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Research

Photo credit: R. Kukreja

Dr. Reena Kukreja interviews two migrant workers in Greece.

Dr. Kukreja's current research project focusses on low class, racialized migrant men working in immigrant-niche sectors in Southern Europe. In the project titled, Undocumented South Asian Male Migrants in Greece: Understanding Masculinity, Love, and Work in Troubled Times, funded by SSHRC Insight Development Grant, she studies how culturally-specific norms of “failed” masculinity impact the likelihood of migration for low-class racialized men. Dr. Kukreja argues this with a case study of undocumented male migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India who are employed in immigrant-niche sectors of agriculture and urban informal economy in Greece.

Dr. Kukreja also studies the ways anti-immigrant discourses, far right populism, racism, and regimes of restrictive migration governance combine to determine gendered experiences of racialized lower-class migrant workers in host countries. Dr. Kukreja studies the flash points that trigger racial oppression from host communities against racialized migrant workers working in agriculture, gig economy or in the informal sector in Greece, Italy, and Spain.

Photo credit: M. Taylor

Dr. Marcus Taylor and research partner Satish Rangari interview a storekeeper in Solnapur village, Aurangabad district, India.

Dr. Taylor’s research considers how public programs designed to create climate resilient farming communities work in practice. Do newly promoted agricultural innovations scale across all farming communities evenly? Or is their ability to deliver impact shaped by social and cultural contexts?

Research Assistant Satish Rangari is now a PhD student at 91TV’s conducting his own research on pesticide risks in climate smart agriculture in rural India.

Photo credit: R. Hall

Stacey Drygeese-Sundberg, an educator and member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, shares teachings with 91TV's faculty, students, and participants in Dr. Rebecca Hall's Futures of Care Indigenous youth gathering on mining and mine closure. Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, October 2024. 

Dr. Hall's current research project, Futures of Care (SSHRC Insight Grant 2022-2027), is driven by the experiences and aspirations of Indigenous and South African communities in mine-affected areas, flipping the script from communities as “impacted” to communities as “agents”. In Canada and South Africa, resource extraction is central to economic development and the political imaginary. While both countries are over-represented in global extractive industries, they are also characterized by community-based resistance to extraction and alternative relations to land and modes of resource governance, often practiced by women, Indigenous peoples and people of colour.

This is a research partnership co-led with Dr. Allison Goebel, Dr. Marc Epprecht, Dedats’eetsaa: The Tłı̨chǫ Research and Training Institute, Hotii Ts’eeda (Northwest Territories, Canada), the Society, Work and Politics Institute (South Africa), and collaborating researchers and graduate students.

Supervision and Research Themes

As recognized academic leaders in their fields with major international research projects, our faculty uniquely bring their active research into the classroom. They provide an enriching space for our undergraduate and graduate cohorts to explore issues of political economy, cultural politics, and sustainability on a global scale.

Our engaging classroom experience is combined with close supervision that provides students with the analytical tools and thematic knowledge required to conduct original research projects.

Three broad themes stand out as key areas of specialization within our program:

 

The Political Economy of Development

Diana Córdoba – political ecology; critical agrarian studies; social justice; environmental sustainability; Latin America

Rebecca Hall – resource extraction; feminist political economy; decolonization; settler colonialism

Reena Kukreja – feminist political economy; migration; masculinities; postcolonial feminism; South Asia; Caste; community-based research

David McDonald – municipal governance; public versus private service delivery (water, electricity and health care); urbanization; migration

Bernadette P. Resurrección – feminist political ecology; natural resource management, climate change and livelihoods; sustainability transitions

Scott Rutherford – Canadian history; social movements; settler-colonialism; cultural politics of development in North America

Susanne Soederberg – housing insecurity and urban displacement; finance and debt (public and private); corporate power in development

Marcus Taylor – labour and livelihoods; agriculture and development; anti-poverty programs and microfinance

Kyla Tienhaara – globalisation; trade agreements; corporations and development

The Cultural Politics of Development

Marc Epprecht – social history in southern Africa; gender, sexuality and development; HIV/AIDS; pedagogies for development

Rebecca Hall – resource extraction; feminist political economy; decolonization; settler colonialism

Reena Kukreja – feminist political economy; migration; masculinities; postcolonial feminism; South Asia; Caste; community-based research

Paritosh Kumar – the politics of tradition and modernity; Hindu Right and religious revivalism in India; development ethics

Bernadette P. Resurrección – feminist political ecology; natural resource management, climate change and livelihoods; sustainability transition

Scott Rutherford – Canadian history; social movements; settler-colonialism; cultural politics of development in North America

Ayca Tomac – transformative movements; social justice organizing in the Middle East and the Mediterranean; youth organizing and identity formation; digital activism; feminist ethnography; community-based research methods

Development and Sustainability

Kilian Atuoye - global health; health equity; social epidemiology; environment and health; food security; healthcare access and utilization

Diana Córdoba – political ecology; critical agrarian studies; social justice; environmental sustainability; Latin America

Marc Epprecht – environment and health, especially in urban contexts in South Africa

Mark Hostetler – political ecology; sustainability research; livelihoods approaches

Paritosh Kumar – globalization and agriculture; plant genetic resources

David McDonald – urbanization and environmental justice; water politics

Bernadette P. Resurrección – feminist political ecology; natural resource management, climate change and livelihoods; sustainability transitions

Susanne Soederberg – cities, housing and vulnerabilities; disaster management

Marcus Taylor – climate change; agriculture and agrarian change; political ecology

Kyla Tienhaara – clean energy; environmental regulation and trade policy

Cross-Appointed Faculty

Our cross-appointed faculty members are able to sole-supervise DEVS graduate students. 

is an Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies. 

Research Areas: Social and environmental production of health; environmental health promotion; environmental stress; psychosocial health;  water insecurity and safe sanitation in Sub-Saharan Africa.

is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences and Associate Dean, Equity and Social Accountability, 91TV's Health Sciences. 

Research Areas: Global health research; child and adolescent health, child rights, health equity and systems approaches to health promotion particularly for vulnerable groups; projects in Nunavut, Lebanon, Thailand and Mongolia.

Allison Goebel is a Professor in the School of Environmental Studies. 

Research Areas: Gender, environment and development in Africa; environmental justice; women, health and the environment; local food issues and movements; urbanization and housing; social impacts of climate change.

Carolyn Prouse is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning.

Research Areas: Political ecology, social reproduction, critical race feminism, global urbanism.

Ariel Salzmann is an Associate Professor in the Department of History. 

Research Areas: World regions, past and present; state society relations in the historic Middle East; theories of state formation; histories of Mediterranean societies; the making of global capitalism.

Sarah Shulist is an Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (LLCU).

Research Areas: Indigenous language revitalization; Linguistic and political anthropology; Indigenous/state relations; Collaborative ethnographic research.