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- 2023 Archives
- Scientists dig deep and find a way to accurately predict snowmelt after droughts
- Cracking the Case of Missing Snowmelt After Drought
- 2023 Esri Canada GIS Scholarship for 間眅埶AV
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Daniel Murphy
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Kyle Kusack
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Matthew Taylor
- Anke Baker Wins Staff Achievement Award
- Spring 2023 Virtual Geospeaker Event with Ginger Gosnell-Myers
- CAG Paper Presentation Award - Congratulations to Alysha van Duynhoven!
- Informing & Engaging Urban Youth on Public Hearings: GEOG 363 Final Showcase
- Research Talk: Modeling Urban Wetland Complexities
- Highlight Paper: Quantifying land carbon cycle feedbacks under negative CO2 emissions
- Bright Addae winner of the 2023 間眅埶AV ECCE GIS Scholarship Award
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Jonny Cripps
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Diandra Oliver
- 2023 Geospeaker Presentation with Dr. Pauline McGuirk
- Congratulations to Our Graduates - October 2023
- Evaluating the impact of educational goals at 間眅埶AV
- The Belongings of Precariously Housed People - A Report
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Takuma Mihara
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Adrienne Arbor
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Claire Shapton
- 2023 Distinguished Speaker Presentation with Dr. Deb Cowen
- Cheers to Paul Degrace and his well-earned retirement!
- 2024 Archives
- Professor Nicholas Blomley Honored with the Community-Engaged Research Achievement Award
- Graduate Students Claire Shapton and Marina Chavez Honored with the Community-Engaged Graduate Scholar Award
- Applications now open: 2024 ESRI Canada GIS Scholarship for 間眅埶AV
- Associate Professor Rosemary Collard achieves 13th place on 間眅埶AV Altmetric List
- The PEAK feature: GSU hosts inaugural RANGE conference
- Gabrielle Wong wins First Prize in 2023 Student Learning Commons Writing Contest
- Gabrielle Wong receives Warren Gill Memorial Award
- Professor Nick Blomley receives Warren Gill Memorial Award for Community Impact
- Geography Student Union recipient of the FENV 2024 Changemaker Awards
- Senior Lecturer Tara Holland reveals the secret sauce of great teaching
- Senior Lecturer Tara Holland Receives 間眅埶AV 2023 Excellence in Teaching Award
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Bright Addae
- GIS undergraduate students participate in the Canada-wide 2024 AppChallenge competition
- Senior Lecturer Andrew Perkins Receives 間眅埶AV 2024 Dean's Award of Excellence in Teaching
- Congratulations to Alysha van Duynhoven, Canada's 2024 ESRI Young Scholar
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Robert Ehlert
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Stephan Nieweler
- Eugene McCann writes on "livable cities" in The Tyee
- Tiana Andjelic wins the 2024 間眅埶AV ECCE GIS Scholarship Award
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Marina Chavez
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Mia Fitzpatrick
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Lan Qing Zhao
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Tyler Cole
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Benjamin Lartey
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Olivia Nieves
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Max Hurson
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to John Sykes
- Farewell to Robert "Bob" Horsfall, Associate Professor
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Andr矇 Ara繳jo
- 間眅埶AV Geography welcomes ethnobotanist, Leigh Joseph, as professor of Indigenous geographies
- Physical Geography September: What is Physical Geography?
- Alysha Van Duynhoven communicates award-winning research at international GIS conference
- How Dr. Tracy Brennands visionary leadership shaped the Department of Geography - a heartfelt thank-you
- Dr. Tracy Brennand honoured with the Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG) Award
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Jay Matsushiba
- Human Geography October: What is Human Geography?
- MA Student Joy Russell featured on CBC Vancouver
- Human Geography October: What is Urban Worlds?
