Graduate Students
Megan Aiken
Supervisors: Dr. Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Dr. Fiona Nicoll
Canadian government & politics, public policy, critical policy studies, health policy, drug policy, law and society, comparative public policy, federalism
Megan Auer
Supervisor: Dr. Linda Trimble & Dr. Siobhan Byrne
Meagan studies the politics of higher education under the supervision of Dr. Rob Aitken. Her interests include graduate education, teaching & pedagogy, program design & delivery, and academic governance. Her dissertation research explores continuity and change in the crisis narratives surrounding higher education. She approaches her research through theories such as affect, neoliberalism, and discipline.
Website: https://meaganauer.com/
Kyle Beattie
Supervisor: Dr. Rob Aitken
My doctoral dissertation focuses on the field of corruption studies. Whereas most of the discipline of corruption studies has largely focused on developing world corruption, I am interested in the types of corruption that emanate from the developed world. These forms of corruption, which are often much more sophisticated, include illegal wars, economic sanctions, fiat currency manipulation, media control and manipulation of public opinion, and the UN veto vote, among others. I am particularly interested in developing new measurements of corruption using my knowledge of computer programming and large quantitative datasets combined with the Islamic notion of fasad (corruption) as a basis from which to define the term. I speak, write, and/or research in English, Spanish, and Arabic.
Website: http://kylebeattie.dx.am/
Laticia Chapman
Supervisor: Dr. Roger Epp
Research Interests: Political Theory, Canadian Politics
I study rural public libraries in Western Canada. This research combines my interest in the historical-political origins of Canada's rural-serving public library system - and public institutions/civil-society more generally - with an ethnographic approach to the role libraries play in their communities, listening to the people who work in and use them.
Telisa Courtney
Supervisor: Dr. Andy Knight and Dr. Jan Selman
Applied theatre in conflict resolution
Samuel Goertz
Supervisor: Dr. Jared Wesley
Political behaviour, Canadian politics, comparative politics, agenda-setting
Stacey Haugen
Supervisors: Dr. Roger Epp & Dr. Sandra Rein
Stacey’s research interests include rural immigration in Canada, international migration patterns, feminist International Relations (IR) theory, and the use of relational storytelling in forced migration research.
Noelle Jaipaul
Supervisor: Cressida Heyes
Political Theory, Gender and Politics, Politics of Outer Space
Danika Jorgensen-Skakum
Research Interests: political theory, posthumanism, digital sovereignty, Indigenous digital sovereignty, new materialism, critical disability studies, critical animal studies
Danika is a queer Métis scholar whose work focuses primarily on Indigenous digital sovereignty in the context of Canadian network relations. Danika also writes on (re)composition, death, and what it means to become in the context of the so-called Anthropocene.
Gerson Julcarima Alvarez
Supervisor: Dr. Isabel Altamirano-Jimenez
Research Interests:Comparative Indigenous politics, semi-presidentialism in Global South, and religion and politics.
Broadly interested in social research techniques based on programming language (Python), I have recently explored some textual analysis strategies. My doctoral research seeks to understand from a comparative perspective the creation/building processes of new institutional arrangements that effectively reflect Indigenous nations' autonomy (self-determination and self-governance).
Website: https://gjulcarimaa.github.io/
Reza Khodarahmi
Supervisor: Dr. Mojtaba Mahdavi
Research Interests: Political Theory, Social Movements, Political Subjectivity, Modernity
My research is about nationalist rhetoric, political modernity and state building in contemporary history of Iran. I am trying to understand how and why the duality of "people-nation", a contrast between the public space and its holistic, homogenous political representation, has been a constitutive element of political sphere in modern Iran.
Brydon Kramer
Supervisor: Dr. Isabel Altamirano-Jimenez
Research Interests: Political theory; histories of political thought; politics of colonization and imperialism; Indigenous politics, especially Indigenous feminism(s); gender and sexuality studies; racial capitalism and the Black radical tradition; historical materialism; political ecology and environmental politics.
My research challenges political theory’s methodological ‘statism,’ which positions the state as the dominant container of political life/analysis. To do this, I draw on various radical traditions to offer a framework capable of both critiquing the state while, also, investigating the different modes of knowing and relating that challenge/exceed it.
Huong Le
Supervisor: Dr. Lori Thorlakson
My doctoral research identifies key fairness issues/debates related to energy transition and connect it with the existing conceptualizations of fairness in the energy justice and energy politics literature (notably the three-tenet approach). Significantly, I will further lay the foundation to show how the dimensions of fairness relate to climate policy/energy transition in general, as well as to grid transition more specifically, using the case of Canada and Alberta. Based on this foundation, I identify the specific framings of fairness issues that may shape and influence public perceptions of distributive fairness in paying for energy transition costs and test how malleable the perception is when the framings shift, as well as investigate the relationship between political ideology/partisanship and the fairness perceptions of energy transition costs in Alberta. The thesis also aims to explain the role of political ideology/partisanship in support for wind and solar projects, the adoption of EVs and energy transition.
