Jessica Parish

– BSc Hons in Political Science (Carleton University)
– MA in Political Science (York University)
– PhD in Political Science (York University)

Jessica Parish is Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration, where she teaches courses on local and urban governance and sustainability. Prior to this she was a Marie Curie International Fellow at the Center for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA) at De Montfort University, Leicester, England. Her MSCA project, funded through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, investigated the role of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factor investing in the build-to-rent housing sector in the United Kingdom.

Jessica’s research and teaching interests are interdisciplinary and focus on debates across urban environmental justice, sustainable development, and feminist theories of social reproduction. Her research and teaching also strive to learn from settler colonial theories and Indigenous knowledges to better understand how issues of housing and environmental justice – both of which are inextricable from land and property – are implicated in colonial pasts and presents as well as decolonized futures.

In addition to her academic roles, Jessica has also held research and policy positions at the Ontario Chiropractic Association and Lancaster House Publishing, and she is a past Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors at Toronto-based Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations.

• Parish, J. (2023) Fiduciary Activism From Below: Green Gentrification, Pension Finance and the Possibility of Just Urban Futures. Urban Planning.
• Kimari, W. & Parish, J. (2020) What is a river? A transnational meditation on the colonial city, abolition ecologies and the future of geography. Urban Geography, 40^th Anniversary Issue.
• Parish, J. (2020) Re-wilding Parkdale? Environmental gentrification, settler colonialism, and the reconfiguration of nature in 21st century Toronto Environment and Planning E: Nature and space, 3 (1), 263-286. 
• Parish, J. (2019) Escaping the Global City? Gentrification, urban wellness industries, and the exotic-mundane. In Tourism and Everyday Life in the Contemporary City. T. Frisch, C. Sommer, L. Stolenberg & N. Stors, eds. London: Routledge, pp 88-111