Directors
Elizabeth Dhuey
Quantitative Analysis and Methods
Michal Perlman
Intervention Creation and Testing
Michal Perlman is a Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development at OISE, University of Toronto. She is the current director of the Dr. R.G.N. Laidlaw Research Centre at the Jackman Institute for Child Studies at OISE.
Michal studies issues related to quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC) including how it should be defined and measured as well as the links between different aspects of ECEC program quality and child outcomes. She has worked with different levels of government to explore how ECEC quality measurement can be used for monitoring and quality improvement purposes. She is also studying how education systems need to support children given the changing nature of work due to disruptive technologies
Michal brings her experience studying educational settings and outcomes to bear on assessing the efficacy of current policies intended to support future workers. In other areas of her research, she also studies parenting and family environments and their effects on childhood development.
Michal has published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals and practitioner/policy-oriented outlets. Her research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the McCain Foundation among other government organizations and foundations.
Linda White
Designing Effective Policy Responses
Linda White is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Linda focuses on applied policy research and knowledge mobilization. Her areas of research include early years, primary and secondary schooling; comparative social and families policies; the role of ideas and norms in public policy development; and federalism, law and public policy. She uses a mixture of systematic qualitative methods, including interviews, case studies, and content analysis
She has published extensively on comparative public policy in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Governance, Journal of European Public Policy, Publius, and Social Politics. She is the author, most recently, of Constructing Policy Change: Early Childhood Education and Care in Liberal Welfare States (UTP, 2017), among other co-authored and co-edited books that focus primarily on comparative social policies to support children and families and gender equality.
She is currently the Principal Investigator of a SSHRC Insight Grant on school choice and education policy and a Co-investigator on a project on the regulatory implications of parents’ perceptions of risk in child care.
For more information about Linda’s other education related research, please visit: https://www.comparativeeducationpolicy.ca/.
Quantitative Analysis and Methods
Mark Ariba
Mark is a PhD Candidate in the department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His dissertation focuses on the construction of meritocracy and its implications for political legitimacy in liberal democratic societies. His research focuses in particular on the geographic regions of the United States and Britain. Mark has worked as a Junior Policy analyst at the University of Guelph’s Community Engaged Scholarship Institute (CESI) where he published policy papers on the attainment of equity in the Transportation, Recreation, and Housing Sectors. Mark is also a Junior Fellow at Massey College.
Fatima Beauregard
Salim Benhachmi
Laurent Cavenaile
Lisa Fernandes
Ethan Fosse
Ethan Fosse is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology
Professor Fosse’s research uses novel quantitative methods to understand social change. He is currently working on three interrelated area: first, creating a new set of techniques for identifying age-period-cohort effects, with wide application in sociology and related fields; second, explaining social and cultural change, focusing on the economic, religious, and political views of recent birth cohorts; finally, developing and applying high-dimensional sparse regression models to analyze textual data quantitatively. His research has been published in a number of volumes and journals, with recent work in Demography, Sociological Science, and the Annual Review of Sociology. He is also the co-editor of a widely-reviewed book on culture and poverty published by Harvard University Press. His work is part of the Education + Training for the 21st Century Research Cluster.
Rob Gillezeau
Rob is an Assistant Professor of Economic Analysis and Policy at the UTSC Department of Management. His research focuses on the economic history of the Indigenous peoples of North America and the intersection of discrimination, protest, and state institutions. Prior to his academic appointment, Rob served as the Chief Economist in the Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition in Ottawa. He has also served as the senior aide to the Minister of Finance and Deputy Premier of British Columbia. Rob is a Broadbent Institute fellow, co-director of the Canadian Economics Association’s Indigenous Economics Study Group, and a founding member of the Canadian Economics Diversity Committee. His current work is estimating the impact of registered Indian Status on education outcomes using Bill C-31. His work is part of the Education + Training for the 21st Century Research Cluster.
Lauren Kennedy-Barrows
Lauren is an EdD Candidate in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at OISE/U of T studying under Professor Dhuey. Her dissertation focuses on micro-credentials and continuing education at post-secondary institutions. She is also the Manager of the English Language Institute at the University of Lethbridge where she manages a team of instructors and oversees language program operations for international students and professionals.
Yizhou Jin
Yizhou is an Assistant Professor of Strategy at UTSC in the Department of Management. He is a microeconomist trained in empirical industrial organization and information economics and studies how data and AI technologies create and distribute economic value in imperfect markets. He specializes in structural modeling, field experiments, and collaboration with firms. His work is part of the Education + Training for the 21st Century Research Cluster.
