Dr. Esra Alkım Karaağaç
Principal Investigator
Department of Geography and Environmental Management
University of Waterloo
I’m a feminist economic geographer, interested in urban inequalities, debt geographies, housing financialization and crises of social reproduction in contemporary Turkey and Canada. In my PhD research In Debt to the State, I examined the lived experiences of indebtedness in state-led mass housing projects in Istanbul. In my post-doctoral research, I focus on international students lived experiences of housing and indebtedness in the Canadian context. I examine the role of private credit and housing markets in Canada’s international higher education-migration system, revealing the socio-economic impacts of predatory practices on student experiences. I often combine ethnographic research with critical policy analysis to reveal how policy plays on the ground. My work converses with feminist political economy, critical urban theory, and social reproduction theory.
Dr. Nancy Worth
Co-investigator
Department of Geography and Environmental Management
University of Waterloo
I'm a feminist economic geographer who is interested in work, social reproduction, inequalities, age and generations, and feminist theory. My research agenda as whole takes an identities approach to focus on issues of social justice and equity—the lived experience of the economic. From my work with young people on school to work transitions to more recent projects with young adults on precarious work, co-residence with parents and work-at-home freelancing, my research focuses on how age intersects with other social categories of difference, across space at various scales (including the workplace, the home, and the city)—understanding economic processes alongside the people who experience them.
I’m a multi-disciplinary urbanist and a human geography PhD student, specialising in queer geography and urban justice. My research interests include sexuality and space, urban inequalities and modernist heritage. Currently, my research is investigating the geographies of queer Arab newcomers in Toronto, their sexuality and their relationship to the city.
Matthew Gajewski
Research Assistant
Undergraduate Geomatics Student
University of Waterloo
I’m a geomatics undergraduate student focusing on spatial human geography. My research interests are social issues people face around the world with my current focus being housing inequalities amongst students in Waterloo. In the past I have contributed to research relating to electric vehicles and aerosol pollutants over the Alberta oil sands. My studies have always brought me back to the human aspect of geography and how geography plays a part in the structure of our lives as well as the problems we face.