Faculty & Staff

Graduate Program Director
Dr. Susan Tilley
Email: stilley@brocku.ca, ext. 3144

Administrative Co-Ordinator
Julia Gottli, STH 400B 
Email: socialjustice@brocku.ca, ext. 5591
Fax: (905) 378-5733

SJES CORE FACULTY MEMBERS
Click on faculty member for further information

PLEASE NOTE:  Faculty members may be on sabbatical and other forms of leave in any given year.  For further information contact the SJES Graduate Program Director.

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ROB ALEXANDER
Associate Professor of English Language and Literature
(ralexand@brocku.ca, Ext. 3886)
Robert Alexander is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature. Formerly a reporter, he now directs Brock’s Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse Studies Program where he teaches courses in news writing, literary journalism, the history of language study, and creative writing. He has published articles on such topics as eighteenth century language theory, psychoanalysis and journalism, and the construction of gender in contemporary journalistic discourse. His current research is focused on journalistic subjectivity.  http://www.brocku.ca/humanities/departments-and-centres/english-language-and-literature/faculty-and-staff-el/robert-alexander

KATE BEZANSON
Associate Professor of Sociology
(kbezanson@brocku.ca, Ext. 3457)
Kate Bezanson works in the areas of social and labour market policy, comparative and Canadian political economy, feminist and welfare state theory and international development. Her current research projects centre around the dynamics of the reconfiguration of the Canadian welfare state in relation to families and family policy. Dr. Bezanson's scholarship considers the ways in which households manage changes in labour markets, family forms and social policies. Her recent publications include "Child Care Delivered through the Mailbox: Social Reproduction, Neoliberalism and Choice in a Theo-Conservative Canada" in S. Bradley and M. Luxton (eds) Neoliberalism and Everyday Life (McGill-Queen's University Press 2010), Gender, the State and Social Reproduction: Household Insecurity in Neo-liberal Times (2006, University of Toronto Press), and Telling Tales: Living the Effects of Public Policy (2005, Fernwood Press, coauthored with S. Neysmith and A. O'Connell). She is co-editor of Social Reproduction: Feminist Political Economy Challenges Neo-Liberalism (2006, McGill-Queen's University Press) and Rethinking Society in the 21st Century (2008, CSPI). She has also published on the topic of gender and social capital (see Canadian Review of Sociology 2006 vol.26, 2 and Status of Women Canada 2006). Dr. Bezanson is involved in food security and local food initiatives and she has two young sons. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/fa...

DALE BRADLEY
Chair and Assistant Professor of Communication, Popular Culture, and Film (dbradley@brocku.ca, Ext. 3180)
Dale Bradley has published on technological history of office spaces, and on the political discourse of the Open Source software movement. His primary research interests are centered upon on the historical emergence of techno society and, in particular, the critical analysis of the discourses and practices surrounding contemporary cyberculture. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/cpcf/faculty...

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MARY BREUNIG
Associate Professor of Recreation and Leisure Studies
(mbreunig@brocku.ca, Ext. 5387)
Mary Breunig teaches courses in experiential education and outdoor leadership. Her main areas of research include: outdoor and experiential education and issues of social and environmental justice; critical pedagogy and Freirean praxis; and environmental education within the Ontario K-12 schools. Mary supervises graduate students in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies, the Faculty of Education, and the Social Justice and Equity Studies Program at Brock University and students at Prescott College in Arizona. She is co-author of Outdoor Leadership: Theory and Practice, the Outdoor Classroom, Critical Pedagogy as Praxis and is co-editor of the Environmental Education Reader. Mary is President of the Association for Experiential Education and continues to enjoy leading wilderness trips for the National Outdoor Leadership School and Brock University Recreation and Leisure Studies students. http://www.brocku.ca/applied-health-sciences/faculty-directory/recreatio...

JONAH BUTOVSKY
Associate Professor of Sociology
(jbutovsky@brocku.ca, Ext. 4371)
Jonah Butovsky is affiliated with the Centre for Labour Studies at Brock University. He has written articles on the New Democratic Party and on Canadian political values. His current research is on migrant agricultural workers in Niagara and the representation of public opinion in the press. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/fa...

