About

I am a doctoral student in the Political Science department at the University of Victoria, specializing in Canadian Politics and working toward a graduate certificate in Indigenous Nationhood. My supervisor is political theorist Avigail Eisenberg.

My research focuses, broadly speaking, on the politics of Indigenous ceremonies, protocols, and symbols within Canadian public spaces and institutions. I am very interested in how the categories of religion and spirituality function within Indigenous-Canadian relations, especially in relation to law, sovereignty, jurisdiction, territory, and dissent. My work brings critical and socio-rhetorical Religious Studies approaches into conversation with Settler Colonial and Indigenous Studies scholarship, often through a critical discourse analysis methodology.

I defended my MA thesis in Religious Studies from the University of Ottawa in October 2017, under the supervision of Naomi Goldenberg. My MA thesis, “Armed with an Eagle Feather Against the Parliamentary Mace: A Discussion of Discourse on Indigenous Sovereignty and Spirituality in a Settler Colonial Canada, 1990-2017” has been published open-access via UOttawa Research and can be viewed here.

I received a BA with distinction from the University of Alberta, with a double-major in Anthropology and Religious Studies.

I am proud to serve as a co-editor of the Religion Bulletin, the online blog of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion, as a councillor for the North American Association for the Study of Religion, and as a member of the Culture on the Edge academic research collective.

Follow me on Twitter to see what I’m reading and thinking about from day-to-day.

Non-academically: I like cats, delicious food and drinks, and indulge in escapism through books, bad TV shows, and excessive amounts of chocolate. I also love to travel, particularly when I can combine a conference or workshop with a brief (or not-so-brief) sojourn abroad.

 

Lake Nemi, Italy, summer 2016