Research
My research centres around helping to make visible the ways in which coloniality and racial capitalism persistently condition how knowledge is made, whose knowledge is valid, and what knowledge is activated as policy or structures that justify and sustain the oppression of certain groups and the privilege of others. I do this through three lines of inquiry: young people's experience of and resistance to spatial injustice, the use of creative practice for increasing urban climate justice through design and governance systems, and theory-building work on art as research.
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Planning Theory
"‘¡Eso no se dice’!: Exploring the value of communication distortions in participatory planning" (2022) Planning Theory
DOI: 10.1177/14730952221124824
Abstract: Plans and policies rely on knowledge about communities that is often made by actors outside of the community. Exclusion from the creation of knowledge is a function of exclusion from power. Marxists, feminist, decolonial and postmodernist theorists have documented how the knowledge of some subjects is disqualified based on their gender, race, socio-economic position or a range of other constructed differences. Often, several of these constructions intersect in one person’s life, compounding their exclusion in ways that are both relational and structural (Crenshaw, 2017). Participatory planning ap- proaches bring members of the community into contact with planning authorities in an effort to include their voices and interests in official plans. Essential to meaningful en- gagement in such a process is the participant’s ability to turn their ideas into change through the exercise of their agency. When that potential for transformation is missing, participation is tokenistic at best and dangerous at worst (Cooke and Kothari, 2001, Hickey and Mohan, 2004; Forester, 2020). When planners ask people whose agency is restricted by institutional and cultural forms of subjugation to talk about issues that adversely impact them, but over which they have little control, we can create exposures to internal and external risks that we are ill-equipped to mitigate. How can planners work towards social transformation without shifting the burden of speaking truth to power onto community members? One of the ways in which power and knowledge are related is through the complicated process of communication. Reflecting on power and communication in planning practice, this paper contemplates the question: when working with communities that have been historically excluded from the creation of knowledge about themselves, should planners strive for undistorted communication or should the distortion in communication be analysed for what it can tell us about agency and power, and opportunities for resistance and transformation?
Anti-Oppresive Practice
From ‘No’ to ‘Know’: a heuristic for decolonizing research with youth. (2024) Children’s Geographies, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2024.2371000
Abstract: This paper addresses epistemic violence in social science research, drawing on a multiyear study with marginalized teenagers in Old Havana, Cuba to articulate an onto-epistemological approach to knowledge production that can contribute to the decoloniality of knowledge production. Building on decolonial, feminist, Indigenous, and poststructuralist theories, the heuristic presented here contributes an alternative to conventional positivist understandings of knowledge, by defining knowledge as social, created, performed and resistant, and illustrates how these theoretical tenets can be made material in research practice, in this case through the use of arts-based methods. Responding to calls to decolonize knowledge within the field of children’s geographies and adjacent disciplines, this paper addresses the attendant need to reconceptualize what counts as knowledge and identify methodological innovations to support the achievement of these changes.
and reflect on their experiences.
This StoryMap illustrates the public spaces most discussed by the muchachos and highlights some of the contestations over public space that are occurring as the neighbourhood transforms from a low-income residential area into a heritage tourism site. Through storytelling, images, and neighbourhood tours, we allowed the muchachos to express themselves in their natural registers and vocabularies, we epistemologically privileged their situated knowledges and modes of communication, creating space for alterity, both opportunity and safety to communicate and reflect on their experiences.
Art in Research
Joven Habana, Best Short Film, Cuban American International Film Festival, Miami, FL. November 2019 Watch Film
In exploring the meaning making and identity work of youth in Old Havana, we moved from live street theatre performances to film. Deciding to create a film, a more sharable medium, allowed the group to resist the dominant spatial imaginary of Old Havana on a larger scale, ensuring their version of Old Havana was known globally. This allowed them to resist the naturalization of the spatial imaginary of Old Havana as a ‘ghetto’ grateful for the modernization brought by tourist income, replacing it with the spatial imaginary of Old Havana, the home they love and feel proud of. The film won Best Short at the Cuban American International Film Festival in Miami, FL in November of 2019, bringing great pride to the community.
