Academic Community Partners

Handel Kashope Wright has been variously Canada Research Chair of Comparative Cultural Studies, David Lam Chair of Multicultural Education and co-editor of the journal International Education.  He is currently Full Professor and Director of the Centre for Culture, Identity and Education http://www.ccie.educ.ubc.ca. He is co-editor of the book series African and Diasporic Cultural Studies (University of Toronto Press), associate editor of Critical Arts and serves on the editorial board of several cultural studies and education journals including Cultural Studies; the European Journal of Cultural Studies; Diaspora, Indigenous and Minority Education; and Postcolonial Directions in Education. Professor Wright is Senior Research Associate, Department of Communication Studies, University of Johannesburg, South Africa and has published extensively on continental African cultural studies, cultural studies of education, critical multiculturalism, anti-racist education, qualitative research and post-reconceptualization curriculum theorizing.

Uzo is the Founder and Provincial Academic Director of YouthREX. She is the York Research Chair in Youth and Contexts of Inequity and a Professor at the School of Social Work, York University. Her educational background includes a PhD in Social Work from the University of Toronto; MSW and BSW from York University; and BSc and MSc from University of Nigeria.

Uzo’s community-engaged research is focused on critical youth work. She conceptualizes her research as a community dialogue that is centred on equitable collaborations with community stakeholders. Her research projects emphasize multi-methods / multi-focal research that make space for multi perspectives.

Uzo has served on a variety of boards, including being appointed by an Order in Council by the Government of Ontario to the Board of Directors of the Central Local Health Integrated Network for two terms of six years (2011-2017).  

Uzo has recently been appointed as Associate Vice-President, Faculty Affairs at York University.

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Angela Stienen has a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Berne, Switzerland, and is currently working as a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Berne, and at the Human Rights and Research Institute (Instituto Popular de Capacitación) in Medellín, Colombia. She is an independent project evaluator for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Her research interests include globalization and urban development, international migration, territory, identity and conflict dynamics.

Dr. Kwok is currently the Associate Director of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. He previously served as the Associate Dean (Undergraduate Programs) and Associate Dean (Southern Alberta Region) in the Faculty of Social Work. In this role he was responsible for the strategic direction and academic quality of all the social work undergraduate programs, which includes campuses in Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge; programs at Red Deer, Medicine Hat, and Grande Prairie; and the online program. Before he joined the University of Calgary in 2016, he was a Professor at King’s University College at Western University and was the Academic Director of the Southwestern Regional Hub of Ontario, Youth Research and Evaluation Exchange (YouthREX) which is funded by Ontario’s Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services and housed in King’s University College at Western University.  He holds a Diploma of Social Work from City University of Hong Kong, a Bachelor of Social Work from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, a Master of Social Work from University of British Columbia, a Doctor of Philosophy in Social Work from University of Calgary, and a Master of Public Administration from Western University. His commitment to his field and support of his peers is demonstrated by his election as the President of Alberta College of Social Workers (ACSW), which is the regulatory body of the social work profession under the Health Professions Act in the province of Alberta. In his career, he has received numerous research and teaching awards, invited to present at national and international conferences as a keynote and panelist member, and has testified at the Canadian Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights on the topic of visible minorities and the criminal justice system.

Dr. Ruglis' work centers on participatory, critical race/ethnic, social justice, feminist, and inclusive approaches to research and teaching in the areas of public education, public health, justice, and youth development. Professor Ruglis' research program is organized around three main axes: 1) Contexts and institutions of youth development, 2) Social determinants of health (SDH) and education, 3) Participatory and community engaged approaches to research, policy and professional training (e.g. participatory action research, PAR; youth participatory action research, YPAR; community based participatory research, CBPR; community engaged participatory action research, CEPAR; participatory policymaking).