- Ajay Minhas Receives 2024 Warren Gill Award
- Dr. Nadine Schuurman featured in 間眅埶AV news article on Runnability
- Hallway Screens Slides
- 2023 Archives
- Alumni
EDUCATION
DPhil, School of Geography, University of Oxford
MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Policy, School of Geography, University of Oxford
BA Hons (Cultural Studies), McGill University
RESEARCH INTERESTS
I am a geographer and feminist political economist with teaching and research interests in the areas of labour and regulation, social reproduction, migration, urbanization, and social infrastructures. I am interested in the ways that categories of social difference shape how wage labour and unpaid work are valued and regulated, and what counts as labour. My research has focused on pension politics and financialization, precarity and unfreedom in contemporary labour markets, and labour and urbanization.
Before coming to 間眅埶AV I taught at Birkbeck College (University of London) and held posts at the University of Glasgow and the University of Cambridge, where I was Director of Studies for Geography at Robinson College.
CURRENT PROJECTS
Understanding Precarity in BC (UP-BC) Partnership Grant. I am the co-Director with Iglika Ivanova, Senior Economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) BC Office, of this SSHRC-funded community-academic partnership. The project runs from 2021-2017; the UP-BC Partnership includes 37 academic and community-based researchers, and 27 diverse community partners, committed to researching and tackling multi-dimensional precarity in BC and in a comparative context.
Workers in the Aging City: Eldercare Labour Markets in Vancouver and Shanghai: This SSHRC-funded project is led by Dr Feng Xu (Political Science, UVic) and Dr Kendra Strauss (The Labour Studies Program, 間眅埶AV). The project, which runs from 2016-2020, investigates paid eldercare work in two major urban labor markets with different care regimes.
TEACHING (SELECTED COURSES)
- LBST 101-3 Introducing Labour Studies
- LBST 202-3: Labour Research for Social Change: Methods and Approaches (Q)
- LBST 307: Unfree Labour and Modern Slavery
- LBST/GEOG 328-4: Labour Geographies
GRADUATE STUDENT SUPERVISION
I am happy to supervise MA and PhD students with research interests in the areas of Labour Studies and Geography, in particular: feminist political economy and feminist political ecology, migration, unfree labour, precarity, and feminist urban theory.
BOOKS
- Meehan, K. and Strauss, K. (eds) (2015) Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
- Fudge, J. and Strauss, K. (eds.) (2013) Routledge, Studies in 'Employment and Work Relations in Context'. by Ben Rogaly on the Society & Space open site (free access).
- Clark, G. L., Strauss, K. and Knox-Hayes, J. (2012) Oxford: Oxford University Press.
OTHER SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
2023
- Ivanova, I. and Strauss, K. (2023) . Vancouver: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, pp. 1-72.
- Strauss, K. (in press). Care and social reproduction. In: Contemporary Economic Geographies, Jennifer Johns and Sarah Marie Hall (eds). Bristol: Bristol University Press.
- Strauss, K. (in press). Anglophonic Labour Geography. In: Handbook of Labour Geography, Andrew Herod (ed). London: Edward Elgar.
2022
- Strauss, K. (2022) . The Conversation, August 8, 2022. https://theconversation.com/a-summer-ofdiscontent-why-public-sector-workers-are-preparing-to-strike-in-b-c-186808
- Reid-Musson, E., Strauss, K. & Mechler, M. (2022) A virtuous industry: the agrarian work-family ethic in US rulemaking on child agricultural labour, Globalizations 19:(6): 922-936. (Authorship: Reid-Musson 50%, Strauss 30%, Mechler 10%).
- Strauss, K., & Xu, F. (2022). Devalued labour, COVID-19, and the problem of profitability: crises of seniors care in Shanghai, China and British Columbia, Canada. Studies in Political Economy, 103(2), 109129. (open access) (Equal co-authorship)
- Strauss, K. (2022). Introduction to Displacements. Special Issue on Displacements (28 papers), edited by Kendra Strauss. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 112(3), 621625. (open access)
2021
- Strauss, K. (2021) Beyond crisis? Using rent theory to understand the restructuring of publicly funded seniors care in British Columbia, Canada, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. . (open access)
2019
- Strauss, K. (2019) .&紳莉莽梯;Dialogues in Human Geography.
