I have the honour and pleasure of working with extraordinary emerging scholars, urban planners, artists and community organizers in a variety of capacities. Below you will find brief profiles of current graduate and postdoctoral advisees, and former postdoctoral fellows and PhD students for whom I have served as a primary advisor. A full listing of MA and MscPL (Planning) students and senior undergraduate thesis students follows.
Current graduate & postdoctoral advisees
Dr. Kelsey Johnson
Social Science & Humanities Research Council & Faculty of Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellow
Kelsey Johnson holds a PhD in Geography from the University of British Columbia (2021). Her research explores in geographies of racial capitalism, nature, and science in modern healthcare economies. She is currently working on a monograph about the American blood plasma economy. This project follows the making of this economy from southern plantation-prisons in the US South in the 1960s to the contemporary expansion of plasma collection across contemporary geographies of suburban inequality. Throughout, it engages the plantation-prison as a space of theory making that reaches backwards into histories of slavery and forwards into contemporary frontiers of medicine, science, and biotechnology.
Mariba Douglas
PhD program, Geography. mariba.douglas@mail.utoronto.ca
Mariba’s research examines the history and expansion of equity, diversity and social inclusion initiatives on university campuses and the persistence of anti-Blackness. Her work addresses questions of Black placemaking, institutional anti-Blackness, elite capture and race and space within the university and wider urban context, with a focus on the University of Toronto.
Liam Fox
PhD program, Geography. liam.fox@mail.utoronto.ca
I am a PhD student and political economic geographer studying resource extraction, global oil and gas infrastructures, and settler colonialism. My current research examines the environmental assessment regime for oil and gas pipelines in Canada, expert knowledge in environmental decision making, and the apparatuses of the petrostate. When not doing research, I am an avid cross country skier, soccer player, gardener, cook, and (very) amateur surfer.
Dana Hasan
PhD program, Geography
Dana Hasan is a PhD Student in Planning who holds a BS in Architectural Engineering from UAEU, UAE, and a MS in Urban Design from EMU, Cyprus. Her research explores the everyday resistance of Palestinians under military occupation. She is interested in examining the ways in which ordinary people make-do and resist on the level of daily urban life, negotiating not only everyday survival but also community resilience, grassroots agency, national identity, sense of place, and overall social sustainability.
Tehniat Khan
PhD program, Geography
Tehniat’s current research examines (anti-)racist urbanism as it manifests in education and pedagogical methodology in elementary schools, specifically public schools in Ontario. She has a particular interest in neighbourhoods which attracted home buyers outside of the GTA due to prices of homes in major urban centres. Essential to this research is the dynamic between interracial relations, emotions, and geographic places. When Tehniat is not doing research, or reading you can find her photographing, painting or being with her children.
Nessie Nankivell
PhD program, Geography
Nessie’s research focuses on infrastructure development, economic security, and social reproduction. In particular, she is interested in how Crown consultation facilitates state surveillance over Indigenous social life. Using design methods developed during her role as an assistant researcher at Forensic Architecture, she hopes to use counter-mapping and situated testimony to create new evidentiary techniques for colonial violence. Nessie is a Faculty of Arts & Humanities Top Doctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto.
Jandell-Jamela Nicholas
PhD program, Geography. jandelljamela.nicholas@mail.utoronto.ca
Jandell’s research engages the experiences of Indigenous and Black women survivors of domestic abuse within the spaces of emergency shelters in Toronto. Her work investigates how Indigenous and Black women who survive inter-partner violence and who temporarily reside in emergency shelters in Toronto can help to inform the planning and design of shelters as spaces for healing, self-determination and empowerment.
Kai Abimelek
PhD program, Geography
Kai Abimelek is a PhD student in Human Geography at the University of Toronto. Their research explores refugee placemaking, queer geographies, and the political imaginaries of ‘home,’ grounded in critical Palestinian geography, diaspora studies, Indigenous geographies, and Black geographies. Kai analyzes geographies of sleep and statelessness through autoethnography, drawing upon their lived experience as a formerly stateless Palestinian. Kai works from a long-term dedication to advancing equity and justice both within and beyond the academic institution.
