Adjunct, Sessional, and Status Only Faculty

Ian Andres

Research Interests

• Municipal and Planning Law

Michelle Berquist

Research Interests

• Planning practice
• Project Management
• Systems and infrastructure
• Civic engagement, community, decision-making methods

Joe Berridge

Research Interests

• Large scale urban planning and regeneration projects
• Waterfront redevelopment

Travis K. Bost

Research Interests

• Race & Political Ecology
• Politics of Infrastructure & Planning
• Nature-Society Relations
• Urban & Historical Geography
• U.S. Gulf South & Caribbean
• Climate Change Politics

Philippa Campsie

Research Interests

• Effective communication techniques in planning
• Housing and homelessness
• Food and local agriculture
• Public consultation techniques

Jeffrey Cantos

Research Interests

• Urban planning
• Community development

Evan Castel

Research Interests

• Urban built form and its relationships with social processes and mental health
• Healthcare quality
• History of architecture and urban planning
• GIS

My academic research is situated at the intersection of urban planning, architecture and public health, where I use a health equity lens with geospatial and epidemiological tools to examine connections between the built environment and human health. My doctoral work focuses on the unique built environment of high-rise habitation, using large Statistics Canada datasets and GIS to examine the health and social consequences of life in the current high-rise boom as well as in the aging, stigmatized high-rises that are central to Canada’s low-income urban housing stock. This work, supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, is providing the first national examination of the social and health implications of high-rise living, bringing insight into the effects of density and the role of disadvantage in Canada’s urban centres.

My undergraduate education was in the life sciences and then architecture (Queen’s University and University of Toronto), followed by ten years of experience in architecture and urban planning policy roles, including working for Ontario’s Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renewal on the preparation of the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe. After developing my research and policy skills in these roles in the private and public sectors, I began graduate studies with a Master’s degree in health sciences at York University before beginning my present doctoral degree.  I am always interested in community and academic feedback and collaboration, and welcome inquiry via my contact information above.

Carolyn DeLoyde

Research Interests

• Environmental Planning
• Environmental Impact Assessment
• Natural Heritage System Planning

Rob Dowler

Research Interests

• Governance & planning decision making boards
• Planning administration & implementation
• Housing policy
• Transit-supportive development
• Smart cities & smart regulation
• Project management & conflict resolution

Damian Dupuy

Research Interests

• Innovation systems
• Innovation policy
• Commercialization
• Knowledge transfer
• Urban and regional economic development

Zahra Ebrahim

Research Interests

• Equity-centred design
• Participatory design
• Participatory policy and planning
• Intersectional city-building
• Institutional reform
• Human-centred design

John Farrow

Research Interests

• How cities develop successful economies
• Financing urban infrastructure

Renee Gomes

Research Interests

• Urban planning
• real estate development
• transit-oriented development
• long-term growth management planning

Kofi Hope

Research Interests

• Just Cities
• Social Movements
• Social Exclusion and Urban Segregation
• Racial Equity
• Municipal Politics and Policy

Rae L Jewett

Research Interests

• health geography
• health services research
• spatial statistics
• multilevel modeling
• Geography/stats education and training methods

Jennifer Keesmaat

Research Interests

• City building
• Designing safe, inclusive and vibrant public spaces
• Affordable housing
• transit planning
• heritage preservation
• strategy development
• sustainable economic development

Joanna Kocsis

Research Interests

• Knowledge co-production
• Decoloniality
• Anti-oppressive practice
• Arts based research
• Stigmatized communities
• Youth
• Leisure

Joanna Kocsis is an anti-oppressive, participatory research methods specialist and PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. Her research has inquired into the international development project from many angles, ranging from the learning practices of international development grantmakers to the role of psychological empowerment in the innovative behaviour of subsistence farmers in Central America. Most recently, she has been exploring the role of affect in the lived experiences of marginalized urban youth in Havana, Cuba. Generally, her work focuses on making visible and undoing systems that colonize and restrict the production of knowledge by communities that face oppression through transformative, participatory research, by offering opportunities for reflection, capacity development and social learning. Joanna worked held Research Award positions at the International Development Research Centre in 2012 (Innovation for Inclusive Development) and 2014 (Policy, Strategy and Evaluation) and has served as the Learning and Evaluation Specialist for the Urban Climate Resilience in Southeast Asia Partnership since 2014. She has co-chaired of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion working group of the Canadian Evaluation Society since 2018.

Lazar Konforti

Research Interests

• agrarian political economy
• rural livelihoods
• land access, land grabbing, land reform, land rights, etc.

Kristian Larsen

Research Interests

• geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial analysis
• health geography
• environment and population health
• physical activity, diet and obesity
• environmental exposure and cancer risk
• access to health care facilities
• transportation geography

Max Laskin

Research Interests

Max Laskin is an associate in the Municipal, Planning and Property Tax Group at Goodmans. His practice encompasses a wide variety of municipal and land development matters for public and private sector clients across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Max assists clients with complex land development applications and appeals, often involving heritage and environmental issues, as well as other municipal approvals.

Gwen MacGregor

Research Interests

• Cultural Geographies of Nationhood
• The City and Public Art
• Unsettling Colonialism
• The Politics of Mapping

Julie Mah

Research Interests

• Housing policy and affordable housing issues
• Social housing development
• Gentrification and displacement
• Evictions
• Planning for spatial justice and equitable development approaches

In general, my research looks at how income inequality manifests itself spatially through unequal housing patterns. I examine issues of housing affordability, evictions, gentrification and displacement, and the planning mechanisms that can be employed to address spatialized inequities, such as the use of value capture tools (e.g. inclusionary zoning).

Stanley Makuch

Research Interests

• Canadian Municipal and Planning law

Loren March

Research Interests

• environmental and ecological gentrification
• more-than-human urban studies
• queer ecologies
• affect
• everyday life

James McLaughlin

Research Interests

• How human activities and natural disturbance affect soil nutrient and water cycles, water quality, and productivity
• Carbon cycling in Far North peatlands, and permafrost

Matthew Palm

Research Interests

• Transportation and housing
• Transportation and land use
• Transport equity/inclusion

Roger Phillips

Research Interests

• Geomorphology, Soil Science, and Hydrology

Léa Ravensbergen

Research Interests

• Cycling
• Critical mobilities
• Feminist urban geography
• Embodiment
• Health inequalities
• Migration
• GIS

Tim Ross

Research Interests

• Planning/design for inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility
• Disability studies
• Inclusive play
• Education access
• Institutional ableism
• Transport and land use planning
• Qualitative methods

Mehrdad Shirinbakhsh Masouleh

Research Interests

• Building Energy Efficiency
• Renewable Energy
• Net-Zero Energy Buildings (NZEBs)

Greg Suttor

Research Interests

• Social and affordable housing policy
• Housing in relation to social policy
• Supportive housing and homelessness
• Housing vis-à-vis urban socio-spatial change

Stephen Swales

Research Interests

• Urban-economic geography
• Environment
• GIS

Romila Verma

Research Interests

• Environmental sustainability
• Climate change impacts on freshwater
• Finding creative solutions to global environmental challenges

Adam Zendel

Research Interests

• Cultural Economy
• Live Music Industry
• Touring Music Industry
• Urban Economic Geography
• Cultural Industries
• Precarious Labour

Broadly, I am interested in the livelihoods, identities and working conditions of cultural workers. My doctoral research explores the everyday life of touring musicians. I am particularly interested in how touring musicians and crew take care of themselves on the road, how they maintain relationships back home, and they come to understand themselves as workers.

Peter Zimmerman

Research Interests

• Real estate development
• Housing Policy
• Affordable Housing