About

I am a doctoral candidate of English and a teacher at the University of Victoria. My dissertation project locates an undertheorized space of transitions and intervals in refugee narratives between displacement and resettlement such as airports, refugee camps, migrant boats, and detention centres. I argue that these interstitial spaces engender radically different narratives and representations of belonging, which contest and re-imagine attachments to nation, citizenship, and homeland in the cultural-political discourses surrounding refugees. Connecting critical refugee studies with decolonial studies, my research emphasizes that refugees are not only the agents of their own stories and narratives but the agents of critical and generative political imaginaries.

As a teacher, accessibility and inquiry-based learning are at the centre of my teaching philosophy. I want my students to take the skills and knowledges attained through classroom activities and bring them into their other courses and projects throughout their learning and professional careers. In all my classrooms, I strive to foster and care for a learning community where students not only deepen their knowledges and experiences but their relations with local and global communities. Because I primarily teach writing and literature, I believe introducing students to a diverse range of voices and storytellers is crucial for engendering equitable and safe learning spaces. As an educator, it is important to affirm and enable the knowledges, experiences, and storytelling traditions of all my students both inside and outside the classroom. 

I am humbled and grateful to learn and teach in this place of the Lək̓ʷəŋən and WS’ANEC’ speaking peoples. As a settler of European background who is not invited to this beautiful and vital place, I believe it is necessary in both my research and teaching practice to create opportunities for truth telling and affirming Indigenous resurgence here in this place and globally.

Outside teaching and research, I thrive on creating things of all kinds. As of late, I really love to cook (when time permits!). For most of my life, I have enjoyed crafting websites and blogs.