Dr. Ruglis conducts mixed methods research, with a special love for qualitative and mixed methods. She is particularly interested in the nexus of social determinants of health, education and human development; especially as it concerns policy. She is interested in school, institutional and community-based approaches to child, adolescent and family health, health education and health promotion across the lifecourse. Dr. Ruglis also has expertise and interests in interdisciplinary curriculum development that is rooted in public health (K-12, and higher education), in interdisciplinary cohort models of graduate education for healthy adolescent development, and policy advocacy. She is increasingly interested in exploring the role of art as a practice central to research, policy, community and individual health. Dr. Ruglis' research and teaching takes seriously "all policy is health policy" and "health in all policies" (WHO, 2014), and her research, thinking and teaching is principally organized by a focus on education as a social determinant of health. She is also a former middle and high school science teacher.

Dr. Ruglis serves on a department, faculty and university committees; the Editorial Board of Community Health Equity Research & Policy; and on the Board of Directors of Chalet Kent (2016 - present) and Uptown Institute (2023 - present).  

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Natalie Coulter is an Associate Professor in Communication and Media Studies and Director of the Institute for Digital Literacies (IRDL) at York University, Canada. She is co-author of Media and Communication in Canada (9th ed) and co-editor of Youth Mediations and Affective Relations (2019) and author of Tweening the Girl (2014) She is a founding member of the Girls’ Studies Research Network (GSRN) at York University, and the Association for Research on the Cultures of Young People (ARCYP).

Dr. Jennifer Jenson (Ph.D. Simon Fraser University), is Professor of Digital Languages, Literacies & Cultures in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia. Prior to coming to UBC (January 2019), Dr. Jenson spent 18 years at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where she was Director of the Institute for Research on Digital Learning.

Dr. Jenson is co-editor of Loading: The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association and a past, long serving President of the Canadian Game Studies Association. Working with Professor Suzanne de Castell (UOIT), Dr. Nicholas Taylor (NC State University) and a team of students in her CFI-funded Play:CES (Play in Computer Environments) lab, she designed a series of educational games including: “Contagion”, “Epidemic: Self-Care for Crisis”, a Baroque music game, and an iPad game for early readers, Compareware. She has completed 2 longitudinal studies of gender and digital gameplay, and held a Partnership Development Grant, Feminist in Games, to support women and others who wanted to play and make games. She also completed a 3-year, mixed methods study of massively multiplayer online games and their players in partnership with SRI International, Simon Fraser University and Nottingham University, UK. She has published widely on education, technology, gender, design and development of digital games, and technology policies and policy practices in K-12 schooling. She has considerable experience working on and with teachers in relation to technology, pedagogy and curriculum, and authored a report for the Ontario Ministry of Education entitled “21st Century Skills, Technologies and Learning“ as well as completed a significant research project on games and learning for the Council of Ontario Directors of Education, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education. She has also worked with school boards, colleges, and technology companies to support the integration and implantation of technologies in the K-12 sector and post-secondary sectors and she has considerable experience designing online learning experiences in higher education. Currently, she is the Principal Investigator of an international SSHRC Partnership Funded Project, “Re-Figuring Innovation in Games”, which seeks to interrupt and re-figure the hostile, misogynistic cultures of game making and play.

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Laura Wiseman, PhD Hebrew Language and Literature, Collaborative Doctorate Jewish Studies, is a member of the Faculty of Education, Department of Humanities LAPS, and Faculty of Graduate Studies. As Koschitzky Family Chair in Jewish Teacher Education, she works with students of the Jewish Teacher Education Program preparing to teach Jewish Studies in formal, informal and experiential education settings. Her research focuses on the significance of intertextual reverberations in Hebrew language and literature: prose and poetry, life writing and écriture féminine. Her work takes into account classical Hebrew sources as well as medieval and modern belles lettres. Wiseman’s present research is on the sacred and the sensual in contemporary Hebrew love poetry by Sivan Har-Shefi. Professor Wiseman is currently president of Canadian Society for Jewish Studies and vice president of Midwest Jewish Studies Association.

