UBC Sociology is excited to welcome our incoming cohort of doctoral and master’s students to the department!
We look forward to seeing what new perspectives and research they will bring to our community, with focuses ranging from surveillance capitalism to Indigenous research methods to urban sociology.
Gabrielle Isabel Abando
she/her
Gabrielle Isabel Abando
MA Student
Gabrielle is an MA student at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests lie in urban and community sociology, particularly relating to the role of social infrastructure and placemaking/place attachments in the settlement process of newcomers, the longevity of immigrant communities, and local articulations of immigrant community identity.
Supervisor:
Previous Institution:
University of British Columbia
Shermeen Bano
she/her
Shermeen Bano
PhD Student
Shermeen Bano, originally from Pakistan, is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on the intersections of marginality, risk, and harm within structurally vulnerable groups. Her previous work has investigated sexual risk and its consequences for khwaja sira (transgender) sex workers in Pakistan.
At UBC, Shermeen is continuing her exploration of these themes through mixed-method research. She aims to uncover the specific mechanisms and pathways that contribute to unequal occupational outcomes and health-related harms experienced by people who use drugs (PWUDs).
Supervisor:
Previous Institution:
The New School
Nicole Dawydiuk
she/her
Nicole Dawydiuk
PhD Student
Nicole Dawydiuk is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. Her interests include Indigenous research methods and the social determinants of health. She is passionate about addressing health access inequities through community-based research that centres Indigenous ways of knowing and methodologies.
Supervisor:
Previous Institution:
University of British Columbia
Daniel Hwang
Daniel Sion Hwang
he/him
MA Student
Daniel Sion Hwang joins us from Manitoba, where he completed their honours undergraduate degree in Sociology at the University of Manitoba. His research interests include health, race, ethnicity, and migration.
Supervisor:
Previous Institution:
University of Manitoba
Shaoyang Jin
he/him
Shaoyang Jin
MA Student
Shaoyang’s research interests mainly focus on the sociology of culture, especially the power relationship between the state ideology and the dominated in the context of socialist China and its post-socialism counterpart. He is also interested in political economy and sociocultural anthropology.
Supervisor:
Previous Institution:
Liaoning University
Karissa Ketter
she/her
Karissa Ketter
MA Student
Karissa Ketter’s research interests are focused on how knowledge, culture, and power are implicated in the social effects of “surveillance capitalism” and global capitalist culture. She is particularly interested in how automated forms of surveillance and the state manipulation of systems of governance impact marginalized communities such as religious minorities, women, racialized populations, the houseless, and the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. Throughout Karissa’s undergraduate degree in International Studies, she explored the ongoing effects of colonialism and the impacts of 20th-century global capitalism through an intersectional lens.
Supervisor:
Previous Institution:
Simon Fraser University
Weiqi Li
he/him
Weiqi Li
MA Student
Weiqi Li completed his BA degree in Sociology at the University of Calgary. In the past three years, he assisted his professors in University of Calgary studying North American Chinatowns and legal consiousness of Chinese immigrants in Canada.
In his graduate studies, he is interested in continue studying deeper on urban sociology topics like North American Chinatowns, while doing more researches focusing on East Asian societies and immigrants in Canada.
Supervisor:
Previous Institution:
University of Calgary
Nathan Shen
he/him
Nathan Shen
PhD Student
Nathan’s research focuses on understanding the healthcare needs of childhood, adolescent, and young adult cancer survivors in British Columbia. In collaboration with survivors and cancer care allies, he aims to develop more effective and patient-centered approaches to cancer care for young people in the province.
Nathan is also interested in exploring methods to strengthen the analytical robustness of qualitative research, particularly when incorporating insider researcher identity and perspectives.
Supervisor:
Previous Institution:
University of British Columbia
Isaac Tetreault
he/him
Isaac Tetreault
MA Student
Isaac is joining us from Montreal, where he completed his undergraduate degree in sociology and anthropology. He intends to use this multidisciplinary approach to inform his research on the social and gendered dimensions of environmentalism.
His previous research projects included examining equity in relation to light rail transit with the Transit Research at McGill lab. Additionally, he researched representations of violence against men in popular music videos for the Masculinity, Emotion, and Popular Music conference at Concordia University, which he helped organize and facilitate as well.
Supervisor:
Previous Institution:
Concordia University
Yifei Yu
they/she
Yifei Yu
MA Student
Yifei is from Shanghai and they completed their undergraduate studies in Sociology at McGill University. Their research interests focus on women’s work-family conflicts, and specifically, how women make decisions regarding fertility within broader cultural contexts and the ways in which gender identities are being constructed. Yifei also aims to broaden their understanding in public sociology.
Supervisor:
Previous Institution:
McGill University
