Students | Citizenship, Equity, Rights, Community, Inclusion and Social Justice (CERCIS)

Current Graduate Students

Andrea Choi

Ph.D. Candidate

The slow-growing demographic of racialized geographers has raised a number of vital questions about the nature of the discipline. Despite a steady increase in visible minority populations in both the United States and Canada, the practice of geography and the bodies of geographers remain predominantly white.

For my doctoral research, I am examining the relationship between the historical/colonial origins of the discipline of geography and the evolution of anti-racist geography in the US and Canada. During this research, I will illustrate the factors perpetuating racism within geography by investigating the factors allowing for the continued weight of whiteness in the practice of geography.

By tracing of the progression/regression of geographic thought through the oral histories of geographers of colour engaged in anti-racist geography, I seek to provide the lineages between individual geographers and contemporary understandings of the role of race within the practice of geography.

Nel Coloma-Moya

Ph.D. Candidate

Email: 8nmc@queensu.ca

My research interests lie within the fields of social, cultural, and political geography and cover a range of topics including racism/anti-racism, citizenship, institutional geographies, geopolitics, and human rights strategies. My Masters work examined the experiences of racism of second generation Canadians of colour and their influence on feelings of belonging in Canada.

In my doctoral research I look at the institutionalized anti-racism initiatives of organizations and the factors that influence their effectiveness. Combining a range of qualitative methods, I assess the factors that influence the strategic directions and decisions of the organizations through an examination of three different research sites and their respective policy interventions.

The research contributes to geographical knowledge of the processes of institutional social change at a range of sites from the local to the international. By positioning institutionalized anti-racism initiatives as the focus of study, this research fills a gap in geographical literature in anti-racism.

Alexandra Giancarlo

Ph.D. Candidate

Email: 11ag26@queensu.ca

A sample of my research interests include critical race studies, the American South, the negotiation of identity in public spaces and its connection to citizenship, qualitative research methodologies, mobility, and disability studies.

My Master’s research focused on the post-Hurricane Katrina recovery of the New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, an area that experienced profound devastation in the wake of the storm and came to epitomize the racial and socio-economic disparities in aid and recovery efforts.

My doctoral research focuses on the racial politics and cultural activism of Louisiana Creoles with particular emphasis given to their practice of trail riding (recreational horseback riding), which I contend functions as a highly visible display of their rural heritage and constitutes a locus of identity for Creoles. I have also edited and authored publications in the field of critical disability studies as well as disability-related policy.

Nemoy Lewis

Ph.D. Candidate

Email: nemoy.lewis@queensu.ca

I’m a fourth year PhD student in Geography, and my doctoral research analyzes the current foreclosure crisis and how it has affected the lives of racialized people, low-income families, and economically disadvantaged communities in two of the hardest hit cities across the United States: Chicago, Illinois and Jacksonville, Florida.

To further the work that I have already undertaken in these two cities, I intend to situate the foreclosure crisis as the most recent installment in the long history of racialized inequality in the American housing market. It is my goal that this research may ultimately contribute to the eradication of racial inequalities within the U.S. housing market.

My research interests include: Housing, Social Justice, Critical Race Studies, Urban Policy, Economic Geography and Political Economy.

Sean Patterson

Ph.D. Candidate

Email: sean.patterson@queensu.ca

From 2009 to 2012, I completed my master’s degree under the supervision of Dr. Stefan Kipfer in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. I am now pursuing a Ph.D. in the Department of Geography, undertaking a comprehensive study of the industrial cleaning industry in the Toronto and Hamilton regions.

In this project, working with Dr. Audrey Kobayashi and Dr. John Holmes, I seek to examine the advocacy efforts by union and non-union organizations to improve working conditions for immigrant workers. I am particularly interested in employment conditions in the cleaning industry and the union and non-union strategies, and government policies addressing issues related to precarious employment and the service sector.

My areas of academic research interest are work, labour and employment and precarious work, and industrial cleaning and the union movement and government policies.

Rebecca Pero

Ph.D. Candidate

Email: 2rpp@queensu.ca

I completed my Master’s degree in the Department of Sociology at Queen’s University in 2011; my Ph.D. work is a continuation of my Master’s project, entitled “The New Local Governance of Immigration in Canada: Regulation and Responsibility.”