- Strauss, K. (2019) .&紳莉莽梯;Progress in Human Geography.
- Strauss, K. (2019) Contract.&紳莉莽梯;Antipode. Article published online first:
- Strauss, K. (2019) Feminist Economic Geography. In: Aurdey Kobayashi et al. (ed), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2e.
2018
- Strauss, K. (2018) Geographical Imaginations of Pension Divestment Campaigns In: Marion Werner, Jamie Peck, Rebecca Lave and Brett Christophers (eds) Doreen Massey: Critical Dialogues. New York: Agenda Publishing.
- Strauss, K. (2018) "Reproduction, justice and spatialities of power" In: Matt Coleman and John Agnew (eds) Geographies of Power. London: Edward Elgar.
- Strauss, K. (2018) Labour Geography II: Being, knowledge and agency.&紳莉莽梯;Progress in Human Geography. Article published online first:
- Strauss, K. and Xu, F. (2018) At the Intersection of Urban and Care Policy: The Invisibility of Eldercare Workers in the Global City. Critical Sociology. Article first published online: .
- Schwiter, K., Strauss, K., and England, K. (2018) "At home with the boss: Migrant live-in caregivers, social reproduction and constrained agency in the UK, Canada, Austria and Switzerland". Trans Inst Br Geogr. 2018;00:115.
- Fudge, K. and Strauss, K. (2018) Migrants, Unfree Labour, and the Legal Construction of Domestic Servitude: Migrant Domestic Workers in the UK. In: P. Kotiswaran (ed.) Unsettling Paradigms, Revisiting the Law of Trafficking: The Palermo Protocol at 15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. In press. (Revised and updated reprint of the 2014 chapter of the same name, published in Migrants at Work. Equal co-authors).
2017
- Werner, M., Strauss, K. et al. (2017) Feminist political economy in geography: Why now, what is different, and what for? Geoforum 79: 1-4.
- Strauss, K. (2017) Labour geography 1: Towards a geography of precarity? Progress in Human Geography. DOI: 10.1177/0309132517717786.
- Strauss, K. (2017) Sorting victims from workers: Forced labour, trafficking, and the process of jurisdiction.&紳莉莽梯;Progress in Human Geography41(2): 140-158.
- Strauss, K. (2017) "Precarious Work", Wiley-AAG International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology, edited by Douglas Richardson, Noel Castree, Michael F. Goodchild, Audrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, and Richard A. Marston.
- Strauss, K. (2017) "Precarious work and winner-take-all economies". In: Gordon L. Clark, Maryann P. Feldman, Meric S. Gertler, and Dariusz Wojcik, The New Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography
2016
- Strauss, K. and McGrath, S. (2016) Temporary migration, precarious employment and unfree labour relations: Exploring the continuum of exploitation in Canadas Temporary Foreign Worker Program.&紳莉莽梯;Geoforum 78: 199-208.
- Buckley, M. and Strauss, K. (2016) With, against and beyond Lefebvre: Planetary Urbanization and Epistemic Plurality.&紳莉莽梯;Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34(4): 617636.
- Fudge, K. and Strauss, K. (2016) Migrants, Unfree Labour, and the Legal Construction of Domestic Servitude: Migrant Domestic Workers in the UK. In: P. Kotiswaran (ed.) Unsettling Paradigms, Revisiting the Law of Trafficking: The Palermo Protocol at 15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2015
- Strauss, K. (2015) These Overheating Worlds.&紳莉莽梯;Annals of the Association of American Geographers, special issue on Futures: Imagining Socioecological Transformation 105(2): 342-350.
- McGrath, S. and Strauss, K. (2015) Unfreedom and workers power: ever-present possibilities.&紳莉莽梯; In: by K. van der Pijl The International Political Economy of Production. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 299-317. (Second author, 40% contribution).
