PhD Graduates

Before her thesis defence, Jemima Baada accepted a tenure-track position at the University of British Columbia’s Geography department starting September 1, 2022. She is an interdisciplinary climate-migration scholar, and her research and teaching are at the intersections of gender, climate change, migration, health and development equity.

Geoffrey Bardwell (2017)

Dissertation Title: Creating and Sustaining Community: An Analysis of LGBTQ Community in London, Ontario

Geoffrey accepted a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Medicine at the University of British Columbia where he worked on a community-based project in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside that explores the social-, structural-, and physical-environmental influences on the implementation and effectiveness of overdose prevention interventions for those who are precariously housed in single room accommodations and emergency shelters. In 2022, he accepted a tenure-track appointment in the School of Public Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo.

Sandra Biskupski-Mujanovic (2022)

Dissertation Title: Women in the Canadian Armed Forces: At Home and Abroad

Sandra began a 3-year postdoc on July 1, 2022, with the Transforming Military Cultures Project at Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) in Halifax. She has also been awarded a two-year SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship via the Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security (MINDS) Scholarships Initiative.

Laura Cayen (2016)

Dissertation Title: “In the end, it’s your pleasure that’s on the line”: Postfeminist, healthist, and neoliberal discourses in online sexual health information

Since completing her PhD, Laura has continued to teach as an Assistant Professor in Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies at Western University. Laura has most recently taught Introduction to Women's Studies and Sexual Subjects, and previous courses include Gender, Sexuality, and Cultural Resistance: Making Culture Jam, Bad Girls: Sexual Dissidence and Popular Culture, and (M)Ad Women: Postfeminism, Advertising, and Activism.

Jennifer Chisholm (2015)

Dissertation Title: For Keeps-Sake: Women's Experiences with Elective Prenatal Ultrasound Imaging in Canada

In the fall of 2015, Jen accepted a position at Lakehead University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Women's Studies. Her work on women's experiences with reproductive technology has evolved to question the role of social location and access, particularly in Northern communities. While at Lakehead, Jen has become involved with the Social Justice Studies Program, and coordinated two annual conferences: Social Justice Activism in Northwestern Ontario, and Feminisms at the Lakehead, which both addressed the role of feminist activism in the community.

Nicole Ephgrave (2015)

Dissertation Title: Sexual Violence at Nyarubuye: History, Justice, Memory. A Case Study of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide

Rita Gardiner (2013)

Dissertation Title: Thinking with Arendt: Authenticity, Gender and Leadership

Dr. Rita A. Gardiner is an Assistant Professor, Critical Policy, Equity, and Leadership Studies, in the Faculty of Education at Western University. Rita has published extensively on diverse topics such as authentic leadership, organizational ethics and questions of gender. Her publications include Gender, Authenticity and Leadership: Thinking with Arendt (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), and articles in Business Ethics Quarterly, Leadership, Organization Studies, and Gender, Work, and Organization. Currently, she is working on a SSHRC funded project that examines the implementation of gender-based violence policies in Ontario universities, a special issue that examines leadership and #me too from diverse global perspectives, as well as a monograph, with Dr. Katy Fulfer, on questions of home and belonging in the work of Hannah Arendt.

Crystal Gaudet (2021)

Dissertation Title: Making meaning about reproductive work: A narrative inquiry into the experiences of migrant caregivers in Canada

Kate Grantham (2016)

Dissertation Title: Making microfinance work: exploring effective strategies to promote Tanzanian women’s economic and social status through microfinance

Kate is a Research Associate with the Institute for the Study of International Development (ISID) at McGill University, Kate manages the dissemination and communication of research outputs from the Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) program. GrOW is $17.5 million multi-funder partnership between IDRC, UKAID and the Hewlett-Flora Foundation. With 14 projects in 50 countries, GrOW works with researchers to improve economic outcomes and opportunities for poor women on the themes of employment, the care economy, and women’s economic agency. Kate is also the Managing Editor of the GrOW Research Series, which disseminates scholarly research on women's economic growth and empowerment.

