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Research
At Laurier, sustainability research is a key part of our overarching goal of moving towards a more sustainable future. It considers the ecological, economic and social factors and interconnections necessary for creating conditions that are at once manageable, viable, and equitable.
As such, it is connected to Laurier's multi-campus, multidisciplinary environment, core values and guiding principles through such topics as: social/environmental justice, ecological resilience, equity, diversity, human and labour rights, economic prosperity, land-use planning, resource management, socially engaged cultural and artistic production, and health and well-being.
We have worked with the Office of Research Services to create this list of sustainability research that is being conducted in each faculty:
Alison Blay-Palmer, Geography and Environmental Studies
- Food sustainability
- Alternative food systems
- Sustainable food report card
Andrea Brown, Political Science
- Nutritional well-being
- Public policy addressing poverty in Uganda
Mary-Louise Byrne, Geography and Environmental Studies
- Physical geography and impacts of environmental management
- Coastal and aeolian geomorphology
Simon Dalby, Geography and Environmental Studies
Jody Decker, Geography and Environmental Studies
- Geographies of health and place
Sean Doherty, Geography and Environmental Studies
- Human activity/mobility patterns and decision making, including tracking methods, modelling, and the impacts on health, safety, and the environment.
Denise Grafton, Geography and Environmental Studies
- Rural health geography
- Historical geography
- Provision of services and rural community sustainability
- Research ethics and quality improvement
Derek Hall, Political Science
- Environmental politics
- Political economy of food, land and agriculture
Rhoda Howard-Hassman, Global Studies
- International human rights
- Economic human rights
- Comparative genocide studies
- Sociology and politics of human rights
- Women's international human rights
- Gay and Lesbian rights
- Human rights and retrospective justice
- Human rights and globalization
Michael Imort, Geography and Environmental Studies
- The connection between the cultural construction of the cultural landscape as a symbolic environment, and the political uses of that symbolism with a focus on the German forest landscape
Alex Latta, Global Studies
- Environment, energy and resources
- Environmental citizenship
- Environmental justice
Christopher Lemieux, Geography and Environmental Studies
- Environmental policy alternatives
- Barriers to climate change adaptation within resource management organizations
Lucy Luccisano, Sociology
- Globalization
- International political economy
- Gender and development
- Inequality, poverty and social policy with a specialization in Mexico
Robert McLeman, Geography and Environmental Studies
- Human dimensions of environmental change
- Environment and human migration
- Fostering citizen participation in environmental science
Brenda Murphy, Geography and Environmental Studies
- Risk and resilience
- Natural hazards
- Climate change research processes
Markus Poetzsch, English
- Ecocriticism
Tanya Richardson, Anthropology
- Politics of nature and environmentalism in the Odessa region of Southern Ukraine
Steven Roberts, Geography and Environmental Studies
- Design and development Geographic Information Science based tools for use in understanding landscape structure and in decision support applications for environmental land use planning
Bob Sharpe, Geography and Environmental Studies
- The status of geographic education in Canada
- The creation and role of geographic and environmental information systems for community-based problem-solving
- Assessing the role of information technologies in social science education with a focus on geomatics and GIS
Carl Simpson, Communication Studies
- Ethical issues in the food industry
- Automobiles, roads, oil production, distribution and use
Alicia Sliwinski, Global Studies
- Anthropology of development
- Humanitarianism
- Disaster studies
- Reconstruction
Scott Slocombe, Geography and Environmental Studies
- The challenge of managing diverse human activities in large regions while maintaining environmental integrity and sustainability
John Triggs, Archeology and Heritage Studies
- Archaeology of the Historic Period in North America
- Understanding factors involved in the rise and fall of historic places
Debora VanNijnatten, North American Studies
- Canadian and American environmental policy, including air quality and climate change policy, transboundary institutions and state-province comparisons
Byron Williston, Philosophy
- Environmental ethics, specifically the ethics of climate change
