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Conducting interdisciplinary, qualitative research to explore the everyday practices, spaces, and relationships of care.

Art in a Just Recovery Mural, co-created by over 70 community members and lead artist, Mel Schambach

Art in a Just Recovery

Art in a Just Recovery is a local community arts project that explores community care in the context of our ongoing pandemic recovery in Guelph, Ontario. Through a series of online and in-person workshops facilitated by Art Not Shame, Social Artist Mel Schambach, and the Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition, participants created individual art pieces that form a large-scale mural. Alongside the mural project is an accompanying community-based research project, building knowledge about community care and collective artmaking.


*Image of completed project mural, co-created by Lead Artist Mel Schambach and 70 community members. For a full list of community artists and to learn more see Art Not Shame's website: click here to learn more

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Knowledge building, community knowledge, community care, collective artmaking, stories

The spaces, practices, and experiences of CareMongering

The first CareMongering Facebook group was created in Toronto, Canada in early March 2020, as a community-based response to COVID-19. The goal of the group was to counteract fear(mongering) with care(mongering) and to organize at the local level to ensure all community members could access basic necessities, services, and resources during the pandemic. Our research considers this movement from a feminist perspective, tracing the spread of CareMongering, how it is practiced at a local level, and the experiences of CareMongering group members and organizers.

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CareMongering, critical community care, mutual aid, care work, emotional labour, COVID-19

Examining the social practice of care in communities 

My PhD in Social Practice and Transformational Change at the University of Guelph explores the social practice of care in communities.

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social practice, caring communities, qualitative methodologies, community-engaged research, Canada

Everyday, lived experiences of social interventions in the Global South

Since 2018, I have been working as a research associate in the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo where I conduct qualitative data analysis and literature reviews to explore how individuals and communities in the Global South are impacted by social interventions in the context of migration, climate change, and food insecurity 

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conditional cash transfers, randomized control trials, migration, climate change, food security, livelihoods, Philippines, Honduras

The social impact of a local non-profit organization

For over five years I was a board member at 10C, a non-profit organization in Guelph Ontario working to foster meaningful social change. During this time I sat on the Social Impact sub-committee which is focused on measuring the social impact of the organization.

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indicators, social impact measurement, community development, SDGs, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Community-based environmental and health monitoring in the North

From 2017-2019 I was a research associate with the Climate Change and Global Health Research Group (CCGHRG) based in the Population Medicine Department at the University of Guelph and the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta. I worked with an interdisciplinary team of researchers to explore the implementation of a community-based monitoring program to monitor the impacts of climate change on Inuit wellbeing in Northern Canada.

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community-based monitoring, Inuit-led research, climate change, mental health and wellbeing, Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada

Indigenous health adaptations to climate change

As a research associate with the CCGHRG, I also supported faculty and students to conduct research on Indigenous health adaptations to climate change. For example, I spent 3 weeks in Labrador conducting semi-structured interviews for a research-documentary exploring the impacts of the declining caribou population on Inuit wellbeing in Rigolet, Nunatsiavut. Research team members worked on a wide range of topics related to climate change and global health in Northern Canada, Peru, and Uganda.

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IHACC, adaptations, Indigenous research, climate change, global health, literature reviews, qualitative data collection, the North, Canada, Peru, Uganda

Shaping the volunteer tourist bubble: Gendered experiences of volunteer tourists

In 2017, I graduated with an MA in Geography and International Development from the University of Guelph. My thesis explored the gendered experiences of volunteer tourists from a feminist perspective. I conducted semi-structured interviews with former volunteer tourists as well as participant observation of a 2-week long volunteer trip in Guatemala. 

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volunteer tourism, feminist analysis, gendered and racialized subjectivities, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, Canada, Guatemala

Community engaged scholarship and local community development

During my graduate degree, I worked as a research intern with the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute. As a research intern I worked closely with community partners to design research projects to meet community-identified research needs. I used semi-structured interviews with municipal workers to research the local ‘sharing economy’ and administered a needs assessment for a non-profit organization focused on food security.

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community-engaged scholarship, applied research, semi-structured interviews, sharing economy, food security, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

The impacts of cause-related marketing on international development 

During my Bachelor of Arts Honours degree in International Development at the University of Guelph (2010-2014), I worked as a research assistant exploring ethical consumption's implications for international development. I used discourse and content analysis, an environmental scan and semi-structured interviews with founders of social enterprises to explore how ethical consumption influences perceptions of international development issues.

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ethical consumption, cause-related marketing, international development, social enterprises, Global North​

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