IG in Transition

As we enjoy the gorgeous Edmonton summer months, IG must say farewell to our Associate Director, Nat Hurley. Nat has played a key role in IG’s success: as one of our founding members and our former Director, they have led IG through a bumpy transitional year, leading the call to transform us into an institute. Nat has highlighted the brilliant intersectional work being done at our university by creating and hosting the Research Fridays @ Intersections of Gender Series, a space to share and promote emerging intersectional research that has garnered international attention. They have also been instrumental in planning and moderating our intersectional health research series, and will be truly missed as an emcee. Furthermore, for 18 months Nat has headed the IG intersectional research directory project that we hope to launch this month. We wish her the very best on her sabbatical - let the writing begin! 

On the bright side, we are welcoming incoming Associate Director, Sara Dorow. Sara was also one of our founding members and we are so looking forward to having her voice at the table. Sara researches and teaches in the areas of gender and family, migration and mobile work, globalization, and qualitative methodologies. A sociologist with strong interdisciplinary training, she has directed a series of research projects that foreground gender, intersectional, and narrative approaches to understanding community, transnational migration and family formation, mobile work experiences, and work-life identities. Over the last fifteen years she has focused these interests on the oil sands region of northern Alberta. She is currently working with a wonderful interdisciplinary team, including a professional photographer, to create a multi-media collection about the meaning of work and to develop intersectional and decolonial approaches to story. Sara has previously served in a variety of administrative roles at UAlberta, including Founding Director of the Community Service-Learning Program and Chair of the Department of Sociology.  

Bukola Salami will remain as IG’s Director, and Rachel Zukiwski-Pezim as Program Coordinator. We are also in the process of hiring a Research Associate who will assist IG in the process of securing grant funding. 

Additionally, IG would like to welcome Dr. Tammy Hopper to the university as the new Dean of Rehabilitation Medicine, Dr. Kyra Pyke as the new Dean of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation, and Dr. Robert Wood as the new Dean of Arts. We hope to collaborate with these new colleagues in our institution and to continue our collaborations with other Faculties, keeping IG as interdisciplinary as possible.  

For the time being, as we attempt to transition IG to an institute, we will be placing our granting program on hold this year. This was a hard decision to make considering the absolutely phenomenal and life-changing work of UAlberta researchers we have funded over the last three years. We hope to reimplement the program once we are in a more settled state. 

Thanks, as always, for supporting IG’s mission of creating, supporting, and promoting intersectional research that changes lives in our communities.