DAVID BUTZ
Professor of Geography
(dbutz@brocku.ca, Ext. 3205)
David Butz teaches social and cultural geography, sonic geographies, geographies of international development, and qualitative research design. He has completed two SSHRC-funded research projects, one that examined colonial and contemporary labour relations in the mountains of northern Pakistan, and another dealing with the constitution of spatiality in Jamaican reggae music. He has also investigated the implications of corporate restructuring for General Motors auto workers in St. Catharines, Ontario. The three projects are linked by an interest in the geographies of exploitation, resistance and self-representation. The latter concern has led to publications relating to research ethics and the method of autoethnography. Professor Butz has also published on irrigated mountain agriculture and sustainable development, and is involved with grassroots political and environmental activism in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan's. He is currently co-investigator with Nancy Cook on a SSHRC-funded study of the impacts of road construction on social organization in an agricultural village in northern Pakistan. He is co-editor of ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies.
http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/geography/fa...

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JANET CONWAY
Associate Professor of Sociology
(jconway@brocku.ca, Ext. 4196)
Janet Conway’s research focuses on social movements in the context of transformations associated with globalization—including neoliberalization, intensified transnational flows, and new communication technologies. She has particular interest in ‘anti-globalization’ movements, transnational feminisms, indigenous movements and the inter-relation of these with each other and other emancipatory social forces. At the graduate level, Dr. Conway teaches Social Justice and Human Rights and Globalization, Inequality and Social Change. Her most recent book is Edges of Global Justice: the World Social Forum and Its ‘Others’, Routledge, 2012. She is also author of Praxis and Politics: Knowledge Production in Social Movements, Routledge, 2006 and Identity, Place, Knowledge: Social Movements Contesting Globalization, Fernwood, 2004. Her work has appeared in journals in sociology, law, politics, geography and women’s studies. She is currently developing two collaborative research projects: on the North American Occupy movement; and on transnational feminist solidarities focused on the World March of Women. She completed her PhD in Political Science at York University in 2002. She holds two Master’s degrees, Political Science (2000, York) and Theology (1990 University of St. Michael’s College) and a BA (Hons.) History (1984, Memorial) Before coming to Brock in 2007, she taught for five years at Ryerson University, Toronto in the Department of Politics and Public Administration. She is a long-time social justice activist in women’s, anti-poverty, and indigenous solidarity movements, a founder of the Metro Network for Social Justice and founding chair of the Toronto Social Forum.
http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/fa...

GALE COSKAN-JOHNSON
Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature
(gcoskanjohnson@brocku.ca, Ext. 5001)
Gale Coskan-Johnson teaches courses on the history of rhetoric and the rhetorics of history, contemporary rhetorical theory, cultural rhetoric and travel writing. She is the director of Brock University’s Writing Program. She has a BA in History from UW-Madison, an MA -TESOL from Northern Arizona University, and a PhD in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric from Syracuse University. Her research interests include rhetorical theory; rhetorics of the border, the nation, immigration, and globalization; transnational feminism; postcolonial theory; ancient rhetoric and its modern reception; second language writing; and critical pedagogies. She is currently working on a project that explores the often-competing rhetorics of national sovereignty and transnational migration in the context of the 2001 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and their Families. Specifically, she is examining the deliberative process that went into the production of the treaty by examining reports written during the 1980s that record the conversations, discussions, arguments and compromises that took place throughout this decade-long collaborative writing process. This set of documents represents rich and rhetorically provocative material in which particular nation-state members of the UN, individually and in alliance, resist, engage, and commit themselves to particular representations of sovereignty, transnational mobility, and, most significantly, the human rights of (un)documented transnational migrants.
http://www.brocku.ca/humanities/departments-and-centres/english-language...

NANCY COOK
Associate Professor of Sociology
(ncook@brocku.ca, Ext. 3176)
Nancy Cook teaches and supervises in the areas of gender and sexuality, qualitative research methodologies, imperialism and globalization, gender relations in Pakistan, and feminist, postcolonial and poststructural theory. With the support of doctoral and postdoctoral SSHRC grants, she has completed two research projects focused on transcultural interactions between Western development workers and local populations in Pakistan. The first entailed ethnographic fieldwork with white women living in Gilgit, while the second focused on Canadian development workers who recently returned home from lengthy development work terms in Pakistan. Her publications develop a feminist sociology of imperialism and an empirically grounded understanding of cultures of cosmopolitanism. In collaboration with David Butz, she is engaged in a new SSHRC-funded study of the impacts of infrastructure development and shifting mobility regimes on social organization in a mountain village in northern Pakistan. Dr. Cook is currently Director of the MA program in Critical Sociology.
http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/graduate-programs/critical-sociolog...

