Home :: About CCCBE :: People of CCCBE

Research Fellows 2009-2010

FACULTY FELLOWS

Professor Andrew Petter

The Centre for Co-operative and Community-Based Economy Studies is pleased to announce that Andrew Petter has received a six-month Faculty Research Fellowship. Professor Petter teaches Legal Process, Constitutional Law and Civil Liberties at the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria.  He joined the Faculty as Assistant Professor in 1986 after teaching at Osgoode Hall Law School from 1984 to 1986. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1988 and to Professor in 2004. He was appointed Acting Dean for 2001-02 and served as Dean of the Faculty from 2002 to 2008.  From 1991 to 2001, he represented the riding of Saanich South as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, during which time he held numerous cabinet portfolios, including that of Attorney General. His major  fields of interest are constitutional law, civil liberties and democratic reform. He has written and lectured extensively on these topics.  The fellowship will begin in January 2010, and will enable Professor Petter to assist in the development of the Centre’s program of support for the study and teaching of issues relating to the social economy in its application and relevance to the University of Victoria Law community.

**Latest News Break***  Congratulations to Andrew Petter in his appointment as the President and Vice Chancellor at Simon Fraser University starting in September 2010. See SFU news release http://www.sfu.ca/pamr/media_releases/media_releases_archives/media_01191001.html

Professor David Leach

David Leach has been awarded a University of Victoria Faculty Research Fellowship. Mr. Leach is an associate professor in the Department of Writing and director of its professional writing. He lived on a kibbutz in northern Israel before completing a B.A. and an M.A. in English from UVic and Queen’s respectively. Since graduation, David has worked in journalism as well as publishing in a wide variety of local and national magazines and newspapers, as well as publishing a major book of investigative non-fiction. His investigative writing has earned him several awards. David’s fellowship will also commence in January, and will be given to his current project, Look Back to Galilee: Searching for Utopia in a Divided Land, an investigation of transition from utopian idealism to market capitalism in the kibbutzim of modern Israel.

Visit David's Blog http://lookbacktogalilee.blogspot.com/ in recognition of Israel's kibbutz movement celebrating its 100th Anniversary

 

 

GRADUATE STUDENT FELLOWS

Eleanor Carlson

Eleanor Carlson was awarded a Graduate Student Fellowship, which began in September 2009. A graduate from the University of Alberta in Anthropology, Eleanor’s master’s thesis research involves an analysis of historical documentation gathered over 30 years by a local food bank on Vancouver Island.  Her research title is “You Eat What You Are: Constructions of Poverty and Responses to Hunger.”  Its objective is to investigate how shifting discourses, images, and constructions of poverty, specifically those pertaining to food insecurity, influence the policies and practices of providing food-relief at a prominent food bank in Victoria, British Columbia.

 

 

Nick Montgomery

Nick Montgomery, an MA student in the Department of Political Science and Cultural, Social and Political Thought at the University of Victoria, was also awarded a Graduate Student Fellowship effective in September.  Nick’s research is titled “A Critical Revaluation of Participatory Economies: Economy as Subjectivity,” and is focused on critical approaches to the study of social movements, and the transformation of social relations.  Co-operatives form an important part of this study, as his research focuses on the creation of alternatives to dominant social, political, and economic relationships. 

 

 

 

Michael Litchfield

Michael Litchfield holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Law from the University of British Columbia. He is a lawyer and management consultant with a varied background in corporate law, organizational management, and housing. Michael’s research is focused on the area of legal structuring for social enterprise in Canada. He was awarded a Graduate Student Fellowship effective January 2010.  Michael’s research is titled: In Search of the Middle Ground: Structuring Social Enterprise in Canada. He will be investigating the current patchwork of legal and regulatory regimes governing social enterprise in Canada and will be comparing these with social enterprise specific statutory models that have recently been adopted in other jurisdictions.
PROGRAM RESEARCH FELLOWS
Na'cha'uaht Cliff Atleo, Jr.
Cliff Atleo is a graduate of Political Science at the University of Victoria and currently pursuing his Master's degree in Indigenous Governance. He is researching Indigenous community-based economies, with a particular focus on examples from British Columbia. The context and locations are important, especially as we look to compare examples from different parts of the world as Indigenous peoples work to survive in an increasingly neoliberal globalized economy. His thesis research offers an Indigenous critique of Aboriginal economic development in Canada. He was awarded the University of Victoria’s President's Scholarship in 2006-2007 and an Indigenous Governance fellowship in 2008. His research interests are in Indigenous community resurgence, alternative Indigenous economies, and identity issues. 


