New faculty hires
The Faculty of Community Services is pleased to welcome the following new faculty members this fall:
Areas of expertise: Black feminist thought; Anti-racist education; Sociology of education; Social justice education; Community-based research
Janelle Brady is an assistant professor in the School of Early Childhood Studies, Faculty of Community Services. She is an anti-racist educator, activist-researcher and community organizer. Brady is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). Her doctoral work explores Black mothering experiences of navigating anti-Black racism in the schooling and education system for their children. At OISE, Brady served as the senior coordinator and researcher of the Centre for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies (CIARS) and is now an advisor. She has been featured by CityNews, CBC, Global TV, the Toronto Star, the Huffington Post and other local media outfits. She taught for a number of years in postsecondary education institutions prior to joining the School of Early Childhood Studies.
Areas of expertise: Black and African immigrant women’s health and wellbeing; Motherhood/mothering among vulnerable populations, Ethical dimensions of social disadvantage; Critical qualitative research
Priscilla Boakye obtained her PhD in nursing from the University of Toronto in 2020. She also holds master's and bachelor's degrees in nursing from the University of Ghana and a master's in health professions education from the Suez Canal University, Egypt. Her doctoral work examined the social-moral dimension of midwifery practice in Ghana. Boakye is currently focusing on understanding the maternity care experiences of Black women in Canada. Boakye previously taught in Ghana and has led a midwifery and pediatric nursing curriculum development program under the Netherlands Initiative for Capacity Building in Higher Education in Ghana. Before joining the university, Boakye worked as a public health nurse-immunizer under the Region of Peel COVID-19 mass immunization program.
Areas of expertise: Industrial engineering; Occupational health and safety (OHS); OHS management; Accident prevention
Aida Haghighi joined the School of Occupational and Public Health in July 2021. She is an industrial engineer with both academic and industrial experience. Haghighi holds a PhD from Polytechnique Montreal and obtained her master's and bachelor's degrees in Iran. All three are in industrial engineering. Haghighi conducted her doctorate program in the field of OHS, with a focus on bypassing safeguards on machinery as a common OHS problem in industry. In parallel with her doctoral studies, she had an opportunity to collaborate with a team of researchers who worked at Polytechnique Montreal and IRSST on a new research project about the impacts of Industry 4.0 on occupational safety. Haghighi also has nine years of experience at National Gas Company as a senior systems analysis specialist and head of the Systems Analysis Department. She has worked on implementing, auditing and maintaining integrated management systems, including OHSAS 18001, ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. Her research interests are focused on Industrial safety; OHS management system and audit; Industry 4.0 and OHS; OHS risk management; continuous improvement and productivity; and integrated management systems in organizations (integrating OHS issues with business processes).
Areas of expertise: Indigenous children, youth, and communities; Land-based educational research; Early childhood disability
Nicole Ineese-Nash is an Anishinaabe (Oji-Cree) scholar and educator whose work focuses on Indigenous experiences of social systems, understandings of land-knowledge, and community-based research. She completed her bachelor of arts degree in early childhood studies with a minor in psychology from Ryerson University before continuing graduate studies in early childhood studies. She is currently a doctoral student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) in the social justice education program, specializing in Indigenous health. Ineese-Nash is currently an assistant professor cross-appointed between the School of Early Childhood Studies and the School of Child and Youth Care. Her work centres Indigenous youth, families, and communities and seeks to support self-determination and Indigenous resurgence. Ineese-Nash is particularly interested in supporting Indigenous youth to connect with their ancestry, land and cultures. She is the director and founder of Finding Our Power Together, an Indigenous-led non-profit organization supporting youth in realizing their own goals.
