CRISIS URBANISMs | Public geographies | Radical pedagogies

SHORT BIO: I am a Human Geographer and a widely published nonfiction writer/journalist working between Vancouver, Canada and Paris, France. My work focuses on public politics and policy solutions (and failures) related to “urban crises” engendered by the presence of marginalized people who depend on public space. My research is intended both to illuminate the obstacles encountered through State policies, and to amplify and support poor peoples’ struggles to live and thrive in so-called inclusive, sustainability-obsessed “world cities” like Vancouver and Paris. I was postdoctoral researcher at the Lab'URBA at Université Paris-Est Créteil in Paris, France from 2022-2024. I defended my doctoral thesis, Welcome to the Bubble? Crisis and care at the crossroads of the Parisian “migration crisis” in December 2022 in the Geography Department at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. My Ph.D. research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Articles and chapters from this work have been published in scholarly journals, edited book collections and general-interest publications. I am currently at work on 2 book projects stemming from this research that I am developing through fieldwork and community-led research in Paris and Vancouver in 2023/2024. I am also a member of the editorial collective of the Radical Housing Journal (since December 2022) and have recently, with comrades in France and in Canada, formed a research group called Collectif SoCS Collective (since 2021).

I teach postsecondary courses in nonfiction writing, Geography and Urban Studies at several postsecondary institutions. Previously, from 2008-2014, I was faculty and program curriculum developer at Concordia University’s Centre for Continuing Education, where I developed and taught creative nonfiction and community-engaged journalism courses in their Creative Writing, Communications and Journalism program. I have been a freelance writer since 1999, and my work has been published and broadcast by many local, Canadian and international publications including National Geographic, The Walrus, the Globe and Mail, the Vancouver Sun, the Georgia Straight, Fast Company, the CBC and the National Film Board of Canada. I was lead film critic, Contributing Editor, and a reporter at Montreal’s alternative alt-weekly Hour Magazine from 2000-2011 (RIP).

I have received a number of professional and scholarly awards including a medal in social journalism at the National Magazine Awards and the Canada Council for the Arts’ Merit Grant for Nonfiction Writers. I am a past fellow of the Banff Centre’s Literary Journalism program, the Antipode Foundation’s Institute for the Geographies of Justice, and the Relational Poverty Network. I hold an M.A. in Media Studies from Concordia University (2007), and a B.A. in Communications (Film Production) and English Literature from Concordia University (1997).