The Wellesley Institute is thrilled to welcome three new researchers to our team. We look forward to the ideas and energy they will bring to the Institute and the contributions they will make to improving health in the GTA.
Seong-gee Um
Seong-gee Um will be joining our team following a postdoctoral fellowship affiliated with the Canada Research Chair in Citizenship and Governance at Université de Montréal. She received her PhD from the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Prentice Institute for Global Population and Economy at the University of Lethbridge. Her research interests lie in the areas of inequality, immigration, and health and social care. Her work explores social policy responses to emerging social risks and how they shape the experiences of vulnerable and disadvantaged populations. Over the last eight years, Seong-gee has been involved in multiple research projects which explore the impact of social policy changes on the health and well-being of marginalized populations such as social assistance recipients and migrant care workers. She is currently a Research Collaborator on an international research team investigating the Supply and Demand of Care within the Gender, Migration, and the Work of Care project (Centre for Global Social Policy, University of Toronto). She is a Book Review Editor for Transnational Social Review: A Social Work Journal (Routledge) and is author and co-author of numerous publications including States and Markets: Sociology of Public Policy in Canada (with Dr. Susan McDaniel), which was published by Oxford University Press in March 2015.
Laura Anderson
Laura Anderson joins the Wellesley Institute from the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, where she is an Eyes High Postdoctoral Fellow. She holds an MPH in Global Health (Public Nutrition) from Emory University in Atlanta, GA, and a PhD in Medical Anthropology from the University of Toronto. Laura has community-based and population health research experience with diverse populations in Canada and internationally, exploring household food insecurity and determinants of health such as migration status and experience, access to and the cultural competence of health care for minority groups, and social exclusion. Her doctoral thesis examined the determinants of health and nutrition among young children in new immigrant families living in Toronto’s Jane and Finch neighbourhood.
Greg Suttor
As an independent consultant, Greg Suttor has been a housing researcher and policy advisor for Toronto municipal governments. He was also a policy advisor/researcher at the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing special task forces and the Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership. He is active in provincial, national and local affordable housing organizations and holds a PhD from the University of Toronto on the policy history and impacts of Canadian social housing. He has a strong interest in the relationships between housing policy, housing market realities, social policy and urban well-being. He believes we can learn a lot from our own history and from comparisons to other times and places.
Junior Researcher
We will still be hiring one more junior researcher. The positions for our senior and mid-level researchers have been filled. We are very pleased that we had so many applicants for these positions, but due to the volume processing took more time than we expected.We will still be hiring one more position as posted. Please stay tuned to our website for updates.