Research Affiliates of the Centre for Human Rights Research contribute to the work and mission of our Centre. While our research affiliates are not in residence, we would like to acknowledge the significant contributions they have made to the intellectual life of the Centre.

In the Centre’s commitment to interdisciplinary research on human rights and social justice, the Centre’s Research Affiliates represent various departments and faculties across the University of Manitoba, as well as other universities and institutions across Canada.

Benefits of being a CHRR Research Affiliate:

  1. Community of other researchers (in U of M and beyond) that engage with human rights in their work
  2. Administrative support
  3. Support with grant writing/editing
  4. Participation in the small grants program
  5. Community targeted outreach for events and other human rights focused opportunities
Faculty of Arts
  • Dr. Sean Carleton is a settler scholar whose research examines the history of colonialism, capitalism, and schooling in Canada. He is also a founding member of the Graphic History Collective.
  • Dr. Joyce Chadya is an associate professor of African history whose research deals with social justice and the rights of women and children in post-colonial contexts. She is also a member of CHRR’s Advisory Board.
  • Dr. Annette Desmarais (PhD in geography) is Canada Research Chair in human rights, social justice and food sovereignty. Her research focuses on food sovereignty, agrarian change, international development theory and practice, and rural social movementsShe is conducting research on the theory, practice, and politics of food sovereignty in Canada, Spain, and Mexico. Desmarais also helped design the new Master of Human Rights program.
  • Dr. Shawna Ferris is an associate professor in Women’s and Gender Studies. She researches and teaches in feminist cultural studies and critical race theory. Her research interests include cultural representations of and responses to sex work/ers, as well as cultural marginalization, and the raced, classed and gendered violence resulting from that. Her current research examines anti-violence, anti-racism and decolonization-oriented commemorative activism stemming from the growing number of missing and murdered women—many of whom are Aboriginal people—in urban centres across the Canadian West.
  • Dr. Stephan Jaeger is head of German and Slavic Studies. He researches on narratives, representations, and memory of war (especially World War One, World War Two, and the Holocaust) in history museums as well as in German and European literature, film and historiography. He asks how moral/legal definitions of war and human rights relate to war’s representation and remembrance, and how war’s representation links past, present, and future. His teaching also includes other human rights-related topics such as German colonialism and genocide, as well as German identity and refugees.
  • Dr. Esyllt W. Jones is the Humanities Research Professor, Faculty of Arts and Professor in the Departments of History and Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba. She is a historian of infectious disease and society, and the history of movements for socialized medicine. Her books include Influenza 1918: Disease, Death and Struggle in Winnipeg (2007), Epidemic Encounters: Influenza, Society and Culture in Canada (2012) edited with Madga Fahrni, and Radical Medicine: the International Origins of Socialized Health Care in Canada (2019). The volume Medicare’s Histories: Origins, Opportunities, and Omissions in Canada, edited with James Hanley and Delia Gavrus, will be released in June 2022.
  • Dr. Nancy Kang is Canada Research Chair in Transnational Feminisms and Gender-Based Violence and Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Manitoba. A literary scholar by training, she engages in interdisciplinary feminist and ethnic studies research by and about women of color.
  • Political scientist Dr. Kiera Ladner holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous politics and governance. Her research project on constitutional reconciliation examines the potential for political reconciliation between Indigenous nations and the settler state, given the long history of injustice, discrimination, oppression, domination, regime replacement and the (attempted) destruction of nations. Dr. Ladner has also developed Mamawipawin – a space for community-based research with Indigenous Peoples.
  • Dr. Cary Miller is Anishinaabe and descends from St. Croix and Leech Lake communities. From 2013 she was the Director of American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and since 2010 has been Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (starting there in 2002). Her book Ogimag: Anishinaabeg leadership 1760-1845 was published with the University of Nebraska Press in 2010 and she previously has published in books such as Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World through Stories and the Encyclopedia of United States Indian Policy and Law. Her research is in Anishinaabe leadership in the early 19th century, Anishinaabe women’s history, Treaties and sovereignty, Wisconsin Indian History, and Cultures of the Great Lakes Region. Dr. Miller was appointed the Associate Vice-President (Indigenous) Scholarship, Research and Curriculum in 2021.
  • Dr. Adam Muller is preoccupied with rights issues arising from the sometime violent collisions of moral, aesthetic, political, and strategic discourses in works of art, especially works of narrative fiction and film. His work seeks to generate insights into the moral and other indignities accompanying suffering, spectatorial ethics (i.e. with the moral dimension of witnessing atrocity), historical truth claims, and representations of the defence and diminishment of human freedom. His scholarship is deeply implicated in a wider set of juridical, historical, moral-philosophical, and popular conversations about the universality of human rights. Muller played a lead role in development of a Master of Human Rights program.
  • Economist Dr. Umut Oguzoglu‘s research interests are in labour economics, health economics, Aboriginal economic development, economic growth, panel data econometrics and applied econometrics. He is currently working on a research project that examines income determinants in First Nations Reserves. He has published papers on the financial protection of health insurance, disability, income support stigma and retirement incentives.
