Congratulations to PhD student Fernando Calderon Figueroa, for making it to the final round of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN) National Policy Challenge. This challenge gives emerging researchers the opportunity to present their research findings on a policy problem of their choice. The final round will be set up as a small conference where finalists will present their pitches and answer questions from the live audience and judges.
Fernando's presentation is on June 9th at 12:45 pm and is titled "Mediating Place and Politics". In his policy project, he asks three research questions (1) Are there identifiable spatial patterns of trust? (2) How does trust relate to the distribution of urban amenities? (3) How do the contextual elements interact with individual predictors of trust? He finds that (a) Trust is unevenly distributed in cities (b) Access to amenities predicts higher levels of outward trust (c) Cities and Provinces can foster amenities through policy. To learn more about Fernando's research, you can watch his presentation on Youtube.
Fernando is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Toronto. He is also a researcher at Toronto's Research Data Centre (RDC) and the Urban Genome Project. Currently, he is working on his dissertation, which investigates the relationship between the built form of cities and civic engagement.
To see the full schedule of presentations, take a look on the CRDCN website.
The Department wishes Fernando all the best with the finals!