Arzana Myderrizi
Dr. Myderrizi researches K-12 special education policy, the economics of education, educator effectiveness, and educational equity for students with disabilities (SWDs) and other underrepresented student populations. During her doctoral studies, she used administrative longitudinal education data and quasi-experimental methods to explore how educators, and the school policies and practices governing educators, shape academic and behavioral outcomes for SWDs. As a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto under Dr. Dhuey, Arzana will continue to advance her research on special education effectiveness in the U.S. and Canada.
Naheed Mukhi
Naheed Mukhi is a PhD student in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning at OISE/ UofT. Her work with various Canadian organizations has been instrumental in supporting newly arrived refugees and immigrant families, promoting the preservation of children’s home culture and language. With experience as an early childhood curriculum and teacher training consultant in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Syria, Naheed brings a global perspective to her research. Her academic interests include culturally respectful early years practices and advocating for pluralism in early childhood education. Currently, her research focuses on the implementation of inclusion practices within the Canadian Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) initiative, which aims to provide $10-a-day childcare across Canada.
Amanda Paul
Amanda is an EdD Candidate in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at OISE/UofT studying under Professor Dhuey. Her dissertation investigates how digital literacy impacts adult learners’ engagement, persistence, and success in e-learning environments. She is a teacher in the Durham District School Board along with being the head of curriculum development and innovative education for Servo Annex.
Carmen Quezada Hernandez
Carmen is a Ph.D. student in the Economic Analysis and Policy Program at Rotman/UofT studying under Professor Dhuey. Her current research is about the effects of teenage parenthood on both the mother and father and the rest of their family. In this research, she use a rich administrative set of Chilean databases that identify family relationships, education, health, and income trajectories for the full population.
Cherise Regier
Cherise is a PhD candidate in Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation at the University of Oxford. Her research examines the determinants and consequences of worker power across high-income countries. More specifically, Cherise evaluates the wellbeing implications of employee voice interventions through a human development and capabilities lens, to advance our understanding of economic and social injustice within labour markets. Her work is part of the Education + Training for the 21st Century Research Cluster.
Ali Sajid
Ali is a PhD student in the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto. He is a research assistant for the NSERC funded project “Engineering Workforce Transformation Requirements in Response to Artificial Intelligence.”
Brad Seward
Brad is an assistant professor at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources and the project director of the Research Initiative, Education + Skills (RIES). He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Guelph and has held positions as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Nipissing University, and as a Senior Human Resources Researcher at the Conference Board of Canada. Brad’s research covers a range of topics including education, skills, school to work transitions and labour market outcomes, human capital, and workplace diversity and inclusion. His work has been shared on CBC Radio, the Globe and Mail, 570 News Radio, and TVO’s The Agenda.
Moyosore Sogaolu
Moyo is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE) at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. She is an empirical economist specializing in topics related to the labour market. Her research interests include the evaluation of family-friendly policies that affect the labour market outcomes of individuals, particularly mothers. Her current research focuses on topics related to the care economy.
Ceci Vasoff
Ceci is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at OISE/UofT studying under Professor Dhuey. She studies K-12 special education finance equity in Ontario, Canada, as well as causal inference and policy evaluation methods for education finance equity research.
Songyu Yang
Songyu is a Master of Engineering student studying Electrical Computer Engineering at UofT. He is contributing his machine learning and data analytic skills to helping understand how to use educational documents such as curriculum and policy documents to better inform education policy in Canada.
Roman Zarate
Roman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto. He studied economics at Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia and at MIT, where he completed my PhD in 2019. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at the brig Institute, and is the creator of Play Together, a virtual platform to assess teamwork and collaborative problem-solving skills in educational settings. His research lies at the intersection of the economics of education, development, and organizational economics.
Huiyan Zhang
Huiyan graduated from UofT with a double major in Statistics and Economics and is an incoming graduate student at UofT’s Master of Finance Insurance program. Huiyan’s professional interest lies in data analytics and quant finance. She is currently working on a project using text analysis to analyze historical curricular documents to better understand skill development changes in Canada over the last 25 years.
Qinyan Zhang
Qinyan is a third-year student at UTSC’s Department of Management and Human Geography. She is working on various projects using her data analysis and programming skills.
Yawen Zhang
Yawen is a fifth-year undergraduate student specializing in co-op software engineering at UTSC. Currently, she is working on automation of education content evaluation.
Xiaoxu (Spring) Zhou
Spring is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at OISE/UofT, studying under Professor Dhuey. She worked in a private high school in Ontario focusing on online education platform and is interested in K-12 education, especially for special education financing and online education development. Her dissertation will be related to developing strategies that enhance learning outcomes and ensure educational equity.
Intervention Creation and Testing
Samantha Burns
Samantha is PhD candidate in the Developmental Psychology Education program at U of T. She has expertise in research methods, such as qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods design, data collection and analytical techniques. She is interested in how early life experiences influence children’s developmental trajectories, with emphasis on early childhood education and care settings.
