Our Alumni

Adam King is an Assistant Professor in the Labour Studies Program at the University of Manitoba. He has also worked as a Senior Researcher in the Social and Economic Policy Department of the Canadian Labour Congress. Adam earned a PhD in sociology from York in 2019.

Albert is currently the NBHRF Research Chair in Community Health and Aging and Associate Professor in Gerontology at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick. This position allows him time to design his own research, which currently explores ways of understanding health that include aging and mortality. He is also bringing his research into his teaching, designing courses on aging and health that focus on love and relationships and courses on contemplative approaches to aging that explore yoga, mindfulness and their transformative potential.

Albert’s time at York Sociology has profoundly shaped his career. He had good fun and learned a lot. Many, maybe all of his sociological theory friends, who would gather at the pub after class have gone on to hold great positions. They continue to be supportive friends and colleagues. After finishing his doctorate Albert went on to hold several postdocs through York, under the magnificent supervision of Pat Armstrong. Almost all of it was done while travelling the world, beaches, back packs, conversations, volcanoes, ashraming, big and small cities, getting lost, being found, 3am project skype meetings, learning, writing, publishing…and all that experience grounded by his time at York and woven through his work.

Alejandro Campos-Garcia defended his dissertation in 2023, under the supervision of Professor Radhika Mongia.

He is currently the Associate Director if Human Rights and Accessibility at Royal Roads University, in British Columbia. His role includes overseeing the administrative, research and educational tasks, ensuring that Royal Roads University is a space for learning and work guided by accessibility, and respect for human rights. In his three years in the position, Alejandro has championed the adoption and activation of capacity-building, communication, and data governance strategic plans and proposed a new system of governance to ensure the success and sustainability of the accessibility and human rights agenda. He has also developed the strategy for the organization of events and drafted baseline policies.

Alejandro has devoted his scholarship and practice to the study of human rights regimes, policy and normative developments in both domestic and international arenas. His publications examine how international regimes have influenced human rights statements, doctrines, knowledge forms, and models of institutional and normative building in concrete local spaces.

Born in Havana, Alejandro is a person of African descent. His intimate exposure to social injustice has underpinned his commitment to interrogating how identity and social status can inform exclusion and imagining compassionate and community-based paths for overcoming these issues.

Alejandro has two kids and resides in the city of Victoria, British Columbia.

Dr. Andie Noack is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University. York's Graduate Program in Sociology was a great place to start their career – they had the opportunity to work with many supportive faculty, honed their teaching skills as a TA, and developed their quantitative research skills working at the Institute for Social Research.

Azar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University. She primarily studies the racial, gendered, sexual, economic and linguistic politics of state-controlled refugee protection. She completed both her MA and PhD in the graduate programs in sociology at York University. The strong culture of critical thought and creative scholarship in these programs deeply shaped her trajectory as a scholar, and in her years in the Program she benefited greatly from the exceptional guidance and mentorship of several faculty members, particularly Professor Radhika Mongia. Colleagues and classmates, whether in her own cohort or a few years before or after, also significantly shaped her experience, and she has remained in contact with many of them.

Cheryl is currently a Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at Toronto Metropolitan University. She established her two fields of scholarly expertise, environmental justice and racialization, as a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Program in Sociology at York University (Ph.D. 2001) by working with innovative professors. There she also met many of the colleagues she is fortunate to co-create and collaborate with regularly.

In 2008, David applied to only one program for his doctoral studies: the PhD program in sociology at York University. He couldn’t think of a better fit and had no Plan B. Luckily, he was admitted, and it didn’t disappoint! David was a student in the program from 2009 to 2015 and he truly enjoyed it. He remembers finding the seminars challenging and stimulating (in particular, Hyun Ok Park’s and Carmela Murdocca’s seminars hurt his brain and left him reflecting all day). His fellow students were very strong and engaging, and thinking together was a treat.

