The York University Team – GenUrb – Urbanization, Gender, and the Global South

Principal Investigator

Linda Peake is the Principal Investigator of Urbanization, Gender, and the global south: a transformative knowledge network (GenUrb). As an internationally known scholar working across Urban Studies, Geography, and Women's Studies, Linda Peake has been involved with questions of feminist knowledge production about the urban since the early 1980s. She has engaged in urban theory production and conducted empirically-informed research on women in cities in both North America and the Anglo-speaking Caribbean, and in particular in Guyana, addressing issues confronting women in relation to economic policies, poverty, violence, and subject formation. She has published extensively and is regularly contacted to contribute to anthologies and edited collections and to give keynotes and invited talks.

She has had extensive experience in editorial work, having sat on eight editorial boards and international advisory boards for international peer reviewed journals in Geography and Women's Studies. Her influence on urban scholarship is also evident in her supervision and mentoring of a new generation of scholars--MA, Ph.D., post-doctoral fellows and early career academics. She has increasingly taken on administrative and leadership roles in the university, at the national level in Canada and globally. She is currently Director of the City Institute at York University and on the board of the Urban Studies Foundation, and she has personally secured over CAD$4M in research monies.

Grant Manager

Leeann Bennett

Leeann Bennett is the Grant Manager of the SSHRC Partnership Grant, “Urbanization, Gender, and the Global South: A transformative knowledge network”, with Professor Linda Peake, at the City Institute. She took on this role in November 2017. Leeann has been the coordinator of the CITY Institute since April 2017 but has worked at CITY in various roles since 2013.

Leeann has a Master's degree in Women's Studies from York University. Her research interests include sexuality studies, particularly sex work and LGBTQ activism, Caribbean studies, transnational feminism, feminist methods and methodologies, and popular culture. To contact Leeann, please email her at leeann3[at]yorku[dot]ca or genurb[at]yorku[dot]ca.

Post-Doctoral Visitors

Elsa Koleth

Elsa Koleth is a Post-Doctoral Visitor at the City Institute at York University. During her time at CITY Elsa will be working on the SSHRC Partnership Project “Urbanization, Gender, and the Global South: A transformative knowledge network (GenUrb)” under the leadership of Professor Linda Peake. Elsa completed her doctorate at the University of Sydney in the field of migration studies with a thesis entitled “Haunted Borders: Temporary migration and the recalibration of racialized belonging in Australia.”

During her doctoral study Elsa was a researcher in an international study funded by the Australian Research Council on Social Transformation and International Migration in the Twenty-First Century (STIM). She has previously worked in legal policy and parliamentary research roles in Australia. Elsa’s research interests include the spatialities and temporalities of processes of urbanization, migration, and mobility, transnationalism and border-making, and the shifting nature of governmentalities and subjectivities, particularly in relation to the intersections of race, gender, and class.

Nasya Razavi

Nasya Razavi joins the City Institute at York University as a Post-Doctoral Visitor on the SSHRC Partnership Project “Urbanization, Gender, and the Global South: A transformative knowledge network (GenUrb),” led by Professor Linda Peake. Nasya completed her Ph.D. at the Department of Geography & Planning at Queen's University. Her dissertation, "Social Control and Public Water," examines participatory practices in water governance, focusing on the remunicipalisation of water services in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Nasya is also affiliated with the Municipal Services Project, an international research programme on policy alternatives in municipal service delivery. Nasya has previously worked for the Government of Canada and recently as coordinator of the Next Generation program, a joint initiative between the Canadian Council for International Co-operation and the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development.

Research and Graduate Assistants

2020-2021

Bri Gardner

Bri Gardner is currently an undergraduate student in Political Science at York University who has been involved in anti-poverty and housing advocacy for several years. Bri has previously been employed at LAMP Community Health Centre and has worked on various electoral campaigns, and in addition to their work on GenUrb is a peer support worker at a COVID recovery site in Toronto.

Eyram Adzo Agbe

Eyram Adzo Agbe is an undergraduate student at York University studying International Development Studies, with an interest in gender and reproductive justice in West Africa. She has previously worked on an ongoing microfinance project in Ghana geared towards women's food security. Eyram combines her skills of copy writing, editing and blogging with research in her summer-long role with GenUrb.

Jenna Blower

Jenna completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto with a double major in Sociology and International Development. Following her passion, she pursued her Master’s degree at Ryerson University specializing in Immigration and Settlement Studies. Jenna is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at York University examining transnational labour migration and care work. Her professional experience includes being a project researcher for the Cities of Migration program at Ryerson University in addition to policy work and advocacy with Ontario chambers of commerce and employment agencies. She will be working with GenUrb as a graduate assistant from January – April 2020. In Summer 2020, Jenna holds a MITACS Research Training Award with GenUrb two write two research training modules, on Feminist Research in the time of COVID-19 and on ethnography.

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Mel Mikhail

Mel is a PhD student in the Gender, Feminist, and Women's Studies program at York University and a Graduate Assistant with the GenUrb team for the Winter 2020 term. Mel's current research interests aim to bring together media geography, the temporalities of capitalism, and critical urban studies. Mel holds a BA and MA in Philosophy, and an MA in Gender Studies. They are also currently an assistant editor with Inanna Publications. Mel will be Graduate Assistant for Summer 2020 assisting with GenUrb's Research Training Modules.

Angela Stanley

Angela Stanley (MA 2014; PhD Candidate, Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies, York University) completed a Masters in Critical Disability Studies at York University, writing a major research paper on Disability and Sexuality: Perceptions of Beauty, Sexuality and Desirability for Queer, Disabled Youth. Angela continues her studies pursuing a doctoral degree in the Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies Program at York University. Her research pays attention to the intersection of race/culture, queerness and disability in order to understand how people make sense of their intimate and sexual lives. Her work so far has centered on the perceptions of beauty, sexuality and desirability that inform how young queer and disabled people create intimate and/ or sexual partnerships.

