MIRRA Team List

The Migration In Remote and Rural Areas (MIRRA) has great number of members.Below are selected MIRRA  members with their  research interests and publications.

Ray Silvius, PhD, University of Winnipeg


Biography
Dr. Ray Silvius is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at The University of Winnipeg. He writes on international political economy, Russia, the emerging multipolar world order, and the political economy of refugees.
His first book, Culture, Political Economy and Civilisation in a Multipolar World Order: The Case of Russia, was published by Routledge in 2016. Silvius is currently undertaking a three-year research project, which is funded by the Manitoba Research Alliance, on the housing experiences of resettled refugees in Winnipeg.
Click here for Ray’s Publications


Linamar Campos Flores, PhD(c) Geography Department: Université de Montréal

Biography
LinaMar Campos Flores holds a master’s degree in Intercultural Mediation (Université de Sherbrooke) and is a Ph.D. candidate in Human Geography at Université de Montréal. She was awarded the FRQSC scholarship for her research project on the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, which hires Latin-American men and women to work in the Canadian fields and green-houses. Her main interest is the emotional dimension in the study of social phenomena through the lenses of Emotional Geographies and Feminist perspectives. She also explores the overlap of intersectionality and post-colonial approaches; the origins and impacts of labour migration in rural areas, including the displacement of farmers to urban centers and overseas work; the overexploitation of resources (monoculture, water); and the loss of agricultural knowledge.
Click Here for Linamar’s Publications


Michelle Lam, PhD(c): University of Manitoba

Biography
An experienced teacher and researcher, Michelle Lam is currently pursuing a PhD in the Education at the University of Manitoba. Her doctoral research explores refugee language learning in rural areas in Manitoba. Michelle has been an English as an Additional Language teacher for over ten years and was the Director of Teacher Training and Development for Lucas Detech Institute in Vietnam. She is currently involved in a research-in-residence project examining newcomer integration in Brandon, Manitoba.
Michelle’s passion for equitable integration stems from hearing stories of discrimination and racism directed towards her family and students in her classrooms. Her strong sense of social justice has led her to advocate on behalf of newcomers, believing firmly that all people are equal. She has a strong record of volunteer service and has received numerous awards, fellowships, and distinctions including a Young Humanitarian Award, a Citizenship Award, as well as awards for high scholarship. Michelle earned a Bachelor’s of Ministry (highest honours) from Ambrose University College in 2006 and an MA in TESOL (honours) in 2009 from Providence Seminary. She has been published in two books for teacher professional development and is a sought-after public speaker and educator.
Click Here for Michelle’s Publications


Marc Valade, PhD Candidate in Policy Studies : Ryerson University


Biography
Marc Yvan Valade is a PhD candidate in Policy Studies researching on the effectiveness of collaborative networks in attracting immigrant residents in smaller Canadian cities. He also holds a Master’s in Public Administration from L’École nationale d’administration publique (Montréal) and a B.A. from L’Université de Montréal.
Marc accounts for two decades of work experience, of which half as executive director of a socioeconomic regional development agency in Quebec.
As a research assistant, Marc has been involved since 2012 in studies on the strategic capacity of senior civil servants, the impact of public ombudsmen on government administration, the integration of immigrant families in Canada, and on Burundian women activists in the late 1990s early 2000s.
Click Here for Marc’s Publications


Talina Contreras, PhD


Biography
Dr. Contreras received a PhD in International Economics and Development from the Complutense University of Madrid and had studied international migrations at the Ortega y Gasset Institute. Her research interests are focused on migration from Africa and Latin America to Spain and migration from the “Northern Triangle” (Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras) to the United States, with Mexico as a transit country. Her current project is: “Globalization and migration processes: Central Americans in Mexico and Africans in Spain”. It is part of the general project “Capitalist Restructuring and Employment Policies”, directed by José Javier Contreras Carbajal, Political and Cultural Department, Division of Social Sciences and Humanities, Autonomous Metropolitan University, Xochimilco, Mexico.
Publications:

  • Contreras, T. (2018), African Immigration and Human Rights Violation in Spain, in The Faces of Violence. Challenges of the 21st century. Edited by the Autonomous Metropolitan University, Mexico.
  • Contreras, T. (2016), The Continuous Sample of Labor Lives (MCVL) in the study of salaried employment of Latin American immigration in Spain, in Magazine of the Ministry of Employment and Social Security, Government of Spain. ISSN 2174-7504, No. 125, p. 167-189. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=5780016

Tina Boop, PhD(c)

Biography
Tina Bopp received her MA in Sociology and Gender Studies in 2015 and is a member of the Graduate Program in Gender Studies and the Graduate School of Social Sciences at the University of Basel (Switzerland). Her main research areas and interests are located within the fields of decolonial and post-soviet studies, critical border studies, feminist epistemology, economies of exploitation, politics of resistance and practices of collective selfcare.
Tina Bopp is interested in the organization of labor in the agricultural sector in Europe. She is analysing how power relations have played out in the history and in current developments in the context of agriculture. Currently, restriction processes on migration and the need for low-wage workers in agriculture are accompanied by the extension of the recruitment structures of the workforce. While we are thus facing transnational labour and care chains and seemingly endless processes of primitive accumulation, agricultural space is diminished. Tina Bopp is furthermore seeking for decolonial perspectives for social and agricultural reproduction.
Click Here for the research project Tina has been part of.


