Research

I’m a cultural anthropologist and I study social movements, social change, and radical politics. I believe in putting social research to work on the pressing problems, issues, and opportunities confronting us.

I began my research career exploring the resonance of the Zapatista movement with activists in Mexico, Canada, and the United States. I wanted to understand the political possibilities and challenges of social movements making connections transnationally.

Out of this, I became interested in the relationship between the radical imagination and social movements. From 2010-2017, I co-directed the Radical Imagination Project with Max Haiven. At the time, I was interested in movements that were actively trying to build real alternatives to the status quo rather than trying to reform or resist it. Working with a range of activists and their movements, I wanted to figure out ways of doing research with movements that makes it useful to struggles for a better world.

More recently, I have worked with community-based organizations to design and carry out qualitative research projects useful to their constituencies. I worked with the Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia on a SSHRC-funded project to investigate the causes and consequences of breach of court orders by criminalized women in Nova Scotia. In another project, funded by the Change Lab Action Research Initiative (CLARI), I worked with the Industrial Workers of the World – K’jipuktuk (Halifax) to explore the barriers to participation in collective action on the part of precarious and low-wage workers.

My current research revolves around the rise of the new populist and far right, fascism, and the deepening crisis of liberal democracy and neoliberal technocracy. I’m increasingly interested in popular forms of education and finding ways of connecting people at the grassroots to research that matters.