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JUNE CORMAN
Associate Dean, Undergraduate, Faculty of Social Sciences, Professor of Sociology
(jcorman@brocku.ca, Ext. 4205)
June Corman teaches in the fields of work, gender and research design. She has served as Chair of Sociology and Director of both Women’s Studies and Labour Studies. She is co-author (with Meg Luxton) of Getting By in Hard Times: Gendered Labour At Home and on the Job (University of Toronto Press, 2001), which received Honourable Mention for the John Porter Prize 2002. Research interests include: political economy, women and work, and social reproduction. She is author of articles on women working in the steel industry, in the education sector, and on farms. Housed in Sociology, she is also involved with Women's Studies and Labour Studies. She has held SSHRC research grants to examine how changes in employment have consequences for families in Hamilton and in Welland as well as the employment and community relations of rural teachers. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/fa...

KERI CRONIN
Chair and Associate Professor of Visual Arts
(keri.cronin@brocku.ca, Ext. 5306)
Keri Cronin teaches courses on the history of visual culture. Her research interests focus on the ways in which visual representations of the nonhuman world have historically shaped, challenged and, at times, subverted dominant human attitudes towards the species they share the planet with. Her current work explores the role of visual culture in 19th century animal welfare campaigns, a project which investigates connections between animal welfare activism and other types of campaigning that were taking place during the same historical moment. She is the editor of The Brock Review, (www.brocku.ca/brockreview) and a member of the organizing committee for "Greenscapes," an interdisciplinary conference which explores the cultural meanings of gardens in human society (www.brocku.ca/greenscapes). http://www.brocku.ca/humanities/departments-and-centres/visual-arts/facu...

HEVINA DASHWOOD
Associate Professor of Political Science
(hdashwood@brocku.ca, Ext. 3894)
Professor Dashwood’s broad research interests encompass international relations, international development and Canadian foreign policy. Her current research on Canadian corporate social responsibility (CSR) was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Dashwood is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on CSR in the mining sector. Dashwood is working on a book manuscript on corporate social responsibility and Canadian mining companies. She is a collaborator with the Canadian Business Ethics Research Network (CBERN), the recipient of a $2.3 million SSHRC Strategic Clusters grant over seven years. With CBERB as a partner, Dashwood is a co-investigator in a new (as of 2007) collaborative, multi-perspective case study project on Canadian mining companies in developing countries. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/political-sc...

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ANN DUFFY
Professor of Sociology
(aduffy@brocku.ca, Ext. 3517)
Professor Duffy is currently publishing an interview-based book (with Professors Nancy Mandell and Sue Wilson) on mid-life women. She is also a participant in a major grant application which explores the international impact of the new economy on workers and their communities. Research interests include social inequality, paid and unpaid work and violence against women. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/fa...

THOMAS DUNK
Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology
(tdunk@brocku.ca, Ext. 3425)
Thomas Dunk’s research program is in the area of linkages between economy, culture and society, with particular focus on class, masculinity, and economic transformation. He is the author of It’s a Working Man’s Town: Male Working Class Culture; the editor of Social Relations in Resource Hinterlands; and the co-editor of The Training Trap: Ideology, Training and the Labour Market. He is currently working on two SSHRC-funded projects: “Adaptation and Resistance to the Information Age in Natural Resource Dependent Regions in Canada and Norway,” and “Hunters, Bears, Masculinity and the Politics of Identity in Ontario and France.” http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/fa...

IFEANYI EZEONU
Associate Professor of Sociology
(iezeonu@brocku.ca, Ext. 4054)
Ifeanyi Ezeonu has published on the impact of neo-liberal economic policies on sub-Saharan Africa (with special focus on the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO) and the international politics of environmental protection. Research interests include: globalization and international development, gang violence, racialised crime, social construction of crime, transnational crime, environmental crime in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria, and contemporary African Diaspora.
http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/fa...