  • Dr. Janice Ristock is provost and vice-president (Academic) emeritus and professor of women’s and gender studies. Her scholarly work reflects an overarching focus on community mental health and social justice. Her research is in three intersecting areas: gender and sexuality; interpersonal violence; and health and stigma. She has gained international recognition for her research on violence in lgbttq lives and on community-based research methodologies.
  • Dr. Lara Rosenoff Gauvin is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology. She is a scholar, artist, activist, and curator whose work centres the knowledge and practices of survivors of conflict and forced displacement, particularly in Northern Uganda, where she has worked since 2004. Her research interests include: Indigenous knowledge, land tenure and rights, inter-generational relations, social repair, witnessing, museology, and responsive multimodal methodologies. Her current work examines Acholi Indigenous governance and law as it pertains to community-based land protection initiatives in post-conflict and post-displacement contexts.
  • Dr. Myroslav Shkandrij is a Professor Emeritus of Slavic Studies who researches cultural politics in the former Soviet Union, and the history of Ukrainian-Russian and Ukrainian-Jewish relations. His focus is on nationalism, government policies toward Ukrainians and Jews, and the depiction in literature and the arts. He has also worked on issues raised by the Famine of 1932-33 (the Holodomor) and on the role of public intellectuals in Russia and Ukraine.
  • Dr. Katherine Starzyk is a Polish-Canadian associate professor in social and personality psychology and director of the Social Justice Laboratory. She is also a founding member of the Centre for Human Rights Research and a research affiliate of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. She aims to understand how to shift attitudes toward past and present human rights issues. Starzyk is responsible for the Canadian Reconciliation Barometer project, funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant. The goal of the project is to develop a measure of reconciliation that is acceptable to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.
  • Dr. Julia Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Labour Studies Program at the University Manitoba. She studies the political economy of labour relations in Canada and the history and politics of women’s labour activism. Julia is also a member of the Graphic History Collective.
  • Dr. Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair is Anishinaabe and originally from St. Peter’s (Little Peguis) Indian Settlement near Selkirk, Manitoba. He is an award-winning writer, editor and activist who was named one of Monocle Magazines “Canada’s Top 20 Most Influential People” and he won the 2018 Canadian columnist of the year at the National Newspaper Awards for his bi-weekly columns in The Winnipeg Free PressHis creative work can be found in books such as The Exile Edition of Native Canadian Fiction and Drama, newspapers like The Guardian, and online with CBC Books: Canada Writes. He is also the co-editor of the award-winning Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water (Highwater Press, 2011)Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories (Michigan State University Press, 2013) and The Winter We Danced: the Past, the Future and the Idle No More Movement (Arbeiter Ring Press, 2014). Currently at the University of Manitoba, Niigaan teaches courses in Indigenous literatures, cultures, histories, and politics and is a proud Treaty One member.
  • Dr. Jocelyn Thorpe is an associate professor in Women’s & Gender Studies and History. Her research examines the history and legacies of colonialism in the Canadian context, seeking to understand how past discourses and relationships of power lead to and naturalize present-day social and environmental inequities. Drawing from critical race, feminist and environmental studies scholarship, her work aims to open up possibilities for just relationships to emerge among humans and between humans and the non-human world.
  • Sociologist Dr. Jane Ursel was the founding director of RESOLVE, a tri-provincial research network on interpersonal violence.  She has led two longitudinal studies: an 18-year analysis of the first family violence criminal court in Canada and a six-year study of women who have experienced violence in their intimate partner relationships. Ursel now leads research analyzing criminal sexual assault complaint attrition rates.
  • Psychology professor Dr. Jacquie Vorauer‘s research centres on “metaperceptions,” that is, people’s beliefs about how they are viewed by others. In particular, she examines communication breakdowns that pose obstacles to positive relationships between individuals and groups. Her long-term goal is to identify ways in which such obstacles can be overcome. Vorauer is applying her expertise to First Nations water rights research co-ordinated by the Centre for Human Rights Research.
  • Sociologist Dr. Lori Wilkinson focuses on the migration and resettlement experiences of refugees, particularly children, youth and their families. She is the director of Immigration Research West and was recently appointed as Canada Research Chair in Migration Futures. Wilkinson is currently working on a nationally funded study on the arrival experiences of Afghan refugees to Canada, a study of gender- and sexually-based violence experienced by refugee women, and heads a three nation study of the socioeconomic and mental health effects of the COVID-19 social and economic restrictions on immigrant and refugee families.
  • Sociologist Dr. Andrew Woolford is professor of sociology and criminology and former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. His research focuses on settler colonial and critical genocide studies, as well as on intersections between ecocidal and genocidal destruction. He is working on two community-based research projects with residential school Survivors: 1) Embodying Empathy, which has designed, built and tested a virtual Indian Residential School to serve as a site of knowledge mobilization and empathy formation; and 2) Remembering Assiniboia, which focuses on commemoration of the Assiniboia Residential School. He has initiated a project on human and other-than-human relations within genocidal processes under the title “symbiogenetic destruction”.