‘Y Compartimos. . .’: the collective creation of performed fiction
in practice (2024) Cultural Geographies in Practice (31) 3
Abstract: This essay combines text and images in the style of a graphic novel to animate the lively and dynamic processes of a qualitative research approach that I call the collective creation of performed fiction. This is a form of projective storytelling in which participants draw on their own experiences to create and perform composite stories. Using fiction helps them avoid revealing sensitive details of their personal lives. The examples shared here are drawn from a long-term engagement with a group of youth in Old Havana, Cuba, where historic geopolitical tensions and emergent economic crises are interrupting the imagined futures of the young. This brief contribution documents key differences between three creative mediums used in this work (street theatre, film and animation), and addresses their varied capacities to mitigate the risks of self-disclosure.
Art & Youth Placemaking
"Places To Be Young: The dispossession of public space in Old
Havana" (2024) Urban Studies
https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241249421
Abstract: The touristification of Old Havana is resulting in unique patterns of gentrification that rely on a new spatial imaginary, the enforcement of which is resulting in the loss of places for residents to be young. The Cuban state’s preservation of significant proportions of social housing as part of its investments in the heritage tourism industry is disrupting common housing-led displacement in the city. The neighbourhood’s economic transition is concentrated instead in public spaces, as squares and streets are taken over by new tourist-serving businesses. This process of enclosure dispossesses locals of both public and private leisure spaces, as the cost of consumption in said businesses are beyond the purchasing power afforded by Cuban salaries. The dispossession of public space is particularly problematic for local youth who, given the persistence and pervasiveness of Havana’s housing crisis, spend the majority of their free time in streets and squares. This displacement of youth reinforces existing patterns of exclusion and discrimination along lines of race, class, and gender. Given the particular value of public space for youth development in communities like Old Havana, this paper documents the three main processes through which young people are being displaced from or dispossessed of urban public space in their neighbourhood, enclosure, sanitization, and temporary appropriation, and discusses the impacts on young peoples’ place-related identity.
Equitable & Inclusive Academia
Research, rigour, and rape: facing the reality of gender-based violence in academic fieldwork Gender, Place & Culture, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2024.2341262
Abstract: My argument in this short reflection is that, currently, the formal systems and institutional cultures of research organizations enable gender-based violence (GBV) in fieldwork by ignoring or denying its existence. By ignoring the ubiquity of GBV in fieldwork, we are failing to prepare for it, leaving people unnecessarily vulnerable, and making it difficult to address its impacts. I identify three areas that require our attention: silence about GBV increases vulnerability to it, academic success must include safety, and the neoliberal university prioritizes cost reduction over wellbeing. Women, and oppressed or underrepresented groups make unique contributions to academia. Unfortunately, recognition of the unique costs such researchers pay to make said contributions lags dangerously behind. GBV is one example of the kinds of heightened risks faced by academics whose gender, sexuality, race, class, and/or nationality locate them outside of the dominant group in the context in which they are operating. Addressing GBV as an occupational hazard in academia is an essential step towards creating equitable and inclusive institutions.
Knowledge to Policy
Building on previous research, which sought to better understand policymakers’ understandings of climate justice, in support of improved urban climate justice policies in Southeast Asian cities, this project involved the development of a new multiplayer board gameto help build understanding and empathy among decision-makers. Otherwise-unconnected policymakers from climate justice-related posts from Khon Kaen, Thailand spent three days and two nights at an environmentalist summer-camp facility outside of their city for an immersive, skill and network-building event, helping researchers from Canada and Thailand to pilot several games-based workshop materials to meet the context-specific needs of Thai policymakers. These materials are currently being expanded into a 9-month professional development course for Southeast Asian policymakers with the support of the Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia and Mahidol University, Thailand.
What would it take to achieve urban climate resilience in Southeast Asian secondary cities?
Urban Climate Resilience
Social science research is only as effective as our communication of it. That is why I focus on supporting research teams who want to improve their impact by finding communication methods that most effectively get their message to their target audiences. As part of my work as the Evaluation and Learning Specialist for the UCRSEA Partnership, I wrote and produced a series of documentary shorts highlighting the important insights of UCRSEA researchers. We wanted an effective way to share real-world examples of urban climate reslisience struggles with audiences such as policymakers, undergraduate students, and civil society groups. You can see the videos here.
Urban Climate Resilience in Southeast Asia Partnership Shorts
"Rights, justice and climate resilience: lessons from fieldwork in urban Southeast Asia" (2021) McMillan, R., Kocsis. J., Daniere, A.