David is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa where he teaches and conducts research on the sociolegal regulation of immigration, the intersections of immigration law and criminal law, nationalism and racism. Anyone reading his work or taking his classes can guess that David is a York alumni, and sees the impact that Anna Pratt, Ratiba Hadj-Moussa, Luin Goldring, Radhika Mongia (to name just a few) have had on his thinking. It was an excellent program and David is proud to say he trained here.

Dr. Diego Llovet is a behavioral scientist with expertise in applied qualitative health research. He is an Assistant Professor in the Health Services Research graduate program at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, where he co-teaches the Introduction to Qualitative Methods for Health Services and Policy Research course. He is also the Behavioral Scientist for the Cancer Screening Unit at Ontario Health (Cancer Care Ontario), where he conducts research to help inform decisions regarding the design and improvement of Ontario’s organized screening programs for colorectal, cervical, lung and breast cancer. As a researcher, he works closely with policy makers, fellow scientists and other stakeholders to ensure project alignment with cancer system priorities and to maximize uptake of research findings among knowledge users. Dr. Llovet’s primary research areas include public health communication as a tool for behavior change, and the use of audit and feedback interventions to support clinical practice improvement. While in the sociology graduate program at York University, Dr. Llovet was supervised by Dr. Alan Blum.

Dina Taha is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Community-Based Research (CCBR), a non-profit research consulting organization that works in partnership with community organizations to conduct community-driven research that empowers marginalized communities and promotes social justice.

Dina earned her PhD degree in sociology from York University in October 2021. Her research interests lie in the intersection of forced migration, gender, and decolonizing methodologies. Her dissertation, titled "Marriage for Refuge," delves into the survival mechanisms of female Syrian refugees in Egypt.

Prior to joining CCBR, Dina worked as a Knowledge Mobilization Specialist at LA&PS at York. She is also a research affiliate with the Center for Refugee Studies where she continues to support the Refugee Research Network as a Knowledge Mobilization consultant. Dina is an active member of Research Impact Canada community of practice.

Dwaine Plaza is a proud alumnus of York University, completing in 1996 a Ph.D. in sociology. Since 1997 he has worked at Oregon State University (OSU). In 2012 he was promoted to Professor of Sociology in the School of Public Policy. He has written extensively on the topic of Caribbean migration within the international diaspora. His publications have focused on migration and settlement practices, second generation acculturation, cultural celebrations, and immigration policy in Canada. Over the past fifteen years he has been (Co-PI or Senior Research Personnel) on National Science Foundation funded research that totals over $23.5 million dollars. In 2014 he was elected President of the Caribbean Studies Association and he currently serves as treasurer for the group. Dwaine served as Associate Dean in the College of Liberal Arts from 2016 to 2018, where he worked to advance student and faculty success. In 2020-2021, he was elected President of the Oregon State University Faculty Senate. In 2021-2022 he was elected as the PAC 12 Academic Leadership Coalition President. In 2023, he was elected to lead the Pacific Sociological Association as its President for 2024. In 2022, Dwaine won the very prestigious Richard Bressler Senior Faculty teaching award at OSU.

Erin Steuter graduated from York University in 1998 with a PhD in sociology. Her PhD dissertation examined the monopoly ownership of the news media in New Brunswick and was supervised by Dr. Ray Morris who was wonderfully supportive. The Graduate Program in Sociology at York introduced an exciting array of new theories and concepts that continue to be relevant to social analysis to this day. In particular, the program had a clear commitment to social justice which enabled Erin to focus her research on the important role of the news media in a democratic society. She is currently Professor of Sociology at Mount Allison University where she teaches undergraduate students and studies critical media analysis and ideological representations in news and popular culture. Recipient of multiple awards for her teaching and research, she is the author of three books about the media and the war on terror including Pop Culture Goes to War: Enlisting and Resisting Militarism in the War on Terror. She recently published a graphic novel about fake news entitled Won't Get Fooled Again: A Graphic Guide to Fake News and regularly offers workshops for schools and community groups that engage the public in contemporary media literacy issues.