Faculty of Law
  • Dr. Kjell Anderson is a jurist and social scientist who studies human rights, mass violence and mass atrocities. He has worked in Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Netherlands and Ireland. His current research focuses on perpetrators of international crimes, the criminology of genocide, transitional justice, and the Dominic Ongwen trial at the International Criminal Court.
  • Dr. Leo Baskatawang is an Anishinaabe scholar from Lac Des Mille Lacs First Nation in Treaty #3 territory. His primary research interests include: the history of Indigenous peoples (with particular attention to the Anishinaabe); Indigenous law and Canadian policy; treaty interpretation and implementation; Indigenous education; Indigenous resistance and activism; the processes of colonization, reconciliation, and decolonization; as well as Indigenous literature, art, and representation.
  • Dr. Nathan Derejko is the Mauro Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice and Assistant Professor of Law at Robson Hall Faculty of Law. Derejko’s research and teaching interests span three interrelated fields of international law: international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and collective security and the use of force (jus ad bellum). He has a particular interest in the applicability and application of human rights law during armed conflict, counter-terrorism and human rights, climate change and human rights, and the law and practice of non-international armed conflict.
  • Prof. Brenda Gunn advocates for greater recognition of Indigenous peoples’ inherent rights as determined by their own legal traditions. She has worked in Guatemala on a case of genocide submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and with Manitoba First Nations on Aboriginal and treaty rights issues. She developed a handbook that is one of the main resources in Canada on understanding the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and has provided technical assistance to the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
  • Dr. Gerald Heckman’s research interests include administrative and constitutional law, human rights law and refugee law. His recent publications have focused on the influence of international human rights norms on states’ domestic legal systems. His dissertation focused on the gap between procedural rights guaranteed to refugee claimants by international human rights treaties and the domestic procedural protections provided claimants under the Canadian, American and Australian systems for refugee protection decision making.
  • Prof. David Ireland practiced criminal law as both Crown and defence counsel before joining the Faculty of Law. His research interests include the effect of social class on justice system outcomes.
  • Prof. Darcy MacPherson’s research is diverse, covering areas such as corporate law, corporate criminality and disability rights. His service work is largely in the area of human rights, particularly as they relate to disability issues. He is both the president and chair of the board of the Canadian Centre on Disability Studies and chair of the steering committee of Inclusive Education for Children with Disabilities in Ukraine, a five-year, $4.7-million project whose major funder is the Canadian International Development Agency.
  • Dr. Mary Shariff is an associate professor in the Faculty of Law. Her diverse research interests include bioethics and law; law of contracts; natural resources law; biogerontology, aging and the law; and assisted death and palliative care.
  • Dr. Donn Short’s primary research interest is safe schools, with a focus on homophobic and transphobic bullying. He is the recipient of a research fellowship from the Law Foundation of British Columbia, as well as a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council standard research grant. Dr. Short is committed to the rights of artists and is a member of PEN Canada and the Playwrights Guild of Canada. At Robson Hall, he founded the group Outlaws and he is the founding editor of the Canadian Journal of Human Rights.
  • Dr. Lorna Turnbull’s primary areas of research include women’s equality as shaped by laws related to economic rights and obligations, and workplace regulation and social inclusion as these impact upon care for dependents. Her teaching interests include international and domestic human rights law, taxation law and policy, gender and equality and women’s rights in a global context. Dr. Turnbull holds a cross appointment with the Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice at St. Paul’s College.