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MARGOT FRANCIS
Associate Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies
(margot.francis@brocku.ca, Ext. 5381)
Margot Francis is an Associate Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies, cross appointed to the Department of Sociology. She teaches courses on queer communities and popular culture, the construction of gender and race in Canadian culture and the Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies. Her research interests include: feminist and post-colonial perspectives on settler societies, critical explorations of culture, arts and identity and integrative approaches to gender, sexuality and the body.
Francis’ book, Creative Subversions: Whiteness and Indigeneity in the National Imaginary (UBC Press, 2011) explores how whiteness and Indigeneity are articulated through iconic images of Canadian identity - and the contradictory and contested meanings these images evoke. Juxtaposing historical images with work by contemporary artists she explores how artists are giving taken-for-granted symbols new and suggestive meanings opening up new questions about history, memory and national identity.  http://brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/facult...

TAMI J. FRIEDMAN
Associate Professor of History
(mailto:tfriedman@brocku.ca, Ext. 3709)
Tami Friedman teaches 20th-century U.S. history at Brock. Her courses cover U.S. history since 1865, U.S. foreign policy, the Cold War, the 1960s, women in North America, and class and capitalism in the United States. She also teaches a graduate course on women and work in U.S. history. Her interests include labor history, women's history, racial/ethnic history, and the social history of economic change. Her research examines the causes and consequences of industry migration within the United States after World War II, with an emphasis on workers, communities, and industrial policy at the local, state, regional, and federal levels. Her publications explore the relationship between economic restructuring and such developments as the decline of organized labor, the rise of the modern Right, and the limits of unionism in the U.S. South. Possible areas of supervision include: deindustrialization, capital flight, economic development policy, corporate globalization, corporate power, union growth and decline, sexual and racial/ethnic divisions of labor, women and work, working-class culture, and class formation/identity.
http://brocku.ca/humanities/departments-and-centres/history/faculty-staf...

JENNIFER GOOD
Associate Professor of Communication, Popular Culture, and Film
(jgood@brocku.ca, Ext. 3707)
Jennifer Good’s research and teaching interests sit at the intersection of the mass media, materialism and our relationship with the natural environment. She has a B.A. in International Relations from U.B.C., a Master’s degree from York University in Environmental Studies and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in Communication. Current work includes looking at the mass communication of climate change, investigating how parents’ television viewing relates to their willingness to let their children play in the outdoors, and generally exploring the relationships between the mass media (television viewing in particular), materialism and environmentalism. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/cpcf/faculty...

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JANE HELLEINER
Professor of Sociology
(jhelleiner@brocku.ca, Ext. 3711)
Jane Helleiner was trained in social/cultural anthropology at the University of Toronto. She has conducted research in Ireland and Canada. Her current research examines differentiated local experience of a changing, stratified Canada/US border. Areas of graduate supervision include critical border studies, racism/antiracism, gender and sexuality, childhood and youth. Dr. Helleiner is on the editorial board for the journal Studies in Social Justice. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/graduate-programs/critical-sociolog...

TAMARI KITOSSA
Associate Professor of Sociology
(tkitossa@brocku.ca, Ext. 5672)
Tamari Kitossa’s areas of course instruction inclusive of: critical perspectives on the criminal legal system; sociology of law, punishment, and society; and counter-colonial approach to criminological theory. Research interests include: counter-colonial theorizing of racial profiling; Marxian approaches to police, the state and repression; the environment; and sexual racism and hypersexualism of African males. Immediate research projects include: a qualitative and quantitative examination of race and representation in Canadian criminology; mainstream criminological discourse as ‘bad faith’ toward blackness and epistemic violence; and, with Dr. Katerina Deliovsky is developing the theory of ‘repressive tolerance’ toward interracial couples. Dr. Kitossa is working on an edited collection entitled: Protest, Repression and the Police State: Critical Studies of Policing, the State and Society, 1960 –1990. He is Co-Chair of the Brock/Niagara African Canadian Renaissance Group (http://brockniagaraafricangroup.weebly.com/). Through the Brock/Niagara African Renaissance Group he is co-developer of the Dr. Wilma Morrison Annual African Heritage Lecture (https://www.brocktv.ca/watch/1100). He is Secretary to the Black Canadian Studies Association (http://bcsa.wordpress.com/the-bcsa/); and, with Richard Ndayizigamiye, is drafting a proposal for an Africana Chair in Borders, Migration and Settlement Studies at Brock University. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/fa...

