Graduate Students
Megan AikenDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science (Canadian and Comparative Politics) Despite a coalition of external actors like advocacy organizations, the media, and even some policing bodies, why is the current Canadian federal government resistant to pursuing transformative change to combat the opioid crisis? My thesis research contends that one root cause of inaction is the illicit drug policy regime that prizes carceral punishment; to complicate matters, this policy regime is founded upon and maintained through a discursive formation that targets populations deemed dispensable or unworthy of being part of Canadian society. This discursive formation not only subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) underwrote decades of increasingly harsher punitive measures for both minor drug offences and trafficking offences, but also became an integral social rule governing citizenship, informed Canada’s pursuit of international recognition of national sovereignty, and concealed the looming danger of a largely unregulated “good drug” industry that eventually targeted populations deemed indispensable and worthy. Website: https://www.meganaiken.com/ |
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Abdullah AlzubaidiDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science (Canadian and Comparative Politics) The research that I am currently undertaking aims to advance literature on mediated deliberation, referendums, and electoral system change by investigating the coverage provided by major print media publications in both the Oceanic country of New Zealand leading-into their 1992 and 1993 electoral reform referendums, and the Pacific Canadian province of British Columbia before electoral reform referendums that occurred there in 2005 and 2009. This research encompasses several of my areas of research interest, including deliberative democracy, mediated deliberation, the mass media, referendums, electoral reform, and electoral system change. |
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Meagan AuerDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science (Gender and Politics; International Relations) Meagan studies the politics of higher education under the supervision of Dr. Rob Aitken. Her interests include graduate education, teaching & pedagogy, program design & delivery, and academic governance. Her dissertation research explores continuity and change in the crisis narratives surrounding higher education. She approaches her research through theories such as affect, neoliberalism, and discipline.
Website: https://meaganauer.com/ |
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Kyle BeattieDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science My doctoral dissertation focuses on the field of corruption studies. Whereas most of the discipline of corruption studies has largely focused on developing world corruption, I am interested in the types of corruption that emanate from the developed world. These forms of corruption, which are often much more sophisticated, include illegal wars, economic sanctions, fiat currency manipulation, media control and manipulation of public opinion, and the UN veto vote, among others. I am particularly interested in developing new measurements of corruption using my knowledge of computer programming and large quantitative datasets combined with the Islamic notion of fasad (corruption) as a basis from which to define the term. I speak, write, and/or research in English, Spanish, and Arabic.
Website: http://kylebeattie.dx.am/ |
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Renée Beausoleil (McBeth)Doctor of Philosophy - Political Science Dissertation title: Home in the city: Practical governance for urban housing and support services.
My research is focused on co-creating governance resources with individuals connected to urban housing and support services. Employing a feminist decolonial analysis within a community-engaged governance process, this project articulates principles and processes that can assist service organizations and community members in collaborating across differences to address inequity in downtown communities. Through this deeply relational fieldwork, my dissertation introduces and analyses a “practical governance” methodology as a community governance strategy and a theory of political relations.
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Margot R. ChallbornDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science Website: https://www.margotchallborn.com/ |
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Laticia ChapmanDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science (Political Theory and Canadian Politics) My research has been somewhat unsettled and far-ranging, from early modern political thought to literary criticism. From my Masters research, I have an interest in New Materialism, post-colonialism, and poststructuralism. More recently, I have been captivated by Hannah Arendt’s theorization of political community and political space. My dissertation will look at rural libraries in Canada as political spaces, and consider reading as a practice both embedded in and alternative to state-building in 20th century Canada. |
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Telisa CourtneyDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science Telisa's research investigates the utility of theatre for development in the reintegration of demobilised child soldiers, and post-conflict reconciliation more broadly. Telisa's geographical interest is in Central and East Africa, specifically Congo and South Sudan. They have done previous research in Kenya and Uganda in their undergrad and masters degree. |
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Chadwick (Chad) CowieDoctor of Philosophy: Political Science (Canadian and Comparative Politics) |
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Dax D'OrazioDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science My project asks a broad question: how are our ideas about freedom of speech changing in the contemporary university? On the one hand, universities are assumed to be bastions of free intellectual inquiry, where difficult and controversial issues can and should be discussed. On the other hand, universities have been accounting for their exclusionary nature and perhaps more than ever recognize that the pursuit of knowledge is not morally neutral. Engaging with a range of political theory, the project seeks to map the different rationales for speech restriction to understand how and why certain claims of harm and victimhood are (in) validated through political contestation. It is grounded by three case studies that each represent different types of contestation on contemporary university campuses: student activist groups, controversial professors, and political pundits. |
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Anas FassihDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science (International Relations, Comparative Politics)
Supervisor: Dr. Mojtaba Mahdavi
My broad research interests fall at the nexus between international relations and comparative politics with a chief emphasis on third world security, political economy of energy, postcolonial analysis, and global North-South energy relationships (post-petroleum) as either political dependence, independence or both. In my PhD thesis, I aim to unravel the complexity of how energy systems, petroleum or solar (or hydroelectric), concentrate rather than disperse power and shape particular kinds of state's sovereignty in the Twenty-first century. |
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Stacey HaugenDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science
Supervisors: Dr. Roger Epp & Dr. Sandra Rein
My research examines the challenges and benefits of refugee resettlement and integration in rural communities in Canada and Europe. Website: www.linkedin.com/in/stacey-haugen-b96501173 |
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Noelle JaipaulDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science
Supervisor: Cressida Heyes
Noelle's research is focused on the political and ethical challenges and opportunities presented by outer space exploration. In particular, Noelle's research aims to develop a deeper understanding of the Overview Effect in relation to its utility in cosmopolitan theory, and to then assess whether social justice behaviours can be enhanced through creative imitation or abstraction of the Overview Effect. |
