Harald Bauder
Professor in the Department of Geography & Environmental Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University and Director of the MA Program in Immigration and Settlement Studies (ISS)
Harald Bauder served as the founding Academic Director of the Ryerson Centre for Immigration and Settlement (RCIS) from 2011 to 2015.
Prior to coming to Toronto Metropolitan University, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Guelph, and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia. He received his PhD in 1998 from Wilfrid Laurier University. In 2015, Dr. Bauder received the prestigious Konrad Adenauer Research Award jointly granted by the Royal Society of Canada and the A. v. Humboldt Foundation, and in 2016 the Sarwan Sahota Ryerson Distinguished Scholar Award for his outstanding contribution to knowledge on migration.
Dr. Bauder has written four monographs, including From Sovereignty to Solidarity: Rethinking Human Migration (Routledge, forthcoming) Migration Borders Freedom (Routledge 2017), Immigration Dialectic: Imagining Community, Economy and Nation (University of Toronto Press), and Labor Movement: How Migration Regulates Labor Markets (Oxford University Press, 2006). In addition, he has edited or co-edited seven volumes – including Putting Family First: Migration and Integration in Canada, Sanctuary Cities and Urban Struggles: Rescaling Migration, Citizenship, and Rights with Jonathan Darling, and the textbook Immigrant Experiences in North America with John Shields – and published more than 70 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and multiple book chapters, reports, and op-eds/blogs in the popular media.
Email: hbauder@torontomu.ca
Rupaleem Bhuyan
Associate Professor in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work
Rupaleem Bhuyan is a second-generation immigrant of Assamese/Indian heritage. She was born and raised in the United States and has lived and worked in the U.S., France and Thailand.
Dr. Bhuyan has an interdisciplinary background in International Studies, Cultural Anthropology and Social Welfare. Her research integrates feminist, participatory, and interpretive methodologies and to address the sociocultural and political context of migration, social rights, and gender based violence. Since 1991, Dr. Bhuyan has been part of the anti-violence movement as a peer-rape prevention educator, domestic violence and sexual assault advocate, community educator and community-based researcher. She has worked closely with indigenous, immigrant and refugee communities in addition to collaborations with advocates in organizations serving the general population.
Dr. Bhuyan is currently the principal investigator for the Migrant Mothers Project, a research and community engagement project that works in collaboration with a network of community-based organizations, women’s rights and immigrant rights groups, and grassroots activists. This research documents different forms of inequality that are produced through Canada’s immigration system that intersect with the spectrum of violence against women. Though our research and community organizing efforts, the Migrant Mothers Project aims to foster deeper knowledge about the inequities that shape our lives and to identify strategies for collectively bring about changes that improve the dignity, and human rights for all.
Dr. Bhuyan teaches introductory and advanced qualitative methodology courses in the Faculty of Social Work. She is the Coordinator for the Social Justice and Diversity Field of Specialization and an affiliate member of the Women & Gender Studies Institute and the Centre for Critical Qualitative Research at the University of Toronto.
Email: r.bhuyan@utoronto.ca
Sutama Ghosh
Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University
Trained in urban social geography, Sutama Ghosh is keenly interested in documenting and understanding the settlement experiences of immigrants and refugees in the Canadian urban milieu. Largely an urban population, new Canadians (who are predominantly of non-European origin) face numerous challenges in accessing some of the basic needs of life during their process of settlement, including food and shelter. She is particularly interested in exploring their unequal access to these basic human needs and the impact of such inequality on their social identities and levels of integration into the Canadian society. Her current research focuses on the intersections between housing deprivation, and new comer’s unequal access to nutritious food in Toronto’s inner suburbs.
Email: sutama@torontomu.ca
John Shields
Professor in the Department of Policy and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University
Dr. John Shields joined the Department of Politics and Public Administration in September 1988, after teaching in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Shields received his PhD in Political Science from the University of British Columbia in 1989. His doctoral dissertation is entitled British Columbia’s New Reality: The Politics of Neo-Conservatism and Defensive Defiance. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Master of Arts (MA) from the University of Windsor.
Dr Shields is a tenured Full Professor with over twenty five years of university teaching and research experience in the areas of public administration and public policy, Canadian politics, the political economy of labour market and welfare state restructuring, immigrant settlement and integration policy and practices, and nonprofit sector studies. He holds a number of student teaching awards, and has developed and delivered distance education courses and modules. He holds/held research affiliations with the Centre for Governance Studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby; the Centre for Voluntary Sector Studies, Faculty of Business, Ryerson University; the International Social Sciences Institute at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland; and CERIS – The Ontario Metropolis Centre (Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement) where he served as one of the Centre Directors from 2002 to 2008. He has served on various advisory bodies including most recently for the Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN).
Professor Shields is also a member of the Yeates School of Graduate Studies at Ryerson. He is affiliated with the MA program in Public Policy and Administration (which he served as co-Director from 2005-2012); the MA program in Immigration and Settlement Studies; the Joint (with York University) Graduate Programme in Communication and Culture, which offers both MA and PhD streams; and the PhD program in Policy Studies.
He has numerous academic distinctions including major academic awards, a Research Professorship from Ryerson University and was awarded the Sarwan Sahota Ryerson Distinguished Scholar Award for 2001. In 2010 he was named a CERIS Senior Scholar by the SSHRC Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement (CERIS – The Ontario Metropolis Centre). In 2013 he received the Yeates School of Graduate Studies Outstanding Contribution to Graduate Education Award. He was also named Ryerson Fellow at Massey College at the University of Toronto for 2013-14. In May 2016, he received the Dean’s Excellence Award for Research Impact.
Dr. Shields has published extensively, including the co-authoring of five books and over forty published articles and papers and an extensive number of policy papers and conference presentations. His most recent research explores issues related to the marketization of the nonprofit sector, immigration and settlement, public administration reform, labour market restructuring with a focus on precarious work and immigrant populations, and knowledge transfer in support of public policy and advocacy. He is co-author of a series of Analytical Reports, Research Snapshots, and Roundtable Background Primers published by the Toronto Immigrant Employment Data Initiative (TIEDI) at York University.
Dr. Shields was Managing Editor of the Journal of International Migration and Integration (JIMI) from 2009-2012 and continues to sit on its Editorial Board. JIMI is a peer reviewed, international journal focused on publishing policy-relevant articles related to immigration and is published by Springer from The Netherlands,
Professor Shields is regularly sought as a media commentator and has been interviewed by and appeared on/in CBC, OnTV, CTV, Montreal Gazette, London Free Press, Edmonton Journal, National Post, Hamilton Spectator, Maclean’s, OMNI TV, among others. He was one of the researchers chosen by Radio Canada International to provide in-depth analysis as part of their series, Immigration: Benefit or Burden?
Email: jshields@torontomu.ca
Marshia Akbar
Senior Research Associate with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University
Marshia is a Senior Research Associate with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration Program at Ryerson University. Her research broadly encompasses economic and social integration of migrants in Canada. She is particularly interested in analyzing how migration and settlement policies shape the labour market integration of migrants across Canadian cities. Her doctoral and postdoctoral research findings have been published as journal articles and web-based reports.
