Research

My research examines youth and adult 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 adult education, respectful engagement with Indigenous knowledges, feminist inquiry, critical posthumanism, and arts-based research practices.

I am Director of the FIDO Lab at the University of Guelph. Our research focuses on multispecies relationships, with particular attention to care, learning, and ethical responsibility in dog–human relationships. We take non-human animals seriously as agentic beings who meaningfully contribute to families, communities, and social worlds, and we advance methodological innovation in multispecies, arts-based, and post-qualitative 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