WENDEE KUBIK
Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies
(wkubik@brocku.ca, Ext 5997)
Wendee Kubik teaches courses on women’s issues; women’s health; violence against women, and women in the economy. Her research interests focus on Aboriginal women, violence against women, gender analysis, community action research, farm women, food and water security and sustainability, and global health issues. Wendee is currently a co-investigator in a five year (2011 – 2016) SSHRC – CURA project “Rural and Northern Response to Intimate Partner Violence” on behalf of the RESOLVE (Research and Education for Solutions to Violence and Abuse) Tri-provincial Research Network. Some of her previous research projects included a Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) – UPCD Program, Rural Community Water Conservation Project in Chile, a SSHRC – (CURA) project entitled “The Healing Journey” (a longitudinal study following the healing journey of women who had been abused by their intimate partners), plus research looking at the health and program needs of Aboriginal grandmothers caring for their grandchildren. She has published articles and books about farm women’s work and health, food sustainability, climate-induced water stress and missing Indigenous women. She is also an Adjunct Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Regina. http://brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/womens-studies

DAN MALLECK
Associate Professor of Community Health Science
(dmalleck@brocku.ca, Ext. 5108)
Dan Malleck teaches the history of medicine. His areas of interest include drug and alcohol prohibition and control, inter-health-professional conflicts, medicalization, professionalization in the health sector, alternative medicine, and the role of the pharmaceutical industry in health care. His dissertation looked at the development of narcotic drug laws in Canada from the perspective of the growth of medical power and emerging moral panics around addictive substances. His current research examines the development of liquor control in Ontario to see how notions of proper and improper drinking were constructed in the interwar period. He is also interested in less conventional teaching methods, notably Problem-Based Learning, Self-Directed Learning, and Community-Based Participatory Research. He is also involved in international health research, contributing to projects addressing health issues related to poverty and inequality in Honduras. He is the editor-in-chief of the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs: An Interdisciplinary Journal. http://fahs.brocku.ca/profiles/profile_chsc.php?id=67

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VOULA MARINOS
Associate Professor of Child and Youth Studies
(vmarinos@brocku.ca, Ext. 3386)
Voula Marinos received her M.A. and Ph.D in Criminology from the University of Toronto, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Faculty of Law, Queen's University. Her research is focused on sentencing and punishment of young and adult offenders, including public attitudes, plea-bargaining, short lengths of custody, accused persons with intellectual disabilities in the courtroom, and alternatives to imprisonment. Her current research includes extrajudicial measures under the YCJA for youth, probation for young offenders, and public attitudes towards plea-bargaining. Dr. Marinos teaches courses in the Department of Child & Youth Studies on youth and the law, young offenders, and sentencing and punishment. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/child-and-yo...

RICHARD MITCHELL
Associate Professor of Child and Youth Studies
(mitchell@brocku.ca, Ext. 5085)
Dr. Mitchell is an Associate Professor in the Child and Youth Studies Department at Brock where he has been a faculty member since 2004. He is a graduate of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, and completed his Ph.D in Sociology and Social Policy with Scotland's University of Stirling. His teaching of undergraduate and graduate coursework within childhood and youth studies includes theories of childhood, qualitative research methods and analyses, social policy, and equity issues. His research, teaching, service and consulting are focused upon international and transdisciplinary approaches to implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child within political, institutional and community-based settings. Recently, Dr. Mitchell has built upon these international frameworks as a core faculty within Brock's Environmental Sustainability Research Centre where he serves as Communications Director. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/child-and-yo...

SHANNON MOORE
Director, Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies, Associate Professor of Child and Youth Studies
(smoore@brocku.ca, Ext. 5396)
Shannon Moore holds a PhD in Counseling Psychology from the University of Victoria. Her scholarship emphasizes community-based implementation of UN human rights and justice instruments. (e.g. UN Basic Principles for Restorative Justice, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities). This focus on social and transformational justice includes investigations that bridge education, critical theory, human rights and mental health. As a clinical counselor, Shannon Moore has practiced both privately and as a consultant within educational, social service, mental health and correctional service contexts in Canada and the United Kingdom. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/child-and-yo...