Giselle is the Assistant Professor of Black Studies in Education at the University of Alberta, where she teaches in the Social Justice and International Studies in Education graduate specialization and the Bachelor of Education program.

Her award-winning research seeks to understand how colonialism, racial capitalism, white supremacy, and modernity operate globally and are implicated in the ongoing (mis)education of Black people. To that end, she is particularly concerned with how anti-Black racism in its various iterations, lack of accessibility, under resourcing, and curricular deficits impede on holistic learning for Black school-aged children and youth and diasporic groups in both local and transnational contexts. She is also interested in the ways in which Black motherwork is deployed in school settings and in other sites of learning to resist these social maladies, whilst transmitting ethics of love, care, and concern.

During her time as a PhD student in York’s Graduate Program in Sociology, her work at the nexus of critical studies in the Sociologies of Race, Education, Gender, Diaspora, and International Development, allowed her to engage with, and learn from, scholars whose research and pedagogy have deeply influenced her own. Moreover, the theoretical and methodological training were rigorous and laid the requisite framework for intellectual growth and curiosity.

Gül Çalışkan is an Associate Professor of Global Sociology at St. Thomas University on the traditional and unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik, (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada). She received her PhD in 2012. Gül joined the Department of Sociology at St. Thomas University in July 2013. Her research and teaching focus on the broad areas of citizenship (as a social practice) and global social justice within global and transnational sociology. Postcolonial Studies informs her research and teaching.

Gül’s scholarship engages in postcolonial, feminist, and critical race literatures, and in narrative inquiry to examine the relations between global processes and everyday realities. She has conducted international migration research in Berlin and Fredericton, and has done an exploratory study of the NB Provincial Nominee Program. She is also a founding member of No One Is Illegal Fredericton, a migrant justice group engaged in grassroots outreach activities. Through her activism, she has established meaningful connections with community organizers and marginalized communities. She is the editor of Gendering Globalization, Globalizing Gender: Postcolonial Perspectives (2020; https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gendering-globalization-globalizing-gender-9780199030729?cc=ca&lang=en&) Gül’s latest publication Forging Diasporic Citizenship: Narratives from German-Born Turkish Ausländer (https://www.ubcpress.ca/forging-diasporic-citizenship, 2023) examines how Turkish diasporic people experience citizenship in Germany. Gül received a New Brunswick Innovation Fund from the Social Innovation Research Fund in 2019 and SSHRC-PEG grant in 2022 for the Promise of Home project (https://wp.stu.ca/promiseofhome/), a narrative based community action research.

Gül has gained extensive experience in undergraduate mentorship in honours thesis, research, student conference presentation, and co-publication. More recently, her thesis or research supervision has included graduate students. Gül teaches Introduction to Sociology; Sociology of Globalization; Globalization and Gender; Race, Racialization and Indigeneity; Orientalism and Islamophobia; International Migration; Sociological Theory; Qualitative Research.

Currently residing in Baltimore, Heather Hax is a lecturer at sociology at Towson University. Her work focuses on prefigurative anti-capitalist movements. Specifically, she studies the role that worker cooperatives play in this transformation. She is a board member of the Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy (BRED) which is a grassroots organization that works towards building a more equitable and democratic local economy and is working on environmental justice campaigns in solidarity with the South Baltimore Community Land Trust (SBCLT), a community led organization working to create permanently affordable housing, development without displacement, and zero waste in Baltimore. She is cofounder of Baltimore Yoga Studies, an Ashtanga yoga program working in collaboration with Guardian Baltimore - a nonprofit that provides free jiu jitsu to area youth.

