Research

My research examines learning as relational, situated, and ethically charged practices. I am interested in how people come to understand themselves and their responsibilities through relationships and practices of care across complex social, cultural, and more-than-human contexts. My scholarship is interdisciplinary, collaborative, and community-engaged, bridging critical education and social science; respectful engagement with Indigenous knowledges; feminist inquiry; critical posthumanism; and qualitative, arts-based, and multispecies research practices.

I am Director of the FIDO Lab at the University of Guelph, where we explore multispecies relationships with particular attention to learning, ethical engagement, care, and non-human animals’ contributions to family and social life. Together with my students and collaborators, I examine how people learn with and from non-human animals, and what ethical responsibility requires within shared multispecies worlds. We approach non-human animals as agentic participants in social life—beings who meaningfully shape families, communities, and collective life—and we are committed to methodological innovation in multispecies research.

My research has been primarily funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Recent funded projects include:

• Maintenance, Care, and Repair in the More-than-Human City (2025). SSHRC Insight Development Grant.
  Role: Co-Applicant (PI: Lauren van Patter)
• Family Care Work in Interspecies Homes (2022). SSHRC Insight Development Grant.
  Role: Principal Investigator
• Young Carers Coming of Age: Transitions in the Context of the Caregiving Relationship (2018). SSHRC Insight Development Grant.
  Role: Principal Investigator