Sepali Guruge, Toronto Metropolitan University
Project Director
Sepali Guruge is a Full Professor in the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing. For the past 25 years, Sepali has demonstrated a solid commitment to increasing the visibility and highlighting the resiliency of marginalized populations. Her program of research focuses on immigrant health, with particular attention to the complex intersections between health, immigration, gender, violence, and aging. She has led related projects in several countries.
Christine Walsh, University of Calgary
Christine Walsh is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Social Work. In her community based, action-oriented and arts informed research she partners with community-based agencies and older adults who are impacted by interpersonal violence, poverty, housing insecurity and homelessness and disaster. In addition, her research interests concern socially excluded older immigrants.
Denise Cloutier, University of Victoria, Victoria
Denise Cloutier is a Professor in the Department of Geography, and a Research Fellow with the Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health at the University of Victoria. As a community-engaged health geographer and health services researcher, her work focusses on both vulnerability and resilience in the areas of healthy aging, supportive environments for vulnerable populations who may be living with dementia, stroke-affected, socially isolated, at end of life, as well as populations living in rural communities. Denise is a mixed methods researcher whose interdisciplinary work is funded by CIHR, SSHRC and the MSFHR, and published in leading gerontology and geography journals.
Hongmei Tong, MacEwan University, Edmonton
Hongmei Tong is an Assistant Professor of the School of Social Work, MacEwan University, Canada. She promotes and facilitates healthy, positive and active aging and creates inclusive and friendly communities for older Canadians. Her current research includes social exclusion in later life; culturally appropriate and innovative interventions to enhance the psychological and social well-being of ethno-cultural minority older adults; teaching pedagogy and learning in gerontological social work education. Her research is based on a social determinants of health framework. She is a registered social worker in Alberta and member of International Federation of Social Workers.
Huda Bukhari, Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture
Huda Bukhari is currently the Manager of Community Engagement at the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture (CCVT). She has been working in the settlement-related field for over twenty years which has been both a journey of growing passion and a learning experience. Bukhari’s work is embedded in holistic, anti-racist and anti-oppression framework and she believes that anyone can make a positive contribution when given the opportunity.
John Shields, Toronto Metropolitan University
John Shields is a tenured Full Professor with over twenty-five years of university teaching and research experience in the areas of public administration and public policy, Canadian politics, the political economy of labour market and welfare state. John is also a member of the Yeates School of Graduate Studies at TMU. John will lead the ICOI Economic Inclusion Research Stream.
Jill Hanley, McGill University
Jill Hanley is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and Scientific Director of the Sherpa Research Institute on Migration, Health and Social Services. Jill’s work focuses on closing the gaps between policies and practice concerning the social rights of migrant populations. Jill will lead the ICOI Social Inclusion Research Stream.
Liza Chan, Calgary Chinese Elderly Citizens Association
Liza Chan is a registered social worker, is the Executive Director of the Calgary Chinese Elderly Citizens’ Association since 1994. Under Liza’s leadership, CCECA has grown from being a single service provider to a collaborator with over 30 agency partners offering a myriad of programs to 5,000 seniors annually. Liza is very active in community work. She is the founder of the Emotional Health Carnival, a collaborative project working with ten associations to raise awareness of mental health in the Chinese community since 2002.
Oona St-Amant, Toronto Metropolitan University
Oona St-Amant is an Associate Professor in the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing. Oona’s program of research examines various forms of unpaid care work. She has used a variety of ethnographic methods to examine the various intersections of culture, sociopolitical intersections of culture, sociopolitica and economic aspects of care.
Sandeep Agrawal, University of Alberta
Sandeep Agrawal is a Full Professor & Director, School of Urban and Regional Planning and Associate Chair, Faculty of Science, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences. Sandeep is an urban and regional planner whose research interests include land use planning and design, international planning, multiculturalism and human rights and planning policy. Sandeep will lead the ICOI Political Inclusion Research Stream.
Satwinder Bains, University of the Fraser Valley
Satwinder Bains is the Director of the South Asian Studies Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley and an Associate Professor of Cultural Media Studies in the College of Arts. Her critical analysis of India’s multilingual policy and planning has informed her interest in the impact of language, culture, and identity on migration, newcomer settlement, and integration of South Asian Canadians. Her research intersects with intercultural education with a focus on anti-racist curriculum implementation; race, racism, and ethnicity; identity politics; Sikh feminist ideology; South Asian Canadian migration and diaspora; and Punjabi Canadian cultural historiography. She also has extensive professional experience in community development.