Graduate Research Opportunities

I’m always happy to chat about research opportunities for students with interests in terrestrial hydrology and/or remote sensing. Positions are available for students at the PhD or MSc level. Several funded positions are typically available to students interested in the applied use of GIS and remote sensing for observation of soil moisture (both passive and active sensors), soil freeze thaw processes, and agricultural land management.  All projects provide excellent opportunities for combining field work, laboratory and computer analysis.  We have field sites in the arctic, within boreal forests, and in agricultural regions.  Students with backgrounds in Physical Geography or Geomatics, Physical Sciences, Engineering or Computer Sciences are encouraged to contact me to discuss available projects and funding opportunities.

At present there are no graduate opportunities with my group, but I am always happy to speak with enthusiastic scholars looking to pursue potential graduate (typically MSc) or senior undergraduate research opportunities. Perhaps a conversation can help you find a research group that does have graduate opportunities that fit your schedule.

My research is concerned with the remote sensing of ecosystem change using optical and SAR satellite data. I am not recruiting any additional graduate students in the Fall 2024 semester. However, I am always keen to discuss future opportunities with interested prospective students.

I welcome inquiries from prospective graduate students (MA or PhD) who share my interests in examining innovative solutions to building more sustainable, equitable and resilient food systems. I am particularly interested in community-driven, equity focused initiatives. Much of my work focuses on the health, wellbeing and settlement of immigrant and newcomer populations.

Funding dependent, there will be two key projects in which I will be recruiting an additional student to join my team in Fall of 2026.

The first aims to uncover paths for strengthening immigrant inclusion in community food security initiatives; and food entrepreneurism and innovation.

The second will examine the scope and breadth of emerging social supermarkets in operation across Canada and the social and physical infrastructure and resources that are needed to ensure such enterprises are sustainable.

I am interested in students that are skilled and/or interested in deepening their skills in mixed, qualitative methods (e.g. focus groups, interviews), and community-engaged, participatory action research approaches.

Please email your inquiries to me directly and include a CV/resume and brief statement of your interests.  

Political Ecology, Marine Conservation, Ocean Governance, and Island Futures

I welcome inquiries from prospective graduate students (MA or PhD) who share my research interests in marine conservation governance, “blue economy” policies and impacts, and/or the science-policy interface in the context of conservation and environmental governance, particularly in islands. Please contact me directly to discuss opportunities; inquiries should include a CV/resume and brief statement of your interests.

I am looking for undergraduate/graduate research assistants and post-doctoral fellows to join my team. We are launching a research program to develop an Indigenous value-based environmental health risk assessment approach and I am interested in students who want to or have worked with Indigenous communities. I am happy to chat with you about your research interests if you have strong skills in Indigenous methods, statistics, ArcGIS StoryMaps, or qualitative methods, and strong software skills. The communities I am working with right now are in southern Ontario and northern Alberta. Please feel free to contact me to discuss available projects and funding opportunities.

I am a member of the Indigenous Mentorship Network of Ontario (https://imnp.uwo.ca/) and the Wabanaki-Labrador Indigenous Health Research Network (http://wabanaki-labradornetwork.ca/).

GIS, Geomorphometry, LiDAR Remote Sensing, Spatial Analysis, Hydrology

Prof. John Lindsay is looking for 1-2 new Masters students to join the Geomorphometry and Hydrogeomatics Research Group (GHRG) in Fall 2020. These fully-funded students will take on a research project related to the broad range of geomorphometry (digital terrain analysis), spatial hydrology, and LiDAR remote sensing topics actively studied within the GHRG. Specifically, Prof. Lindsay is looking for students to work on projects related to improving information extracted from the newly acquired Ontario LiDAR topographic data sets. Application areas include predictive soils mapping, soil organic carbon, and the study of accessibility in urban areas. Like all graduate members of the GHRG, the incoming students will be involved in the application and development of novel techniques for handling these data in spatial hydrological applications. GHRG students are provided advanced training in GIS and geomatics more broadly and have opportunity to gain experience with terrain mapping equipment, LiDAR data, and spatial analysis software (GIS and remote sensing). Interested applicants are encouraged to email Prof. Lindsay (jlindsay@uoguelph.ca) with a statement of interest and experience and an unofficial transcript.

