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I am a critical economic and urban geographer with a mix of academic and professional experience and a specific focus on the role of finance in everyday life. My work has been published in leading geography journals such as Progress in Human Geography, the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Urban Geography, Geoforum, and the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society.

Since beginning my position at Queen's in September 2019, I have conducted several funded projects on different elements of the Canadian financial system. From 2020 to 2023 I completed a project on Canada's Social Finance Fund, examining how the fund evolved through the policymaking process and the power dynamics which shape how the investments in the fund help define the 'social good'. From 2023 onward I have been leading a SSHRC Insight grant on the spatial politics of monetary policy in Canada. 

Prior to my employment at Queen's, I completed a Master of Science in Planning at the University of Toronto and subsequently worked as a planner and researcher in both the private sector and for the City of Toronto. Based on this experience I developed a research interest in how the increasing power of finance and market-based policies are shaping the social systems that people rely upon for the necessities of life. 

After leaving the City of Toronto I returned to academia to undertake a PhD in Geography at the University of British Columbia (UBC). At UBC my dissertation explored how market-based education policies spread throughout the United States and the intersections of these markets with financial speculation and the urban geographies of race. My post-doctoral fellowship at Concordia University extended this research interest into Canada through new subject areas such as impact investing and social finance. 

Credentials
B.A. (University of Toronto)
M.Sc. Pl (University of Toronto)
PhD (University of British Columbia)

Research Interests

My research interests are focused in economic and financial geography, specifically the role of markets in shaping important urban, social, and economic systems that shape people's everyday lives.
 
Using a political economic approach, my past and current research projects have critically examined our increasing reliance on market systems of service provision to plan the delivery of public goods and on the role of financial systems in producing spatialized inequality. Through doing so, I explore how geographic factors such as place-based political struggles and the circulation of financial capital shape the ways that markets evolve and function. This has included research in several areas such as: (1) new visions for the use of public finance, including the critical analysis or monetary policy; (2) new models of social finance and impact investing; (3) schooling markets, student debt, and the role of schooling in shaping urban dynamics; and (4) the movement of policy between cities.

Student Supervision
I am interested in work with students with research interests in the critical study of markets/finance, geographies of education, and urban policy and philanthropy from a variety of perspectives (political economy, critical race theory, etc.).

Curriculum Vitae (pdf, 187KB)