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CATHERINE JEAN NASH
Associate Professor of Geography
(cnash@brocku.ca, Ext. 3238)
Catherine Nash teaches social and cultural geography with a focus on urban issues. Catherine has a law degree from the University of Ottawa, an M.PL in Urban Planning from Queen’s University and a PhD from Queen’s University in urban geography. Catherine has taught courses on gender and geography, the philosophy of geography and concepts of power/knowledge and landscape. Her current research focuses on gender, sexuality and space and, in particular, is concerned with the emerging fields of queer and trans scholarship. Catherine has published a number of articles and book chapters on historical aspects of Toronto’s “gay ghetto” and on contemporary queer spaces such as the Toronto’s women’s bathhouse events. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/geography/fa...

TRENT NEWMEYER
Associate Professor of Recreation and Leisure Studies
(trent.newmeyer@brocku.ca, Ext. 5118)
Trent Newmeyer teaches the sociology of leisure, research methods (primarily qualitative research design), and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. His research interests include the social history of tourism and leisure, crafting as politics, and issues around HIV/AIDS from pregnancy planning to the use of crafting (body mapping) in mediating cultural stigma around HIV.
http://www.brocku.ca/applied-health-sciences/faculty-directory/recreatio...

JOSEPH NORRIS
Professor of Dramatic Arts
(jnorris@brocku.ca, Ext. 3596)
Joe Norris is professor of Drama in Education & Applied Theatre in the Department of Dramatic Arts, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine & Performing Arts at Brock University. He advocates the arts as ways of knowing, doing and being. His book, “Play building as Qualitative Research: A Participatory Arts-based Approach” purports that play building is a legitimate research methodology and received The American Educational Research Association’s Qualitative Research SIG’s Outstanding Book Award in 2011. It documents how data generation, its interpretation, and its dissemination, all can be mediated through theatrical means. Using forum theatre he invites audiences to reconceptualize both the issues and themselves after the performance. His work with duoethnography furthers his interest in designing dialogic qualitative research methodologies that assist in the reconceptualization of the world and of self. Driving his research agendas is the belief that an unreflected-life is a life half-lived and that we need the Other to assist us in understanding that which we cannot comprehend alone. http://www.brocku.ca/humanities/departments-and-centres/dramatic-arts/fa...

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HIJIN PARK
Assistant Professor of Sociology
(hijinpark@brocku.ca, Ext. 3540)
Hijin Park works in the area of anti-racist feminism. Her research and teaching interests include feminist criminology, refugee and migration studies, and securitization studies. She has published articles and book chapters on violence against racialized women, the criminalization of migration, and Canadian white settler nationalism. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/fa...

SHAUNA POMERANTZ
Associate Professor of Child and Youth Studies
(shauna.pomerantz@brocku.ca, Ext. 5371)
Dr. Pomerantz is interested in the construction of youth and girlhood through the complimentary lenses of sociology and cultural studies. She focuses on how young people use cultural texts to make sense of themselves, each other, and the world around them, paying particular attention to the institution of the school, where teenagers must learn to negotiate complex social worlds and categories. She is also committed to doing qualitative research with young people, particularly interviews and ethnography. Her past projects include Girl Power, a long-term study of girls’ expressions of empowerment and understandings of feminism, and Dressing the Part, an ethnographic study of how girls used style to negotiate their identities in an urban, multicultural high school. Her current SSHRC-funded study (with Rebecca Raby), is entitled, Smart Girls: Negotiating Academic Success in a “Post-Feminist” Era. She received her PhD from the University of British Columbia, where she studied Sociology of Education and taught in the areas of feminisms, child and youth culture, and social justice. When not working, she likes to listen to indie rock, read popular teen novels, catch up on smart television shows, and hang out with her daughter, Miriam. http://brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/child-and-youth-...

MARIA DEL CARMEN SUESCUN POZAS
Associate Professor of History
(msuescunpozas@brocku.ca, Ext. 5145)
Maria del Carmen Suescun Pozas received her PhD from the Departments of History and Art History at McGill University, and her B.F.A from the Department of Fine Arts at Concordia University. She specializes in modern Latin America with a concentration on Colombia from the 1920s. Her publications open up general domains of study such as art and art institutions, literature, politics and economics to cultural analysis. Her current research, collaboration, and supervisory interests include truth, reconciliation and reparation, conflict resolution, memory and social change. http://www.brocku.ca/humanities/departments-and-centres/history/faculty-...

