I have been tinkering with making engaging and fun ‘learning tools’ for students for a long time and have an abiding interest in demystifying the strange world of academia for newcomers. I am broadly interested in issues relating to the translation, organization and representation of academic and specialist knowledge into more user-friendly and publicly available formats. For the past several years I have been working on adapting the graphic novel ‘Gringo Love’ (published in 2020 with University of Toronto press) with my colleague, Professor Marie-Eve Carrier-Moisan and Brazilian illustrator Deborah Santos.
On a similar note, in January 2020 I launched ‘The Department Podcast’ with podcast show producer and fellow co-host Philip Primeau. The Department Podcast is a teaching and learning podcast that retells stories about our department, the people in it and the work we do here. My interest in making the academic world more accessible (or even just presenting it in a less typically dull manner) has led me to develop the ‘Outreach and Teach’ Series, a series of recruitment-focused educational audio programs designed for high school students.
I have been teaching SOCI 1001 and 1002 Introduction to sociology courses at Carleton since 2016, as well the year-long SOCI 2005A Theory class. In more recent years I have developed and co-taught the FYSM 1506C ‘Creative Sociology’ that explores the academic use and adaptation of comics, graphic novels, podcasts and other alternative media.
I have been teaching sociology for several years: at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and most recently at the University of Ottawa. My teaching has focused on classical and contemporary social theory as well as numerous introduction to sociology courses.