Calpaana Jegatheeswaran
Calpanaa Jegatheeswaran is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Developmental Psychology and Education program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She is completing her dissertation under the supervision of Dr. Michal Perlman. The focus of her research is on how environmental risk factors and parenting impact low-income children’s socio-emotional and cognitive development during their formative years. She has also recently worked in the equity, diversity, and inclusion space, exploring how these constructs shape the experiences of children and their families within social institutions, especially the home and the school.
Ryan Lu0
Ryan is a PhD student in the Developmental Psychology and Education program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. His research has three primary focuses: 1) the relationship between child care quality and children’s developmental outcomes; 2) the factors that influence the quality of child care (e.g., neighbourhood characteristics); and 3) the development of peer relationships in early childhood. Also, he has worked on a project studying the feasibility and accuracy of AI-supported automation of integrating evidence in social science.
As well as having both qualitative and quantitative research experience, Ryan has worked on a variety of meta-analyses and longitudinal survey studies looking at Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). He has extensive experience with data management and conducting a wide range of analyses (e.g., multilevel modeling, longitudinal analyses, and structural equation modeling). He is passionate about supporting young children’s development in child care settings by conducting rigorous research that can inform ECEC policies and practices.
Jesseca Perlman
Jesseca a PhD student in the Developmental Psychology and Education program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Her research has focused on (1) the sibling relationship in diverse families, (2) the mental health of parents and children within diverse families, and (3) professional development programs for early childcare educators to support the development of children.
Before beginning her PhD, she gained valuable experience working in childcare settings, primary schools, and research institutes. These roles in educational settings provided her with the foundation to understand the practical aspects of child development and education. Building on this foundation, she transitioned to a research-focused path and developed extensive skills in both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, data collection and management, and data analysis. All her work and research have centered around supporting the development of young children, enhancing family functioning, and promoting the mental health of families.
Sumayya Saleem
Sumayya is a Ph.D. candidate in the Developmental Psychology and Education program at the University of Toronto. Her focus lies in understanding consensus formation regarding 21st-century skills and producing empirical evidence concerning how these skills can be cultivated at various life stages. She is interested in applied quantitative and mixed research methods, and she collaborates closely with interdisciplinary teams and community organizations on knowledge mobilization initiatives.
Esther Yu
Esther is currently completing her Developmental Psychology and Education (DPE) MA program and will be starting her PhD in the fall of 2024. With psychology, statistics, and AI background, her research interests mainly center around mixed-method research, child development, the quality of early childhood education and care, and the application of AI to support children across diverse developmental contexts. Recently, she’s been involved in projects focused on measurement development and program evaluation, which are areas she is eager to further develop expertise in.
Designing Effective Policy Responses
I Younan An
I Younan An is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science. His major fields are Public Policy and Comparative Politics. His research interests center on comparative public policy, primarily policies over the life course in relation to poverty, inequality and labor, in developing countries (especially in Southeast Asia). His current project seeks to understand the role of policymakers in Southeast Asian countries in making choices to curb labour market risks, especially the threatening forces of new technologies. He seeks to understand why some governments adopt innovation related policies, while others choose to invest in social investment strategies or social welfare programs.
Salar Asadolahi
Salar completed his PhD in political science at the University of Toronto and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University working with Prof. Adrienne Davidson under the auspices of the SSRHC Insight Grant, “Assessing the Financial, Governance, and Parental Feedback Effects of School Choice in Canada” (PI Jim Farney). Salar has worked collaboratively with Prof. Linda White on the politics of school choice, including leading the creation of the School Choice Policy Index and attendant publications. His own research interests include comparative welfare state policies, public opinion and voting behaviour, and parties and elections, with a particular focus on the politics of right-wing populism.
Sophie Borwein
Sophie’s primary research lies at the intersection of political economy, political behaviour, and public policy. Her current research agenda has two focuses. The first focus is on understanding how people’s local contexts and communities act as meaningful group identities for them, shaping their political behaviour and policy preferences. The second focus is on understanding how people respond to economic disruption associated with technology as compared to other labour market shocks, and what policies and politics they want in response. She has published on topics related to Canadian social policy, immigration policy, and place identity.
Jim Farney
Jim Farney is Professor and Regina Director at JSGS. Prior to this, he served as the head of the U of R Department of Politics and International Studies. With a PhD from the University of Toronto and an MA and BA from the University of Saskatchewan, he has published and taught on themes such as political parties, education policy, Canadian politics, and institutional change.
His most recent book (with Clark Banack) is Faith, Rights, and Choice: The Politics of Religious Schools in Canada, which received an honourable mention for the Seymour Martin Lipset Book Award of the American Political Science Association 2023. A co-investigator in the SSHRC funded Comparative Education Policy Network, he is currently PI on a SSHRC Insight grant investigating the fiscal, governance, and public opinion impacts of school/parental choice.