Mantha Katsikana

Mantha is PhD student in Human Geography working on the alternative narratives and obscured facets of the austerity crisis through the affective geographies of women’s and feminized subjects’ everyday socially reproductive practices and their role in the production and re-claiming of space in the context of austerity in Athens. Mantha holds and BA and MA in Urban Planning(UTH) and an MA in Architecture and Spatial Design(NTUA). Mantha’s research explores feminist data visualization and urban sonic geographies through soundscapes and field recordings, as part of qualitative urban feminist research. Her previous work focused on issues on gender and affective labor in grassroots resistance movements as well as on the neoliberal governance of urban austerity in Athens, analyzed from a grassroots feminist standpoint. Mantha also explores soundscapes and field recordings artistically through the making of experimental electronic music as well as visualization and archiving through zine making and independent publishing. She has received a MITACS Research Training Award to work with GenUrb, writing Research Training Modules in Summer and Fall 2020.

Siya Zhang

Siya Zhang is a RAY (Research at York) undergraduate assistant with GenUrb. She is a third-year undergraduate Psychology student, and is also interested in sociology. Siya is bilingual in Mandarin and English and assisted with some translations for the Shanghai City Research Team for the Winter, Summer, and Fall 2019 terms. She is a research assistant with GenUrb for Summer 2020, translating and transcribing for the Shanghai City Research Team.

2019-2020

Jenna Blower

Sehrish Malik

JSehrish Malik is a graduate assistant for the GenUrb project at the CITY institute for the f/w 2019-2020 terms. She is a fourth year Ph.D. student in the department of Humanities at York University. She completed her M.A. in women’s studies and her master’s research project focused on the veiled/unveiled bodies in “Western” representations of the ‘Orient’. She is currently interested in feminist literary theory of the body, race, and psychoanalytic theory, analyzing the opposition between the body and the mind in feminist literary theory, the concept of ‘writing through the body’ in women’s literature and the psychoanalytic concept of transference, embedded in mourning for the loss of object.

Angela Stanley

Siya Zhang

Siya Zhang is a RAY (Research at York) undergraduate assistant with GenUrb. She is a third-year undergraduate Psychology student, and is also interested in sociology. Siya is bilingual in Mandarin and English and is assisting with some translations for the Shanghai City Research Team for the Winter, Summer, and Fall 2019 terms.

Omar Elsharkawy

Omar is an MES student in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, researching food system planning. He is a Graduate Assistant with GenUrb for the Fall and Winter 2018/2019 terms - Winter 2020. He holds a BA in Environmental Studies from Carleton University. His research interests include social procurement, food policy, and food citizenship. Omar has previously worked both as a researcher and as an organizer in grassroots and non-profit settings.

Mel Mikhail

2018-2019

Omar Elsharkawy

Omar is an MES student in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, researching food system planning. He is a Graduate Assistant with GenUrb for the Fall and Winter 2018/2019 terms. He holds a BA in Environmental Studies from Carleton University. His research interests include social procurement, food policy, and food citizenship. Omar has previously worked both as a researcher and as an organizer in grassroots and non-profit settings.

Jamilla Mohamud

Jamilla Mohamud is a Master's student in Environmental Studies, with an area of focus in Urban and Regional Planning. She is interested in city building through community partnership and understanding the intersecting issues that communities confront during the process of urbanization. Jamilla worked as a Research Assistant on the SSHRC PG Grant, “Urbanization, Gender, and the Global South: A transformative knowledge network” for Fall and Winter 2017/2018 and returned as a Graduate Assistant for the Winter 2019 term.

Rawan Mostafa

Rawan has been working as a research assistant on the "Urbanization, Gender, and the Global South: A transformative knowledge network (GenUrb)" project since Summer 2018. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a minor in Professional Writing. Rawan was awarded the Dean’s Award for Research Excellence (DARE) for working on GenUrb. She is interested in intersectional feminism and the implications of neocolonialism on urban life in the Global South.

Javeria Mirza

Javeria Mirza is an international student from Pakistan in her fourth year in the Global Political Studies program. She is interested in International relations, political economy, and the study of security, conflict, and peace. Having been awarded the Dean's Award for Research Excellence in 2019, she was a Research Assistant for GenUrb for the Summer 2019 term. Outside of this role, Javeria is a Residence Life Don and the Lead Ambassador for President Rhonda Lenton .

Siya Zhang

2017-2018

Vanessa Grace Bart-Plange

Vanessa Grace Bart-Plange was a Graduate Assistant at the City Institute at York University. At CITY, Vanessa worked on the SSHRC Partnership Project "Urbanization, Gender, and the Global South: A transformative knowledge network (GenUrb)" under the leadership of Professor Linda Peake and Dr. Elsa Koleth in Winter 2018.

Vanessa is a Master’s student in the Graduate Program in Development Studies at York University. She previously completed her Honours Bachelor’s degree at the University of Toronto with a double major in International Relations and Political Science and a minor in African Studies. Her research interests include community development, education policy and curriculum reform, African government and politics, and public policy.

Melissa Hernandez Jasso

Melissa Hernandez Jasso was an undergraduate student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She studied International Relations at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, with a combination of various courses in Sociology. She worked over Summer 2018 as a Mitacs Globalink Research Assistant in the GenUrb project. Her main interests are Marxist and critical theories, feminist studies, international migration, Latin American studies, and decolonial/postcolonial studies. She is also fond of impressionist music and painting and enjoys playing with watercolours.