Research & advocacy program
Community-driven research for social transformation
Bridging Concordia’s research capacity with our partners’ advocacy efforts to advance social transformation.
About the Program
SHIFT’s Research and Advocacy Program (RAP) connects Concordia researchers with community partners to drive social change. We help researchers address community priorities, build collaborations, and turn research into actions that make a difference.
Our Fellowship program invites Concordia graduate students into a year-long collaboration with a Montréal community organization in a research project designed to serve the organization’s systems change goals.
Selected students work directly with community partners to understand their needs and create relevant research outputs that serve their work. At the same time, as a cohort, students participate in training and co-learning sessions to hone their capacity to conduct research that contributes meaningfully to social change work. Students also have access to SHIFT staff throughout their engagement for coaching and support.
Across Montreal and in cities around the world, neighbourhood improvement initiatives including increased green space, improved public transportation, community gardens, and better housing conditions have frequently resulted in rising costs and the displacement of long-term residents and local businesses.
In this context, low-income communities are placed in a paradoxical
position, forced to resist changes that would otherwise make their neighbourhoods healthier, greener, and more livable in order to avoid displacement.
The upcoming cycle of SHIFT’s Research and Advocacy Program brings together a cohort of community-led projects to explore alternatives to this cycle of development-driven displacement.
Working within a shared framework, student fellows and community partners will develop models of urban improvements that prioritize stability, affordability, and environmental care, while remaining attentive to the local context and needs of the most vulnerable residents.
This cycle’s community partners include Brique par brique, Chinatown Round Table, Comite d’Action Parc-Extension, Climate Justice Montreal, JIA Foundation, and Logifem.
Faculty Advisors
Bengi Akbulut
RAP Hub Faculty Advisor
Assistant Professor, Geography, Planning and Environment and Co-Director, Social Justice Centre at Concordia whose research in political economy, ecological economics, and community-based economic alternatives provides rigorous theoretical grounding in the structural changes the program’s partners are working toward.
Leila Ghaffari
Fellowship Faculty Advisor
Assistant Professor in Geography, Planning and Environment whose research examines the territorial aspect of social inequalities, and a member of the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve urban planning advisory committee between 2018 and 2020.
Meghan Joy
Public Policy Faculty Advisor
Associate Professor in Political Science at Concordia whose research explores: the policy and politics of population aging; urban politics, policy and theory; and changing relations between the state and nonprofit organizations.
Felice Yuen
Program Evaluations Faculty Advisor
Professor, Applied Human Sciences, Concordia University who has worked extensively on the healing and rehabilitation needs of Indigenous women in federal and provincial prisons for nearly two decades. She leads the program’s independent developmental evaluation, bringing methodological rigour and deep alignment with the program’s equity commitments.
Training Facilitators
Patrick Dedauw
Strategic Power Structure Analysis Trainer
Researcher and organizer who provides strategic power research training and curriculum design for unions and social-movement organizations, with experience working in Power Structure Analysis under Jane McAlevey at the UC Berkeley Labor Center in collaboration with a union of healthcare workers. Patrick will teach graduate research fellows to build a power map and design organizing campaigns that strategically target relevant decisionmakers.
The Rover
Investigative Research Trainer
Award-winning reader-funded investigative journalism project reporting from Montreal, across Quebec, and beyond. Largely funded by subsribers, The Rover covers politics, housing, labour, grassroots initiatives, Indigenous issues, culture and more. The Rover will help RAP research fellows develop interview skills to support their research project.
Past projects
Strengthening employment assistance for individuals from the Black community who have been incarcerated or are about to be released
Research Fellow: Erykah Yasmine Kangbeya
This project supports an awareness campaign aimed at expanding employment assistance for formerly incarcerated individuals and those soon to be released in Quebec, particularly within the Black community, through a community-managed pilot employment database. The research and awareness program fellow will use community-based research methodologies to document current barriers to access for DESTA members,
understand the political landscape and power dynamics surrounding post-release employment opportunities, and analyze the development of similar pilot programs to inform DESTA's awareness strategy.
DESTA was founded in 2006 with a mandate to address systemic and personal barriers to employment, such as criminal records, housing, and lack of resources. DESTA's mission focuses on education, employability, and entrepreneurship.
Turning existing popular support for free, expanded, and accessible transit into concrete wins
Research Fellow: Hope Moon
This project contributes to Climate Justice Montreal’s Free, Expanded, and Accessible Transit campaign. The SHIFT Research and Advocacy Program Fellow will play a pivotal role in the coalition’s project to catalyze existing popular support for the campaign into concrete wins. Climate Justice Montreal is a group pursuing environmental and climate justice through education, mobilization and collective action in solidarity with directly affected communities.
The organization strives to act in solidarity by using anti-oppression and decolonization principles, making decisions by non-hierarchical consensus—these values inform and ground their public transit campaign.
Advocating for more equitable and culturally relevant mental health services for Filipinx youths
Research Fellow: Marbella Carlos
This project contributes to the Kapwa Centre’s advocacy for more equitable and culturally relevant mental health services for Filipinx youths within Quebec’s public system. The Research and Advocacy Program Fellow will use research the policy and power landscape around mental healthcare in Quebec, document current barriers to access, and analyze recent campaigns that have effectively moved
the healthcare system to inform the Kapwa Centre’s entry into policy advocacy.
Centre Kapwa is a non-profit organization decolonizing Filipinx-Canadian diaspora mental health and wellness through art, movement, and conversations. Its mission is to unlearn, unite, and uplift.