Dr. Lynch completed a Ph.D. in Language and Literacy Education from The University of British Columbia and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Michigan State University. She joined FIU in 2017 following an associate professorship position at York University. Her research is published in peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, Reading Psychology, the Journal of Research in Reading, and the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education. She has co-authored two books: Teaching and Learning about Family Literacy and Family Literacy Programs (Routledge), and Literacy: Reading, Writing and Children’s Literature (Oxford University Press). Her research focuses on early literacy, family literacy, and educator professional learning. Jackie is currently involved in a literacy project with diverse families.

Nimo Bokore is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Carleton University. Bokore’s education, research and practice background comprises Neuroscience and Social Work, Migration and Resettlement, Forced Migration, Refugees, Trauma and Transference, Equity and Higher Education, and Poverty and Social Policy. Her current research interests include Mental Health, Resettlement/Integration Barriers and finding new ways for individuals, family or community healing. Bokore is the recipient of the 2014 Hilary M. Weston Scholarship for outstanding efforts and commitment to the study of mental health, and organizes the biennial Somali Studies in Canada colloquiums – most recently in 2021: Somalinimo, Blackness and Belonging in the West.

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Donna Patrick is professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. She has recently completed a Partnership Development Grant (2018-2021) “Mobilizing Nipivut (‘Our Voice’): a radio-based communications partnership for urban Inuit” and finished co-researching a SSHRC-funded project entitled: “Out of Place in Nunalijjuaq: Effecting Social Change with Montreal Inuit through Participatory Action Research (PAR)” (2018). She was also a collaborator on the CIHR Project Grant, “Qanuikkat Siqinimiut? A community-based study of southern Quebec Inuit health and wellbeing” (October 2018-September 2022).

Her most recent Arctic-focused research has involved participatory action research with Inuit in Ottawa and Montreal, which explores Inuit identities, life histories, multi-literacies, and the construction of place in transnational contexts through objects, food, stories, and most recently, community radio. Previous research has also included studies in language politics and policy, social semiotics, and critical literacy studies. Other interests lie in the broader area of Indigeneity and urban Aboriginality in Canada; and the political, social, and cultural aspects of language use, with a focus on language endangerment discourse, language revitalization, and Indigenous languages in Canada. Her 2003 book, Language Politics and Social Interaction in an Inuit Community (Mouton de Gruyter), the edited volume, Language Rights and Language Survival (with Jane Freeland, St. Jerome Press) and a number of published articles and papers examine these issues. She also recently co-edited two Special Issues for the Canadian Modern Language Review (CMLR) with Peter Jacobs (SFU) on “Indigenous Language Learning, Teaching, and Identities”, Vol. 73, Issue 4, November 2017 and Vol. 74, Issue 3, August 2018. Recent papers have examined Inuit-Yupik-Unangan Language maintenance and revitalization and the evolution of Inuktut dictionary-making. She is currently Co-Editor of the CMLR with Michael Zuniga (UQAM).

Dr. Patrick teaches courses in Language, Culture, and Power, Research Design, and courses that focus on Indigeneity, in Canada and the Arctic. She served as President of the Canadian Anthropology Society/Société canadienne d’anthropologie (CASCA) from May 2015 – May 2018 and the Associate Editor of the Canadian Modern Language Review/La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes (CMLR/RCLV) from March 2015-October 2019, before becoming Co-Editor. She has also served on numerous thesis boards at Carleton, Université d’Ottawa, and Trent University.

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Dr. Clinton Beckford is the Vice-President, People, Equity, and Inclusion and a Professor of Geography in the Faculty of Education at the University of Windsor. His research and scholarship focus on sustainable agriculture and food and nutrition security. His key foci include tropical small-scale farming systems, food justice, environmental justice, urban agriculture, poverty, environment, and food and nutrition security, school food programs, and gender dimensions of agriculture and food security. His research occurs within a broad livelihoods’ framework based in equity and social justice. He also does research in education that focus on equity and social justice in education with special interest in the education of vulnerable children and girls.