy, her doctoral research historicizes and compares the normalization of student debt and the expansion of educational migration in Canada’s settler colonial and capitalist context. This project examines processes of privatization shaping publicly assisted universities in Ontario to ask whether and to what extent these changes shift the organization of social reproduction as well as levels of post-graduate exploitation. Spring is also a co-founder of GUTS, a digital feminist magazine based in Toronto.
Vivian Stamatopoulos is a PhD Candidate in the Graduate Program in Sociology at York University. Her research interests include quantitative and qualitative research methods, precarious labour, and (unpaid) familial caregiving. When she is not assisting in the teaching of courses in Sociological Research Methods at York University, she has been contributing to various research projects, including the Re-Imagining Long-Term Residential Care: An International Study of Promising Practices led by Dr. Pat Armstrong, the Women, Deindustrialization and Community project led by Dr. Norene Pupo, Dr. June Corman, and Dr. Ann Duffy, and the Neighbourhood Effects on Health and Well-Being Study commissioned by St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
Christine Streeter is a fourth-year PhD Candidate in the School of Social Work, with a specialization in Political Economy at Carleton University. As a social worker committed to improving insecure working conditions for care workers in the social work and social services work sector, her research explores precarious work and safety at work. Under the supervision of Dr. Susan Braedley, her thesis research draws on feminist political economy to investigate social service worker’s experiences during the pandemic. She has been involved in ethnographic site studies involving unpaid work in long-term residential care, as well as identifying and comparing promising practices to support all groups of seniors when imagining age-friendly cities. She recently completed a Mitacs Accelerate Grant on LGBTQI2S seniors’ and workers' safety in health care, social care, and municipal public services
Rana Sukarieh is a PhD candidate in the department of sociology at York University. She holds a B.A in economics from the American University of Beirut, Hon. B.A in sociology, M.A in sociology from York university. Rana’s research interests are in the areas of transnational social movements, social movements and political economy in the Middle East and postcolonialism. Her dissertation focuses on the understanding of international solidarity among transnational activists, with focus on the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement.
Samia holds a BA (Hons), in International Development Studies from York University. Hoping to execute research in fields of women's' economic participation, gender equity, labor movements, particularly exploring within the ready-made garments (RMG) sector of Bangladesh. She assisted the research project ‘Sustaining Power for Women’s Rights’ - to closely monitor and track labor party activity within the RMG sector. Under this project, Samia had the responsibility to analyze findings and draft media-tracking reports that she has co-authored, They have been published by Brac University in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Carly Teng is a doctoral student in the Political Science department. She completed a Master of Arts in Asia Pacific Policy Studies at The University of British Columbia and a Bachelor of Arts in Gender Studies at Simon Fraser University. Her current research examines Chinese hydropower dam construction in Laos and analyzing the social relations between the temporary Chinese foreign migrant workers constructing the hydropower dams and the local Lao communities who are forced to migrate. Carly is interested participatory research action methods and using feminist international political economy, and feminist political ecology frameworks to inform her work. Before attending York University, Carly worked in Laos as a gender mainstreaming advisor for an NGO and as a program officer at the Office of the Canadian Embassy. In addition, she was actively engaged with grassroots women’s organizations in South Korea working in solidarity on the “comfort women” issue and with Filipina migrant workers in military camp towns.
Kiana is a York graduate student undertaking a Masters of Arts in Politics with a Diploma in European Studies. She is highly research-focused and hopes to one day pursue a legal career.
Kasim Tirmizey is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. He has a Masters in Environmental Studies from York University. His doctoral dissertation examines labour and peasant movements in the national liberation struggles in Punjab, British India. The motivation of the study is toward renewing contemporary labour struggles in the region. His research interests include labour geography, social movements, social history, state theory, critical social theory, and anti-colonial Marxism.
Brent Toye is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Politics at York University. His dissertation examines institutional differences in the neoliberal transformation of higher education and training in Canada and Australia, with a particular focus on the role of party-union links in the formulation of public policy. Brent is also interested in examining the intellectual history and theoretical basis of third way social democracy as the 'other' neoliberalism.