Faculty of Education

  • Dr. Marlene Atleo/ʔeh ʕeh naa tuu kʷ is of the House of Klaaqishpeelth, Hiimixklaaq, Humiis, of the Ahousaht First Nation, Nuučaan̓ uł Tribal Council, and holds an appointment with the University of Manitoba as a Senior Scholar in the Faculty of Education. She focuses on understanding the development and delivery of diverse and non-traditional community programs for credentials in post-secondary education. She also works on human rights to socio-historical integrity in education, on capacity development and on heritage language rights for educational success of Indigenous peoples. ʔeh ʕeh naa tuu kʷiss works with is defined by the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage as practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills, technologies, objects, artifacts, cultural spaces, and sacred sites.
  • Dr. Nadine Bartlett is as assistant professor with 22 years of experience in the public school system as a classroom teacher, resource teacher and student-services administrator. Her career as an educator has included teaching in urban, rural and northern Indigenous communities. Her research focuses on inclusive, person-centered and strength-based models of support for marginalized children, youth and families.
  • Dr. Bruno de Oliveira Jayme (he/him) is a queer visual artist and an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education. Born and raised in Brazil, Dr. de Oliveira Jayme uses arts–based research to trouble the complex apparatus that produces and reproduces poverty and marginalization in developing countries. Through artistic expressions, Dr. de Oliveira Jayme’s research brings forth hidden narratives of oppression, untold stories of inequity, but above all, the dreams of an alternative reality for one self, a process in which he identifies as the pedagogy of possible dreams. His research interests are: arts–based methodologies, museum education, adult education, critical and creative pedagogies and arts–based environmental education.
  • Dr. Michelle Honeyford‘s research focuses on literacy, identity and citizenship, particularly around issues related to rights and representation. Her work involves building partnerships with teachers, schools, and communities to design more equitable, advocative and activist pedagogies for youth – including undocumented immigrant youth, youth in alternative education, and youth in afterschool programs – largely through writing, digital photography and multimodal literacies. She co-leads the Manitoba Writing Project with colleague Wayne Serebrin.
  • Dr. Melanie Janzen is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the University of Manitoba. Her research is informed by critical and feminist theories, with a central focus on exploring the inter-related workings of power and discourses, particularly as they relate to the identities of teachers and children. Her research includes two SSHRC-funded projects on exploring the emotional toll of obligation in teaching and on improving educational experiences for children in care. In addition, she is interested in critical analyses of children’s rights and the implications of rights-based discourses for children and schooling.
  • Dr. Sandra (Sandie) Kouritzin is Distinguished Professor of Second Language Education. Her work addresses the right to Indigenous linguistic and cultural emancipation, and opposes language loss, language shift, and minority language endangerment, as well as oppressive practices stemming from academic research and the demands of higher education. Particularly informed by critical discourse analysis and positioning theory, her work aims to reveal and undo the broad spectrum of overt and covert operations undermining our empirical, conceptual, theoretical and pedagogical work.
  • Dr. Robert Mizzi is the Canada Research Chair in Queer, Community and Diversity Education and an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Administration, Foundation and Psychology. His research examines the politics, policies, and practices that include or exclude 2SLGBTQ identities in organizations.
  • Dr. Shannon Moore is an assistant professor of social studies education in the department of curriculum, teaching and learning. Through her research, she has explored: student responses to issues of social justice; media education and media literacies in the social studies context; and the use of digital video production in pedagogy and research. Moore hopes to continue research on the use of social justice and playful pedagogies in formal educational spaces.
  • Dr. Nathalie Piquemal’s research and teaching examine education from a human rights perspective. Her specialty is intercultural and international education, with a focus on issues of cultural discontinuities as experienced by minority students. Dr. Piquemal’s areas of interest also include research ethics; immigration, language and culture; cultural and linguistic discontinuities; and Aboriginal education.
  • Dr. Wayne Serebrin is an associate professor in language and literacy. He and colleague Michelle Honeyford lead the Manitoba Writing Project, which organized a forum for teachers on writing for social justice and human rights and a summer institute for educators who want to become better writers. Serebrin is working with teachers from 17 schools to create spaces that value children’s and youths’ everyday, local writing discourses and connect them with global discourses.
  • Since becoming an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning, Dr. Jennifer Watt’s research has focused on how teachers, learners, and families can cultivate compassion, well-being, and well-becoming in times of crisis, uncertainty, and discomfort particularly through life writing as a pedagogical process for telling stories about what matter most about teaching and learning. Jennifer is a Co-Director of the Manitoba Writing Project and part of the Well-Being and Well-Becoming in Schools in Canada Research Initiative. Currently, Jennifer is shifting her research focus to explore the ways in which educators have ethical responsibilities to support students who have experienced the trauma of sexual assault and gender violence and pedagogical responsibilities to teach students about sexual consent and healthy relationships.