Mikael Hellstrom, PhD Postdoctoral Fellow: University of New Brunswick


Biography
Mikael Hellstrom’s work focuses on refugee settlement in New Brunswick, particularly issues of public management and the facilitation of labour market entry. He interviews refugee settlement service users and stakeholders about key issues in the sector to identify bottlenecks in terms of service delivery capacity and accountability. Moreover, he collaborates with local community activists to explore how we can use innovative teaching techniques, particularly game-based learning, to improve the delivery of citizenship training.


Junichiro Koji PHD


Biography
Junichiro Koji is an Associate Professor at the Department of International and Regional Studies, Hokkaido University of Education (HUE) in Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science with specialization of Canadian Studies (University of Ottawa). Before joining HUE, he worked at the City of Montreal as a research officer in youth policy and Japanese Embassy in Canada as a political analyst.
His research interests include: Canadian and Quebec politics, comparative research between Canada and Japan, immigration and integration policy, diversity management policy, local and regional development policy, local citizenship, sister city relations (Hakodate and Halifax), university-community partnership, state-society relations, and governance.
He is also active in community engaged research on building a welcoming community for foreign residents and supporting local development in Esashi, a small municipality in Hokkaido, through university-community partnership.
Click Here for Junichiro’s Publications


Nazmy K. Villarroel-Williams: Postdoctoral Researcher 


Biography
Nazmy K. Villarroel-Williams is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Graduate Entry Medical School, University of Limerick. Nazmy is currently working on a HRB funded project on Ethnic Minority Health in Ireland (link to https://www.ul.ie/gems/public-and-patient-involvement-ppi-research-group ).  Previously, she worked on ethnicity classifications at the Usher Institute of population health sciences and informatics (The University of Edinburgh), funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Nazmy holds a MSc Tropical Medicine & International Health, MPH, and PhD in Public Health. She has worked in the area of immigrant’s health research since 2006 before moving to the University of Limerick.
Her research interests include: Social epidemiology, population health, immigrant and refugee health and health care, ethnic health inequalities, indigenous/aboriginal health inequalities, social determinants of health, global health, gender inequalities in health and health data analysis.
A list of her research can be found: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nazmy_Villarroel-Williams


Simona Zollet : TAOYAKA Program, Program for Leading Graduate Schools, Japan

Biography
Simona Zollet, originally from Italy, is a PhD student in the Department of Cultural and Regional Studies in the Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation at Hiroshima University, Japan. Her current research interests include sustainable farming and local agri-food systems in mountainous and rural areas of Japan and Italy. Despite the many socio-cultural differences between the two countries, the issues of marginal rural communities in both countries are surprisingly similar and echo the situation in rural areas across the world. As a response to increasingly urgent issues such as depopulation, aging, and farmland abandonment, she focuses on young and new entrant farmers in marginal rural areas, and especially those who are adopting agroecological and innovative approaches in their farms. One of her research lenses is urban-to-rural and rural-to-rural migration, and especially the phenomenon of lifestyle migration connected to the ‘back to the land’ movement and to the search for more meaningful and sustainable lifestyles. Ultimately, she is interested in examining whether new and in-migrant organic farmers can contribute to the creation and maintenance of viable and vibrant rural communities in marginal areas, within a framework of place-based development focused on sustainability and grassroots innovation processes. Methodology-wise, she employs qualitative and mixed method approaches, and is working towards a higher level of stakeholder involvement in her research work.


Tsuyoshi Tokuda: Associate Professor -Otani University


Biography
Dr. Tsuyoshi Tokuda is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Otani University in Kyoto, Japan. He is interested in sociological studies about urban & rural areas, immigrants, religion, disaster areas (Kobe, Tohoku) and the sociological discourse of strangers (G. Simmel, A. Schutz, Z. Bauman). He is funded by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and has published two books (in Japanese) about immigrants living in Japan’s rural areas and social integration policy of Japanese national / local government. He is currently developing a comparative study on international immigrants to rural areas involving Japan and Canada.
Click here for Tsuyoshi Tokuda’s publications.