Areas of expertise: Financialization of housing; Political economy of housing; Anti-Blackness and housing; Urban housing policy; Race and inequality
Nemoy Lewis is an assistant professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning. He received his PhD in human geography from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Lewis earned both his undergraduate and master’s degrees in geography at the University of Toronto. For his doctoral research, Lewis analyzed the ongoing foreclosure crisis in the United States and its effects on Black people and low-income communities in Chicago, Illinois and in Jacksonville, Florida. Lewis' research explores how space is racialized by examining the co-production of racialization and financialization in North American urban housing markets, and the growing affordability problems impacting Black renters. His current research investigates a relatively new type of financialized landlord – primarily private equity, asset management firms and REITs – and their impacts on the physical infrastructures and urban social geography of disenfranchised communities.
Areas of expertise: First Nations- and Indigenous-led research; Decolonizing education; Indigenous children and youth
Loretta Loon is Eeyou and Inninew Cree and a band member of Fort Albany First Nation. She is a PhD candidate in education at York University in which her thesis deciphers “Stealing Across Time: Indigenous Eeyou Istchee and Autochthony as Decolonization.” She has worked with Indigenous communities throughout Ontario during the past twenty-two years in community development, health policy, administration and post-secondary education with a focus in Indigenous education, adult education and First Nations pedagogy. As an educator, she has developed Indigenous-focused curriculum at a number of universities including McGill, Algoma, Brock and York. She has also worked extensively in health policy for an Indigenous health planning authority as well as a senior policy advisor for the Government of Nunavut in Iqaluit. Loon brings her experience at the community level and within federal and provincial contexts in housing, health policy and analysis. Her research interests include Indigenous land-based pedagogy and decolonizing education, Indigenous children and youth over-representation in child welfare and justice systems, and Indigenous youth resiliency.
Areas of expertise: Patient-centered care; Team-based care delivery; Qualitative research methods; Scoping reviews; Nursing education
Kateryna Metersky is an assistant professor at the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing. She completed her PhD in nursing at the University of Western Ontario in 2020. Both of her previous degrees (BScN and MN) are from the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing. Metersky’s PhD work focused on the role of the patient with an interprofessional team in the primary care setting. She developed a framework to help support patients in their role development by identifying the required processes and conditions that need to be in place for successful role enactment to occur. Metersky is currently expanding this work through developing and evaluating a Patient Roles on Interprofessional Teams (PRITS) scale.
Areas of expertise: Mad studies; Fat studies; 2SLGBTQ+ health and wellbeing; Qualitative research; Arts-based methods; Community-based research
Lauren Munro is an activist-academic, artist, and writer whose personal and professional life is driven by a commitment to social justice. She is a PhD candidate in community psychology at Laurier where her dissertation uses arts-based methods to explore fat women’s experiences of and responses to stigma and discrimination. Munro has extensive experience as a community-based researcher and her scholarship to date has involved a wide array of projects focused on the health and well-being of 2SLGBTQ+ communities, body diversity and weight stigma, disability justice in arts-based research, transformative approaches to mental health, sexual health service access for women with psychiatric disabilities, centering service user epistemology in medical education, and issues related to sexual health and HIV vulnerability. In addition to her skills in qualitative research design, Munro has experience with arts-based methods such as photovoice, digital storytelling and digital fictions. As an instructor, she is committed to cultivating compassionate classrooms where students, instructors, and teaching assistants are all positioned as vital contributors to the learning environment.
Areas of expertise: Nursing education; Women’s health; Prenatal care and community health; Anti-Black racism and anti-racism
Nadia Prendergast is excited about joining the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing. Prendergast has been actively involved in creating strategies and approaches on ways to address racism within the classroom and clinical settings. She currently sits as an advisor for the Canadian Nurses Association and the Canadian Student Nurses Association on addressing racism within nursing. Since migrating from England to Canada, Prendergast has worked as a public health nurse, a clinical case coordinator and childbirth educator. She completed her master’s and PhD in education and women’s studies from OISE, at the University of Toronto. Her area of research focused on the lived experiences of internationally educated nurses of colour working within Canada’s multiculturalism practices.