Faculty of Social Work
  • Dr. Marlyn Bennett is an Associate Professor at the University of Calgary, a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Children’s Well-Being, and an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Manitoba. She was formerly an Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba and Director of the Masters of Social Work Based in Indigenous Knowledges. Bennett specializes in Indigenous child welfare policy, qualitative research methods using Photovoice and digital storytelling and cultural safety for Indigenous women who have experienced sexual violence.
  • Dr. Tracey Bone, RSW, is an Associate Professor of Social Work. Her research and scholarship are in the human rights and social justice area of Deaf studies, with a particular focus on service and program accessibility challenges for members of the d/Deaf, DeafBlind, and hard of hearing communities. She also has an interest in qualitative research methods including photovoice, and in ensuring research is accessible to participants who are Sign Language first-language users. Her additional areas of research and scholarship include exploring the empowering role of art for mental health service users, the sibling experience of eating disorders, and the pedagogy of social work education.
  • Prof. Colin Bonnycastle is a Senior Scholar and former director of the northern social work program in Thompson. He has done or is involved in research on homelessness, gendered violence, childcare, water security, and women and economic restructuring in the North. He has also written in the areas of social work ethics, charity, religion and social welfare, and social justice.
  • Dr. Maria Cheung is Professor and Associate Dean at the Faculty of Social Work whose research focuses on human rights and spiritual minorities in China. During her tenure of over twenty years, she has received multi-million grants from research funding agencies such as the former Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), SSHRC, and the International Association of Social Work Education to conduct research in women’s rights in China, and immigrants and refugees. Her recent research topics are on the psychological impacts of torture and CIDT, and human rights education.
  • Dr. Judy Hughes researches how professional service providers understand and respond to intimate partner violence. She recently studied the ways women indirectly disclose abuse to community health nurses and how the nurses recognize these verbal cues as indicators of intimate partner violence. In another project, Hughes studies the experiences of women who are negotiating child custody arrangements and/or being investigated within the child welfare system.
  • Dr. Mohammad Khan is an assistant professor of social work whose research interests include poverty, human development and social policy. He studies the disparity in financial capability and wellbeing across individuals’ social locations such as age, gender, income levels and immigration status, as well as developments on basic income in Canada.
  • Dr. Lindsay Larios is an assistant professor in social work and interdisciplinary critical policy researcher. She studies citizenship and immigration in the Canadian context, in particular, as it intersects with family and reproductive politics and policies. Her most recent work focuses on the politics of pregnancy and childbirth and precarious migration as an issue of reproductive justice.
  • Dr. Hai Luo’s work addresses social and health issues of older adults of diverse cultural backgrounds and the implications to social work theory and practice. Her research and publications includes cross-cultural aging, end-of-life issues from cultural perspectives, barriers for older immigrants to access healthcare, gambling and addictions among older immigrants, elder abuse in culturally minoritized groups, and social capital for older adults. She is involved in local and international projects to study active aging and cultural minority older adults.
  • Dr. Christine Mayor (she/her) is an assistant professor in social work at the inner-city ACCESS program at the University of Manitoba. Her critical and interdisciplinary research focuses on educational equity, trauma, racism, and anti-carceral/abolitionist practices. As a Board Certified Trainer and Registered Drama Therapist, she is also experienced with the use of arts for healing, activism, and a method of research.
  • Dr. Eveline Milliken works in the inner-city Social Work ACCESS Program and the Aboriginal Child Welfare Initiative. Prof. Milliken’s areas of interest include women’s issues/feminist perspectives; cross -cultural communication; and cultural safety.
  • Dr. Ashley Stewart-Tufescu is an assistant professor and registered social worker whose research and practice focus on children’s rights and child maltreatment. She has travelled extensively to implement and evaluate a rights-based program to prevent violence against children in challenging contexts and under-served settings, including chronic conflict zones and regions recovering from natural disasters.