Alix Jansen
Alix Jansen is a PhD Candidate and a Connaught International Scholarship holder at the University of Toronto. She specializes in the study of welfare states and the political economy of skills in advanced industrial democracies. She contributed to the research outputs of Future Skills Canada and the Innovation Policy Lab at the University of Toronto. A former Fulbright Scholar, she has international experience in interview-based research concerning work and the welfare state. Her dissertation project focuses on the distribution of retraining to unemployed workers in Canada, the US, Denmark, and the Netherlands. She has also worked as a Senior Advisor for the Ministry of Social Development in New Zealand, where she specialized in operational policy and active labour market policy.
Susan Prentice
Susan’s research program begins with concerns about social inequality and social change, and interests in public policy and systemic discrimination. She works in two broad areas of scholarship, with a critical intersectional focus on gender relations. She is am trained as an historical sociologist, and so brings an historical as well as a sociological imagination to her work.
Her primary specialization is social and family policy broadly, and childcare policy specifically. Her interdisciplinary research program is indebted to feminist political economy traditions, and consistently addresses questions of care, gender, social movements, and the Canadian state. Her secondary arena of specialization is higher education, where she seeks to understand how formally neutral institutions co-exist with inequality and marginalization.
Jenna Quelch
Jenna Quelch is PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto with a Collaborative Specialization in Public Health Policy from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
Her research focuses on the politics of parenthood and reproduction, with an interest in access to health and family policies. She recently co-authored a chapter studying the evolving politics of child care in Canada alongside Linda White and Martha Friendly. Currently, Jenna is working with Linda White and Adrienne Davidson to study the impacts of institutional business power in the child care sector in Canada, Australia and Germany.
She has twice been awarded the Ontario Graduate Scholarship and the RBC Graduate Fellowship in Public and Economic Policy. She holds a Master of Public Policy from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of British Columbia.
Marlene Terstiege
Marlene is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. For previous degrees, she studied in Germany, the Netherlands, and Oman. While her main research focus is on the contestation of climate activism and global environmental politics more broadly, she also has an interest in policy studies. Her work in this field has examined the differences and evolution of both childcare/early childhood education and school choice policies across the German Bundesländer.
Phil Triadafilopoulos
Phil is a Professor in the Department of Political Science. His research interests are: how right-of-centre political parties are adapting to more culturally diverse electorates; Canadian ‘exceptionalism’ in immigration politics and policymaking; the interplay of liberal openness and illiberal closure in the migration policies of industrialized liberal democracies; the politics of religious accommodation as regards Muslims in Canada and Germany; the changing meaning of skills in Canadian education policy; the dynamics of school choice policy in Canada.
Apostolos Zesos
Apostolos Zezos is a third-year University of Toronto (Trinity College) student, working as a research assistant with Dr. Triadafilopoulos. He is currently pursuing a double major in Global Health and Public Policy at the Munk’s School. He will be studying at University College London in the UK for winter of 2025. Apostolos’s professional placements include the Greek Consulate in Toronto, MSF Greece in Athens, and most recently the NATO Association of Canada.
Past Participants
Jacob Buchan
Jacob Buchan recently graduated Dean’s List Scholar at the University of Toronto, with his BA in History with a Focus in Law, Political Science, and English. Jacob is passionate about research. In 2021, he published on Ontario’s resource allocation during the polio epidemic in The Young Researcher and more recently contributed to studies on Smart Home Technology and data ethics in JMIR mHealth and uHealth, Innovation in Aging, and Surveillance & Society. Jacob was proud to work alongside Linda White and Salar Asadolahi on this comparative study and hopes to contribute to research on education and public policy in the future.
Luis Calderon
Kyra Menezes
Kyra Menezes is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, completing a double major in Ethics, Society, and Law and Peace, Conflict, and Justice with a minor in Philosophy. She is completed an independent research project on mothering through violence in Latin America at Trinity College. She has previously conducted research in the fields of public health policy and consumer behavioural patterns under the G20 Research Group and Behavioural Economics in Action at Rotman. She has been awarded the University of Toronto National Scholarship and the University Health Network Academic Achievement Scholarship to support her in her academic and research pursuits. Currently, Kyra is working with Linda White and Adrienne Davidson to study the impacts of institutional business power in the child care sector in Canada, Australia and Germany.
Michael Nolan
Michael Nolan completed his MA in Political Science at McMaster University and participated in the Parliamentary Internship Programme. He currently works in Ottawa on Parliament Hill.
Mailing Address
Department of Management
University of Toronto Scarborough
UTSC Instructional Centre
1095 Military Trail
Toronto, ON M1C 1A4
