research

I do informal research every day as part of my job as a writer. But I’ve also been involved in some more structured, formal research projects. Here are a few:

philosophy

Since the spring of 2020, my primary focus has been a collective endeavour called “The Philosophy Exception.” This project is a metaphilosophical investigation into diversity within the discipline. Academic philosophy is historically “demographically challenged” yet there has been much theorizing about why this is and how to intervene. Our website collects and organizes all of this work in one place. We have published our own academic paper on the topic and are working towards building a database to support the categorization of future publications.

We are led and underwritten by Dr. Alison Wylie, Canada Research Chair and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and supported by funds from the College of Arts at the University of British Columbia and the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council.

psychology

I was a peer coach for graduate students at UBC on the Student e-Mental Health Project with Vigo Lab. This project aimed to support university students’ mental health and substance use challenges through the Minder app, developed in collaboration with students and incorporating tools like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) exercises, psychoeducation, and peer coaching. It targeted issues such as anxiety, depression, and substance use. My role involved guiding students in navigating Minder and offering non-clinical mental health support based on active listening and problem-solving. I also worked on a team within the lab creating content tailored to meet the needs of the LGBTQIA2S+ sub-population. In March 2024, the outcomes of our RCT testing Minder with 1489 UBC students were published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

data justice

The data justice project team is part of the UBC Gender+ in Research Collective and the Office of Regional and International Community Engagement (ORICE). As a member of the 5th and 6th cohorts, I worked to refine and distribute the Community-Based Research & Data Justice Resource Guide to engaging with data in a way that foregrounds social justice and highlights the political considerations of data-driven processes.

Through my work with The Philosophy Exception, I learned first-hand how little data exists on philosophers while seeing how crude the extant empirical sources are. Considering intersections of gender, class, race, and identity is crucial for data collection processes going forwards and the Community-Based Research & Data Justice resource builds on existing work to guide researchers toward best practices.