Faculty of Health Sciences
  • Idris Elbakri grew up in Palestine, and has called Winnipeg home for many years. Over the years, Idris has emerged as a voice for Canadian Muslims and Canadian Palestinians in Manitoba, while also supporting a broad range of human rights causes as a friend and ally. He has volunteered and served through several community organizations. He is also a member of the City of Winnipeg Human Rights Committee. He has given numerous media interviews and spoken in several forums on topics related to Muslims in Manitoba, Islamophobia, and Palestine and has published a number of editorial opinions in the Winnipeg Free Press and CBC Manitoba. His passion for freedom and justice is driven by the multi-generational experience of his family as they struggled with colonialism. Professionally, Idris works in healthcare and has an appointment as an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba.
  • Dr. Brenda Elias is a professor in Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba, and former co-director and founding member of the Manitoba First Nations Centre for Aboriginal Health Research. Her research interests include gender health, mental health, social determinants, health info-structures, Indigenous and inter-transdisciplinary health research, and research ethics. She conducts multilevel quantitative and mixed-method studies into the social, cultural, biological, economic, political and historical determinants of health. Dr. Elias has partnered with the Centre for Human Rights Research to demonstrate the power of collaborations in advancing health rights of populations.
  • Dr. Esyllt W. Jones is the Humanities Research Professor, Faculty of Arts and Professor in the Departments of History and Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba. She is a historian of infectious disease and society, and the history of movements for socialized medicine. Her books include Influenza 1918: Disease, Death and Struggle in Winnipeg (2007), Epidemic Encounters: Influenza, Society and Culture in Canada (2012) edited with Madga Fahrni, and Radical Medicine: the International Origins of Socialized Health Care in Canada (2019). The volume Medicare’s Histories: Origins, Opportunities, and Omissions in Canada, edited with James Hanley and Delia Gavrus, will be released in June 2022.
  • Dr. Linda Larcombe’s research is focused on the study of genetic, socio-cultural and environmental factors contributing to infectious disease susceptibility and resistance in Canadian Aboriginal populations. Trained in anthropology, her approach to infectious disease research is multidisciplinary and draws from medical anthropology, immunogenetics, immunology, ancient DNA, geographic information systems, land use studies, history and archaeology to gain new perspectives regarding disease susceptibility and resistance.
  • Dr. Robert Lorway is an professor of medical anthropology in the Institute for Global Public Health, University of Manitoba, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Intervention Politics and Social Transformation. His research analyzes how forms of intervention life unfurl around transnationally-mediated attempts to alleviate the suffering of stigmatized people. He has written two books on the subject, Namibia’s Rainbow Project: Gay Rights in an African Nation, and AIDS Activism, Science and Community across Three Continents.
  • Dr. Pamela Orr is a physician, teacher, administrator and researcher with an interest in circumpolar and Indigenous health. Her current research focuses on the biologic and social determinants of health, and on health-care systems. Orr is a consultant with the J.A. Hildes Northern Medical Unit and associate editor of the International Journal of Circumpolar Health. She is vice-president of the Circumpolar Health Research Network, and on the board of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.
  • Dr. Marcelo Urquia is an associate professor and research scientist at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, Department of Community Health Sciences. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Applied Population Health. Urquia conducts epidemiological studies using large linked administrative databases. One major focus of his research is on immigrant health, particularly surrounding health issues that intersect with the rights of immigrant women, girls, minors and families, such as prenatal sex selection and child marriage.

Faculty of Environment, Earth and Resources
  • Dr. Bruce Erickson is an associate professor of geography whose research focuses on the cultural and political dimensions of outdoor leisure, paying attention to how colonialism and nationalism in Canada impact our recreational use of space. His work also documents the impact of gender, race and sexuality on our understandings of nature and space. His current projects address ecotourism in northern Canada, environmental activist campaigns throughout Canada and the United States, and the production of heritage sites in Ontario.
  • Dr. Jonathan Peyton is an associate professor in the department of environment and geography. His work bridges environmental geography and political ecology and develops a historical and cultural approach to questions of resource, extraction and development conflicts. His work assesses the social and environmental effects of large-scale infrastructure projects, development schemes and resource programs, particularly in Canada’s North. Current projects aim to analyse the early stages of Arctic oil and gas regimes, the emergence of Prairie resource cultures in times of transition, and the political ecology of urban natures in Winnipeg.
  • Dr. Shirley Thompson is an associate professor at the Natural Resources Institute. Her research interests lie with food, housing and water security in northern Manitoba Aboriginal communities, where the sustainability and health disadvantage is most evident. She has specialized in applied research, which included government, industry and Indigenous organizations. Recently, she and her students have produced participatory video documentaries, including Harvesting Hope, about food sovereignty in northern Manitoba.
  • Dr. Nicole Wilson is an assistant professor from the Department of Environment & Geography and the Centre for Earth Observation Sciences. She is a scholar of settler origin whose research focuses on Indigenous peoples, environmental governance and environmental change in the Arctic. In particular, her research examines the many ways that Indigenous peoples are asserting their self-determination and revitalizing their governance systems to respond to various stressors, including climate change and resource development. She has examined these topics in a number of contexts, including Indigenous-led community-based monitoring, water governance and policy, and climate change adaptation.

Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences
  • Dr. Annemieke Farenhorst is the Associate Vice-President Research at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Farenhorst holds active grants from NSERC, SSHRC and CIHR and has supervised more than 100 students and postdoctoral fellows in natural and social science research projects. In her capacity as the Prairie NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering from 2011 to 2020, Dr. Farenhorst helped shape Canada’s Dimension Charter for post-secondary institutions. Dr. Farenhorst is the elected Secretary of Division VI (Chemistry and the Environment) of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and the co-lead of the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) Hub for Sustainable Development GOAL (SDG) 6 Clean Water and Sanitation. Dr. Farenhorst also serves as an Associate Editor for Agricultural Science and Technology, an American Chemical Society journal. She previously led a research training program for First Nations Water and Sanitation Security (2013-2019), as well as a program to advance food security for small-scale farmers in Central America (2005-2014). Dr. Farenhorst has been recognized for her professional contributions through a range of awards including the 2016 Women’s Executive Network Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award Winner in the Sun Life Financial Trailblazers & Trendsetters category.