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Danika Jorgensen-SkakumDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science
Supervisor: Dr. David Kahane
Danika is a Michif scholar whose work focuses primarily on the environmental and algorithmic entanglements of politics in Alberta. Danika also writes on (re)composition, death, and what it means to become in the context of the so-called Anthropocene. She has collaborated on a research-creation project with Jessie Beier, THE FUTURE OF FOOD IS ______ since 2017. |
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Ehsan KashfiDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science
Supervisor: Dr. Mojtaba Mahdavi
My research is about the manifold state-sponsored attempts to reconstruct Shia identity in the post-revolutionary Iran, seeking to delineate the discursive processes and institutions through which Shi'ism is evoked and restored to articulate a hegemonic narrative of identity, securing political support and cementing legitimacy. |
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Emrah KeskinDoctor of Philosophy - International Relations My current research focuses on the impact of mental health trauma on post-conflict reconciliation. |
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William KujalaDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science
Supervisor: Dr Catherine Kellogg
My research is at the boundary between political theory and international relations. My PhD project examines how revolutionary Black and anticolonial internationalisms in the US understood North America's unique situation in the era of decolonization. Other research interests include: dialectical political thought, empire and race in IR, and theories and critiques of sovereignty. |
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Samantha PapuhaDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science
Supervisor: Dr. Lori Thorlakson
Through comparative visual discourse analysis, my work addresses constructions of refugee victimhood in Canadian and Italian television news. I am particularly interested in addressing how national media environments impact both who is seen as a deserving victim, and the public's later support for refugee resettlement initiatives. |
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Rissa-Wilissa ReistDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science (Gender and Politics and Canadian Politics)
Supervisor: Dr. Linda Trimble
Brief description of work: My dissertation research explores how political humour responds to gendered and racialized forms of violence in contemporary Canada. Using a combination of critical discourse analysis and activity-based focus groups, my methodology disaggregates humour into two components: the meanings communicated by humour and the reception of it by audiences. Through this research, my goal is to understand how political humour in Canada reinforces and/or contests gendered and racialized hierarchies by marking some acts of violence normal and humorous while others as unacceptable. |
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Daisy RaphaelDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science(Gender and Politics and Canadian Politics) Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar (2013) Supervisor: Dr. Lois Harder Title: Feeling Canadian: Affect, Citizenship, and Government in Canada My research explores concepts of citizenship and nation in contemporary Canada through the lens of affect theory. Examining national narratives and origin myths under Harper and Trudeau, I want to trace the ways in which our relationships to the nation are governed via our feelings, whether of belonging or exclusion, for instance. |
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Geoff SalomonsDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science Website: geoffsalomons.wordpress.com |
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Elise SammonsDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science |
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Luke SandleDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science My work lies in the fields of political ontology, continental political thought and radical democratic theory. I am writing my dissertation on the ontological claims found in the thought of Hannah Arendt and Alain Badiou. My argument is that the use of the terms ‘natality’ (Arendt) and ‘fidelity’ (Badiou) to theorize political subjectivity and political action represent a methodological exemplarity when it comes to work on the philosophy of the political. I thus oppose the work of Arendt and Badiou to a wide swathe of authors who have also claimed to express the fundamental logic of politics, such as Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Jean-Luc Nancy, Giorgio Agamben, and Jacques Rancière. |
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Doctor of Philosophy - Political Science Broadly interested in social science methodologies, I have been focusing on quantitative methods & automated textual analysis. My doctoral research looks at the carbon tax as a climate mitigation policy from a perspective of political communications and policy design. |
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Noureddin ZaamoutDoctor of Philosophy - Political Science I am a PhD candidate in political science, specializing in comparative politics and international relations. My research examines how conflict changes the space for pluralist ideas and projects in societies undergoing conflict, focusing on Syria as a case study.
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David BaxterMaster of Arts - Political Science
Supervisor: Dr. Fiona Nicoll
Using my background as an academic librarian, I study the political economy of the production of knowledge about gambling and problem gambling. My project focuses on comparing gambling research published in academic journals and books to gambling evidence produced as "grey literature", such as government publications, think tank reports, and case law. |
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Alicia BednarskiMaster of Arts - Political Science
Supervisor: Dr. Yasmeen Abu-Laban
My research interests include the politics of gender, race, migration, and citizenship. For my thesis research, I am examining political and news media rhetoric surrounding the alleged practice of foreign women coming to Canada to give birth and contextualizing these discourses within gendered and racialized notions of what Canadian citizenship should look like. |
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Sagnik GuhaMaster of Arts - Political Science
Supervisor: Dr. Greg Anderson
My research interests largely relate to the field of International Relations and International Political Economy. I am interested in the discourse surrounding global development and institutions of global governance. Specifically, I am interested in studying the impact of these institutions on the global South (particularly Asia) and examining shifts in developmental paradigms concurrent to the rise of India, China and the dynamic geopolitics of Asia. Understanding the complex interplay of factors underlying the interactions of these emerging economies with the 'old order' of the 20th century forms an important part of my research interests. |
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Sayeh YousefiMaster of Arts - Political Science Course-Based
Supervisor: Dr. Siobhan Byrne
I am researching the influence of political advisors on political decision-making, looking specificaly at former U.S. Presidents. |
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Melanie DeneMaster of Arts in Policy Science My interests are how legislative policies impact Indienous women in on/off reserve communities. |
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Amissa JablonskiMaster of Arts in Policy Studies |
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Justine KeeferMaster of Arts in Policy Studies Focusing research and practicum work on the use of the duty to consult by industry in Alberta as it impacts Indienous communities. This includes a specific focus on potential impacts of the new coal policy, as well as Canada's new guidelines under IAAC. |
keefer@ualberta.ca |