Former doctoral & postdoctoral advisees
Dr. Nemoy Lewis
Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto 2019-2021. Current: Assistant Professor, School of Urban & Regional Planning, TMU nemoy.lewis@ryerson.ca
Nemoy Lewis holds a BA and MA degree in Geography from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Human Geography from Queen’s University (Canada) in 2018. His research explores the complex intersections of anti-Black racism, race, housing, and financialization. He is currently exploring the growing affordability problems impacting Black renters in Canada and the U.S. in the context of the financialization of the rental housing market.
Dr. Wes Attewell
Faculty of Arts and Science PDF, University of Toronto, 2016-18. Current: Visiting Assistant Professor, Dept. of Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU.
Wes’ first book project, Developing Violence: Disassembling the USAID complex in Afghanistan, is under contract with the University of Minnesota Press.. He is at work on a second book project, entitled The Lifelines of Empire: Logistics, Infrastructure, and the Decolonizing Pacific which tracks the evolution of logistics as a key infrastructure of imperial rule, identifying the Vietnam War as a defining moment in this process.
Dr. Martin Danyluk
PhD in Geography @ UofT, 2017. Current: Assistant Professor, University of Nottingham. martin.danyluk@nottingham.ac.uk
Martin Danyluk is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Nottingham. His research and teaching focus on urban change and inequality in the context of global economic restructuring, drawing on his background in human geography, urban planning, and political economy. In recent years, his research has examined the spaces of the global logistics industry, and his current work explores the entanglement of infrastructure and finance.
Dr. Maya Eichler
SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto, 2011-13. Current: Canada Research Chair in Social Innovation and Community Engagement and Associate Professor of Political Studies and Women’s Studies, Mount Saint Vincent University.
Dr. Eichler is interested in social change and citizen engagement in the military and security sphere, with a particular emphasis on the role of gender. Dr. Eichler currently conducts research on gender, sexual violence, and the armed forces, the transition from military to civilian life, and community stories of war and peace. She is the author of Militarizing Men: Gender, Conscription, and War in Post-Soviet Russia with Stanford University Press (2012) and the edited volume Gender and Private Security in Global Politics with Oxford University Press (2015).
Dr. Lia Frederiksen
PhD in Geography @ UofT, 2020. lia.frederiksen@utoronto.ca
Lia Frederiksen is Visiting Scholar in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo, where she is conducting research on precarious employment in public libraries. Her research broadly spans the areas of urban geography, labour studies, and feminist political economy. With Emily Reid-Musson, Nancy Worth, and Daniel Cockayne, she is a co-convenor of Understanding the Future of Work, an international research collaboration supported in part by a SSHRC Connections grant.
Dr. Yasmin Khan
PhD in Geography @UofT, 2022 yasminali.khan@mail.utoronto.ca
Yasmin Khan holds a Ph.D. in Geography and Women & Gender Studies. Her research looks at social and environmental impacts of humanitarian aid policies aimed at Rohingya refugees, and how these policies affect non-refugee Bangladeshi citizens. She has dual master’s degrees in water resource management and community & regional planning, both from the University of New Mexico. Yasmin was director of The Americas Program, an online foreign policy magazine based in Mexico City, and held two Fulbright research grants for community water work in Veracruz and Baja California Sur, Mexico. She is a reporter at KUNM radio in Albuquerque, covering worker’s rights and migrant detention with a focus on Spanish-speaking residents.
Dr. Weiqiang Lin
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto, 2015-16. Current: Associate Professor, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. weiqiang@nus.edu.sg
Weiqiang is a human geographer interested in mobilities and the infrastructures of moving. Employing cultural geographical approaches, his work examines the myriad ways in which contemporary society is mobilised. In particular, his writings seek to open up the cultural politics of mobilities production through an infrastructural lens, charting through the creation of a variety of artefacts and regimes.
Dr. Katie Mazer
PhD in Geography @ UofT, 2019. Current: Assistant Professor, Environmental & Sustainability Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies, Acadia University. katie.mazer@acadiau.ca
Katie is a human geographer interested in the ways our lives, perspectives, and environments are shaped by work. Her research examines how the state regulation of work and poverty serves industrial resource extraction and settler colonial expansion in Canada.