Faisal welcomes students who are interested in pursuing graduate opportunities in his People, Plants and Policy lab to contact him by email (fmoola@uoguelph.ca). The 3P lab presents interdisciplinary opportunities for students to pursue Masters and PhD degrees focused on conservation policy and practice, forest management, plant ecology (at the species and community level) and ethnobotany in partnership with Indigenous Peoples. Faisal is particularly interested in students with strong academic backgrounds, who are comfortable with field work and are interested in scholarly collaboration and writing.

I am recruiting Master’s and/or PhD students to start in Fall 2026 on two projects:

•  Urban Political Ecology of Informal Greenspaces - There is a growing movement to create national parks in urban Canada, propelled in part by COVID restrictions in which more people turned to parks as sources of relaxation and connection. At the same time, it is increasingly recognized that “informal greenspaces” (IGS) from pop-up parks to vacant lots may also provide significant ecosystem service and biodiversity benefits as well as meaningful recreational opportunities. This research project asks, how can we identify these IGS, understand what they mean to people, and assess their relationship with conventional parks? We will: 1) identify and characterize IGS using volunteered geographic information (VGI) from citizen science platforms; 2) compare informal and formal greenspaces in terms of their accessibility and biophysical qualities; 3) contextualize the limitations of the VGI data we utilize. We will test our approach in southern Ontario.
•  Situating Data for Environmental Justice – Canada’s National Strategy to Address Environmental Racism requires the federal government to complete a study examining whether racialized, Indigenous, and other marginalized communities are disproportionately exposed to hazards such as toxic pollutants. The study is likely to rely on existing datasets, mapping, and analytical approaches. As such, it may focus only on proving the existence of environmental racism rather than illustrating its mechanisms. Our project will instead demonstrate mechanisms such as the failure of policy to address cumulative effects, showing which communities have dealt with the most toxic substances, the longest, and which are home to industrial facilities habitually non-compliant with environmental health protection laws.

Prospective students should be interested in conducting interviews, document analysis, surveys, and/or statistical and spatial analysis for their research. I can offer training in communication skills - including mapping, data visualization, and public writing - and in the scholarly fields of political ecology and science and technology studies. Students would have the opportunity to collaborate with the Environmental and Data Governance Initiative and other partners. Former graduate students have gone on to work in academia and in the conservation and environmental NGO sectors.

I welcome interested candidates to email me with a brief statement of interest, an unofficial transcript, and a writing/research sample.

Are you interested in exploring the social dimensions of waste in Canada? I welcome inquiries from prospective MA students who are passionate about the social science of waste systems and are eager to contribute to community-based research.

My research examines the social life of waste, and I’m interested in supervising projects on topics such as: food waste and food insecurity, the gendered dynamics of waste systems, circular economy discourses, waste-related labour practices, the governance of waste flows in Canada, and other related topics.

I prioritize applicants with employment or volunteer experience in waste-related sectors, community organizations, food systems, or environmental initiatives. Please note that I am currently considering MA applications only, and am not considering PhD applicants at this time.

Conservation through Reconciliation

As PI of the Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership, I am interested in speaking with exceptional prospective MA or PhD students interested in advancing Indigenous conservation governance in Canada. I am particularly interested in speaking with students who can work at the community level to help advance the conceptualization and practice of decolonized conservation or those who want to engage with advancing reconciliation within existing protected areas. Visit the website to see what the partnership has been up to and whether your interests are a good fit.

Biogeography, One Health, Conservation, Lemurs, Community Ecology, Spatial Ecology

I am interested in recruiting a PhD student to study the scale effects of species extinction and assembly among lemurs in Madagascar within my LEMR lab. The LEMR lab values diversity encourages applications from all persons regardless of background and including those underrepresented in academia. Not all people have the same opportunities and thus experience. While there is a minimum expectation for student achievement for acceptance to this position, we encourage applicants to consider potential equivalencies to the above ‘Essential’ and ‘Desired’ skills. The lab encourages all candidates to speak with current lab members learn more about the work environment. Interviews may be conducted interviews in person, at conferences, or virtually to provide equitable access to a diverse array of applicants. The details of the application are in the linked file below.

PhD Position in Geography