My Recent Work

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China's Social Credit System

The Chinese government wants to reduce corruption by increasing trustworthy behaviour in society (Woo, 2025). The government believes this can be achieved through technology, using data to penalize bad and reward good behaviours (Yang, 2022).
China’s social credit system (SCS) is an ambitious technological attempt to unify financial, legal and other information from corporations and social organizations to provide a full picture of creditworthiness, the goal of which is to instill ‘trustworthiness’ in society, to achieve social change required to reduce corruption (Daum, n.d., Koty & Huld, 2023).
Although technology can bring substantial benefits, it is important to recognize the influence of power relations on technological outcomes and to understand that data is not inherently objective (the assumption that it is, is referred to as the ‘allure of objectivity’ (Benjamin, 2015)).
With this problematization, this essay will answer the question: How might power structures between local and national government, as well as the assumed objectivity in data, impact the ability of the SCS to achieve social change and reduce corruption?
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Educational Equity

This research examines to what extent Indigenous education policy frameworks (IEPFs) in three Canadian provinces meaningfully address educational equity in the K-12 public school system for Indigenous students. Despite an effort to increase equity for Indigenous students, significant gaps remain. This research draws on literature to define educational equity and proceeds to a thematic analysis to identify how policies could be enhanced. The findings indicate that the provinces selected contain measures of achieve Indigenous equity in education, however a lack of details in increasing teacher competence is a gap that left unaddressed may allow for inequities to continue.
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Plastic and Health

This brief discusses the acute global health consequences of plastic, particularly because of the immense pollution from single use plastic (SUP). Given the integration of plastic in Canadian lifestyles, consequences of our consumption actions echo overseas through waste shipments, which end up in the environment and circle back through bioaccumulation in the food system (Ferronato and Torretta, 2019). Although Canada recognizes the urgent need to curb plastic waste, policies have focused on reduced usage and recycling. A viable non-toxic and fully compostable (leaving behind no microplastics) alternative, polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) exists, however, challenges such as manufacturing cost and economic importance of the petrochemical industry in Canada have slowed diffusion (Mukherjee and Koller, 2023; Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), 2025) .

Policy Brief - Inuit food security

Inuit populations in Canada have the highest rate of food insecurity of any Indigenous population in a developed country (Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2017). This results in a crisis of basic needs poverty. Evidence shows that empowering communities to define their own food systems (food sovereignty) is effective at combatting food insecurity. Policies that champion food sovereignty including the need for supporting infrastructure are recommended.