Ian is an Associate Professor of sociology and Chair of the Sociology, Egyptology and Anthropology Department at the American University in Cairo. He is also the Principal Investigator of Extimacies: Critical Theory from the Global South, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation 30th anniversary grant. In this role, Ian directs a global team of co-investigators examining how critical theory, an intellectual movement traditionally associated with European and North American cultures of thought, is received, transformed, contested, adapted, and put into dialogue with various cultures of critique situated in the Global South. His publications have engaged with questions of the nation, identity, religion, memory, fantasy and political subjectivity through the use of continental social thought and psychoanalytic theory. His monograph, Nation, Crisis and Reproduction: Religion and National Identity in Québec, explores moments through which national identity, and consequently, the nation are reconstituted and reproduced.

Ian’s experiences in the doctoral program in sociology at York University exposed him to a wide variety of sociological and interdisciplinary approaches and research projects. While providing him with a firm grounding in sociological theory and methods, the program also allowed him the space to creatively explore within and beyond disciplinary boundaries, and to develop as a researcher.

Jade Da Costa is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Guelph, in affiliation with Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice and The Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition. They are also an active community organizer and knowledge mobilizer across Central Southern Ontario. To learn more about their work, visit their professional website at: jadecrimson.com. Jade earned a PhD in sociology from York in 2023.

Jarrett Rose is an Assistant Professor at SUNY Polytechnic in the Community and Behavioral Program and the Department of Sociology. Using cultural and social-psychological frameworks, he studies how therapeutic communities are created in psychedelic-assisted therapy and how social and emotional connection and group dynamics impact trauma reduction, healing, and self-transformation. Dr. Rose also works in the field of global health, participating in an interdisciplinary, international team of researchers studying the social, political, and postcolonial factors influencing the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak and response in West Africa.

Dr. Jasmin Hristov is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Guelph Institute of Development Studies. Her research expertise is in the areas of development and conflict, political violence, non-state armed groups, economic globalization, agrarian movements, and gender violence. Dr. Hristov is presently the principal investigator for the SSHRC-funded project Land Violence, Security and Development in Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico. Previously, she led two SSHRC-funded projects on violence, land dispossession and human rights violations in Central America and Mexico.

Kelsey Ioannoni, Ph.D., is a fat solo mom, a contract faculty member at many universities (including York), and an alumnus of the sociology program here at York. During her time in the program, she sat on many different departmental committees, which provided her a great opportunity for professional development and appreciation for the administrative responsibilities of a professor.

As a fat studies scholar, her research interests are centred around the fat body, weight-based politics, and weight-based discrimination. Kelsey’s dissertation explores the way that body size, specifically fatness, impacts the ability of fat Canadian women to access health care services. She looks at the ways in which fat Canadian women understand their bodies through the lens of the ‘obesity epidemic’, and how, in turn, this lens results in the antagonistic relationships with their bodies. These feelings carry over to health care spaces where practitioners often hold anti-fat bias, resulting in weight-based discrimination and experiences of fatphobia in health care.

Moving forward, post dissertation, Kelsey is passionate about investigating the ways in which fat women experience discrimination related to reproductive health and access to reproductive assistance, and fat mothering.

Since earning her MA and PhD degrees in sociology at York University, Leigha is now working as a postdoctoral researcher at Western University’s Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing. Her research is largely qualitative in nature and focuses on chronic pain and opioid use. Leigha is also involved in several public health projects related to infectious disease spread. Her time at York was highly formative and, in particular, the opportunity to work with faculty members with a wide range of research interests and theoretical and methodological approaches was crucial for informing her own approach to sociology. Leigha’s thesis and dissertation committees were also extremely supportive and helped guide her in her development as a scholar. As a whole, the program was invested in her success, including in her successful application for a Vanier Graduate Scholarship.

Nick is currently an Assistant Professor in the Policing and Community Well-Being program at Trent-Durham. He is also a lead investigator on a research grant exploring the impacts of cannabis legalization and the Covid-19 pandemic on cannabis use patterns and behaviours in Canada. During his time at York University, he had the great pleasure of working under the supervision of Dr. James Williams. He conducted ethnographic research on club drug use and risk management in the Toronto Electronic Dance Music (EDM) scene.

