CITY membership offers a range of benefits and opportunities, including access to:
- a thriving, collaborative community engaged in urban research;
- a collegial work and meeting space;
- all City Institute seminar series;
- workshops, symposia, and special events;
- transdisciplinary collaboration among faculty and researchers;
- writing support through peer review groups and writing workshops;
- administrative support in applying for and administering research grants held by the Institute;
- website, communication, knowledge mobilization, and research dissemination support;
- volunteer opportunities;
- the City Institute listserv.
To learn more about the Institute and to meet graduate students with similar interests, reach us on city@yorku.ca.
2025/2026 CITY Institute Graduate Student Affiliates
Aishwarya Bhattacharyya
Email: Aishb@yorku.ca
Program: PhD
Program Name: Human Geography
Department: –
Bio:
Aishwarya comes from Bengal, a region shaped by the history of the colonially imposed partition along what we know as the India-Bangladesh border now. This belonging informs how she sees the world and the work she does. For the past seven years, Aishwarya has worked in the impact sector, focusing on state interventions to address social challenges in emerging markets. Now, as a researcher, she studies how climate change and extreme heat affect miners in small towns, making their jobs even harder and more dangerous. She aims to understand how regulatory frameworks can be improved to protect workers and promote multilevel equities.
Samantha Boyd
Email: samboyd1@yorku.ca
Program: Masters
Program Name: Graduate Programme of Social Anthropology
Department: Anthropology
Bio:
Samantha Boyd is an incoming PhD student in the Graduate Programme of Social Anthropology at York University. Her sub-disciplinary interests are in urban anthropology and, more specifically, the experiences of power, contestation and subversion within place. Having been raised in a social housing project built for veterans in Montréal, Québec, Samantha has always felt a deep connection to the sense of community and pride that comes with affordable public housing and inclusive city design. Her recently completed Masters thesis examined how grassroots arts communities resist state-led urban redevelopment in Singapore.
Hillary Birch
Email: hbirch@yorku.ca
Program: PhD
Program Name: Environmental Studies
Department: Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change
Bio:
Hillary Birch is a PhD Candidate in Environmental Studies in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University, supervised by Professor Roger Keil. She holds a master’s degree in urban governance from Sciences Po, Paris, where she studied the urban governance of Ebola in Monrovia, Liberia. Her PhD explores how projects of global health intersect with processes of urbanization in Lusaka, Zambia, shaping flows of water and waste. She is a Dahdaleh Global Health Graduate Scholar in Planetary Health, supported by a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship and an IDRC International Doctoral Research Award.
Rob Butrym
Email: rbutrym@yorku.ca
Program: PhD
Program Name: Political Science
Department: Department of Politics
Bio:
Rob is a PhD student, whose wide research interests include Political Theory, History of political thought, Canadian Politics, Canadian History, Urban Governance, Planning, and By-Laws. He holds an M.A. in Political Science, a B.A. in History, and a Concurrent Certificate in Urban Studies and Planning (USP) from McMaster University. His academic interests range from radical democratic thinkers like Niccolò Machiavelli and Cornelius Castoriadis to Marxist urban theorists like Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and Neil Smith. His research focuses on physical space and political activism. He has done work on gentrification in Canadian cities and city by-law analysis, particularly in Hamilton, Ontario. He also has experience working with the City of Hamilton and McMaster’s William Ready Division of Archives.
Yuly Chan
Email: yuly@yorku.ca
Program: PhD
Program Name: Sociology
Department: –
Bio:
Yuly Chan is a PhD candidate in Sociology at York. Her research focuses on how states and social movements are decommodifying housing in Europe and North America.
Leonardo Furtado
Email: leofurtadomcf@gmail.com
Program: Masters
Program Name: Geography
Department: EUC
Bio:
Leonardo Furtado is currently a second-year MA candidate in Geography at EUC, starting the PhD in Geography in Fall 2025. Originally from Brazil, he has a background in International Relations and experience in education and research on culture as a tool of soft power. His current research explores LGBTQIA+ migrants in Canadian cities, examining how their emotions shape imagined and real spaces. As a queer immigrant, he seeks to give voice to his community and challenge traditional geographic research paradigms.
Clara Isabel Gomez-Garcia
Email: clara24@yorku.ca
Program: PhD
Program Name: Environmental Studies
Department: Faculty of Environmental Studies and Urban Change
Bio:
Clara Isabel Gomez-Garcia is a second-year Ph.D. student in Environmental Studies at York University. She has a background in Urban Management and Development and has experience in research, consulting, and international cooperation in Bogotá. Her current research focuses on the intersection of care work and social housing production in Bogotá, specifically how women’s care tasks shape dwellings and residential trajectories.