Roberto Mendoza
Supervisor: Dr. Jared Wesley
Research Interests: Political Finance, Money in Politics, Corruption
I am a “pracademic” (a practicing political scientist) whose career path has taken me from government and consultancy boardrooms to university classrooms. My research focuses on Political Finance and Money in Politics in a comparative perspective with a focus on Canadian Politics.
Devan Prithipaul
Supervisor: Dr. Yasmeen Abu-Laban
Research Interests: Political Theory; Gender & Politics
My doctoral research is around understanding and comparing political communication in Canada and China. My work is interdisciplinary, drawing on theories from communication studies, cultural studies, and political theory. I take an active role in publishing articles, chapters, presenting at conferences, and have an interest in university pedagogy as well.
Rissa Reist
Supervisor: Dr. Linda Trimble
Indigenous Politics, Gender and Politics, Canadian Politics, Political Communication
Savannah C. Ribeiro
Supervisor: Dr. Yasmeen Abu-Laban
Research Interests: Comparative Politics, European Politics, Political Theory, Critical Theory
Savannah did her bachelor's degree at Grant MacEwan University and completed a master of arts at the University of Toronto's Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Affairs. She studies the politics of the dead and how the living project particular meanings, ideas, or political projects onto the dead, and how these meanings, ideas, and projects can influence individuals’ relationships with their nation
Elise Sammons
Supervisor: Dr. Siobhan Byrne
In my research, I'm interested in exploring how memory, both individual and collective, intersects with politics. In my doctoral dissertation project, I am tracing public remembering of the 1939 voyage of the M.S. St. Louis, which has come to symbolize North American apathy to the fate of European Jews in the 1930s. Through a longitudinal and comparative study of this memory, my research contributes to our knowledge of the legacy of this significant historical event, but also contributes to debates about what constitutes political memory, and to methodologies for studying memory.
Luke Sandle
Supervisor: Dr. Catherine Kellogg
My research takes a historically situated approach to democratic theory. I am interested in how questions concerning how we might democratically define "the people"; how a people gives birth to itself as a collective agent; where the boundaries of the demos ought to lie, are worked out in the tumult of democratic practice. I trace much of this out in the formative praxis of the late nineteenth century American Populists. The Populists had to build an understanding of "the people" as they acted, they had to educate themselves as they agitated, they had to act as their own lawgivers and they, in many ways, became the people as they wielded the people's name. I am interested in what orienting examples like these might contribute to a general anxiety among democratic theorists about how we might approach democracy's most fundamental paradoxes and dilemmas.
Eleyan Sawafta
Supervisor: Dr. Yasmeen Abu-Laban
Sawafta's research project conducts a comparative study of on-campus activism at universities in the United States and Canada. The study explores multiple dimensions, including the discourse of settler colonialism as both structural and epistemic violence, as well as the role of surveillance systems in shaping activism.
Sewordor Toklo
Supervisor: Dr. Feodor Snagovsky
Research interests include African studies, Canadian politics, democracy, gender politics, voting behaviour, corruption, political violence, taxation, and quantitative research.
Mel Wilk
Supervisors: Dr. Sandra Rein and Dr. Rob Aitken
Cuba; international political economy; international migration; food security and systems; feminist IR; Latin America and the Caribbean
Seon Yuzyk
Supervisor: Dr. Jared Wesley
Political Theory; Canadian Politics; Critical Genealogy; Black Studies; Queer Studies; Marxism; Black Feminist Epistemologies
Hussain Alaeddin Alhussainy
Supervisor: Dr. Joshua St. Pierre
Critical Disability Studies/Policy, Political Theory, Political Economy, Post Colonial Studies, International Relations, and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa.
Hussain Alhussainy is an MA student in the Department of Political Science and a recipient of the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) award. His academic focus spans critical disability studies and colonial/post-colonial studies in the Middle East. In his current research, Hussain challenges orientalist narratives that depict the Middle East as indifferent to disability rights and inclusion. Instead, he explores how the region’s complex socioeconomic disparities—shaped by ongoing neo-colonial influences, Western interventions, and entrenched colonial legacies—create substantial barriers to progress in disability justice. Additionally, Hussain’s research contrasts Western and Middle Eastern understandings of disability: while Western frameworks often treat disability as an individual issue tied to economic productivity, Middle Eastern perspectives, prior to colonization and Western influence, have historically understood disability through a more collective lens, untethered from neoliberal values and separate from the human body’s economic valuation.
In his previous BA Honours thesis, Hussain examined how Canadian universities marginalize disabled students, barring them from full participation and educational pursuits through neoliberal policies, entrenched ableist and eugenic attitudes, and inaccessible educational and physical infrastructures.