Sarah is the Senior Membership Services Officer for the University of British Columbia Faculty Association (UBCFA), which is a certified labour union representing approximately 3600 faculty members, librarians, archivists, and program directors on both the Vancouver and Kelowna campuses. In her role, Sarah supports the FA’s Executive Director and works with their Membership Services Officers to assist members with various workplace related issues. This includes negotiating grievance settlements, accommodations, and leaves as well as representing members in workplace investigations and disciplinary proceedings.

Sarah met so many amazing people through her time in the PhD Program, many of whom are still good friends, and she learned so much from them and from Sociology’s faculty and staff. She was drawn to the Program because of the Program’s strong tradition of supporting critical and progressive work, especially in the area of social theory. She has no doubt that she would not have been able to undertake her dissertation project anywhere else, and is grateful for the support she received from the Program; it will always be herintellectual home.

Sheila is a professor whose scholarship lies in gender and sexuality studies, psychoanalytic sociology, and feminist theory. You may know their books Queering Bathrooms or Sexing the Teacher or the play they staged at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre: Queer Bathroom Monologues. In addition to queer theory and transgender studies, they do work in feminist and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Sheila brings critical psychoanalytic theories, ideas, and perspectives to sociology because the Lacanian Big Other (the site of language, culture, the law, etc.) are not only ‘outside’ but inside the subject. Sociological studies of subjectivity, social and governmental regulation are different when we take the psychic life of power seriously. Sheila is appointed to the graduate programs in Sociology; Gender, Feminist & Women’s Studies; Social and Political Thought. They teach graduate courses in Queer Theory; Studies in Sexual Regulation; Sex and Gender in Social Theory; and Race, Psyche & Sexuality. Graduate teaching and supervision are especially rewarding in the graduate program in Sociology because our students are critical, passionate, politically, and theoretically engaged. Sheila is always impressed by the way our students build community in the program and push faculty to envision sociology more broadly and inclusively.

Susan is currently Professor and Interim Director of the Institute of Political Economy at Carleton University. She came to York sociology in search of theory, to help her understand and confront neoliberal governance and its effects on women's care work. She came to the right place. Fourteen years later, she appreciates other aspects too. First, Susan became a member of a wonderful intellectual community. To this day she conducts research and writes with many of her fellow students and former mentors. Second, she received an outstanding foundation in research through RAships with experienced professors who involved her in all research activities, from idea formulation to proposal, financial management, team work, writing, and research mobilization. Further, Susan and her colleagues were offered the resources and opportunities to cultivate sophisticated, nuanced, sociological imaginations.  Through courses and other learning opportunities, they were exposed to a wide range of theoretical perspectives, topics, and interests.  They participated in dynamic, contentious, open departmental debates and politics. This liveliness promoted productive tensions that both included students as community members and pushed them to walk their sociological talk within a relatively safe intellectual and political frame. Among themselves, and somewhat smugly, she admits, her cohort buddies often reflect on their excellent training!

Vivian Stamatopoulos is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at Ontario Tech University. Vivian earned her PhD in Sociology from York University in 2018 and was awarded the Canadian Sociological Association’s Outstanding Graduating PhD Student that same year. Vivian is known for her research and advocacy in family caregiving and long-term care (LTC), gaining significant recognition during the COVID-19 pandemic for her critical stance on the treatment of residents in LTC homes, highlighting systemic failures and advocating for reform. As a media commentator and public speaker, Dr. Stamatopoulos works to raise awareness about the challenges within the caregiving system, supporting families and pushing for improved conditions in long-term care facilities. For her efforts in this area, she has received several honours, including Chatelaine Magazine’s “Doris Anderson Award” (2021), Best Health Magazine’s “Health Hero” Award (2021), Toronto Star’s “Vaccine Hero” award (2021), Ontario Trial Lawyers Association’s “Safety Leadership Award” (2021), Ontario Health Coalition’s “Orville Thacker Award” (2022) and University Health Network’s: ICAIR Paper of the Year (2024).