PhD Alumni

  Congratulations to Professor Patricia Louie, winner of this year’s Outstanding Graduating Sociology Student, PhD Award! This award was created by the Canadian Sociological Association in 2013 to help Sociology Departments recognize their top graduating students. During her time at the University of Toronto, Professor Louie made significant contributions to the research community. She published … Read More

A 2019 publication titled Tolerance of Homosexuality in 88 Countries: Education, Political Freedom, and Liberalism by PhD graduate Tony Zhang and Professor Robert Brym was recently selected for a special collection in John Wiley & Sons as one of five journal articles across disciplines and published over the last two decades to promote LGBT+ History Month … Read More

Recent PhD graduate, Katelin Albert will begin a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Department of Sociology at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Katelin graduated on June 13, 2019. Her dissertation is entitled, Technologies of Sexuality: The HPV Vaccine and an Investigation into Parental Responsibility, Progressive Sex-Education, and Adolescent Girls’ Subjectivities, and was completed under … Read More

PhD Candidate Anelyse Weiler will be joining the University of Victoria’s Department of Sociology as an Assistant Professor. Before her new position begins in July, she will be defending her dissertation on 12 June. Supervised by Josée Johnston with committee members Hannah Wittman (UBC) and Jennifer Chun, her dissertation is entitled, The Periphery in the … Read More

Omar Faruque, who completed his PhD in the Department of Sociology in January 2019, has been awarded a two-year Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue research in the Department of Global Development Studies at Queen’s University for the 2019-2021 academic years. The SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship program is funded by the … Read More

Alexandra Rodney, who completed her PhD in the Department of Sociology in 2017, has been awarded a Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue research in the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University for the 2019-2010 academic year. The SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship program is funded by the Canadian government and seeks … Read More

Ph.D. graduate Tony Huiquan Zhang and Professor Robert Brym have published an article in Sociological Forum. The article studies how tolerance of homosexuality is jointly shaped by individual educational attainment and political freedom. The main finding is that in free societies, education is a liberalizing force as scholars expected. However, in non-free societies, education does … Read More

PhD Graduate Salina Abji has recently published an article in the international Feminist Journal of Politics. The article investigates postnational-feminist approaches to gender-based violence in the contemporary immigration context. The article examines how for some advocates, a postnational politics deeply informed their criticisms of state borders and restrictive immigration controls as fundamental sources of gendered and racialized violence. Salina … Read More

PhD graduate M. Omar Faruque published an article in the Asian Journal of Political Science.  The piece analyzes the development of local community resistance to mining in Bangladesh. Faruque studied the Phubari movement and found that its success in opposing mining was largely because the activists worked with local communities and framed their action in … Read More

PhD Graduate Salina Abji published an article in Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society that analyzes the relationship between state power and women’s rights. She explores the political advocacy within the “Shelter | Sanctuary | Status” Campaign formed by feminist and migrant rights groups in protest of the searching of women’s shelters for … Read More

In an article published in Citizenship Studies, PhD Graduate Salina Abji analyzes the “No One Is Illegal” migrant rights movement in Canada to explore the limitations and opportunities of a post-nationalist framework. She argues that although post-nationalism is limited in its ability to address the concerns of non-status migrants, the conceptual framework is useful for challenging … Read More

PhD Graduate Louise Birdsell Bauer published an article in the Labour Studies Journal. The article shows how political identities adopted by U of T graduate students engaging in precarious work allowed them to form a “coalition of support” via the media, faculty, and undergraduate students. It demonstrates how political identities rooted within real economic conditions affect … Read More

PhD Graduate Louise Birdsell Bauer and Professor Cynthia Cranford published an article in Work, Employment and Society that examines union renewal among personal support workers. The authors argue that the relations between support workers and their clients influence union organization in important ways. Louise Birdsell Bauer obtained her PhD in Sociology from the University of Toronto in … Read More

PhD Graduate Sarah Cappeliez and Professor Josée Johnston published an article in Poetics that explores how cosmopolitanism is expressed through everyday food consumption in Toronto and Vancouver. Based on the lived experience of twenty families, the authors define three different modes of cosmopolitan consumption. Sarah Cappeliez obtained her PhD in Sociology from the University of Toronto … Read More

PhD Candidates Louise Birdsell Bauer and Mitch McIvor have published a paper in the Canadian Review of Sociology with Professor Robert Brym. The article analyzes data on Canadian strike duration, volume, and frequency, and finds that strike activity has been increasing since 2001. The authors argue that this change can be explained by the reduction in … Read More

PhD Graduate Kim de Laat and Sociology Professor Shyon Baumann published an article in the Journal of Gender Studies that analyzes Canadian television advertisements and their role in reproducing ideas about gender and motherhood. They find that women depicted as mothers in advertisements were portrayed as consuming for the benefit of others, while women who were not … Read More

PhD Graduate Kim de Laat published an article in Work and Occupations examining the work environment of professional songwriters and their methods of managing conflict and reward within an uncertain and inconsistent industry. Kim de Laat obtained her PhD in Sociology from the University of Toronto in 2017 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the … Read More

PhD Graduate Kim de Laat published an article in the Sociological Forum analyzing musical form and content in the American recording industry. The article explores processes of innovation and diversity within the industry during the emergence of digital technology, from 1990-2009. De Laat argues that the ways in which types of innovation and diversity interact have broad … Read More

PhD Graduate Kim de Laat and Professor Judith Taylor published an article in Feminist Formations that examines the effect of the institutionalization of the women’s movement on younger generation’s perceptions of political activism. Through interviews conducted with university students who participated in “feminist internships”, the authors find that “progressive social-movement organizations” can negatively affect students’ perceptions of … Read More

PhD Graduate Kim de Laat and Professor Shyon Baumann published an article in Poetics analyzing cultural schemas in television advertisements to determine the impact of underrepresentation of older women in media content. They argue that the degree of underrepresentation indicates a devaluation of the demographic, which may have negative social implications. Shyon Baumann is a Professor … Read More