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REBECCA RABY
Chair and Associate Professor of Child and Youth Studies
(rraby@brocku.ca, Ext. 3172)
Trained as a sociologist, I draw primarily on critical and post-structural theorizing to study social justice in childhood and youth. My research and teaching investigates discrimination against young people, especially as age intersects with gender, race, class and sexual orientation; sociology of education, with a focus on school disciplinary and surveillance practices as well as sex education; constructions of childhood and adolescence, particularly how they are experienced by children and adolescents themselves; theories of rebellion, resistance and contestation among adolescents/youth; and children and youth as active participants in broader society. My recent book School Rules: Discipline, Obedience and Elusive Democracy is a critical examination of secondary school dress and discipline codes in terms of the language they use, and how they are created, applied and received by teachers and students. My current project with Shauna Pomerantz examines intersections between academic smarts and gender in high school. http://brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/child-and-youth-...

MARY-BETH RADDON
Associate Professor of Sociology
(mraddon@brocku.ca, Ext. 3460)
Mary-Beth Raddon researches the sociology of money, and the intersections of non-market and market economies. Critical analysis of "the gift" is a core theme that ties together work on philanthropy, charitable giving and volunteering, inheritance, unpaid service and caring work. She has a longstanding interest in community currencies: initiatives to create parallel local money systems that seek to generate meaningful work and convivial, sustainable, democratic and sovereign local economies. Her book, Community and Money: Men and Women Making Change (Black Rose, 2003), shows how experimentation with new exchange networks exposes problems and injustices of everyday economic life, including gendered patterns of reciprocity, exchange, work and shopping, identification of which helps point the way to new economic politics. Professor Raddon teaches courses in research design, qualitative methods, service-learning, and anti-poverty strategies. http://brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/facult...

JENNIFER ROWSELL
Canada Research Chair in Multiliteracies, Associate Professor of Education
(jrowsell@brocku.ca, Ext. 6121)
Jennifer Rowsell is a Canada Research Chair in Multiliteracies at Brock University’s Faculty of Education where she directs the Centre for Research in Multiliteracies. Jennifer has written and co-written several books, journal articles, and book chapters over the past ten years. Jennifer has presented at many national and international conferences. Her current research projects include: a high school ethnography in an urban and suburban high school in the Toronto and Welland areas where she applies design principles and uses multimodality to teach and learn secondary English with ethnically diverse youth; a SSHRC-funded international research study on 21st century reading processes; finally, Jennifer has completed research with thirty producers who apply a variety of modes from sound to visual to digital environments to broaden our understandings of literacy. Her research encourages a socio-cultural view of literacy built on the principles of the SJES Program.
http://www.brocku.ca/education/directory/teachered/jrowsell

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JOHN SORENSON
Professor of Sociology
(jsorenson@brocku.ca, Ext. 4369)
John Sorenson gives courses on animals and society, racism, and corporate globalization. Much of his research has been on war, nationalism and refugees and he has been active in solidarity groups in Africa, Asia, Central America and the Middle East. He was also actively engaged in humanitarian relief work in the Horn of Africa with the Eritrean Relief Association. His most recent book is Ape (forthcoming from Reaktion Press) and other books include Culture of Prejudice: Arguments in Critical Social Science; Ghosts and Shadows: Construction of Identity and Community in an African Diaspora; Imagining Ethiopia: Struggles for History and Identity in the Horn of Africa; Disaster and Development in the Horn of Africa; and African Refugees. In 2006 he received a three-year SSHRC research grant to investigate animal advocacy as a social justice movement. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/graduate-programs/critical-sociolog...

DENNIS SORON
Associate Professor of Sociology
(dsoron@brocku.ca, Ext. 3458)
Dennis Soron's teaching and research interests include social and cultural theory, the political economy of consumption, radical ecology, and the intersection of labour and environmental politics. He has published various book chapters, articles, and interviews on consumerism, work, the environment, and the issue of depoliticization. He is (with Gordon Laxer) the co-editor of Not For Sale: Decommodifying Public Life (Broadview/Garamond, 2006). http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/fa...