Dr. Alexis Mitchell
PhD in Geography @ UofT, 2018. Current: SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, NYU. mitchell.alexis@gmail.com
Alexis Kyle Mitchell is an artist and scholar who often works collaboratively alongside artist Sharlene Bamboat under the moniker Bambitchell. Mitchell recently completed a PhD in Human Geography at the University of Toronto where she held a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship. She was artist-in-residence at Akademie Schloss Solitude (2015-2017) and at the MacDowell Colony (2018), and fellow at Sommerakademie Paul Klee (2017-2019). In 2020-2022 Mitchell will hold a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Disability Studies at New York University under the supervision of Dr. Faye Ginsburg..
Dr. Vanessa Parlette
PhD in Geography @ UofT, 2012. Current: Senior Associate at Social Impact Advisors. vanessa@socialimpactadvisors.ca
Vanessa Parlette is a Senior Associate at Social Impact Advisors where she guides organizations and collectives to define the social impact they aim to achieve and build the strategies to get them there. With a PhD in Geography from the University of Toronto and a Master’s in Communications from Simon Fraser University, Vanessa is committed to bringing equal rigour to the co-design of community solutions as to the methods used to measure and enhance impact.
Dr. Shiri Pasternak
PhD in Geography @ UofT, 2013. Current: Associate Professor, TMU | Former Research Director, Yellowhead Institute, shiri.pasternak@torontomu.ca
Shiri is Assistant Professor in Criminology at Ryerson University in Toronto. She is the author of Grounded Authority: the Algonquins of Barriere Lake Against the State, (University of Minnesota Press, 2017). Her current research interests involves studying the risk of Indigenous rights in the natural resource extraction economy.
Dr. David Seitz
PhD in Geography @ UofT, 2015. Current: Associate Professor, Harvey Mudd College. dseitz@g.hmc.edu
David K. Seitz is a critical geographer of liberal multiculturalism. His writing investigates the cultural, political, and affective dimensions of geographical processes, including urban gentrification, immigration and asylum, queer community formation, U.S. imperialism, and struggles over social reproduction. Seitz is assistant professor of cultural geography in the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. David is the author of A House of Prayer for All People: Contesting Citizenship in a Queer Church.
Dr. Brett Story
PhD in Geography @ UofT, 2015. Current: Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, brett.story@utoronto.ca
Brett is an assistant professor is an assistant professor of Media Praxis at the University of Toronto, has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Sundance Documentary Institute. She is the author of Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America and the director of the award-winning documentaries, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes, and The Hottest August.
Former Masters & Masters of Science in Planning (MscPl.)
Kai Abimelek (MA) “Palestine in Diaspora: Carcerality, Resistance and the Queer Politics of Place.” 2025
Faizaan Khan (MscPl) “Malvern Memories: From Heritage Preservation to Anti-Displacement in Toronto’s Racialized Inner Suburbs.” 2024
Jane O’Brien Davis (MscPL) “Monument as Method: Transforming Collective Memory in Canada.” 2023
Alicia Doering (MscPL) “Future Diasporas: Navigating Culture, Art and Identity within Toronto’s Unaffordable Urban Landscape.” 2022
Beth Wong (MscPL) “ISO (In Search Of) Home: Addressing Queer Youth and Housing Precarity in Toronto.” 2022
Khalood Kibria (MA) “A City in Crisis: Tenant Displacement and the Fight for Housing During COVID-19 in Toronto.” 2021
Jacqueline Dumornay (MA) “State of the Culture: An Analysis of Black Uprising Soundscapes in North America.” 2020.
Symon James Wilson (MA) “Geographies and Infrastructures of School Segregation: A Historical Case Study of Rochester, NY.” 2020.
Darian Razdar (MscPl) “Toronto Queer: Erotic Experiments with Culture & Place.” 2020.
Jandell-Jamela Nicholas (MA) “Indigenous Women Survivors of Domestic Abuse seeking Temporary Refuge in the space of Toronto Shelters.” 2019.