Cheuk Ming Tsang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Public Policy at the City University of Hong Kong. She holds an MA in Corporate Environmental Governance from the University of Hong Kong and an Honours BA in Sociology & Psychology from the University of Toronto. Her research interests include union leadership, precarious employment, and the reproduction of social inequality.
My name is Kevin Varghese and I am pursuing my MA in Political Science at York University where I will be undertaking courses in the field of International Relations and Political Theory with an emphasis on political economy. I recently completed my BA Hons. Specialization in Global Political Studies at York University. I am currently interested in exploring the nature of labour, migration, violence, and social oppression in the Global South with the unraveling of neoliberal capitalism, especially in the post-pandemic climate. I am inspired by Dependency theory, as well as Marxist and Neo-Marxist frameworks of analysis in order to fundamentally understand the reason why flexibilization of the labour force has now pushed the Global South as well as North to a point of socio-economic decay.
Evan Vipond (they/them) is a Ph.D. Candidate in Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies at York University. Evan’s work is interdisciplinary and engages with trans theory, feminist theory, critical race theory, critical political economy, and cultural theory. Their doctoral project, Trans Liberalism: Trans Rights and the U.S. Military, critical examines advocacy efforts to lift the U.S. military’s trans ban. Evan has conducted both academy- and community-based research with trans and nonbinary people throughout Ontario. Their work has been published in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies (2018), Canadian Review of Social Policy (2017), Gender and Education (2017), Queer Cats Journal of LGBT Studies (2016), Western Journal of Legal Studies (2015), and Theory in Action (2015). They are the Co-chair of the JusticeTrans Board of Directors.
Chris Walsh is studying sociology at York University. Previously, he studied sociology at Brock University. Chris is working on developing competencies in both social theory and sociological research methods and hopes to apply them in his dissertation research, which will explore the responses of displaced workers to job-loss.
Dillon Wamsley is an MA student at York University in the Political Science Department, where he studies International Relations and Comparative Politics, with a specific focus on political economy. Drawing on a variety of Marxist and non-Marxist radical analytical frameworks, he is interested in examining the ascendance of neoliberal capitalism in the U.S. over the past 35 years, and the myriad effects of market-based public policies, privatisation, and de-industrialization on the working class – in particular, the African American working class. His current research focuses on the various connections between neoliberal economic policies, the changed landscape of de-industrialized, de-socialized labour, and the emergence of mass incarceration in the U.S., specifically the disproportionate incarceration of African American people.
Elizabeth Watters is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. She holds an MSW degree from Wilfrid Laurier University, and a BSc degree from York University. She has over a decade of professional experience, and has worked in the areas of social work education, health promotion, diversity services, and vocational rehabilitation. Her doctoral research applies an intersectional feminist and social determinants of health lens to explore the impact of precarious employment on the health of racialized immigrant women in Southwestern Ontario. Her research interests include precarious employment, migration, globalization, and health equity.
Nathi's interdisciplinary background in Critical Race, Environmental, and Labour Studies, and his research into Black Social and Solidarity Economics, has fostered his passion for community and people-oriented means of organizing our present moment’s social and economic institutions. His M.A. research seeks to establish a black[ened] epistemology for crypto-social and solidarity economies, working towards a theory of black radical blockchains, with the goal of establishing a white paper that advances a grounded approach to blockchain technology. His non-academic work includes bridging the gap between non-profit fundraising/financing initiatives and community stakeholders, with a focus on engaging equity deserving groups in public policy decisions around housing, co-operative housing and student housing development, and municipal multi-tenant housing regulations. He is the chair of both the York Village Housing Association and the York Non-Profit Housing Society Co-operative, a Board Members of the Affordable Housing Committee at York University, and a Program Director at HOUSE Ontario. As the acclaimed President of the York University Graduate Students Association (YUGSA) for Fall-Winter 2022-2023, Nathi endeavours to tackle the single largest cost associated with attaining a post-secondary education — rent. Nathi can be reached at nathi@houseontario.org.