Sophia Ilyniak
Email: silyniak@yorku.ca
Program: PhD
Program Name: Human Geography
Department: Geography
Bio:
Sophia Ilyniak is a PhD candidate in Human Geography at York University. Her research focuses on urbanization, uneven development, and the role of NGOs in rebuilding Ukrainian sub/urban space during wartime. Rooted in radical geography, her work is informed by community organizing experience and critiques neoliberal state reconfigurations.
Kad Mariano
Email: km99@yorku.ca
Program: PhD
Program Name: Political Science
Department: Department of Politics
Bio:
Kad Mariano is a PhD student in the Department of Politics at York University. His research interests include nationalism, memory politics, settler colonialism, and transnationalism. His master’s thesis investigated how Toronto memorializes Indigenous identities, focusing on the Spirit Garden at Nathan Phillips Square. His PhD research compares how Filipinx diasporas in Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg engage in memory work around national reconciliation, linking experiences of colonial oppression in the Philippines with Indigenous struggles in Canada. Kad has presented internationally and is a recipient of the Canadian Graduate Scholarship – Doctoral award.
Jacob Roberts
Email: jacobrob@yorku.ca
Program: Masters
Program Name: Critical Human Geography
Department: Geography
Bio:
Jacob Roberts is an MA student in Critical Human Geography. He studied classical archaeology and geography at Queen's University and worked as an archaeologist. His research explores how the planning of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics contributed to urban neoliberalization and weakened democratic politics. Guided by Jacques Rancière’s political theory, Jacob critically analyzes urban policy and spatial order through a discursive lens, examining how mega-events reshape city landscapes and depoliticize public space.
Farida Rady
Email: frady@yorku.ca
Program: PhD
Program Name: Geography
Department: Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change
Bio:
Farida Rady is an artist, community planner, and PhD student in urban geography, working between Cairo, Toronto, and Abu Dhabi. She holds an MES from York and an HBA from U of T. Her work spans urban governance, housing justice, migration, public memory, and counter-cartographies. Farida has published and exhibited internationally and focuses her research on how legal tools contribute to spatial and legal exclusion of marginalized urban populations in the global north, especially regarding public space and permanent displaceability.
Stefan Treffers
Email: stefanrtreffers@gmail.com
Program: Post-Doc
Program Name: Sociology
Department: Sociology
Bio:
Stefan is a postdoctoral fellow and recent PhD graduate from the Sociology Department at York University. His research focuses on urban governance, housing policy, policing, and urban securitization. He has co-authored several journal articles in Urban Studies, Housing Studies, Journal of Urban Affairs, and the British Journal of Criminology.
Viktoriya Vinik
Email: vikaav@yorku.ca
Program: PhD
Program Name: Politics
Department: LAPS
Bio:
Viktoriya Vinik is a PhD candidate in Political Science at York University. Her dissertation uses historical materialist analysis to examine the Israel-Palestine conflict through the lens of settler colonialism, capitalist urbanization, and the digital platform economy. She theorizes Airbnb as a rent-extraction circuit that contributes to gentrification and displacement. Viktoriya connects platform capitalism to broader processes of spatial dispossession, labor exploitation, and the racialization of housing markets, offering a Marxist critique of the Israeli state’s role in shaping class and urban structures.
Laura Waddell
Email: lwaddell@yorku.ca
Program: PhD
Program Name: Social Anthropology
Department: Anthropology
Bio:
Laura Waddell is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at York University. Her SSHRC-funded research is a school ethnography in southern France, studying how student teachers emotionally navigate their training and state secularism (laïcité) in multicultural classrooms. She is also an instructor for the Cross-Campus Capstone Classroom (C4) and works on initiatives that support accessible and equitable higher education. Laura has taught in both Canada and France and contributes as a writer/researcher to heritage and education projects like Camerise.
Brian Waters
Email: brianmahayie@gmail.com
Program: PhD
Program Name: Geography
Department: Urban and Environmental Change
Bio:
Brian Waters is a Fulbright scholar pursuing his PhD in Geography at York University. He holds Bachelor’s and dual Master’s degrees in Urban Planning and Agricultural Economics. His research focuses on decentralized water sources in the global south and uses participatory action research to explore ownership, access, and administration of water. Brian has led multiple development studies on urban transport, energy, and agriculture. He is committed to collaboration and aims to influence policy through evidence-based approaches.