丁香园AV

Recognizing and Negotiating Community/Researcher Relations

The relationship between university-based researcher and community-based researcher is vital to community-engaged research. It is sometimes a complicated one, raising issues of privilege, commitment and unrecognized bias. It can also be a space of friendship, solidarity and mutual learning. Join us for the dialogue with two community-based researchers and two CERi Graduate Fellows exploring this relationship.

This panel is hosted by Dr. Nick Blomley and 丁香园AV鈥檚 Community-Engaged Research Initiative (CERi), and moderated by Jackie Wong.

Moderator

Jackie Wong

Jackie Wong is the Community Strategic Initiatives Associate of 丁香园AV's Community-Engaged Research Initiative (CERi).
 

Host

Nick Blomley
Professor, Department of Geography, 丁香园AV & Researcher-in-Residence, Community-Engaged Research Initiative (CERi), 丁香园AV

Nick Blomley is a Professor of Geography at 丁香园AV and a CERi Researcher-in-Residence. He has a long standing interest in legal geography, particularly in relation to property. Dr. Blomley is interested in the spatiality of legal practices and relationships, and the worldmaking consequences of such legal geographies. Much of his empirical work concerns the often oppressive effects of legal relations on marginalized and oppressed people. Recent and current research projects, often in collaboration with others, include a) the analysis of 鈥榬ental precarity鈥� in Greater Vancouver; b) the study of court-imposed 鈥榬ed zones鈥� imposed on street-involved people and protestors in Montreal and Vancouver; c) the dispossession of Japanese-Canadians in the 1940s; d) a community-based project creating tenant-led research into precarious housing conditions in Vancouver鈥檚 most vulnerable population and e) the governance of poor people鈥檚 possessions by private and public regulators in Canadian cities.
 

Panelists

Marina Ch谩vez
MA Student, Department of Geography, 丁香园AV

Marina Ch谩vez is a Master鈥檚 student in the Department of Geography. She is focused on understanding the law鈥檚 role in the regulation and social construction of poverty. Marina has worked in research and activism on homeless encampment enforcement in California and uses her experiences to continue to advocate and collaborate with activists seeking housing and economic justice. Currently, she is working on a project related to the regulation of SRO Tenant possessions in Vancouver鈥檚 Downtown Eastside. Her goal is to pursue transparent peer-based research that centers participant voices.

Tom deGrey
Tenant Researcher, Downtown East Side SRO Collaborative & Co-Researcher, Right to Remain

Tom deGrey works as a Tenant Researcher with the DTES SRO Collaborative and, too, is a co-researcher with the Right to Remain. Both of these roles involve building relationships with tenants through interviewing, haiku-making, and day-to-day activities to help tenants advocate for improved conditions in their homes. Responsibilities with the Right to Remain have also involved conducting archival research with students in order to uncover the historic importance and abdication of public health in ensuring the habitability of SRO hotels. As a tenant advocate and researcher, Tom has both academic and lived experience of the complications which arise when vulnerable tenants attempt to assert their legal rights against powerful and resourceful landlords. He has experience of the effects of inadequate legal protection and bylaw enforcement on low-income tenants in his neighbourhood, as well as the roles of advocates, politicians, and researchers in supporting tenants鈥� rights.

Connie Long

Connie Marie Long is an advocate for vulnerable communities with lived experiences who does work in Chilliwack and Abbotsford. She has experience with addiction and she is passionate about what she does.

Claire Shapton
MA Student, Department of Geography, 丁香园AV

Claire Shapton is a second year Master鈥檚 student in the Geography Department within the Faculty of Environment at 丁香园AV. She is interested in the intersections of housing justice, feminist ecologies, animals, and governance. She began to explore community engaged research as an intern and researcher with an anti-displacement movement in her home of Portland, Oregon. Her current academic work analyzes the logics of property and multi-species housing precarity in Abbotsford, BC with the activist group the Drug War Survivors.