This year of the Graduate Fellowship brought together students from thirteen of the University of Toronto to work under the mentorship of eight faculty members:
- Karen Chapple, Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning
- Prentiss Dantzler, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
- Aditi Mehta, Assistant Professor, Urban Studies
- Nasim Niknafs, Associate Professor, Faculty of Music
- Fadi Masoud, Associate Professor, Daniels Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism
- Stanka Radovic, Associate Professor, Department of English
- Dan Silver, Professor, Department of Sociology
- Enid Slack, Director, Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance
| Name | Program of Study | Degree | Project Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adrian Petterson | Information | PhD | Abortion Zine Distribution Initiative |
| Alice Nahyeon Kim* | Information | PhD | Mapping BIPOC Diasporic Media in Toronto |
| Angela Ho* | Science in Planning | Master’s | Evaluating Heritage Business Retention Strategies in Vancouver: Lessons for cultural districts planning |
| Bernice Hoi Ching Cheung* | Ethnomusicology | PhD | Belonging and MIRROR: Cantopop fans in the Greater Toronto Area |
| Brenn Anderson-Gregson | Planning | PhD | The “Craft Beer Revolution” and “Third-Places” |
| Chaitanya Ahuja | Civil Engineering | Master’s | Out of Sight, but Top of Mind: A Policy Brief and Neighbourhood-Level Interactive Map of Urban Water, Wastewater, and Stormwater Infrastructures across Canada, Age, Material Use, and Embodied Greenhouse Gas Emissions |
| Graeme Stewart-Wilson | Political Science | PhD | Property Taxation and Capacity Spillovers: Implications for local state-building in Sub-Saharan Africa |
| Jatin | History | PhD | Investigating the City’s Urbanization through Social Lens: Settlements and Housing of Marginalized Communities in Twentieth Century Delhi |
| Isaac Mendita | Geography | Master’s | Social Impacts of Green Infrastructure |
| Kayla Benjamin | Health Systems Research | PhD | And Intersectionality-Based Policy Analysis of Social Policies with Consequences for Unpaid Care Workers in Bogotá, Columbia |
| Lisa Shin | Information | Master’s | A Working Guide to Toronto’s Local Film Festivals (working title) |
| Lucy MacKinnon | Science in Planning | Master’s | From Warehouses to Breweries: Industrial placemaking and gentrification on Geary Avenue |
| Maria Alonso Novo | Landscape Architecture | Master’s | Food Access Atlas |
| Marianna Lahaie Luna | Human Geography | PhD | TBD |
| Marina Klimenko | English | PhD | The Back of the Turtle, Cities, and their Watersheds |
| Mehdia Hassan | Social Justice Education | PhD | Landscapes of Lifelong Learning: Showcasing visual narratives of collage with Afghan youth in Toronto |
| Mercedes Sobers | Epidemiology | PhD | The Black Joy Art Project |
| Mostafa Saneii | Civil Engineering | PhD | Electrifying Easter Canada’s Freight Corridors: A blueprint for the future |
| Nushrat Jahan | Planning | PhD | Stories of Care: Climate action in Toronto |
| Pelin Gül | Sociology | PhD | Grassroots Resistance and Urban Housing Struggles of Internally Displaced Populations in Post-Disasters: The case of Hatay, Turkey |
| Salim Benhachmi | Education & Leadership Policy | PhD | The Impact of Autonomous Public Schools on Neighbourhoods |
| Stephen Tu | OISE Higher Education | PhD | Roots/Routes: Stories of Diaspora on Philosopher’s Walk |
Adrian’s work focuses on how abortion access can be supported by technologies in ways that pave the way for more intersectionally inclusive reproductive health futures. They use interview and co-design methods, working alongside abortion access organisations to design for how technologies can be leveraged to support more inclusive, reproductive justice-oriented futures. “
Alice Nahyeon Kim (she/her) is a PhD student in the Media, Technology, and Culture stream at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. Her doctoral research examines BIPOC diasporic media and journalism practices on digital platforms. She also works as a Korean diasporic media reporter based in Toronto.
Angela Ho (she/her) is a second year Master of Science in Planning student at the University of Toronto. Prior to moving to Toronto, Angela worked in public engagement with the Planning unit at the University of British Columbia and was involved in the Vancouver Chinatown community. Angela is the author the award-winning Vancouver Chinatown Food Security Report and created the Chinatown Sound Map project. Angela currently works as the Community Investment Manager with the Kensington Market Community Land Trust, where she manages the organization’s community bond campaign to support the acquisition of a second property for the land trust.