Meeting the needs of neighbourhoods vulnerable to displacement through urban agriculture strategies
Research Fellow: Rebeca Esquivel
This project supports Growing A.R.C.’s call for Montreal’s urban agriculture and community garden strategy to better serve the needs of marginalized communities in neighbourhoods vulnerable to gentrification and displacement. The Research and Advocacy Program Fellow will examine the policy and power landscape around Montreal’s urban agriculture policies and funding decisions, document existing mismatch with the needs of marginalized communities
(including cases of green gentrification) and analyze recent municipal green policies to inform Growing A.R.C.’s advocacy strategy.
As a self-described playground to activate, reciprocate, and cultivate relationships with earth and all beings, Growing A.R.C aims to increase biodiversity and strengthen ties with local natural resources.
Understanding ethics approval processes for by/for/with Black and racialized communities research projects
Research Fellow: Sarah Abou-Bakr
This project supports a campaign advocating accountable and community-driven ethics protocols for research projects led by and working with Black and racialized communities. The Research and Advocacy Program Fellow will help PSRR better understand the policies, practices, and decision framework on ethics approval processes within research councils specifically for by/for/with Black and racialized communities research projects.
Additionally, the Fellow will analyze recent changes in research ethics protocols to inform the PSRR’s advocacy strategy.
The Platform for the Self-determination of Racialized People in Research (PSRR) creates collective spaces for those whose knowledge and lived experiences are often dismissed or invalidated in the research community, so they can come together, see themselves reflected in one another, and imagine new ways of doing things — together.
Advocacy for decreasing timelines for family reunification for refugee claimants
Research Fellow: Ateş Balsoy
This project contributes to Welcome Haven's policy advocacy efforts to reduce the timeline for family reunification for refugee claimants and asylum seekers in Canada. The Research and Advocacy Program Fellow will analyze the policy and power landscape around family reunification legislation in Canada and study recent policy shifts to inform an advocacy strategy for Welcome Haven. The Welcome Haven Project is a community-based, participatory research project that brings regular psychosocial workshops to refugee claimant families in their communities in Montréal.
Expanding access to alternative health services in Quebec
Research Fellow: Leila Salazar
This project supports Community Healing Days’ policy advocacy efforts for more equitable access to traditional therapy modalities within Quebec’s public system. The SHIFT Research and Advocacy Program Fellow will examine the policy and power landscape around healthcare in Quebec to inform an activation strategy for the research produced in Year 1 of Community Healing Days’ Research and Advocacy Program Fellowship.
Raising awareness about the transformative potential of community bonds in Quebec.
Research Fellow: Marcus-Xavier Granada
This research supports the impact and social activation campaign for a futurist documentary, produced using participatory methods, about community economic development. The project explores the history of social finance in Quebec, particularly lessons from local experiences with community bonds. The resulting video uses speculative approaches to explore future pathways for scaling up community bonds campaigns in Quebec.
The research student works with the Brique par brique team to develop power maps, create targeted communications plans for the documentary, and support outreach to stakeholders for strategic screenings.
Brique par brique is a nonprofit organization founded in 2016 to respond innovatively to the need for affordable housing in the gentrifying and multicultural Parc-Extension neighbourhood. The organization raises community-based investments to fund the development of affordable housing and cultural spaces for residents facing systemic barriers.
Community-led housing and real estate for Montreal's Chinatown.
Research Fellow: Isabel Teramura
This research collaboration supports JIA Foundation's Clark Street Reimagined initiative by conducting a comprehensive overview of community-based real estate solutions including land trusts, community bonds, and real estate management co-ops.
Clark Street Reimagined is a community-led vision for housing and real estate in Montreal's Chinatown.
The campaign focuses on three plots of land on Clark Street, which have been acquired by the City of Montreal with the intention of reselling to a community partner for developing non-market housing. In response to this opportunity, JIA Foundation launched Clark Street Reimagined to create a concept plan for a mixed-use housing project in collaboration with Chinatown residents, business owners, and non-profit organizations.
The research team will turn findings into community workshops on potential models for the Clark Street development. These sessions will provide space for neighbourhood stakeholders to offer input on JIA Foundation's proposal to the City.
A sovereign, sustainable agri-food hub for Kahnawá:ke
Research Fellow: Elena Tresierra-Farbridge
The research collaboration is centered on the work of Tkà:nios, an intergenerational collective of Kahnawake community members working to reclaim traditional Haudenosaunee ways of life by nurturing local foodways and advancing food sovereignty. They are engaged in a collaboration with researchers from the Centre for Engineering in Society to develop technical plans
for physical infrastructure (e.g. community kitchen, seed bank, learning pavilion) that will provide a long-term home for their work in Kahnawake.
Keep up with the Tkà:nios project
Understanding municipal land use policies and processes to advocate for the Plateau's unhoused Indigenous population.
Research Fellow: Frédérique Hébert-Mondragon
Plateau Pour Tous is an initiative of the Indigenous Support Work Project (ISWP), a small but tenacious team of Indigenous people supporting the Indigenous Street Community in the Plateau borough in Montreal. The mandate of ISWP is to centre and support the well-being of Indigenous people with lived experiences of homelessness through decolonial advocacy and revitalization practices.
Plateau Pour Tous is interested in understanding municipal land use policies and decision-making processes to inform their advocacy and engagement strategies. The project involves a literature review and case study development leading into a co-created strategy.
Want to know more?
Meet the Concordia faculty members already applying their work to address community priorities and turning their research into actions that make a difference.
