Community-based Research

Story

From 2012 to 2018, I undertook a long-term project exploring social inclusion and spatial justice in South Africa.

My doctoral research explored the narrative accounts of participants living in this temporary and transient community.

These stories convey the nuanced and complex ways in which people make sense of home and belonging in a context shaped by dislocation, dispossession, violence and racial divides, and more recently by widening socio-economic disparities and mass migration.

A monograph of this work was published by Daylight Books in June 2019 to coincide with the 25th Anniversary of South Africa’s first open election.

Homelands is a meditation on history, place, and identity — and the way our understandings of ourselves are constructed and refashioned through the stories we tell about our lives and our homes.

Empathy

From 2020 to 2022, I stewarded a collaborative research project exploring the needs, aspirations, and experiences of ethnocultural families with young children (0 to 5 years) in community-based Early Learning and Child Care in Edmonton.

The project was a partnership with the Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative, the Evaluation Capacity Network (University of Alberta), and the Edmonton Council for Early Learning and Care.

Journeys through Early Learning and Child Care combined traditional research methods (focus groups and interviews) with human-centred design approaches (empathy mapping and journey mapping) to answer the following questions:

1) What are the lived experiences of ethnocultural families as they attempt to access and receive early learning and childcare in Edmonton?

2) What assets, cultural resources, and ways of knowing can be harnessed to improve the system?

3) What opportunities exist to shift approaches and practices and catalyze positive change?

Voice

I have extensive experience as a documentary photography focusing on social justice issues in Canada and abroad {See: PHOTOGRAPHY].

Over the past several years, I have enriched my photographic practice by using photovoice, digital storytelling, and arts-based methods to expand the possibilities for critical reflection, dialogue, and deliberation.

I have facilitated workshops employing these methods in Kenya, Tanzania, Pakistan, Haiti, Sweden, South Africa, and the USA.

These community-based projects have animated the community conversations on poverty, HIV/AIDS, childhood injury, gender equity, and social inclusion.

Equity

In 2023, I helped develop a scorecard to assess the appropriateness of HIV services provided to African, Caribbean, and Black communities in Canada.

In 2020, I supported a research project in Edmonton to develop primary care pathways for individuals experiencing addiction. to methamphetamines.

The project built on my experience undertaking ethnographic research on how socio-cultural factors affect health decision-making among individuals experiencing homelessness in Edmonton’s inner city.

Prior to this, I worked for several years with Indigenous communities to address the systemic barriers they are facing to healthcare, education, and housing.

A highlight included drafting the public report for the groundbreaking Edmonton Urban Aboriginal Dialogue — a yearlong project to engage Indigenous Peoples in Alberta’s capital and thereby reframe the historical relationship between the City and urban Indigenous citizens.