Bernice Hoi Ching Cheung is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology in the Faculty of Music. She holds bachelor’s degrees from the University of Calgary and her current work is supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Scholarship. Her doctoral research examines the ways in which Cantonese popular music fans in Toronto’s Hong Kong diaspora negotiate their fan and diasporic identities. She is passionate about bringing together scholars of Hong Kong-related research and is a Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the Hong Kong Research Café and Jackman Humanities Institute Hong-Kong Canada Working Group at the University of Toronto.
Brenn Anderson-Gregson is pursing his PhD in Planning from the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on transportation equity and housing affordability using spatial and computational methods. He is also an avid appreciator of weekend bike rides to craft breweries.
Chaitanya Ahuja is a Master of Applied Science candidate in Civil Engineering at the U of T Centre for Sustainable Built Environment. His research explores the links between the embodied greenhouse gas emissions of urban water infrastructures and neighbourhood design – including population density, housing types, and street topology – to identify climate-compatible urban growth pathways.
Graeme Stewart-Wilson is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, a Doctoral Fellow with the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI), and a Graduate Fellow at the School of Cities. In his research, Graeme studies the potential state-building effects of property tax reform in sub-Saharan Africa, with a specific focus on capacity spillovers between local taxation and urban planning. Graeme holds a Masters in Global Affairs from the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and a Liberal Arts degree from Quest University Canada.
Jatin (he/him) is an international third year PhD candidate at the Department of History, with a collaborative specialisation in South Asian Studies. Currently, he is also an Urban Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban Environments, and a Graduate Fellow in Training at the School of Cities, University of Toronto. After recently finishing his candidacy exams, Jatin is heading for continuing his project’s archival research and fieldwork. His research interests cut across urbanization, housing, caste, law, environment, colonial and postcolonial South Asia, and their global interconnections. Jatin is keen to investigate the intersections of caste-based social hierarchy in the making of South Asian cities.
My name is Isaac Mendita, I am a second-year master’s student with the Geography and Planning Department, my research focus investigates human and environment interactions within the urban landscape. Apart from that, I grew up in downtown Toronto my whole life and I enjoy playing sports, particularly basketball and soccer.
Kayla Benjamin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto and a Vanier Scholar. Outside of her Ph.D., Kayla works as a Researcher at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Global Social Policy and the Universidad de los Andes’ Proyecto Digna, where she works on the global Care Economies in Context Project, investigating the organization and process of the Canadian and Colombian care economies and the effects of different institutions, cultures, and social and economic policies in shaping them. Kayla is also Co-founder and Chief Research Officer of the Canadian non-profit, missINFORMED, a health education and advocacy platform for young women and gender diverse people.
Lisa Shin is a second-year student at the Faculty of Information specializing in library and information sciences under the Master of Information program. She currently works as a Toronto Academic Libraries Intern (TALInt) at the Scholarly Communications & Copyright Office and as a Graduate Student Library Assistant at the Gerstein Science Information Centre. She is a current EDIU Fellow at the Faculty of Information working on bringing workshops and resources on digital scholarship and storytelling closer to students. Her research interests include health information, audiovisual materials, and academic librarianship.
Lucy MacKinnon is an urban planner and researcher whose work focuses on place-keeping, social connection and belonging in public space. She is presently pursuing her Master of Science in Planning at the University of Toronto. Her research examines the politics and equity implications of pedestrian-oriented street redesign in Toronto. She is presently working on a project that seeks to examine if people-centered placemaking designs in industrial areas can be compatible with industrial street use.
Maria Alonso Novo is pursuing a Masters in Landscape Architecture and has a background in architecture and environmental studies as well as experience in research positions with faculty at the University of Toronto. Working towards her thesis, Maria is interested in sustainable food systems across different scales and ways in which local communities can get involved in these processes. Maria believes that public green spaces can serve as catalysts for social organization and climate advocacy. As a researcher, she hopes to highlight community led organizations and learn from innovative best practices to design future spaces where people are excited to get involved.
Marianne Lahaie Luna is currently a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto, and a Junior Fellow at Massey College. Her doctoral research examines the impacts of precarious housing on food behaviours of recent Latinx immigrants in the city of Toronto. Prior to embarking on her doctoral studies, Marianne earned a Master of Environmental Public Health at the University of Toronto and completed a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Environmental Science at the University of Ottawa. Her passion for research has led her to work with organizations including the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Canadian Red Cross, and the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development. Additionally, Marianne co-founded the Lahaie Luna Lezama Foundation, an NGO dedicated to advancing menstrual health rights and reducing period poverty in Latin America. She is fluent in French and Spanish and is learning Italian.
Marina Klimenko is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Toronto. Her SSHRC-funded dissertation titled “Fluid Forms: Mediating Waters’ Affordances in Contemporary Canadian Literature” draws on new materialist, formalist, and ecocritical frameworks to explore the futures that contemporary writing on waters imagines. Her criticism has been published in Studies in Canadian Literature, while her creative writing has appeared internationally online and in print.