Faculty of Architecture
  • Dr. Susan Close is Associate Dean (Academic) at the Faculty of Architecture and a Senior Fellow at St. John’s College, both at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. Close’s book Framing Identity: Social Practice of Photography in Canada (1880-1920) addressed how Canadian women at the turn of the twentieth century used photography as a social practice to establish identity. Her current teaching includes interdisciplinary courses about design history, theory and photography. She has presented at art history, history and design conferences nationally and internationally. Close is also a photographer with work in both national and international collections. She is currently working on a manuscript on the intersection of photography and the built environment. This study contains three central themes: ‘Histories and Narratives,’ ‘De-categorizing and Metaphor’ and ‘Issues and Agency.’ Each section provides a close reading informed by a cultural analysis perspective of photographs concerning concepts that include placemaking, mise -en -scene, narrative, settlement and surveillance as well as issues such as photographic social activism and its relationship to the built environment.
  • Dr. Sarah Cooper is an Assistant Professor in the Department of City Planning in the Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba. Her research focuses on housing and social policy, with an emphasis on ensuring access to housing for all. Her current research examines housing for low-income households in Canada, with a focus on the expiry of social housing funding agreements—an issue that will transform the landscape of housing and housing policy in Canada over the next few decades. She approaches her research from a social justice perspective, and draws on neoliberal urbanism, settler colonial theory and critical housing theory to inform her work.Prior to completing her PhD at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Sarah worked as a Research Associate and Planner at the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources in Winnipeg, and as a researcher at the Manitoba office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. She has worked on a wide variety of research and planning projects, including neighbourhood housing plans, watershed and community plans, and housing and social policy analysis. Sarah is a Registered Professional Planner (RPP) and Member of the Canadian Institute of Planners (MCIP).

Faculty of Engineering
  • Civil engineering associate professor Dr. Qiuyan Yuan aims to develop sustainable technologies for water and waste treatment processes that will reduce the environmental burden, carbon footprint, and greenhouse gas emissions. She is also interested in community outreach to promote environmental awareness. Yuan is involved with research on First Nations water issues.

Faculty of Graduate Studies
  • Dr. Nancy Hansen is director of the interdisciplinary master’s program in disability studies. Her University of Glasgow PhD thesis examined the impact of education and social policy on the employment experiences of women with physical disabilities and her post-doctoral research examined the access of women with disabilities to primary health care. Dr. Hansen’s research interests include disability history (eugenics and bioethics), geography of disability, disabled women’s issues, disabled people’s access to primary health care and disability and the media.

Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management
  • Dr. Fenton Litwiller is a leisure scholar and assistant professor. Their research program emphasizes the use of critical inquiry to investigate inclusive recreation environments.
  •  Dr. Sarah Teetzel is an associate professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management. Her research focuses on applied ethics and human rights in sport, including the eligibility constraints that transgender athletes face to compete in sport.

School of Art
  • Dr. Shepherd Steiner is assistant professor of contemporary art and theory at the School of Art. He is in dialogue with a wide range of contemporary photographic practices and actively researches the ways in which the interpretative dynamics encountered on the micro level of photography are mediated by larger issues in the political crucible. This research is inclusive of the theoretical notion of teleopoiesis and opens onto the horizon of ethics.

Libraries
  • Camille Callison brings expert knowledge and lived experience to our conversation about Indigenous Knowledges and relationship building in library, archival and cultural memory praxis. Camille is a Tāłtān Nation member, the University Librarian at the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV), and a passionate cultural activist pursuing a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Manitoba dedicated to critically examining the relationship between cultural memory institutions and the continued survival and activation of Indigenous knowledges, languages and cultures. Among many other contributions, Camille serves as the Chair of IFLA Professional Division H and a member of IEEE P2890™ Recommended Practice for Provenance of Indigenous Peoples’ Data, OCLC Reimagine Descriptive Workflows Advisory Group, NISO Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion subcommittee and the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Taskforce on Archives. She is committed to advancing matters related to Indigenous peoples and creating meaningful change related to equity, diversity, and inclusivity within cultural memory professions.

Other Universities
  • Prof. Aimée Craft is an associate professor at the Faculty Law, University of Ottawa, and an Anishinaabe-Métis lawyer from Manitoba. She is a leader in the area of Indigenous laws, treaties and water. She prioritizes Indigenous-led and interdisciplinary research, including visual arts and film, co-leads a series of major research grants on decolonizing water governance and works with many Indigenous nations and communities on Indigenous relationships with and responsibilities to nibi (water). She plays an active role in international collaborations related to transformative memory in colonial contexts and reclamation of Indigenous birthing practices as expressions of territorial sovereignty.
  • Dr. Melanie O’Gorman  is a development economist at the University of Winnipeg with experience with fieldwork and policy analysis in a number of developing countries. She is involved in economic analysis for the Centre for Human Rights Research First Nations drinking water project.
  • Dr. Shauna Labman is an associate professor of Human Rights and Executive Director at the Global College, University of Winnipeg. She is a legal scholar who writes and speaks extensively on refugee law, resettlement, and private refugee sponsorship within a broader context of human rights and public international law. She focuses on the layered influences of law on public policy and government positioning.
  • Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier is an Associate Professor and the Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the School of Humanitarian Studies at Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Smith-Carrier’s program of research, grounded in a human rights framework, touches upon many different fields in the social policy arena, including access to social welfare benefits, social assistance receipt, food in/security, basic income, poverty, and climate justice. She is the Chair of the National Forum Strategic Planning Committee for a Basic Income Guarantee in Canada, and editor of Critical Policy Studies.

