{"id":4092,"date":"2021-01-13T13:08:09","date_gmt":"2021-01-13T18:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/?post_type=cu_people&p=4092"},"modified":"2025-04-29T11:13:48","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T15:13:48","slug":"christina-muehlberger","status":"publish","type":"cu_people","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/people\/christina-muehlberger\/","title":{"rendered":"Christina Muehlberger"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \n \n \n <\/h1>\n\n \n <\/header>\n\n\n\n

Membership Engagement Officer,
\nCanadian Association of University Teachers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChoose your own adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s how Christina Muehlberger describes her experience at the Institute of Political Economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI really liked how interdisciplinary it is,\u201d she says. \u201cYou get to create your own degree.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The flexibility and openness of the program allows students to look at a topic from many different angles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a perfect fit for Muehlberger\u2019s research at the time, which looked at the effects of neoliberalism on universities and the role of the university in community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was no other program that I could do that research as well as I did,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her research ended up taking a path towards critical geography, but Muehlberger didn\u2019t have a background in that field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was the political economy program that allowed her to explore this area, read the literature and think to herself, \u2018Oh that really excites me and makes me look at the university in a different way.\u2019’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Muehlberger says she is a big advocate for the Institute and it isn\u2019t just because of the interdisciplinary approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The core courses in political economy are like boot camp in political theory and methodology. You come out with a really strong foundation in those things, which I thought was excellent,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is more to the program than theory. Muehlberger says she appreciates how the Institute has put an emphasis on experiential learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Muehlberger\u2019s academic interest in universities led her to a research placement with the Canadian Association of University Teachers through the Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it was a really cool opportunity to show that the research skills I was gaining and the issues I was interested in were really applicable to organizations beyond the university,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was also a great networking opportunity for Muehlberger, who now works at the organization full-time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey knew my name in part because I\u2019d done research for them years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, Muehlberger works as a membership engagement officer with the Canadian Association of University Teachers to help faculty associations across the country better engage their members on campaigns and bargaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still close with the majority of her cohort, Muehlberger says it\u2019s great to see the different career paths her friends and colleagues have taken since completing their master\u2019s with the Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWatching all of the different roads people take from the program is really cool. We\u2019re all working in very different working environments, on very different issues but you can see us pull out some things we\u2019ve learned every once in awhile,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See Christina’s End-of-Year interview (2015) as president of the Graduate Students\u2019 Association (GSA) with the Charlatan here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4094,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cu_people_first_name":"Christina","cu_people_last_name":"Muehlberger","cu_people_initials":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_people_type":[89],"cu_people_expertise":[],"class_list":["post-4092","cu_people","type-cu_people","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_people_type-alumni"],"acf":{"cu_people_job_title":"Alumni","cu_people_degree":"","cu_building":false,"cu_people_office_num":"","cu_people_pronoun":"none","cu_people_designation":"","cu_people_email":"","cu_people_phone":"","cu_people_phone_ext":"","cu_people_linkedin":"","cu_people_bluesky":"","cu_people_twitter":"","cu_people_instagram":"","cu_people_facebook":"","cu_people_website":"","cu_people_orcid":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/4092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_people"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/4092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_people_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people_type?post=4092"},{"taxonomy":"cu_people_expertise","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people_expertise?post=4092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}