Our team

Stuart Poyntz, Scientific Director

Stuart is Professor in the School of Communication and has been a Visiting Scholar at Queensland University of Technology, Griffith University, Hong Kong Baptist University and the University of British Columbia. He was also President of the Association for Research in Cultures of Young People. His research addresses children’s media cultures, theories of public life and urban youth media production. He has published four books and is currently Principal Investigator of the SSHRC-funded research project, Youthsites: Charting the non-formal arts learning sector in creative lives, and Lead Investigator of the Social Media and News Section of the SSHRC-funded research project, IMPACTS: Collaborations to Address Sexual Violence on Campus. He has published widely in national and international peer-reviewed journals, including Oxford Review of Education, Canadian Journal of Communication, Popular Culture, Journal of Children and Media, Cultural Studies, Journal of Youth Studies, Studies in Social Justice, Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, and the Canadian Journal of Education, and in various edited collections.

Am Johal, Senior Research Associate

Am Johal is the former Director of SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement and Founding Co-Director of SFU's Community Engaged Research Initiative. He is an Associate with SFU's School for Contemporary Arts and Institute for the Humanities. He has served on the Vancouver City Planning Commission and on the boards of Vancouver International Film Festival, 221A, Indian Summer Festival, Alliance for Arts and Culture, the Bloom Group, the Jim Green Foundation, the Vancity Community Foundation and many others. He is the author of Ecological Metapolitics: Badiou and the Anthropocene, and co-author with Matt Hern of Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life: A Tar Sands Tale and O My Friends, There is No Friend: The Politics of Friendship at the End of Ecology. He is co-editor with Stuart Poyntz and Kari Grain of the forthcoming collection Critical Futures: Community Engaged Research in a Time of Crisis and Social Transformation.

Joanna Habdank, Program Manager

e joanna_habdank@sfu.ca

Joanna Habdank has worked extensively in areas of community development with a focus on program and policy development for immigrant and refugee populations. She has six years of non-profit management experience preceded by five years working as a journalist. Her work has appeared in the Vancouver Sun and other publications throughout Canada. She has an MSc in Human Rights (LSE) and MA in International Journalism (Cardiff). Her research interests have explored the extent to which legal frameworks can be applicable to the protection of rights for women facing precarious migration situations such as displacement and trafficking. 

Tara Mahoney, Research and Engagement Manager

With over 15 years of experience in community organizing and a PhD in Communication from Simon Fraser University, Tara has been at the forefront of innovative projects that bridge the gap between academic research and community-driven solutions. She oversees the creation and production of SFU CERi's publications and programs, including the 312 Main Research Shop and Graduate Fellowship Program.

Tara has published widely on topics related to community-engaged research and public engagement with climate issues. Prior to her role with SFU CERi, Tara was the co-founder and creative director of public engagement agency Gen Why Media, instructor with Civic Innovation Change Lab at RADIUS SFU and the Research Fellow in Climate Change Communications at the David Suzuki Foundation. She teaches climate communications in the Climate Action Certificate Program offered by SFU Continuing Studies. To learn more about her engagement work and publications visit creativepublics.ca.

Kari Grain, Special Research Associate

Kari Grain is a practitioner-scholar at the intersection of higher education, social justice, and community engagement. She earned her PhD in Education at UBC as a Vanier scholar, where her research focused on local community impacts of international service-learning in Uganda. For the past five years, she has worked as an educational consultant, focusing on experiential education, community-engaged research, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Her research has been published in the Journal of Experiential Education, the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, and the Canadian Journal of Studies in Adult Education. She is currently a sessional instructor in UBC’s Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Education and has been collaborating in varying capacities with SFU scholars since 2017's Community2University Expo.

Joanna Ashworth, Research Associate

Joanna Ashworth researches, teaches and practices methods of democratic engagement including convening mini publics for public policy formation. She is a filmmaker, educational programmer and curriculum designer focusing on dialogic leadership and collaborative governance in the related fields of green infrastructure, energy transitions, climate change mitigation and regenerative agriculture practices. She is a research associate with Participedia.net and past co-chair of the Teaching, Training and Mentoring Committee and Senior Associate with the Wosk Centre for Dialogue where she has led programs and partnerships for more than ten years. Recent publication:

Ashworth, J. (2020). 9 Art-ful Methods of Democratic Participation: Listening, Engagement, and Connection. In L. Levac & S. Wiebe (Ed.), Creating Spaces of Engagement: Policy Justice and the Practical Craft of Deliberative Democracy (pp. 208-225). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487519889-011

Kiara Okonkwo, Program Coordinator

Kiara Destiny Okonkwo (she/her) is a Master's student in the Communication Research for Social Change program at SFU. She has a background in journalism, community organizing, and creative writing. Kiara's interests include critical (mixed) race theory, multiculturalism, and questions of “Canadian” identity in media.

Steven Ta, Communication Specialist

e cericoms@sfu.ca

Steven Ta leads CERi’s external communications, contributes to publication design and development, and manages relationships with key partners to support effective knowledge sharing and collaboration.