Our Team - Park Perceptions and Racialized Realities

Acknowledgements

This research project took place in two neighbourhoods in Toronto, from the Mohawk word Tkaronto. This land has been care taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Huron-Wendat, and the current treaty holders, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Learn more at https://native-land.ca. This land is home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to live, collaborate, play, and engage in relationship on and with this land and with each other. Notably, given the project’s focus on greenspaces, we acknowledge the history of colonization and ongoing impacts of colonialism.

Principal Investigators

Nadha Hassen received her PhD in Environmental Studies at York University in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change. She has a Master of Public Health from the University of Toronto, specializing in Social and Behavioural Health Sciences. Her work explores health equity in different environments, bridges research, policy and practice and takes an interdisciplinary, community-engaged approach with a focus on intersectional anti-racism. Park Perceptions and Racialized Realities is part of Nadha Hassen's doctoral work and is an interdisciplinary community-engaged research project that uses photovoice and photo elicitation. Her doctoral supervisor was Dr Sarah Flicker.

Sarah Flicker is a York Research Chair in Community-Based Participatory Research and Full Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. She is engaged in an exciting program of research that focuses on the engagement of youth and other actors in environmental, sexual and reproductive justice. More broadly, she is interested in community-based participatory methodologies and has published in the areas of health promotion, sexuality, ethics, decolonizing methodologies, participatory visual methods and community-based participatory research methods. Her research has informed policy at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.

Community Partners and Collaborators

We’d like to recognize and thank all the resident photographers who participated in the project and generously shared their time and insights. A warm thank you to our working group of community members who engaged in thoughtful discussion and analysis to inform this report, including Caitlin Arizala, Constance Boakye, Isatu Barrie, Minakshi Das, Darryl D’Souza, A.D., Josephine Grey, Amal Kanafani, Ayesha Khan, Sayem Khan, Priscilla Souza, Vino and others who wish to remain anonymous.

Community Research Advisory Group: Sincere thanks to everyone who supported this project in various ways including Clara Stewart-Robertson, Minaz Asani-Kanji, Janet Rodriguez (she/elle/ella), Zoi de la Peña and Deluxson Yogarajah. This project was done in collaboration with Greenchange, Jane/Finch Centre and the St. James Town Community Co-operative.

Research Assistants

Anjalee Srinivasan, Ralph Dizon, Reece Rabanal.

Graphic design for the community report by Elika Zamani | Portfolio

Funding support generously provided by the Jane/Finch Centre, York University-TD Community Engagement Centre Catalyst Grant and York University.