Current Work: Assistant Professor, Department of City Planning, University of Manitoba
I entered SCARP’s PhD program in 2005 and completed my dissertation on government-to-government approaches to planning with First Nations in 2011. Although I had already worked as a natural resource and protected area planner, it was at UBC that I really began to adopt the identity of a ‘planner’and found my feet as an emerging planning scholar, educator and theorist.
Before fully completing my PhD, I was offered a two-year postdoctoral position at the University of Glasgow to conduct research on how the institutions of urban and natural resource planning recognize (and often misrecognize) Indigenous rights, title and governance systems. I then worked for a while as a Lecturer of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Sheffield, before moving on to my current position at the University of Manitoba in 2013.
My work at UM includes coordinating the ‘Indigenous Planning Studio’. This service-based learning course allows my students and myself to work alongside interested Manitoba First Nations, as they assert their sovereignty and plan for the long-term future of their communities. In addition to my teaching and community service, I also maintain an active research agenda and am currently looking at the planning relationships that are beginning to emerge between First Nations and municipalities.
I have published in Planning Theory, Planning Theory and Practice, Critical Policy Studies, Land Use Policy and Society and Natural Resources. I was also one of a handful of early career scholars who were invited to contribute to an upcoming edited collection, which celebrates the scholarship of Patsy Healey and draws together scholars who have worked to extend her ideas. At the moment, I am co-writing a book with my postdoctoral supervisor, tentatively entitled Planning for Coexistence? (Ashgate Publishing).