Environment and Urbanization Vol. 34 Issue 1
DO
Abstract: Recent transformative resilience research calls for urban climate interventions that better meet the needs of low-income and other marginalized groups. Such initiatives, it is suggested, must move beyond technocratic and superficial solutions to address the systems and structures that create climate vulnerability. While these are important theoretical developments, there is still much to be learned about how to support transformative resilience on the ground. This paper situates transformative resilience theory in practice with lessons from a five-year research partnership in Southeast Asian cities. We argue that for resilience research to advance rights and justice, knowledge production and mobilization efforts must be conceptualized as active parts of the transformation process. Bringing together conceptual and methodological insights from resilience, political ecology and governance learning research, we offer three pathways for transformative resilience and present examples of how they can be operationalized in Southeast Asia and beyond.
Urban Climate Justice
Understanding the climate crisis and its impacts on cities through a social justice lens has the potential to transform the ways in which we respond to global environmental change. There is a growing body of work that explores the importance of the rights and entitlements of citizens in building climate resilience. While the value of such work has been made more salient thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, most policymakers are ill-equipped to apply either the theory, or what we have learned, to policy. This research project proactively engages policymakers in implementing transformative change to support climate justice in Southeast Asian (SEA) secondary cities. Building on our ongoing work with a network of policymakers, researchers, and civil society actors through the Urban Climate Resilience in Southeast Asia Partnership (UCRSEA), this transdisciplinary initiative defines urban resilience as development that is sustainable and socially just in the face of urbanization and environmental change. Further, the project pursues such transformative change by simultaneously producing knowledge on, and strengthening, stakeholders’ capacities to understand and use climate change knowledge for inclusive and just climate adaptation.
In this presentation, Joanna Kocsis, PhD Candidate at U of T's Geography and Planning department, connected theoretical developments around rights and resilience in the field urban climate justice to practice by grounding the literature’s key arguments in the experiences of a five-year project based in Southeast Asian cities, such as those in Thailand and Myanmar, that she was a part of. The project consisted of a network of researchers working closely with civil society stakeholders to understand and influence urban climate resilience. Joanna shared her insights into how researchers can better support the local efforts towards transformative resilience that advances rights and justice, by understanding researchers’ knowledge production and mobilization efforts as an active part of the transformation process. The presentation was followed by a lively discussion and Q&A.
Empowerment and Innovation
"Opening The Doors To Innovation in Central America: Empowering the most marginalized to address their development challenges through participatory research" (2013) Second Place Best Paper, Oxford University's Academy of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Conference no
Abstract: This study identified sixteen mechanisms through which Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB) activities common throughout Central America contribute to an increased sense of psychological empowerment. Each mechanism works through one or more of the cognitive elements of psychological empowerment identified by Thomas and Velthouse (1990) to give the participant a stronger feeling of control over their life. This feeling, in turn, results in an increased manifestation of the personality traits required for innovative behaviour. Using the PhotoVoice method, this research identified important affective responses to social learning and experimentation and highlighted actions and practices on the part of Agronomist-facilitators that enhance the psychological impact of PPB work.
Rural Climate Resilience
Extreme Weather, Climate Change And The Livelihoods Of Hillside Households In The Jesus De Otoro Valley, Honduras
(2011) MSc. Thesis, University of Guelph, Master of Science (Planning) in Rural Planning and Development
Abstract: This thesis is an investigation of the impacts of extreme weather on the livelihoods of households in the hillside communities of the Jesus de Otoro Valley, Honduras. Extreme weather events can have profound negative impacts on livelihoods that rely heavily on natural resources, such as agriculture. The reliance of hillside households on agriculture and related activities for survival makes this population critically vulnerable to the negative impacts of extreme weather. This study found that the livelihood resources of this group that are most affected by extreme weather events are cash income and human health. Strong rains, drought and extreme temperatures have several direct impacts on household income, not only for hillside farmers themselves, but also for the merchants whose businesses have been developed to serve them. Extreme weather events also have multiple direct impacts on human health. Increased incidence of bacterial infections and communicable diseases are serious effects of strong rains, drought and temperature extremes. This study found a clear positive feedback link between decreased income and deterioration of health. Climate change studies predict that extreme weather events will become more frequent and severe. If these predictions are correct, hillside households will suffer potentially devastating impacts on their livelihoods. The coping strategies currently employed by hillside households in the face of extreme weather events are unlikely to provide the resources needed for households to survive under more severe and unstable weather conditions.