I’m not sure when or where my love affair with urbanism started, but I have a feeling it began when my family moved to El Paso, Texas. El Paso had a depth of spirit and energy I hadn’t seen growing up in small town Canada. Yet at the same time, living in this US/Mexico border town also gave me a very quick and visceral lesson on the persistent social, economic, and environmental inequalities that endure in many of the world's contemporary cities. Questions of inequality have been a theme in my research ever since.
At the age of 19, I wandered further outside my comfort (and time) zone to live and study in Jaipur, India. Living in India was a defining period in my life. In retrospect, it helped shape my worldview. My world is complex, beautiful, and hopeful. It also helped solidified the focus of my undergraduate studies. In 2000, I earned an honours degree in international development from the University of Guelph.
My graduate studies at the University of Toronto were spent attempting to answer many of the questions that plagued my youth. I explored corporate environmental management in Vietnam with the goal of understanding why some Vietnamese companies adopt market-oriented conservation practices while others resist. Following my masters, I worked in Vientiane, Laos coordinating a waste management project with researchers at Laos' National Science Council. My doctoral research, also based in Vietnam, examined the interplay between economic and urban development and the changing experience of migrant waste collectors working in Hanoi, the country’s capital city. My research documented the increasingly gendered experience of waste picking in Vietnam, and detailed why and how urban form and livelihood formation intersect for itinerant workers in globalizing cities.
In 2008, I joined the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) as a senior program officer for Asia. For over five years I worked in two global programs - urban poverty & environment and climate change & water - funding and managing applied research led by developing country institutions. I have worked, for example, with developing country researchers on improving governance mechanisms for ensuring safe access to water and sanitation services for women in resettlement colonies in peri-urban Delhi, India; public/private partnerships for water provision in an informal settlement in North Jakarta, Indonesia; and, new financing and management models for community-based waste management in low-income areas across Indonesia.
Now as a professor at the University of Waterloo, I continue to explore my passion for urban planning and international development through my research and teaching.
At the age of 19, I wandered further outside my comfort (and time) zone to live and study in Jaipur, India. Living in India was a defining period in my life. In retrospect, it helped shape my worldview. My world is complex, beautiful, and hopeful. It also helped solidified the focus of my undergraduate studies. In 2000, I earned an honours degree in international development from the University of Guelph.
My graduate studies at the University of Toronto were spent attempting to answer many of the questions that plagued my youth. I explored corporate environmental management in Vietnam with the goal of understanding why some Vietnamese companies adopt market-oriented conservation practices while others resist. Following my masters, I worked in Vientiane, Laos coordinating a waste management project with researchers at Laos' National Science Council. My doctoral research, also based in Vietnam, examined the interplay between economic and urban development and the changing experience of migrant waste collectors working in Hanoi, the country’s capital city. My research documented the increasingly gendered experience of waste picking in Vietnam, and detailed why and how urban form and livelihood formation intersect for itinerant workers in globalizing cities.
In 2008, I joined the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) as a senior program officer for Asia. For over five years I worked in two global programs - urban poverty & environment and climate change & water - funding and managing applied research led by developing country institutions. I have worked, for example, with developing country researchers on improving governance mechanisms for ensuring safe access to water and sanitation services for women in resettlement colonies in peri-urban Delhi, India; public/private partnerships for water provision in an informal settlement in North Jakarta, Indonesia; and, new financing and management models for community-based waste management in low-income areas across Indonesia.
Now as a professor at the University of Waterloo, I continue to explore my passion for urban planning and international development through my research and teaching.