Fully-funded places for the MA in Geography program: Fall 2015 and Fall 2016 Entry

Professor Dragos Simandan would like to recruit two students for the MA program in Geography at Brock University (St. Catharine’s, Ontario) to work with him on his SSHRC grant “Is cross-cultural experience conducive to wisdom? A study of Romanian immigrants in Toronto”. The two students are expected to enroll in the MA Thesis stream (five funded terms) and to choose as their thesis topic & research assistantship focus one of the following two pathways:

1. One Master’s student will be hired for ten hours a week for 48 weeks ($15,000 available for this research assistantship, in addition to the $7,000 fellowship provided to all full-time MA students) to conduct thirty in-depth semi-structured interviews with Romanian immigrants in Toronto and to transcribe and code part of the interview data with an eye on writing their MA thesis around a detailed analysis of the emotional geographies surrounding reflections about wisdom among Romanians in Toronto. The student will be asked to develop her/his own theoretical perspective, but I expect that it will build heavily on the exciting new work on emotional geographies of scholars such as Pile (2011), Anderson & Harrison (2010), Thrift (2008), Bondi (2009), and Simandan (2011; 2012; 2014). The analysis of the emotion-related information undertaken by this MA student will contribute to the larger objectives of the grant, while also providing the empirical material for the completion of a master’s thesis. I will expect the student to present his/her results at a relevant Canadian conference and to co-author with me a paper for Emotions, Space & Society. He/she will receive training in in-depth semi-structured interviewing, transcribing and coding interview data, critical thinking and writing, emotional geographies, and presentation skills. He /she will learn how to organise a major research project, and the protocols of enquiry and norms of good research in geography.

2. One Master’s student will be hired for ten hours a week for 48 weeks ($15,000 available for this research assistantship, in addition to the $7,000 fellowship provided to all full-time MA students) to conduct thirty in-depth semi-structured interviews with Romanian immigrants in Toronto and to transcribe and code part of the interview data with an eye on writing their MA thesis around a detailed analysis of the gender differences in conceptualizing wisdom among Romanians in Toronto. The student will be asked to develop her/his own theoretical perspective, but I expect that it will build heavily on feminist geography as well as the exciting work on gender differences in attitudes to, and understandings of, wisdom (Gluck et al, 2009; Aldwin, 2009). The analysis of the gender-related information undertaken by this MA student will contribute to the larger objectives of the project, while also providing the empirical material for the completion of a master’s thesis. I will expect the student to present his/her results at a relevant Canadian conference and to co-author with me a paper for Gender, Place & Culture. He/she will receive training in in-depth semi-structured interviewing, transcribing and coding interview data, critical thinking and writing, gender geographies, and presentation skills. He /she will learn how to organise a major research project, and the protocols of enquiry and norms of good research in geography.

The candidates must have an undergraduate degree in geography or a related social science or humanities discipline (psychology; sociology; political science; popular culture; philosophy). Preference may be given to candidates fluent in Romanian. For further information, please contact Professor Simandan at simandan@brocku.ca .