Ghizlane Zerzkhane is an undergraduate student studying Global Politics, with a keen interest in post-structural studies and analysis. Currently undergoing research in post-structuralism and language politics, Zerzkhane seeks to pursue research in the field of labour rights and its affiliation with language politics, especially in the regions of Northern and Central Africa. Zerzkhane’s research interests also include political economy, sociolinguistics and migrant labour rights. In the future she hopes to study Applied Linguistics at Concordia University and pursue a career within policy research as a linguistics researcher.
Aliya Amarshi received a PhD in Sociology from York University in 2018. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Ryerson University where she is working on multiple projects that explore the barriers faced by skilled immigrants entering the Canadian labour market. Her research highlights the ways in which employer expectations and demands for "Canadianness" enact a specific type of racial exclusion that many immigrants internalize as personal failure. In addition to her work on new immigrants, she also conducts research on racial trauma and the experiences of racialized psychotherapists and therapy clients in Toronto. As a psychotherapist-in-training, Aliya is committed to an ethic of social justice, and striving towards more equitable and compassionate ways of living and working together in both her clinical and research work.
Bronwyn Bragg is a SSHRC postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University. Her current research examines the conditions of work facing migrant and refugee workers in the Canadian meatpacking industry. Bronwyn is a co-investigator on the SSHRC funded project COVID-19 Among Meatpacking Workers: Documenting Migration Status and Employment Conditions in Southern Alberta. She has a PhD in human geography from the University of British Columbia. Bronwyn's research agenda is shaped by sustained engagement with migrant justice organizations and informed by collaborative, community-engaged research methods.
Clement Chipenda is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the SARChI Chair in Social Policy at the University of South Africa. He is currently working on a collaborative research project that focuses on the social policy dimensions on land and agrarian reforms with a focus on Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Clement holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of South Africa, and his research interests are in agrarian political economy, social policy, social protection and security, rural development, labour relations, youth development, citizenship, and Covid-19 dynamics. He is a former Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies, Global Dynamics in Social Policy (Collaborative Research Centre 1342, Project B09), University of Bremen in Germany, and has recently been invited to join the Group Inclusion and Social Policies Over Time (GST) (Project B01) as a country expert on social security. Some of his selected publications can be found in the Canadian Journal of African Studies, Journal of Comparative Family Studies African Journal of Economic and Management Studies, African Identities, Africa Review, and Journal of Asian and African Studies.
Manoj Dias-Abey is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace (Queen’s University). Manoj’s current research looks at the strategies civil society organizations can employ to improve the working conditions of migrant farmworkers, especially given the nature of the globalized food system. Manoj is interested in the broader issue of emerging worker organizations—e.g. innovative unions, worker centres, legal clinics, activist and advocacy bodies, transnational advocacy networks, and social movements—and how these organizations draw upon, are limited, and transformed by the legal environment.
Celso dos Santos Malachias has a PhD in operations and innovation management studies at Fundacao Getulio Vargas Business School, international exchange doctorate program at University of Oxford, England, and MSc in innovation studies research at Mackenzie University. Professionally, in the latest years, he and conducted a consulting company for in Brazil in recruitment, searching and selecting professionals and executives mainly for high tech companies dealing therefore with new knowledge, trends, in a fuzzy and turbulent environment. Academically, his PhD thesis investigated how the companies read the signals in the market and convert them into innovation. The proposed framework offers ways to monitor trends and weak signals and alert individuals, companies and society what’s coming, how the market is changing and how to convert them in innovation. Celso studies and conducts lectures in graduation, post-graduation, MBA, colleges and companies about Artificial Intelligence, Innovation, Jobs, Labour markets, requirements and, how the artificial intelligence impacts individual, careers, labours, increasingly displacement, inequality, informality, and what we could do to prepare an innovation to be more inclusive. Will all the society benefit from the new technology, or just part of them, increasing potentially the inequality in the society? Should digital transformation projects consider the impact into society?
