Research

I produce academic-quality research on a variety of topics. I have a specializations in qualitative research methodologies and design, specifically in phenomenology and communicology.

I plan and manage major projects involving primary research through interviews, surveys, and focus groups, and secondary research through literature reviews and textual sources. I analyze data with programs like NVIVO and through phenomenological narrative analysis.

I have secured research grants from major funding sources, including Tri-Agency (SSHRC), think tanks and NGOs (Institute for Social and Economic Research), and the private sector (3M Canada).

A few areas of ongoing research interest for me are in corporate social responsibility,  sustainability, and environmentalism and ecology (ESG broadly defined). I also work with consulting clients to research, design, and implement CSR and social purpose policy.

My PhD research was a discursive and text-based project in Resistance Studies, a field I also work on in relation to Extractive Industries and Energy Politics. I completed the University of the Arctic PhD Certificate Program in Extractive Industries. For more on my academic research, see my full CV.

Research Portfolio

Climate change and extractive industries:

  • “Resistance to Extractive Industries in Newfoundland and Labrador,” publication in Circumpolar Notes (link)
  • “Newfoundland and Labrador’s Oil Ambitions and Climate Change,” conference paper presented at UArctic (link)
  • “Anarchism and Unconventional Oil,” examining hydraulic fracturing, pipelines, and protest movements; publication in Materialism and the Critique of Energy (link)

Corporate social responsibility:

  • “Corporate Social Responsibility and Neoliberalism: Toward Authoritarianism?” White paper (link)
  • “CSR, In-reach, and Social Disintegration in the Mining Region of Labrador West” White paper for Impakt Inc. (link)

COVID19 pandemic (I have been writing extensively on the pandemic and am currently compiling a new book based on some of my recent journalism):

  • “COVID-19 Outbreak in Canada calls for an Ethics of Collective Care” (link)
  • “COVID-19 has Exposed Society’s Upside-down Priorities” (link)
  • “The Global Battle for Personal Protective Equipment turns Ugly” (link)
  • “Thinking Outside the Crisis: The Pandemic and Social Unrest” (link)

Literature and humanities:

  • Institute of Social and Economic Research, Doctoral Fellowship (link)
  • Resistance in Contemporary Newfoundland Fiction, PhD dissertation, 2017. (link)
  • “Branded Newfoundland: Lisa Moore’s Alligator and Consumer Capitalism.” Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, 28.1 (2013). (link)
  • “The Naming Compulsion in Dillon Wallace’s The Lure of the Labrador Wild and Mina Hubbard’s A Woman’s Way through Unknown Labrador.” Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, 26.1 (2011). (link)