My research has been supported through competitive grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and these grants have allowed me to conduct large scale qualitative studies on how workers engage in sophisticated, multi-faceted and informal lifelong learning in response to the systemic inequalities they face in their social and workplace contexts. Two principles have guided my academic approach. First, I believe that workplace contexts are embedded within and therefore need to be studied in relation to broader social contexts such as state policy, national histories and global economic relations. Second, I am committed to the methodological value of research which is based on detailed, ethnographic understandings of peoples’ lived experiences. Guided by these principles, I have conducted qualitative, interpretive, multi-subject and multi-year ethnographies of workers lives in Canada and India. Through these interdisciplinary projects, I have explored the ways in which women and men in diverse contexts experience, navigate and challenge forms of social exclusion as part of their daily lives as well as in their paid jobs.

Themes, projects and related publications

• Working and Learning in the Transnational Service Economy
• Learning, Migration and Precarious Labour
• Welfare Fraud and the Criminalization of Poverty
• Youth Labor Market Experience

Funded Research Projects