Mariba Douglas (MA) Anti-Blackness in the University in the Age of “Equity, Diversity and Social Inclusion.” 2019.
Kevin Kempada (MscPl) “Addressing Demand for Diverse Sports Facilities in Toronto. 2019.
Adwoa Afful (MscPl.) “Planning from the Margins”: Black organizing in the GTA and New Frameworks for Collaborative Planning.” 2018.
Connor Pion (MA) “An NDN* in TRANS*ition: The Academic-ish Journal of a Trans/Non-Binary Non-Status Mixed-Nation Urban-Nish.” 2017
Molly Willats (MA) “Queer space and gentrification in Toronto.” 2017.
Natalia Zdaniuk (MA) “Shoutback and Safe Space.” 2016.
Maria Saroja Ponnambalam (MA) “Geographies of Precarious Citizenship: The Policing of Race and Status in Toronto.” 2016.
Anna Wynveen (MscPl.) “Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood? Unpacking the complexities of residents’ associations and their role in the planning process.” 2015.
Jordan Hale (MA) “Along the highway: landscapes of national mourning in Canada.” Master’s in Geography, University of Toronto. 2014.
Mary Mallin (MScPl) “Are There Benefits for the Community When Schools Close?.” Master’s of Science in Planning, Programme in Planning, University of Toronto. 2014.
Amy Buithenhuis (MA) “Public Private Partnerships in Ontario.” University of Toronto. 2013.
Charissa Jattan (MscPl) “Planning with low income immigrant communities in Flemingdon Park.” Programme in Planning, University of Toronto. 2012.
David Seitz (MA) “(Selectively) Getting Religion: Flirtations with the Secular and the Religious in Canadian Queer Politics.” (Co-supervised with K. Rankin) Master’s in Geography, University of Toronto. 2011.
Sheila Htoo (MscPl) “Planning with communities: Improving Participatory Planning Process through Community-Based Research Strategies.” Programme in Planning, University of Toronto. 2011.
Chloe Richer (MscPl) “Community-Driven Planning in Mimico-By-The-Lake: An Alternative Response to Revitalization.” Programme in Planning, University of Toronto. Defended March 2011.
Emma Chadwick (MscPl) “The school within a school: Community building and choice in Toronto’s alternative schools.” Programme in Planning, University of Toronto. 2011.
Ian Clark (MscPl) “Suburban Transportation Planning and Equity.” Programme in Planning, University of Toronto. 2011.
Meghan Joy (MscPl) “Incorporating Residents into a Place-based Approach to Poverty Reduction: A Case Study of the United Way Toronto’s Action for Neighbourhood Change.” Programme in Planning, University of Toronto. 2010.
Helen Looker (MscPl) “Greener Pastures: Smart growth and the Suburbs.” Programme in Planning, University of Toronto. 2010.
Nicholas Thompson (MscPl) “Heritage planning in Toronto.” Programme in Planning, University of Toronto. 2010.
Nemoy Lewis (MA) “An American Nightmare: The Subprime crisis and the impact on African Americans.” Master’s in Geography, University of Toronto. 2010.
Stephanie Gris (MscPl) “School selection and gentrification in Southwest Toronto neighbourhoods.” Programme in Planning, University of Toronto. Defended March 2009.
Sarah Ryman (MA) “The Discursive Reproduction of the Safe Third Country Agreement: Rethinking Belonging in the Era of Entrepreneurial and Securitized Citizenship.” University of Toronto. 2008.
Undergraduate Independent Research & Practicum
Sayem Khan (2019-20), Nathanial Baker (2019), Alison Zhou (2017-18), Khalood Kibria (2018, 2019), Liam Fox (2017), Zach Cave (2015), Jeff Tanaka (2011-12); Natalia Zdaniuk (2011-12), Amanda Rocchese (2010-11); Ben Hirsch (2010-11); Felix Kalmenson (2010-11), Jordan Hale (2009-10); Debra Pogorelsky (2010); Daniel Pierre (2009), Lin Wang (2009), Anne Marie Croce (2008-2009), Adam Pivko (2007-8), Catherine Denson (2008).
Deborah Cowen 