Patricia Hamilton (2017)

Dissertation Title: "We Do This Too": Black Mothers' Engagements With Attachment Parenting In Britain And Canada

Mayme Audra Lefurgey (2021)

Dissertation Title: Yoga as embodied peacebuilding: Moving through personal, interpersonal and collective trauma(s) in post-conflict Colombia

Jami McFarland (2022)

Dissertation Title: Timely Representations: The Queer Elder Figure in Canadian and U.S. American Film and Television

Dr. Jami McFarland (she/her) is currently working as a Research Associate for two community-based research projects created for and with older adults living in Southwestern Ontario: Aging in Neighbourhoods (engageresearch.ca) and Direct[Message]: Digital Access to Artistic Engagement (direct-message.ca). Working under the co-supervision of Drs. Carla Rice and Nadine Changfoot, and in collaboration with Hamilton's artist-run Centre[3], Jami's Mitacs-funded research with Direct[Message] aims to make the arts more accessible for and inclusive of older adults aging with and into disabilities.

In 2023, Jami will begin a 2-year SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice (https://revisioncentre.ca) at the University of Guelph. Jami's postdoctoral program will extend her doctoral work about mainstream representations of aging, queerness, and disability. Specifically, Jami will collaborate with 2SLGBTQ older adults to co-create diverse digital stories to challenge and build on a narrow set of queer elder narratives found in film and television, and to promote a greater understanding of how 2SLGBTQ older adults respond to these visual narratives.

Miranda Niittynen (2018)

Dissertation Title:Un/Dead Animal Art: Ethical Encounters Through Rogue Taxidermy Sculpture

Rachael Pack (2018)

Dissertation Title: The Duty to Survive Well: Neoliberal Governance, Temporality and Breast Cancer Survivorship Discourse

Rachael is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Education Research and Innovation in the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry. In collaboration with Drs. Sayra Cristancho and Taryn Taylor, Rachael's post-doctoral program of research explores how critical, qualitative methodologies can be harnessed to explore complex patient care and medical education problems. Her recent ethnographic study of Clinical Competency Committees was nominated for the top research in residency education prize by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and was featured on Wiley's Medical Education podcast. Rachael's current work is focused on tracing the complex risk-calculations that women engage in when making choices around perinatal cannabis use and exploring how knowledge of this process can be leveraged to facilitate patient-centered care.

Jacqueline M. Potvin (2018)

Dissertation Title: Biopolitics, Risk, and Reproductive Justice: the Governing of Maternal Health in Canada's Muskoka Initiative

Dayna Prest (2021)

Dissertation Title: (In)tolerance and (in)visibility: LGBTQ+ sense of place in the Stratford area

Sarah Saska (2016)

Dissertation Title: Can Applying a Gender Lens to Social Innovation Promote Women's Rights and Gender Equality?

Dr. Sarah Saska (She/Her/Hers) translated her research into practice and is the co-founder and CEO of Feminuity. Feminuity is a global strategy firm that partners with leading technology startups through to Fortune 500 companies to build diverse teams, develop equitable systems, and design inclusive products and company cultures. With clients such as Autodesk, Google, and Ubisoft, Sarah and her team are working to design a more equitable future through technology.

Sarah has twice been named amongst the Women’s Executive Network’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada and on Culture Amp’s list of “21 Diversity and Inclusion Leaders You Should Know.” She is a TEDx speaker, and she has been featured on CBC’s The National and Fast Company.

Andie Shabbar (2018)

Dissertation Title: Queer Autonomous Zones: Activist Art, Surveillance, and the Imperceptible Politics of Affect.

Andie's dissertation examines activist and artistic responses to contemporary forms of sexual surveillance including biometric recognition technologies and the ways in which they seek to cultivate particular expressions and experiences of sexuality. Her current research explores the affective potential of tarot as a mode of working through gender-based violence and trauma. Andie is currently an instructor in GSWS.

Vanessa Slothouber (2021)

Dissertation Title: Narratives of Detransition: Disrupting the Boundaries of Gender and Time

Gina Snooks (2022)

Dissertation Title: Between Worlds: Artful Auto/Biography and/as Pagan Healing

AnnaLise Trudell (2016)

Dissertation Title: Girls' Speak: Criticality as Agency

Dr. AnnaLise Trudell is Manager of Education, Training & Research at Anova (formerly Women’s Community House & Sexual Assault Centre London). She brings extensive analysis of sexual violence and gender dynamics through her research at Western University and is a seasoned public educator and facilitator with over 500 presentations engaging youth, professionals & post-secondary students through public education.

Graduate Programs