Alicia Bednarski
Supervisor: Dr. Yasmeen Abu-Laban
My research interests include the politics of gender, race, migration, and citizenship. For my thesis research, I am examining political and news media rhetoric surrounding the alleged practice of foreign women coming to Canada to give birth and contextualizing these discourses within gendered and racialized notions of what Canadian citizenship should look like.
Dara Campbell
Supervisor: Dr. Feo Snagovsky
Research Interests: Political Behaviour, Voter Behaviour, Political Communication, Canadian Politics
Dara (she/her) is a racialized settler from Prince George, BC. She's curious about political communication, right-wing narratives, and working-class voter behaviour in Canada. Dara works as a communications consultant focused on social transformation, climate justice, and Indigenous sovereignty. Beyond work and academia, she enjoys cycling, cooking, and diving into books and podcasts.
Maddie Dempsey
Supervisor: Joshua St. Pierre
Research Interests: Critical Disability Studies, Queer Theory, Critical Theory, Intersectional Feminism
Maddie (they/she) is a radical intersectional feminist, inspired by Sara Ahmed’s understanding of the Femininst Killjoy. Their research looks at the ways late autism diagnosis impacts women’s socio-political participation, rooted in a critique of the medical industrial complex, and its ignorance towards women’s health.
Sagnik Guha
Supervisor: Dr. Greg Anderson
My research interests largely relate to the field of International Relations and International Political Economy. I am interested in the discourse surrounding global development and institutions of global governance. Specifically, I am interested in studying the impact of these institutions on the global South (particularly Asia) and examining shifts in developmental paradigms concurrent to the rise of India, China and the dynamic geopolitics of Asia. Understanding the complex interplay of factors underlying the interactions of these emerging economies with the 'old order' of the 20th century forms an important part of my research interests.
Aidan Trembath
Supervisor: Dr. Roger Epp
Research Interests: Critical Security Studies, Provincial Politics, Indigenous-settler Relations
My field interweaves securitization discourse theory with Canadian provincial politics, critical infrastructure studies, and Indigenous-settler relations. I research discourses of security and counter-security in Canadian provinces to explore how Indigenous political actors within and outside of provincial institutions dismantle security narratives that privilege a settler-colonial status quo.
Evan Walker
Matthew Boonstra
Supervisor: Dr. Jared Wesley
My research areas include early learning and child care policy in Alberta, Canada, and other countries; Canadian politics; Alberta politics; and municipal politics.
I am in my final year of the Masters in Policy Studies program, and work as a Policy Analyst in the Alberta Ministry of Children and Family Services. My capstone examines factors that contribute to quality in early learning and child care (ELCC), and best practices in Canada and other countries.
Ikenuo Fatima Ebun
Supervisor: Dr. Yasmeen Abu-Laban
Developing strategies to support Black women entrepreneurs in Alberta
Kelcey Fleming
Supervisor: Dr.Jared Wesley
My research interests include public safety, criminal justice, and education policies and my capstone focuses on effective evaluation strategies within Alberta Justice. Prior to MAPS, I obtained a degree in Education as well as worked with municipalities in support of administration and operations of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Gary Jason Godinho
My research interests include the study of Federalism, Energy Policy, Transit Policy, and Alberta’s Relations especially with India. I am specifically interested in having my capstone paper on one of these research areas so that I can help develop innovative policy solutions for Albertans.
McKayla Kennedy
Supervisor: Dr. Rob Aitkens
My research interest are International Law, International Relations, and Human Rights. I am examining how States and Multinational Corporations (MNCs) are subjected to International Law when committing human rights violations abroad. More specifically, how the lack of framework for MNCs within international law has allowed for human rights violations in the global south in comparison to states.
Shi Kerslake
Research Interests: Public Policy, Democracy, Public Communication, Conspiracy Theories, and Human Rights.
Completed my undergraduate research at the University of Alberta, Augustana Campus, working on Conspiracism and its relationship with Democracy as seen through the academic approaches of political scientists. My masters research will be focused on the processes and applications of public policy through my practicum position.
Patrick Leason
Supervisor: Dr. Corey Snelgrove
Undertaking a capstone project which researches how wildfire mitigation policy can be improved in the context of Indigenous communities in Alberta.
Ben Moncrieff
Accountability failure, gambling policy, tax policy, green transition and sustainability
Faried Nasir
Supervisor: Dr. Greg Anderson
Political Finance, Critical Theory, Racial Capitalism
Angelic Nixon
I am Angelic Nixon. My undergrad study in political thought at the MacEwan University, awakened my conscience to the significance of having an ethic-based approach in the decision-making process of public policies. A good public policy making approach, not only takes into consideration those who are alive today but also those who will be alive a century from now. As a student of Policy Studies at the University of Alberta, I strive to master the skills of consensus building, co-management, and fair consideration of various types of knowledge to maximize synergy and minimize conflict with a focus in comparative research.