Fully Funded Graduate Student Opportunities in Geography at York University
The Geography Graduate Program at York University in Toronto is recruiting up to 20 MA, MSc, and PhD students for 2019. We are offering full funding packages to all students, and excellent opportunities for research support through faculty research projects and other sources of fieldwork funding, including research centres (http://research.info.yorku.ca/organized-research-units/) and the Faculty of Graduate Studies. As one of Canada’s top Geography Graduate Programs, we aim to attract excellent graduate students who fit our research-oriented graduate program. Potential students can find more information about our programs and funding on our website: http://geography.gradstudies.yorku.ca/future-students/.
Our basic funding package provides minimum guarantees with respect to annual income that are designed to be equivalent to or better than those offered by other Canadian universities. This includes excellent packages for Masters as well as PhD students. Students with high academic merit are also eligible for various scholarships.
Current faculty research projects in the Geography Graduate Program that are currently recruiting students are listed below. Additional details are provided on our website (https://geography.gradstudies.yorku.ca/research/research-projects/).
From Entrepreneurship to Rentiership? The Changing Dynamics of Innovation in Technoscientific Capitalism (2018-2023). Examines the extent, manifestation, and policy implications of ‘rentiership’ San Francisco, South East England; and Toronto. Faculty Contact: Kean Birch
The Famine Generation in Toronto: Poverty, Crime, and Place 1847-1882 (2018-2022). Concerns the lives of a subset of the immigrant men, women, and children who departed Ireland for Toronto in and around the years of the Great Potato Famine (1845-1851). Faculty Contact: William Jenkins
Spaces of labour in moments of urban populism (2015-2021). This project is recruiting both MA and PhD students. Explores labour’s response to and role in shaping urban populism in four North American cities and involves students as part of the research team. Faculty Contact: Steve Tufts
Urbanization, gender and the global south: a transformative knowledge network (2017-23). MA and PhD students; includes research assistant positions. Conducting research, public education and policy enrichment in seven cities (Cairo, Cochabamba, Georgetown (Guyana), Ibadan, Mumbai, Ramallah, and Shanghai), to advance understanding of how the relationship between poverty and inequality is being transformed, focusing on how this is reconstituting gender relations and women’s right to the city. Faculty Contact: Linda Peake.
Long-term perspectives on lake ecosystem change with thawing permafrost (2017-22). Recruiting MSc and exceptional PhD students, fully funded thesis research, motivated students with an interest in limnology and Arctic environmental change are encouraged to apply. Investigates how lakes are changing in response to thawing permafrost in the Taiga Plains and Mackenzie Delta Uplands regions (Northwest Territories), using lake sediment cores as natural archives of long-term environmental change. Faculty Contact: Jennifer Korosi
Bruce Peninsula forest canopy impacts on the water and carbon budgets (2018-20). Our field measurement program records the profound effects that the eastern white cedar forests of the Bruce Peninsula have on rainfall interception and CO2 emissions from the forest floor through methods that incorporate remote sensing and GIS. Faculty Contact: Richard Bello
Causes and implications of sea-Ice decline on Hudson Bay. Using reanalysis model results we are examining monthly changes in the surface radiation and energy balance components on Hudson from 1979 to the present, to quantify the factors responsible for disappearing sea ice. Faculty Contact: Richard Bello
To stay or not to stay: The geographies of immigrant integration, transnationalism, and return migration intentions among African immigrants in Canada (2017-22). This study examines the return intentions of African immigrants in Canada, drawing on the experiences of Ghanaians and Somalis in Toronto and Vancouver. Faculty Contact: Joseph Mensah
Intellectual Migration: The China-Canada-US Dynamics (2017-22). Support available for excellent MA or PhD students. Seeks to understand the dynamics underlying global knowledge and human capital flows and the significant role of Canada as a nexus in these flows by exploring migration patterns among the highly educated China-born population. Faculty Contact: Lucia Lo
Libre-échange, gouvernance et démocratie municipale. Étude comparée de quatre villes canadiennes: Halifax, Montréal, Toronto et Vancouver (2017-21). Primarily MA students. Focuses on comparing the impacts of free trade agreements on municipal democracy in four city-regions in Canada, based on the perceived democratic deficit felt by community actors in the design and implementation of these agreements. Faculty Contact: Jean Michel Montsion
Anti-fascism: Prospects, Dilemmas, Urban Dimensions. Focuses on the multiple meanings of anti-fascism in France today, paying special attention to the difficulty of countering the growing ‘normalization’ of right populist and neo-fascist politics and their claims to multiple, local and national scales of urban life. Faculty contact: Stefan Kipfer
Developing a comprehensive spatial database of fire, harvest, and road disturbances in Ontario (https://www.borealdb.ca/) (2018-2020). This is an ongoing effort to consistently compile at ~1 ha spatial resolution, annual maps of disturbance (i.e., fire, harvest, road) in Ontario’s boreal region from 1972 to present and to analyze the resulting patterns. Faculty Contact: Tarmo Remmel