I am more specifically interested in immigrant perceptions and experiences of immigration policies, immigration policies in practice in small- to medium-sized Canadian cities and the Local Immigration Partnership model.

In addition, I have conducted research and analysis in the areas of surveillance, Latino geographies and border studies and am attentive to issues of social justice and activist methods of research.

Ronald J Roy

Ph.D. Candidate

Email: ronald.roy@queensu.ca

Recent global flows of people and culture bring new challenges to citizenship and belonging. Negotiations of identities are taking place as people migrate to new cities where experiences of exclusion challenge the relevance of social justice. I focus on people’s social constructions of difference and how these differentiations impact people’s lives as they move through places in the city.

My current research considers the experiences of recently arrived French-speaking people in minority Francophone cities in Canada. In the French places of the city – such as community centres, schools, health centres, and Francophone organizations – race and language differences are foremost in challenging newcomer “integration” and how members of Francophone minority communities imagine themselves and the world around them.

My subsequent research involves the expanded use of mobilities in qualitative methods and looking at how new media technologies impact migration.

Ricardo Smalling

Ph.D. Candidate

Email: smalling@queensu.ca

Ricardo has degrees in Geology, Natural Resources Management, and Law. His PhD research focuses on indigenous rights in the Canadian constitutional context with an emphasis on its applicability to non-renewable resource extraction.

As part of this research work, and more broadly, his research is concerned with issues of race and the underlying structural biases that indigenous persons in Canada face in the legal system when trying to vindicate their rights.

His research also touches on aspects of identity and the role the law plays in shaping identities.

Cheryl Sutherland

Ph.D. Candidate

Email: 0car@queensu.ca

My research interests include: social geographies of race and gender; geographies of social justice, citizenship, and human rights; place and the construction of community; emotional geographies; activist geographies; and smaller city geographies.

I am particularly interested in the ways in which racialized women experience smaller Canadian cities and my PhD research will explore how racialized women negotiate and contest their identity(ies) within this geographic location.

Past Students

Eda Acara

Ph.D.

Email: eda.acara@queensu.ca

My research interests draw from a number of topics, which include cultural geographies of memory, place and spatiality, environmental geographies of neoliberalism in the Global South and postcolonial and feminist geographies of the Middle East. I am also interested in alternative methods for knowledge production and dissemination, such as digital maps and environmental history databases.

With my current PhD dissertation, I look at social constructions of river pollution in Turkey, specifically Ergene River. Located at the Thrace region of Turkey, the Ergene River, a tributary of the Meric (Maritza) River crosses the border between Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. The river is considered a “dead river,” with level four pollution, according to the Turkish Ministry of Environment (2004). Through an examination of environmental narratives and contextualizing these narratives within the neoliberal development and changing environmental governance strategies of the current government, I explore the conflict geographies of pollution across different ethnic local communities and between communities and the state in an era of neoliberal water and pollution governance.

I work in the Editorial Board of Feminist Critique (FE) Journal since 2009, published by Ankara University, Turkey. In the past, some of my articles were published by several non-academic publications such as local newspapers and/or journals.

Meghan Brooks

Ph.D.

My research interests draw from a number of topics including equity, racism/anti-racism, citizenship, belonging, and power. My master's work examined the experiences of racism of second-generation Canadians of colour and their influence on feelings of belonging in Canada.

Through my PhD research I explored the factors that enable and constrain organizations doing anti-racism work. I analyzed influence of neoliberalization, backlash and geopolitics on the design and implementation of initiatives and identified strategies to mitigate their effects.

Paula Loh

M.A.

Email: paula.loh@queensu.ca

I am interested in exploring Aboriginal identity, specifically how modern Aboriginal artists express their identity through their artwork as a means of communicating to the non-Aboriginal population of Canada.

Traditionally, Aboriginal identity has often been expressed in art in a romanticized manner, using roles such as hunters and keepers of the land. This portrayal is a means of reinforcing a national identity of a pristine northern wilderness but does not reflect the modern reality of the majority of Canada’s Aboriginal population, as 54% now live in urban centres (2006 Census).

Roselyn Salvador

M.A.

Email: roselyn.salvador@queensu.ca

I have an interest in exploring the socioeconomic consequences of female care givers who, through the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP), have chosen to migrate from the Philippines to work in the Canadian informal eldercare sector.

My master’s thesis will examine the care arrangements and kin impact for multi-generational family members left behind in the Philippines.