Kim Hardy

Kim Hardy has earned a Master’s degree in Business specializing in Community Economic Development at Cape Breton University. Kim is a Community Economic 3Development Practitioner with research interests in co-operatives and co-operative economies. Kim has six years of experience working with First Nations development corporations and rural communities on community based economic development projects in BC and the Yukon. Originally from Vancouver Island, Kim spent three years living and working in the Yukon Territory. Here, she had the opportunity to work with many different communities in capacity building, co-operative development and local economic development planning processes. More recently, she completed a research project with Ecotrust Canada examining the opportunities to use the co-op model in coastal BC Aboriginal economies. To build upon this work, Kim has joined the Centre to conduct and support research on issues concerning Aboriginal peoples. Kim is working with the Centre to support a project proposal that aims to learn about the successes of the Arctic Co-ops and reflect upon how these successes can be applied to First Nations in BC.  The aim of the project is to bring together First Nations and Arctic Co-op leaders to share experiences and increase co-op development to meet community needs. Kim has been an active member of the Canadian Community Economic Development Network participating on the BC/Yukon Council and is currently contributing to Genuine Progress Indicators Pacific as a Board Member.


COMMUNITY RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS

Ashley Akins

Ashley Akins has been awarded a Community Research Fellowship. With this fellowship, Ashley plans to research how community-based enterprises and networks can assist in the preservation and revitalization of both traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and the social economy in impoverished indigenous communities.  Ashley is a 2009 graduate of UVic, majoring in environmental studies and Latin American studies. She was remarkably active as an undergraduate, becoming the founder and president of the Q’ente Textile Revitalization Society as well as the co-founder and director of Mosqoy: Sacred Valley Youth Fund, two sustainability projects based in the Andes region of Peru that have earned Ashley a number of awards and scholarships. Q’ente is a community network that provides a fair outlet through which to sell textiles while promoting traditional art and culture. Mosqoy provides post-secondary educational opportunities to impoverished youth of the Sacred Valley.  




Susan Anderson-Behn

Susan Anderson-Behn has been awarded a Community Research Fellowship. Susan has been a member of the First Nations Working group on Pacific Integrated Commercial Fishing Initiative (PICFIC) which is a federal government program. Currently, Susan’s fellowship at the Centre will be dedicated to working on a report which examines the disconnects between the PICFI criteria and the social/environmental/community economic criteria used by First Nations.  The purpose of the report is to clearly reflect both what the First Nations feel they need from the PICFI program and what the program can provide to address the First Nations values and needs in fisheries. She has been involved in First Nations fisheries exclusively since 1998, when she started working for Yale First Nations to establish their first Fishwheel Project. She was the Director, Treaty Negotiations, Resource Management and Environment for the BC Federation of Labour and was the first Chair of the Fisheries Committee of the Treaty Negotiations Advisory Committee advising both Federal and Provincial Government around the BC Treaty Process.

 

VISITING RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP

Panu Kalmi

Panu Kalmi is a visiting scholar, currently an Academy Research Fellow at the Academy of Finland and Adjunct Professor (Docent) at the Helsinki School of Economics (HSE) that will be renamed Aalto University in the beginning of 2010. He was an Acting Professor at HSE, Visiting Professor at Radboud University, the Netherlands, and Visiting Fellow at Cornell University, New York.  Dr. Kalmi’s research: Co-operative Banks in the Financial Crisis: An International Comparison, is an analysis of the various financial co-operatives around the world, their different evolutionary stages and the strengths and potentials of different ways of organizing financial co-operatives. His research has primarily focused on two topics: impacts of employee participation on enterprise performance and employee outcomes. More recently research has focused on financial co-operatives.  He has collaborated with the Finnish co-operative banking group OP-Pohjola and been involved in a project on financial co-operatives in Uganda, and has recently started a project investigating how the financial co-operatives are doing in the financial crisis.