Other Institutions (professional affiliates)
  • Dr. Karine Duhamel is an Anishinaabe-Métis historian. She was formerly adjunct professor at the University of Winnipeg and director of research for Jerch Law Corporation. More recently, Duhamel was director of research for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, drafting the final report and managing the forensic document review project and legacy archive. She is now an independent historian and consultant working on projects across the country to foster awareness of Indigenous histories and contemporary issues with a research focus on colonization, treaty federalism and the resilience of Indigenous people.
  • Dr. Anne Lindsay is a settler historian whose research into Indigenous/newcomer relations has given her the opportunity to study such interrelated histories as chattel slavery in what has come to be known as the Canadian fur trade and the histories of Indian Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals and Sanatoria. Her work with the Manitoba Indigenous Tuberculosis History Project has contributed to the creation of a research guide designed to support families and communities searching for loved ones who were sent to Indigenous Hospitals and Sanatoria in Manitoba in the period from the 1930s to the 1970s and never returned.
  • Dr. Christine Lwanga is an Adjunct Professor and a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Manitoba. Her research interests are focused on human rights principles, values, and objectives and related policy and sustainable development. Lwanga’s work highlights the role of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and UNESCO (1978) Declaration on Race and the Elimination of Racial Prejudice in advancing healing and social justice. She employs critical race and social theory, systems-based knowledge, and post-modernism dialectical analysis, and impact evaluation as part of evidence-based practice to promote holistic (human-social-economic), inclusive, and equitable development. Lwanga is currently co-leading a MITACS/ Industry (community) partnership project exploring the use of human rights values centered practice theory and measurements of outcomes to enhance the effectiveness of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.
  • Dr. Karlee Sapoznik Evans is the Deputy Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth. Her research, teaching, activism and advocacy have focused on the prevention of human trafficking, forced marriage, sexual exploitation, and slavery; the history and legacies of residential schools; social justice and human rights; the Holocaust, genocide, and memory; the best interests of children and youth; and women’s, gender, and oral history. Evans has worked in Sierra Leone, Mali, Peru, Italy, England, Spain, Ukraine, Israel, and the U.S.
  • Dr. Shayna Plaut is the Director of Research at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Her work sits at the intersection of academia, journalism and advocacy. As an educator, researcher and journalist, Shayna has served as a consultant for the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International and a variety of migrant and human rights organizations. Since 2014, Shayna has served as the Research Manager for Strangers at Home, a project of the Global Reporting Centre, which has won numerous journalistic and human rights award. Since 2004, Shayna has developed and taught a large array of courses focused on the framing of social justice and human rights including at Simon Fraser University where she served as the Simons Research Fellow in International Law and Human Security from 2015-2016. Shayna developed the first human rights courses at Columbia College Chicago and the Graduate School for Journalism at University of British Columbia. Shayna happily relocated to Winnipeg in the summer of 2017 where she lives with her partner, two children and two cats.
  • Dr. Youcef Soufi is a Research Associate with the Institute of Islamic Studies at the University of Toronto, where he led an international working group funded by the Connaught Global Challenge Foundation studying anti-Muslim racism within Western societies. He is an expert in the history of Islamic law and his first book, The Rise of Critical Islam: 10th-13th Century Legal Debate (Oxford University Press 2023), pushes back against secularist assumptions that Islam and critical speech are inherently at odds. His recent publications analyze North American Muslim communities’ responses to anti-Muslim racism in the aftermath of 9/11. He is a contributor to the volume Systemic Islamophobia in Canada, published by the University of Toronto Press earlier this year and his forthcoming book tentatively titled On the Outskirts of Empire: Radicalization and State Surveillance on the Canadian Prairies will be published with NYU Press in 2024. Dr. Soufi is a former faculty member of the University of British Columbia’s Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies Department, responsible for the department’s Islamic Studies program, and the former Chair of the Canadian Association for the Study of Islam and Muslims (CASIM).

Interested in becoming a Research Affiliate?

Please read the Members section of our constitution. Please email CHRRman@umanitoba.ca with a short bio (100 words). We will be in touch with you to discuss the Research Affiliate program.