- Strauss, K. (2015) "Pension systems and labour law in the EU". In: Costello, C., Davies, A. and M. Freedland (eds.) Research Handbook on EU Labour Rights Law. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
- Strauss, K. (2015) "Social reproduction and migrant domestic labour in Canada and the UK: Towards a multi-dimensional concept of subordination". In: Craig, G, Lewis, H. Skrivankova, K. and L. Waite (eds.) Vulnerability, exploitation and migrants: Insecure work in a globalised economy. London: Palgrave.
- Wainwright, J., Kosek, J., Strauss, K., Akhter, M., Labban, M., Mann, G. (2015) Geoff Mann's Disassembly Required: A Field Guide to Actually Existing Capitalism (2013, Oakland: AK press). Capitalism Nature Socialism. Published online: 10 Apr 2015. DOI:10.1080/10455752.2015.1030436.
- Strauss, K. Feminist economic geography and Capital in the Twenty-First Century: going beyond add gender and stir . Geoforum Online First: DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.07.005.
- Strauss, K. (2015) . openDemocracy
2014
- Strauss, K. (2014) 'Accessing pension resources: the right to equality inside and out of the labour market. International Journal of Law in Context 10(04): 522-537.Fudge, K. and Strauss, K. (2014) Migrants, Unfree Labour, and the Legal Construction of Domestic Servitude: Migrant Domestic Workers in the UK. In C. Costello and M. Freedland (eds) . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Ince, I., Featherstone, D., Cumbers, A., Mackinnon, D., and Strauss, K. British Jobs for British Workers? Negotiating Work, Nation and Globalisation through the Lindsey Oil Refinery Disputes. Antipode. Article first published online: 28 MAY 2014. DOI: 10.1111/anti.12099.
- Strauss, K. Challenging labor and work to survive well. Book review symposium for J.K. Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron and Stephen Healy, Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities. Social & Cultural Geography. Published online: 22 May 2014. DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2014.916991.
2013
- Strauss, K. (2013) "Fair-mutualisation and the socialisation of risk and reward in European occupational pensions". In Countouris, N. and Freedland, M. (eds) Resocialising Europe in a Time of Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Strauss, K. (2013) "Flexible work, flexible pensions: The evolution of retirement (in)security." In Arthurs, H. and Stone, K. (eds.), Rethinking Workplace Regulation: Beyond the Standard Contract of Employment. New York: Russell Sage.
- Strauss, K. (2013) "Unfree again: social reproduction, flexible labour markets and the resurgence of gang labour in the UK". Antipode 45(1): 180-197.
2012
- Strauss, K. (2012) "Coerced, forced and unfree labour: geographies of exploitation in contemporary labour markets". Geography Compass6(3): 137-148.
- Featherstone, D., Cumbers, A., Mackinnon, D., Strauss, K. (2012) "Boundary Crossing: Progressive Localism in the Age of Austerity". Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(2): 177182.
2008-2011
- Strauss, K. (2011) "Globalization and the service workplace: Citizenship, entitlement, and the future of UK occupational pensions". American Behavioral Scientist, 55(7): 902 - 919.
- Clark, G. L., Duran-Fernandez R., and Strauss, K. (2010) "Being in the market": the UK house-price bubble and the intended structure of individual pension investment portfolios. Journal of Economic Geography, 10(3): 331359.
- Strauss, K. (2009) "Financialisation and gendered risk in occupational pensions". In Clark, G. L., Dixon, A. and Monk, A. H. (eds.), Managing Financial Risks: From Global to Local. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 258-279.
- Strauss, K. (2009) "Cognition, context, and multimethod approaches to economic decision-making". Environment and Planning A, 41(2): 320-317.
- Strauss, K. (2008) "Re-engaging with rationality in economic geography: behavioural approaches and the importance of context in decision-making". Journal of Economic Geography, 8(2): 137-156.
- Clark, G. L. and Strauss, K. (2008) "Individual pension-related risk propensities; the effects of socio-demographic characteristics and a spousal pension entitlement on risk attitudes". Ageing and Society, 28: 847-874.
Courses
Fall 2024
Spring 2025
Future courses may be subject to change.