I received my PhD in psychology from York University in 2018. Currently, I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, I study Chinese immigrants' mental health, sense of (un)belonging, and experience of racism amid the Covid-19 pandemic and the Canada-China tensions. In addition, I have been writing on the history of psychology and human sciences in China's socialist movement, as well as how contemporary Chinese people experience sociocultural conflicts. My select publications can be found in Review of General Psychology, Social Anthropology, History of Psychology, History of Science, History of Education, Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, Narrative Inquiry, and Chinese Sociological Dialogue.
Karl Gardner is a researcher and organizer working alongside migrant justice, Indigenous solidarity, abolitionist, and labour movements. He is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Politics at the University of Toronto, where his research explores how racialized migrants and Indigenous peoples build solidarity in settler colonial states such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. He completed his PhD in Political Science at York University, and is currently working on a book manuscript based on his dissertation that examines the role of migrant justice movements in the creation of sanctuary cities in Canada. His work with the GLRC focuses on the role of unions in advancing equity and racial justice, both in Canadian workplaces as well as within unions themselves.
Phil Henderson is a settler, originally from Saugeen Anishinaabek territories and a recent doctoral graduate from Political Science and Indigenous Nationhood at the University of Victoria. Upon completion of his dissertation, In and Against Canada, he joined the Institute of Political Economy at Carleton in September 2022 as a SSHRC-funded Postdoctoral Fellow. Phil’s postdoctoral project, The Army of (Re)Production and the Defenders of the Land, intends to study the interrelationships between Indigenous land/water defenders and (self-)organized workers in what’s presently known as Canada, with an interest in both their disjunctures and conjunctures.
Hari KC is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and a Contract Teaching Faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University. He holds a PhD in Global Governance from the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University. His doctoral dissertation explores the issues of Nepali women migrant domestic workers in the Arabian Gulf countries. His research interests are on issues of international migration (particularly South-South labour migration), migration governance, and gender and social justice with a regional focus on South Asia. In the past, Hari has worked, in various roles, for the BBC Media Action, Embassy of India, Carter Centre, and Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal. Hari holds two master’s degrees in English from the University of Waterloo (Canada) and Tribhuvan University (Nepal), and also a master’s degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from Conrad Grebel University College (Canada).
Adam D.K. King is Post-Doctoral Visitor in the Department of Politics, and affiliated with the Gender and Work Database and the Canada Labour Code-Data Analysis Infrastructure research project at York University. His research explores working-class culture and identity and union organization in the nickel mining industry in the Northern Ontario. He is also currently part of a team of researchers studying labour standards compliance and enforcement in Canada’s federal jurisdiction, including the contested regulation of Indigenous employment.
Tsitsi Mpofu-Mketwa is a postdoctoral associate at the Future Water Institute at the University of Cape Town working on a UKRI GCRF Water and Fire Project that addresses community resilience to climate change-induced disasters such as floods, drought and recurrent fire outbreaks. Tsitsi obtained her PhD in Sociology of Development at UCT. Her PhD thesis investigated how isiXhosa-speaking women traders in Langa Township, Cape Town, exercised agency in responding to structural constraints and opportunities that affected their informal trading businesses. Tsitsi has experience in applied community research and social development practice in the Cape Flats marginalised communities of Cape Town. Tsitsi‘s research interests are in human adaptation to structural and environmental constraints in an increasingly globalised and neoliberal world, sustainable livelihoods, migration, informality, and individual and collective agency.
Reena Shadaan is the Mustard post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Work and Health. Shadaan has a PhD in environmental studies at York University and an MA in gender studies and feminist research at McMaster University. She is a former recipient of the Canada Graduate Scholarship to Honour Nelson Mandela and York University’s President’s University-Wide Teaching Award. Shadaan’s research intersects environmental and occupational health and justice. In her doctoral work, Shadaan used feminist and worker-centered visual methods to map the occupational health of nail technicians who contend with a lack of ergonomic workplace conditions, routine exposure to harmful toxicants, verbal abuses, and labour exploitation. Shadaan’s work further traces common toxicants in the nail salon to their roots in petroleum extraction and petrochemical production, underscoring connections across sites of violence and harm. In her post-doctoral research, Shadaan will continue to work with nail technicians and other racialized newcomer and immigrant-settler workers on issues of occupational health and justice in precarious workplace settings.