SUSAN SPEAREY
Associate Professor of English Language and Literature
(sspearey@brocku.ca, Ext. 3885)
Susan Spearey’s research interests focus on literary/cultural responses to contemporary histories of mass violence, on the one hand, and to projects of transitional justice and social reconstruction, on the other. She also works on pedagogy, witnessing and the ethics of reception. Courses taught include Literature of Trauma and Recovery, Postcolonial Literature, South African Literatures of Transition; Textualizing Post-conflict Histories, Social Justice and the Arts, literary theory, and graduate seminars on research skills.
http://www.brocku.ca/humanities/departments-and-centres/english-language...

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NANCY TABER,
Associate Professor of Education
(ntaber@brocku.ca, ext 4218)
Nancy Taber's work focuses on the sociocultural implications of education/learning. She teaches in the areas of critical adult education, sociocultural contexts of education, and learning gender in a militarized world. Her work often draws on her experiences serving in the Canadian military as a Sea King helicopter air navigator. She has engaged in a critique of militarism from her own perspective and that of other military mothers (with a focus on learning masculinities and femininities in military communities of practice), and is now exploring gendered issues of militarism in children's fiction and school curricula. She has recently completed research focusing on a girl empowerment book club for struggling readers. She is interested in feminist methodologies, such as institutional ethnography, feminist discourse analysis, and life history. Nancy has published in journals such as Adult Education Quarterly, International Journal for Lifelong Education, Studies in Continuing Education, Gender and Education, Children's Literature in Education, and Qualitative Research. She is currently working on a book about the ways in which academic and militaristic norms interact. http://www.brocku.ca/education/directory/undergradgradedstudies/ntaber

LEANNE TAYLOR,
Assistant Professor of Education
(leanne.taylor@brocku.ca, Ext. 4965)
Leanne Taylor teaches courses addressing the sociocultural contexts of education, including diversity and equity issues in schooling and the interrelationship between pedagogy, culture and identity. Her ongoing research explores the social construction of racialized identities; multiracial discourses and critiques of critical ‘mixed race’ theory; transnational and immigrant student aspirations; the experiences of marginalized and ‘at risk’ youth in secondary and postsecondary schools; and the effects of school policies and teacher conduct on student experiences. A key focus of her work addresses how education that strives to be equitable and socially just must continually engage with the complexities of race and ethnicity, including multiracial experiences. She is currently investigating the use of digital media as a way of fostering teacher candidates’ engagement with equity issues. She is also researching social justice networks between university and community workers in the Niagara region.
http://www.brocku.ca/education/directory/undergradgradedstudies/leanneta...

SUSAN TILLEY,
Graduate Program Director, Social Justice and Equity Studies, Professor of Education
(stilley@brocku.ca, Ext. 3144)
Susan Tilley has worked as both teacher and curriculum coordinator in public school contexts. Her interest in social justice and equity became more formalized as a result of the critical ethnography she conducted with women attending a school while incarcerated in a federal-provincial prison. She teaches graduate courses in curriculum theory, contemporary issues in curriculum studies, and qualitative research methodologies in the Faculty of Education. Her research interests include curriculum, teacher education, antiracism, critical white studies, pedagogical practices, research ethics, qualitative research, teacher research, critical ethnography, and education in alternative sites. She began her term as Graduate Director of the MA in Social Justice and Equity Studies July 2010.
http://www.brocku.ca/education/directory/undergradgradedstudies/stilley

EBRU USTUNDAG
Associate Professor of Geography
(eustundag@brocku.ca, Ext. 4417)
Ebru Ustundag teaches courses on community development, urban planning, cities and globalization. She has a BSc (Political Science and Public Administration) and MSc (Urban Policy Planning and Local Governments) degrees from Middle East Technical University (Turkey) and Ph.D. (Geography) from York University. Her doctoral dissertation ‘Turkish republican citizenship and rights to the city’ analyzes the constitutions, contestations and transformations of the Turkish republican project’s citizenship practices and strategies, through the spaces of a historical neighborhood in Istanbul: Beyoðlu. In so doing, it establishes the link that has been neglected between the city and citizenship in studies on Turkish republicanism, citizenship and nationalism. Currently she is working on two projects: ‘Women and Awqaf in Ottoman Istanbul’ (with Professor Engin Isin) and ‘Security Discourses and Democratic Paradoxes’. Her major areas of interest are: theories of space and cities, citizenship studies, feminist geographies, urban geographies as well as political and cultural geographies of Middle East. http://brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/geography/facult...

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