People

Who is on the Research Team?

 Principal Investigator: Sandra Acker

Co-Investigators: Michelle K. McGinn; Anne Wagner

Research Coordinator: Caitlin Campisi

Collaborators: Eve Haque, Marie Vander Kloet

Research Assistants: Pushpa Hamal

International Collaborators: Lisa Lucas, Oili-Helena Ylijoki

About Us

Sandra Acker

Sandra has worked in universities in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada and is currently a Professor Emerita in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and an associate member of OISE’s Centre for the Study of Canadian and International Higher Education. Her research interests lie in changes in academic work, the social production of academic research, gender and academe, women academics in leadership positions, experiences of doctoral students and graduates, and university tenure and other evaluative practices. Her publications include Whose University Is It, Anyway? (coedited with Anne Wagner and Kimine Mayuzumi, 2008), The Realities of Teachers’ Work (1999), and Gendered Education (1994), as well as numerous chapters and articles in journals including the British Journal of Sociology of Education, the Canadian Journal of Higher Education, Gender and Education, Higher Education Research & Development. Contact: sandra.acker@utoronto.ca

Michelle K. McGinn

Michelle is Associate Vice-President, Research and Professor of Education at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada. Her scholarly work draws attention to the ways the current research climate shapes scholars’ careers, practices, and identities. Researcher development, collaboration, writerly identities, and ethics in academic practice for (post)graduate students and established scholars are major considerations in her program of research. This scholarly grounding is reinforced through courses she teaches in higher education, research methodology, and writing for publication, and through her administrative responsibilities. Connect via Twitter @dr_mkmcginn

Anne Wagner

Anne Wagner, MSW, PhD, is a recently retired Associate Professor at Nipissing University in the Department of Social Work. Her research interests include critical approaches to higher education, neo-liberalism in academia and critical pedagogies, with a particular interest in how identity impacts learning in the classroom.  Anne’s research interests also encompass social work practice and she is currently involved in a project exploring the value of a peer support model to providing support to women in rural areas who have experienced sexual violence. Contact: e.wagner@utoronto.ca

Caitlin Campisi

Caitlin Campisi is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Social Justice Education at OISE/University of Toronto. Her research project focuses on doctoral student retention in the contemporary Canadian academy. She is particularly interested in the doctoral student experiences of current and former doctoral students and the process of choosing to remain in or leave a doctoral program. She recently served as the Executive Director of the Association of Part-Time Undergraduate Students at the University of Toronto and has over a decade of experience serving as a student representative within university governance. Currently, she is Associate Academic Dean at Cégep Heritage College.

Marie Vander Kloet

Marie Vander Kloet is Associate Professor in the Program for universitetspedagogikk at the University of Bergen, Norway. Formerly she was the Assistant Director of the Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation and the Teaching Assistants’ Training Program at the University of Toronto. She is an educational developer and a researcher in higher education and university pedagogy. Her current research interests include: equity and access in teaching and learning, contingent instructors in higher education, graduate student professional development, race and gender in academic development, and research culture, work and identities in higher education. Her work has been published in Critical Studies in Education, The Canadian Journal of Higher Education, and The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.  Contact: marie.vander.kloet@uib.no

Eve Haque

Eve Haque is an Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics at York University in Toronto, Canada.  Her research and teaching interests include equity in higher education, multiculturalism, white settler nationalism and language policy, with a focus on the regulation and representation of racialized im/migrants in white settler societies. She has published in journals such as Social Identities, Higher Education Research and Development, and Pedagogy, Culture and Society, among others. She is also the author of Multiculturalism within a bilingual framework: Language, race and belonging in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2012). Contact: ehaque@yorku.ca

Lisa Lucas

Lisa Lucas is a Reader at the University of Bristol Graduate School of Education in the UK. Her research interests focus on higher education policy in a global context and in particular, the funding of higher education and the evaluation of the quality of research and teaching. She is also interested in policies on access and equity in higher education. Her research also focuses on academic work, including early career academics and policies guiding the development of doctoral education. Among her publications are The Research Game in Academic Life, published in 2006 by SRHE/McGraw-Hill, and Academic Research and Researchers (edited with Angela Brew), published in 2009 by SRHE/McGraw-Hill.  Contact: Lisa.Lucas@bristol.ac.uk

Oili-Helena Ylijoki

Oili-Helena Ylijoki is a Research Director of the Research Centre for Knowledge, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies TaSTI and an adjunct professor of social psychology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, Finland. Her research interests cover higher education studies, science studies and time studies. She has investigated and led projects on academic cultures, identities and careers, transformations of knowledge production, women in science and intermediary organizations, and conflicting temporalities in academia. She is a founding member of the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers in Finland, and a member of the current Nordic Centre of Excellence on Women in Technology Driven Careers.  Contact: oili-helena.ylijoki@tuni.fi

Pushpa Hamal

Pushpa holds a doctorate in Adult Education and Community Development from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. He has research interests in examining the relationships between political subjectivity, state restructuring and community building in Nepal, with a focus on rural roads as a key site of political action and learning. He also has interests in the social construction of research, based on several years of participation on the project team. Contact: pushpa.hamal@mail.utoronto.ca