Associate Fellows

Lisa Kowalchuk received her B.A. in Sociology at McMaster University, her M.A. in Sociology from McGill University, and her Ph.D. in Sociology from York University. She taught for four years at St. Mary’s University in Halifax before joining U of Guelph in July 2004. Her most recent research, funded by SSHRC, looks at the labour conditions of nurses in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and how these have been affected by the post-neoliberal turn in both of these countries’ approaches to health-care policy.  Her past projects have focused on social movements in El Salvador related to land reform and to neoliberal health-care restructuring. Issues of gender justice in the developing country context are another area of interest, and have been a theme of several courses she has taught.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: El Salvador, Central America

Keywords: Social movements, collective action, collective resistance to neoliberal globalization in Central America, gender justice in the developing countries

Professor Landolt received her Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University and joined the department of sociology in 2001. Her research examines the production and reproduction of systems of social exclusion and inequality associated with global migrations. Specific themes include: refugee-migrant political incorporation, precarious work and income insecurity, non-citizenship and precarious legal status. She teaches courses in international migration, immigrant incorporation and transnationalism, ethnicity and racialization, social inequality and qualitative methods.

Professor Landolt’s current SSHRC-funded project (2011-13) examines the ways that the Ontario public education system practices inclusion and exclusion in the context of encounters with precarious status migrants. Questions that organize the research include: What is the role of school board workers (i.e administrators within and outside of specific schools, teachers, guidance councellors, frontline staff) in regulating access to schooling? What are the narratives and rules they invoke to frame their practices? What is the role of actors outside of the school systems (e.g. community advocates, legal aid workers) in negotiating access? What networks and resources do these actors and institutions bring to bear in these negotiations? Mapping the networked encounters between different actors and institutions will reveal how the boundary between citizens and non-citizens is produced and contested.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Latin America and Canada

Keywords: refugee-migrant ,political incorporation, precarious work and income insecurity, non-citizenship and precarious legal status

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Mexico, North America

Keywords: Political sociology, international development, gender, urban policy

Pascal Lupien is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brock University. He holds a PhD in Political Science and an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Guelph, a Master’s in Information Studies (MIS) from the Université de Montréal, and a BA in Politics from McGill University.

Lupien’s book, Citizens’ Power in Latin America: Theory and Practice (SUNY Press, 2018), looks at how local communities use participatory democracy mechanisms to pursue collective social development goals. His research has also been published in journals such as Democratization; Citizenship Studies; Political Science Quarterly; Information, Communication and Society; Social Media + Society; Gender, Place and Culture; and Latin American Perspectives.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Chile

Keywords: Comparative Politics, Democratic Engagement, Citizen Participation, Social Policy, Social Movements and Activism, Indigenous peoples’ politics, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)

Laura Macdonald is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Institute of Political Economy at Carleton University. She has been researching and writing about Latin America and global political economy since 1983. She has published numerous articles in journals and edited collections on such issues as the role of non-governmental organizations in development, global civil society, citizenship struggles in Latin America, Canadian development assistance and the political impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). She has edited four books: The Politics of Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean, Cambridge University Press (with Tina Hilgers, forthcoming); North American in Question: Regional Integration in an Era of Economic Turbulence, University of Toronto Press, 2012 (with Jeffrey Ayres); Contentious Politics in North America, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 (with Jeffrey Ayres); and Post-Neoliberalism in the Americas: Beyond the Washington Consensus?, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 (with Arne Ruckert). She is co-author of Women, Democracy, and Globalization in North America: A Comparative Study.  Palgrave Macmillan, 2006 (with Jane Bayes, Patricia Begne, Laura Gonzalez, Lois Harder, and Mary Hawkesworth), and author of Supporting Civil Society:  The Political Impact of NGO Assistance to Central America, Basingstoke, UK and New York City: Macmillan Press and St. Martin’s Press, 1997. She has been Principal Investigator on four SSHRC research grants: “From Minor Player to Major Actor: Canada’s Role in Latin America,” 2012-2017 (Insight Grant, $379,834); “Social Citizenship in North America,” 2006-2009 (Standard Research Grant $89,000) and “Borders and Bodies:  Canadian and U.S. Immigration and Border Control Policies in the New North America” 2003-2006 (Standard Research Grant, $66,000), and 1993-98, “Economic integration, human rights and civil society:  transnational responses to NAFTA” (Standard Research Grant, $35,000).

Macdonald is also a regular media commentator on issues related to Latin American and North American political economy, and is a member of the McLeod Group (www.mcleodgroup.ca), a group of academics and development professionals working to advance Canadian policy and action in international cooperation and foreign affairs.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Mexico

Keywords: NGOs and development, citizenship, NAFTA

I am a Cultural Anthropologist with special interests in Latin America, development discourses and ethnography, environmentalism, women and gender, feminist research – and teaching undergraduate students! I did research for my PhD in southern Mexico on a Canadian development project, the Calakmul Model Forest. This involved participant observation research with development workers, campesinoleaders, and Yucatec Maya campesinas. I am working on developing a new research project on food, environment and protest that would involve research in Mexico and Canada. I speak Spanish, French and a little Yucatec Maya.

I came to Kwantlen from Mount Royal University in Calgary, and before that the University of Calgary. Over the last decade I have taught courses on Latin America, Anthropology of Gender, Globalization, Indigenous Studies, Ethnographic Writing, Anthropological Research Methods, Anthropological Theory, and Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. I am very excited to be working with students at Kwantlen now. I see understanding of Cultural Anthropology as essential to living in a globalizing world, and encourage my classes to explore the multicultural worlds we live in.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Mexico  and Canada

Keywords: Development, ethnography, environmentalism, women and gender, feminism

Morgan Poteet is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada. His current research interests are in the areas of migration, youth, criminalization, and trauma. He uses qualitative approaches including arts–based methods such as Digital Storytelling and Photovoice to explore the lives of youth from the Central American community in Toronto, and inter–generational dynamics among Salvadorians in Canada and across borders.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Canada, Central America.

Keywords:Migration, youth criminalization, racialization, trauma, identity and belonging.

Josh studies the role language practices have played in the colonization of the Americas. He is the author or coeditor of four books, the most recent Translation and Epistemicide: Racialization of Language in the Americas (U Arizona Press, 2023). He has collaborated on the translation of two books of Latin American philosophy, Heidegger´s Shadow by José Pablo Feinmann (with María Constanza Guzmán; Texas Tech 2016) and Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América by Rodolfo Kusch (with María Lugones; Duke 2010). He also engages in ethnographic and participatory research on structural and institutional violence, race and gender violence, incarceration and life after incarceration.

Country(ies) or Region(s) of Specialization: Latin America, especially Argentina and Colombia

Keywords: Latin American philosophy; translation; epistemic injustice; colonialism; prison abolition; migrant detention; structural violence; race and gender violence