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I completed my PhD (2017) in Geography at the University of British Columbia with a dissertation about slum-upgrading and pacification projects in Rio de Janeiro’s favela communities. I received both my BA/BPHE (2008) and MA (2011) at Queen’s from the Department of Kinesiology and Health Studies, where I focused on critical sport and health sociology. My employment experience has primarily been in the fields of institutional equity and urban women’s health. I have most recently been a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto.

Having grown up in Toronto, I am fascinated by the dynamics and politics of the “urban.” My interests in cities range from sport mega events to slum upgrading to the social determinants of health. While my research is global, I remain grounded in the politics and pedagogies of my home on unceded and treatied Indigenous territories, be it in Toronto, Vancouver, or Kingston.

I currently live in Kingston with my partner, Mark and our dog, Lucy. Outside of work I can often be found fumbling around on the fiddle, reading novels, or looking for local pick-up soccer games.

Credentials:

• PhD – University of British Columbia (Geography)
• MA, BA/BPHE – Queen’s University (Kinesiology and Health Studies)

Links:

Research Interests:

My scholarly work unpacks practices of urban economic development. It builds relationships between global and anti/decolonial urbanism, critical development studies, health sociology, and critical race feminist geographies.

My current focus is on the social and economic dynamics of urban infrastructural development. I ask questions such as: How do low-income, racialized communities grapple with state-led upgrading efforts in Brazilian favelas? How does FIFA negotiate with local authorities over the locations of World Cup stadiums? How do communities build their own “public” infrastructure (such as park areas) in the shadow of state-led projects? And how does non-valued work – such as breastfeeding – become distributed through urban infrastructures of human milk banking? I pursue questions such as these in North America, South America, and Africa.

I am also beginning work at the intersection of bio-capital and bio-security, asking how private companies and large philanthropic organizations control global vaccine rollouts in ways that reproduce colonial and imperial divisions of the world; and how emerging biosecurity mechanisms are being enacted at an urban scale to prevent zoonosis (and with what effects on local populations).

Curriculum Vitae (PDF 181 kB)