Brent Wolfe, Geography and Environmental Studies
- Impact of climate change and variability on water resources
Hideki Arrizumi, Economics
- Health economics
- Labour economics
- Industrial organization
David Blenkhorn, Marketing
- Corporate sustainability
- Green evolution in business-to-business marketing
Ignacio Castillo, Operations and Decision Sciences
- Sustainable and closed-loop supply chain management
Barry Colbert, Policy
- Sustainable strategic management
- Societal learning for sustainability
- Corporate Social Responsibility
Mitali De, Operations and Decision Sciences
- Environmental management systems
- Decision support systems
- Optimization
Bruce McConomy, Accounting
- Environmental accounting
Frank Millerd, Economics
- Fisheries development
- Internal migration
- Climate change and commercial navigation in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River system
Tracy Snoddon, Economics
- Canadian environmental policy and Kyoto
Randall Wigle, Economics
- Climate change economics
- Trade and the environment
Sarah Wilner, Marketing
- Consumer culture
- Product development and innovation
- Brand management and communication
- Manager interpretations of customer needs
Xuan Zhao, Operations and Decision Sciences
- Inventory decision making
- Coordination/contracting
- Competitive revenue management
Kristiina Montero, Education
- International, global and multicultural children's literature
- Culturally responsive teaching practices
Bruce Arai, Human and Social Sciences
- Sociology of work
- Health
- Education
- Environmental sociology
Janet McLaughlin, Health Studies
- Migrant worker health
- Global and environmental health
- Food systems
Kim Anderson, Indigenous Studies
- Indigenous environmental thought
- Community-based indigenous research
- Indigenous feminism and masculinity
Lamine Diallo, Sociology
- Community development using participatory action research to understand the impact of social policies on organization community groups, particularly the issue of diversity and social inclusion
Robert Feagan, Society, Culture and Environment
- Alternative and localized food systems
- Sustainable community development
- Cultural/Environmental philosophy and management
- Globalization
Rick Gamble, Journalism
- Food related issues, particularly food policy and fair trade
Ella Haley, Sociology
- Food sovereignty in Brant County
- Exemplary countryside line in Waterloo
- Community based research on disappearing farmland
Stephen Haller, Society, Culture and Environment
- Environmental issues, especially predictions of global catastrophe that might result from, say, overpopulation, global warming, or nuclear winter
Carole LeClair, Indigenous Studies
- Aboriginal environmental thought
Brenda Murphy, Society, Culture and Environment
- Social capital and environmental justice
- Risk (climate change, disasters, hazardous facility siting)
Andrew Robinson, Human Rights and Human Diversity
- The moral and practical capacity of liberal-democratic states to accommodate deep cultural diversity
Edward Shizha, Sociology
- Exploring ways in which integration of indigenous knowledge and learning can enhance knowledge utilization in socio-economic development
Kimberly Barber, Music
- Socially engaged cultural and artistic production
- Culturally diverse musical performances
- Interdisciplinary and multi-institutional arts collaboration
Marc Kilgour, Mathematics
- Environmental management
Deborah MacLatchy, Biology
- Ecology and biotoxicology
- Endocrine disruption in aquatic environments
- Aquatic environmental contaminants (pulp and paper, mining, sewage)
- Women in science
Jim McGeer, Biology
- Environmental effects monitoring
Kevin Stevens, Biology
- Anthropogenic stressors of wetland plant ecology
- Determining the capacity of wetland plant communities and wetland plants to mediate the adverse effects of human population growth
Manuel Reimer, Psychology
- Community-based change for the promotion of environmentally sustainable behaviours
- Networks and collaboration
- Change within complex social systems
- Evaluation research and implementation
- Sustainability of social programs
Michael P. Wilkie, Biology
- Environmental physiology Fish physiology and metabolism
- Sea lamprey biology
- Fish gill structure and function
- Toxicology of waterborne metals to fishes
- Toxicology of sea lamprey pesticide
Douglas Woolford, Mathematics
- Study of environmental problems using applied probability and statistical methods
- Forest fires and climate change
Ginette Lafreniere, Social Work
- Diversity, community and social change
Eliana Suarez, Social Work
- Global and local health disparities and social justice
- Local narratives of trauma and resilience strategy based on the experiences of Indigenous women in the aftermath of political violence in Peru
- Research methods