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About Us

Image of Ashley Day

Ashley Day is an Assistant Professor the School of Kinesiology & Health Science.  Her current research, 'Wiisokotaatiwin – Coming Together to Discuss and Re-imagine Health & Physical Education' works with school boards in Ontario to establish and strengthen relationships for envisioning anti-colonial health education. Ashley is committed to establishing, nurturing, and sustaining relationships that affirm Indigenous sovereignty and that supports contextually specific and culturally safe policies for Indigenous Health and Education. Ashley has settler and Dene/Métis ancestries and is a registered member of the Norman Wells Métis located in the Sahtu Region of Northwest Territories.

Photo credit: Veronica Iacob

Image of Amanda De Lisio

Amanda De Lisio is an Assistant Professor of Physical Culture, Policy, and Sustainable Development in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University. She is also an Executive Member of the CITY Institute and Co-Director of the Critical Trafficking and Sex Work Studies Research Cluster at the Centre for Feminist Research. Her research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), Mitacs Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, explores feminist solidarities in response to state violence, particularly in Olympic and FIFA host cities. Her work has been published in both academic and popular presses in English and Portuguese.

Image of Tammy George

Tammy George is an interdisciplinary scholar and educator in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science. She is also a psychotherapy candidate at the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis working with athletes, veterans and addictions. Her current research lies at the intersection of critical military studies, racial violence and mental health and explores the reconfiguration of racial and national subjectivities in an era of neoliberalism. Her current book manuscript entitled, “Be All You Can Be or Longing to Be: Racialized soldiers, the Canadian military experience and the im/possibility of belonging to the nation” examines the connection between military service, racial trauma and mental health with implications for how we wage war in the contemporary moment.

Image of Lyndsay Hayhurst

Lyndsay Hayhurst is a qualitative, feminist participatory action researcher and Tier 2 York Research Chair in Sport, Gender and Development, and Digital Participatory Research. An Associate Professor at York University, she directs the DREAMING in Sport Lab and collaborates with diverse community partners to address social justice and inequities in sport, leisure, and recreation. Lyndsay’s recent work critically explores issues of gender (in)equity, mobility, and feminist climate (in)justice with equity-owed groups in local and global contexts. She co-directed Changing Gears (2024), a documentary on bicycles and mobility justice.

Twitter: @drlyndzhayhurst @bicycles4devs @SSJDpodcast

Image of Hernan Humana

Hernán E. Humaña teaches in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University. His academic interests include issues of politics, identity, and human rights in sports. Hernán teaches “Olympic Games: Heroes and Villains at Play” (KINE3440) and “Sociology of Sport I” (KINE3620). He coached Volleyball and Beach Volleyball at three Olympic Games for Canada (1992, 1996 and 2000).  He wrote the book Playing Under the Gun: An Athlete’s Tale of Survival In 1970’s Chile (second edition: 2020).  He is presently working on two book manuscripts: From Olympic Medal to World Champion: An Immigrant Family’s Journey and Sport, Athletes and Human Rights in Chile.

Image of Larkin Lamarche

Larkin Lamarche (they/them): As teaching-stream faculty, I am most interested in reimagining how and where learning can take place to stir a constant state of wonder in students, the heart of my teaching spirit. By using the word ‘wonder,’ I also cultivate spaces for showing one’s feeling-self, one’s inner daydreamer and creative. My work is about the trial and error of experiential education and active learning – practices that foster theory-to-practice ways of learning, critical thinking, and self-reflection. My work is also about enacting teaching and learning that centres decolonization, flattens a teacher-student hierarchy and ultimately cares for students, because students matter.  

Image of Yuka Nakamura

An Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science, Yuka Nakamura’s (she/her) main research interests are multiculturalism, social inclusion, diverse forms of citizenship; and how race, class, and gender intersect and impact people’s identities and physical activity experiences.  With particular interest in exploring sport’s capacity to foster community and belonging by and for ethnic and/or religious groups, her 2019 ethnography of the North American Chinese Invitational Volleyball Tournament (NACIVT), Playing Out of Bounds (University of Toronto Press), investigates how identity, belonging, and community are shaped by race, gender, and culture.  A secondary area of research is the lived experiences of and access to physiotherapy service and education. 

Credit: Alex Felipe

Parissa Safai (she/her) is a Full Professor in and Chair of the School of Kinesiology and Health Science in the Faculty of Health at York University.  Her research interests focus on the critical socio-cultural study of sport at the intersection of risk, health and healthcare including the social determinants of athletes’ health.  Her interests also centre on sport and social inequality with focused attention paid to the impact of gender, socio-economic, and ethnocultural inequities on accessible physical activity for all. She is currently President of the International Sociology of Sport Association (ISSA), 2024-2028.

Image of Sachil Singh

Sachil Singh is an Assistant Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science in the Faculty of Health at York University. As an interdisciplinary scholar, he researches how unintended biases — particularly about race — shape people's lives. His current work examines sources of bias in health systems and how these biases are often embedded in health technologies. Through his research, he is deeply committed to social inclusion and social justice which he extends into the classroom with his teaching focus on socio-cultural history, identity politics, racial discrimination, and surveillance.

Twitter: @sachil_singh