Kendra Strauss

Background and Research Interests:

Education

• DPhil, School of Geography,  University of Oxford
• MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Policy, School of Geography, University of Oxford
• BA Hons (Cultural Studies), McGill University

Research Interests

I am a geographer and feminist political economist with teaching and research interests in the areas of labour and regulation, social reproduction, migration, urbanization, and the political ecology of social infrastructures. I am interested in the ways that categories of social difference shape how wage labour and unpaid work are valued and regulated, and what counts as labour. My research has focused on pension politics and financialization, precarity and unfreedom in contemporary labour markets, geographical imaginations of environmental change, and labour and urbanization.

Before coming to SFU I taught at Birkbeck College (University of London) and held posts at the University of Glasgow and the University of Cambridge, where I was Director of Studies for Geography at Robinson College.

Current Projects  

Workers in the Aging City: Eldercare Labour Markets in Vancouver and Shanghai: This SSHRC-funded project is led by Dr Feng Xu (Political Science, UVic) and Dr Kendra Strauss (The Labour Studies Program, SFU). The project, which runs from 2016-2020, investigates paid eldercare work in two major urban labor markets with different care regimes. More information.

Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces to Respond to Climate Change: This project is part of Work in a Warming World (W3), and examines can Canadian work and workplaces can contribute to slowing global warming by bringing work, the workplace and workers “in” to a green transition. More information.

Graduate students interested in working on themes related to my research, can find additional information here: http://www.sfu.ca/labour/research/faculty-research-projects.html and here http://www.sfu.ca/labour/about/people/kendra-strauss.html.