Research
is a flock of gerunds…
Researching is…
… reading, searching, asking, listening, thinking, looking, watching, interviewing, discussing, writing, collaborating, analyzing, visualizing, reflecting, sharing, re-writing, verifying, promoting, connecting, building, co-creating, re-creating, re-visiting …
As a transdisciplinary researcher, I’ve worked on a variety of projects using primarily qualitative methods. My interests include urban green spaces, local food security, housing and houselessness, informal labour, queueing and waiting, supply chain logistics, and cycles of consumption and waste.
Find Below Examples of projects I’ve worked on
To reach out about my previous work, or if you’re looking for a qualitative researcher, connect with me through my Contact page.
Researching the work lives and work tools of informal recyclers (binners)
This research investigated how work tool availability and selection in the labour of urban waste-picking (e.g., carts, bicycles, boxes, bags) impacted the everyday work lives and livelihoods of unhoused binners in a gentrifying Global North context.
Ethnographic methods: in-depth semi-structured interviews, go-alongs, site-based observations
Key themes: mobility, stigma, dirty work, gentrification, recycling schemes, surveillance, informality, livelihood, waste (discard studies).
Role: principal investigator
Read this research published here
My current Research examines perceptions of ownership, responsibility, and duty of care in relationships between food retail corporations, municipal councils, and community stakeholders
Methods include: discourse analysis of media reports, council minutes, and policy documents; in-depth semi-structured interviews, and expert stakeholder focus groups
Key themes: food retail labour, self-service, community-corporate relations
Role: doctoral researcher
Examining the North American front lawn as small-scale nature space
This research examined the multi-faceted nature of front lawn space and its many tensions, including:
nature space versus human-controlled space: the lawn both invites and repels nature, as “good neighbours” have often been defined by the products machinery (lawn mowers and weed-whackers) and agro-chemicals (glyphosate, neonicotinoids, pyrethoids, 2,4-D) they are encouraged to buy and use
privately-owned space on public display: spaces where concepts of “family” are performed for the neighbours (e.g., appropriate for wedding and graduation photos but not family barbecues, for flowering shrubs but not food production)
Methods included: literature review, site-based observations, discourse analysis (municipal policy documents, by-laws and neighbourhood association regulations), mapping and photographing in different neighbourhoods (non)compliance with summer watering regulations.
Key themes: green space, suburbia, rights of nature, informal surveillance, social control, consumption
Role: sole researcher
Investigating impact of condo development and transit hub on local community
In this project, my urban research partner and I documented a displacement-in-progress, as an immigrant neighbourhood and its school community were dismantled by “demovictions” and increasingly unaffordable rents. We observed the many paradoxes of the “revitalization” of a neighbourhood that lost many families who were themselves so vital to the community.
Methods included: walk-alongs and go-along interviews, on-site observations, in-depth semi-structured interviews with multiple stakeholders, guided site visits of community hubs (including neighbourhood house, elementary school, seniors activity centre), discourse analysis (municipal reports and meeting minutes, development plans and reports, media reports, anti-displacement organization reports, real estate advertisements).
Key themes: gentrification, displacement, transit-oriented design, densification, affordable housing
Role: co-researcher
Evaluating the efficacy of a homeless-to-housed program
This research evaluated a Housing First initiative in a municipal context of increasing homelessness, gentrification, and decreasing availability of affordable housing. Commissioned by funders, the study was conducted to inform future funding and policy directions.
Research methods included: literature review, fidelity study, in-depth interviews with multiple stakeholders, focus group facilitation, affinity diagramming (K-J method) with research team
Key themes: housing, homelessness, community resources, social service provision, determinants of success
Role: research assistant, member of small team
Assessing the role of cemeteries as heterotopias and multi-purpose urban green spaces
While working in a cemetery, I observed that people who spent time there were not necessarily visiting a loved one. This research project emerged from intersecting interests in: green spaces as pollinator highways and sanctuaries for urban wildlife, increasing human demand for urban green space, and Foucault’s heterotopias.
Methods included: site-based observations, discourse analysis of cemetery texts (e.g., websites, signage, regulations), in-depth semi-structured interviews with multiple stakeholders, and review of selected literature on trends in global cemetery use by and value to local community.
Key themes: cemeteries, urban green space, stigma, multispecies ecologies and contact zones
Role: sole researcher
Examining the Finnish forest industry
“How have countries like Finland and Japan managed to grow ‘cultures of wood’? What could BC do to grow its own culture of wood?”
Inspired by this question, posed at a forest and wood product industry conference, I investigated what Finland was doing differently from BC, from the ways that forests and wood were embedded in grade school and post-secondary education, to the active role of communities, families and individuals in forest stewardship. I also investigated the structure of Finnish firms and their role as producers of forest products for a national and global market—from lumber and wood pellets to paper products and innovative uses of cellulose.
Methods: review of industry literature, including corporate reports, and national and global forestry reports; examination of presence of forest and wood education in school curriculum, and mapping geographic locations of higher education institutions and forestry trades training accessibility.
Key themes: forestry, forest stewardship, forest industry, innovation funding, wood education
Role: sole researcher
Other research projects — the short version…
Examining the role of street trees in urban environments — their impact on multispecies diversity in urban spaces, their role in the health of humans and in the maintenance of city infrastructure, and their effect on multiple modes of transportation — from shading cyclists and pedestrians, to obstructing views or causing drivers to change their speed.
Documenting the decades-long transboundary debate to establish a sewage treatment plant in the Capital Regional District (greater Victoria, BC) to stem the flow of raw sewage into the Salish Sea.
Engaging community as project co-coordinator to show people how growing their own food could impact their health and relationship with their environment.
Investigating school absenteeism of immigrant and refugee youth. Uncovered bureaucratic barriers to social and institutional services in lives of low-income immigrant and refugee families seeking health care within a predominantly monolingual system.
I research in three languages
Projects in French include Étude comparative des onomatopées dans les langues romanes
Projects in Spanish include Una vida llena de otras texturas: mapa mutante de carritos de la no-compra