Scaling functions for landscape patch shapes assessed from vertical transects of UAV imagery (2018-2020). Images based on vertical transects over a fixed ground point are used to develop scaling functions that describe the shape—resolution relationships and to inform object recognition and feature extraction. Faculty Contact: Tarmo Remmel
Ecologies of Labour: Unpacking labour, ecology, and mobility within the seafood sector (2018-21). Possible support for qualified and experienced MA and PhD students. Explores the ecological and social processes that shape labour processes in the commercial fisheries sector, with a focus on Southeast and East Asia. Faculty Contact: Peter Vandergeest
Understanding the Experiences of Chinese International Students in Canada: Pre- and Post-Migration Reflections (2018-20). Primarily MA students for research in Toronto. This research aims at understanding the various factors and actors facilitating the recruitment of Chinese international students to Canada, as well as documenting the different experiences of such international students after they return to China. Faculty contact: Jean Michel Montsion
Political geographies of activism and citizenship: Recruiting mostly PhD students. Examines the gap between the stated principles of liberal democracy, and the reality of exclusion, injustice, exploitation, and oppression from the perspective of the marginalized. Has a particular interest in studying questions of identity and belonging through creative and artistic expression. Faculty Contact: Patricia Wood
The Impact of Volcanic Ash on the Hydrology of Arctic Landscapes, Iceland. Interested in MSc and PhD students to conduct field research in Iceland for 3-4 months at a time. Evaluates the impact of tephra (dust and volcanic ash) on the hydrologic dynamics of diverse wetland landscapes in Iceland, and the utility of smart sensors in monitoring water levels, soil moisture across a wetland site in southeast Iceland. Faculty Contact: Kathy Young
Green Militarization / The Militarization of Conservation (2018-25). Examines the increasing military buildup within and across conservation areas around the world, or what is called “Green Militarization. Possible topics include the political economy of green militarization, its rationales, its histories, and its impacts (e.g., on local communities, governments, wildlife, and ecological processes), and its alternatives. Faculty Contact: Elizabeth Lunstrum
The Political Ecology of International Borders (2018-25). Examines the interplay of ecology and practices of building, extending, maintaining, and bringing down international borders, in sites including the Canadian-US border, the Mozambique-South Africa border, and other borders and borderlands around the world, based on student interest. Faculty Contact: Libby Lunstrum
Canada-Philippines Alternative Transnational Economies. Explores the ways in which non-capitalist economic transactions and practices link Canada and the Philippines through networks forged by transnational migrants. MA and PhD students will benefit from a team of collaborating researchers in Toronto, Vancouver and Manila, and fieldwork opportunities in both countries. Faculty Contact: Philip Kelly
Global production networks for sport: Canada’s role in producing elite hockey players in China. Examines how the Chinese state is developing an elite hockey team to represent China for the 2022 Winter Olympics through building global production networks linking with Canadian expertise in hockey. Faculty Contact: Glen Norcliffe
Ecology and survival of an endangered species in Canada. The last major Canadian population of the native cactus Opuntia cespitosa is assessed to determine health, ecology and positive interactions in its Point Pelee community. Faculty Contact: Taly Drezner
Subalterity, public education, and welfare cities: Comparing the experience of displaced migrants in three cities [Havana, Toronto, Kolkata] (2015-20). MA and PhD students, must have an interest in either Cuba or India. Historically traces the geopolitical impacts on cities and schools through questions of conflict and displacement in Havana, Toronto and Kolkata. Faculty Contact: Ranu Basu
Queering Canadian suburbs: LGBTQ2S place-making outside of central cities (2016-20). Addresses key knowledge gaps regarding the lives, service needs, and place-making practices of suburban Canadian LGBTQ2S (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, and Two-Spirit) populations in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Faculty Contact: Alison Bain
Neoliberal industrialization, the rural periphery, and uneven development in India (2016-20). Examines how India’s neoliberal-capitalist industrialization causes new forms of class inequality and new forms of geographically uneven development. Faculty Contact: Raju J Das
An interactive mobile GIS-based tool that deciphers complex parking restrictions in space and time. Simplifying the street-parking experience in busy urban centres by providing real-time parking restriction information with colour-coded coloured road-side overlay mapping layers for heads-up use in automobile navigation systems and mobile apps that provide driving directions. Faculty Contact: Tarmo Remmel
Climate Change Diagnostics. Identifies the patterns, trends and underlying causes of climate change and carbon dynamics, emphasis on changes in Canada and its Subarctic and Arctic regions. Faculty Contact: Richard Bello.