Mehdia Hassan (she/her) is a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto, OISE, in the Department of Social Justice Education. Mehdia’s PhD research uses the art form of collage to explore the everyday learning experiences and stories of Afghan youth within their Toronto neighbourhoods and communities. Mehdia is passionate about building fertile community spaces that further nourish the current diverse capacities, stengths, and knowledges of young people. Her work is also inspired by her experiences as a visual artist, who has been facilitating visual arts workshops for youth in her Toronto neighbourhood of St. James Town, for over 10 years. She has collaborated with various Toronto-based organizations to design, facilitate, and advise the development of community-engaged programming for young people in Toronto, including programs on Afghan youth mentorship, community safety, intergenerational sewing, and visual arts. In many ways, her work advocates for youth agency and challenges the deficit discourses of Afghan youth.
Mehdia is also interested in increasing knowledge mobilization between academic and public communities. Her mixed media artwork on migration journeys has been featured in University of Toronto’s Research Revealed exhibition: https://researchrevealed.utoronto.ca/beyond-borders-and-hyphens-the-journeys-of-migration/.
Furthermore, Mehdia’s arts-based research has been featured in various exhibitions and international platforms, including most recently at UofT’s Hart House, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Helsinki, Finland.”
Mercedes Sobers (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and a Connaught Fellow. Her research focuses on mental health disparities among Black people in Canada, with an emphasis on improving mental health service access and outcomes. She currently leads the Black Joy Art Project, an initiative celebrating wellness and resilience within the Black community. She is passionate about creating equitable, inclusive mental health interventions, and her work integrates both academic research and community engagement to drive meaningful change. Through her roles, she strives to improve mental health outcomes for historically marginalized and under resourced communities.
Mo Saneii is a Ph.D. student specializing in the decarbonization of road freight, with a focus on electrification and the optimization of charging infrastructure for long-haul trucks. Their research bridges transportation, energy systems, and sustainability, aiming to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon future for freight transport. With a strong background in logistics and transportation, Mo leverages advanced data analysis, machine learning, and geographic information systems (GIS) to develop innovative solutions that support electric vehicle adoption and infrastructure planning.
Currently, Mo is optimizing electric vehicle charger locations along major freight corridors in Eastern Canada, incorporating truck traffic patterns and regulations on drivers’ rest periods. Their work aims to create a strategically placed network of charging stations and electrified highways, reducing operational downtime while promoting sustainable practices. Mo’s approach integrates both technical efficiency and policy considerations, ensuring practical and scalable outcomes.
As a School of Cities Graduate Fellow, Mo brings a multidisciplinary perspective that aligns with the program’s mission of addressing urban challenges. By focusing on freight electrification, they aim to contribute to the development of cleaner, more efficient transportation networks in cities and beyond, fostering a sustainable future for urban freight and long-haul logistics.
Nushrat Jahan is a PhD candidate (ABD) in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. She is an aspiring scholar-activist in urban climate justice, social movements, and the theory of care. Her doctoral research seeks to centralize care in the global climate justice movement. Nushrat received an SSHRC Doctoral Award (2022-2023) and an OGS Doctoral award (2023-2024).
Nushrat is the General Secretary of Shwasti. Shwasti is a grassroots community-based organization in Taylor Massey neighbourhood improvement area.
Nushrat was a member of the Global Urbanism working group at the School of Cities in Fall 2019 and a peer mentor in Spring-Summer 2020.
Pelin Gül is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. Using qualitative methods, her research focuses on displacement, immigration politics, housing, and urban (re)development. She examines how global and domestic inequalities shape these dynamics in the age of climate change and polycrisis, through the lenses of intersectionality and environmental justice. Her dissertation investigates how historically marginalized populations respond to and resist the forced displacement conditions in post-disaster contexts. Her latest project examined refugee politics and nativism in Türkiye, demonstrating how they are driven more by domestic, geopolitical, and international inequalities than by ideology.
Salim Benhachmi is a PhD student in education policy at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the effects of neighbourhoods on children’s outcomes and on the relationship between schools and neighbourhoods. Prior to his doctoral studies, Salim worked as a Research Associate at Yale University and J-PAL. He holds a master’s degree in economics from the London School of Economics and a bachelor’s degree in finance from McGill University.
Steve Tu (he/him/他) is a PhD student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. He is a SSHRC CGS-D scholar and Digital Research Alliance of Canada-funded researcher. His research interests include philosophy and theory of higher education, multispecies ethnography, other-than-human stories, ecocriticism, (environmental) posthumanities, “artificial” intelligence, student mental health, doctoral education, university faculty, post-qualitative inquiry, research-creation, terror management theory, possibility studies, and anti-Asian racism.