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Executive Committee

The Executive Committee is comprised of the President, President Elect, Past President, Treasurer, Secretary, Managing Editor of the Canadian Review of Sociology journal, the Communications Officer (also referred to as ‘Officers’), and the chairs of the following subcommittees: Anti-Islamophobia; Black Caucus; Decolonization; Equity Issues; Francophone Affairs; Justice for Palestine; Public Engagement and Professional Concerns; Research Advisory, and Student Concerns (also referred to as ‘Directors’).

Officers are elected by the membership for their specific position and serve a three-year term. Terms may be extended for one year for all but the President’s position with Executive Committee approval. Directors are chosen by their particular subcommittee and may sit on the Executive Committee from one to three years.

2024-2025 Executive Committee

President Dr. Liam Swiss	President-Elect Dr. Mark C.J. Stoddart	Past-President Dr. Temitope Oriola	Treasurer Dr. Qiang Fu
Secretary Dr. Zohreh BayatRizi	Communications Officer To be confirmed	Journal Managing Editor Dr. Dominique Clément	Co-Chair-Anti-Islamophobia Subcommittee Dr. Nadiya Ali
Co-Chair-Anti-Islamophobia Subcommittee Dr. Ayesha Mian Akram	Co-Chair-Black Caucus Dr. Johanne Jean-Pierre	Co-chair-Black Caucus Dr. Giselle Thompson	Co-Chair-Decolonization Subcommittee Dr. Sofia Locklear
Co-Chair-Decolonization Subcommittee Dr. Yvonne Sherwood	Chair-Equity Issues Subcommittee Dr. Jessica Braimoh	Chair-Francophone Affairs Subcommittee Dr. Guillaume Durou	Co-chair-Justice for Palestine Subcommittee Dr.Katie MacDonald
Co-chair-Justice for Palestine Subcommittee Dr.Christopher Powell	Chair-Public Engagement and Professional Concerns Subcommittee Dr. Eloy Rivas-Sánchez	Chair-Research Advisory Subcommittee Dr. Kara Brisson-Boivin	Chair-Student Concerns Subcommittee J Overholser

 

See also Canadian Sociological Association Subcommittees

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President: Dr. Liam Swiss

Liam Swiss is Professor of Sociology, and Head of the Department of Sociology at Acadia University. His research examines foreign aid, global development, the politics of Canadian aid policy, and gender equality. His current SSHRC Insight Development Grant (with Dr. Lisa Kaida, McMaster University) examines the relationship between Canadian foreign aid and the remittance sending behaviour of migrants to Canada from low- and middle-income countries. His published research has appeared in journals such as the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Social Science Research, and World Development, among others. He is the author of the book The Globalization of Foreign Aid: Developing Consensus (Routledge 2018). He is a two-time former President of the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development, and was a co-founder of the CSA’s Sociology of Development Research Cluster.

President-Elect: Dr. Mark C.J. Stoddart

Mark Stoddart is a Professor of Sociology at Memorial University. His areas of research, teaching, and student supervision include environmental sociology, political sociology and social movements, and communications and culture. His main current research interests include the sociological dimensions of climate change, oil and energy transitions, and sustainable tourism development. He is co-author of the book Industrial Development and Eco-Tourisms: Can Oil Extraction and Nature Conservation Co-Exist? (Palgrave). Through a comparative analysis of Denmark, Iceland, Newfoundland and Labrador, Norway, and Scotland, this project offers valuable lessons for how coastal societies can better navigate relationships between resource extraction and nature-based tourism in the context of climate change. He is co-editor of the Handbook of Anti-Environmentalism (Elgar) and Revitalizing PLACE through Social Enterprise (Memorial University Press) and is Associate Editor of the journal Environmental Sociology. Dr. Stoddart is a member of the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists. He is also the 2024 recipient of the Memorial University Faculty of HSS Dean’s Award for Distinguished Scholarship.

Past-President: Dr. Temitope Oriola

Temitope Oriola is professor of criminology/sociology and associate dean in the Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta. He is an exemplary scholar and public intellectual known for field-defining sociological research on terrorism and policing, leadership and service to his discipline, and commitment to mobilizing knowledge in support of informed public debate. Internationally, he is known for his work on terrorism studies. In Canada, Professor Oriola’s scholarship focuses on policing and use of force. A decorated researcher and teacher, Professor Oriola has received multiple national and international recognitions, including an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship and a National Dorothy Killam Fellowship, one of only eight recipients in Canada.

Professor Oriola is one of Canada’s most sought-after public intellectuals on police reform. He has served as special adviser to the Government of Alberta on Police Act Review. He is a member of the Board of Directors, Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and a columnist with the Edmonton Journal. Professor Oriola is also a recipient of the Governor General of Canada Academic Gold Medal (2011), Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship (2015 and 2017), Kathleen W. Klawe Prize for Excellence in Teaching (2020), the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations (CAFA) Distinguished Academic Award (2022), Arts Research Excellence Award (2022) and the Rosalind Smith Award (2023), among others. On the recommendation of the Alberta Legislature in January 2023, Professor Oriola received the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal for ‘exceptional qualities and outstanding service to our province in the field of Advanced Education and Public Service.’

Treasurer: Dr. Qiang Fu

Dr. Qiang Fu is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He co- directs the Centre for Chinese Research and chairs the Graduate Studies in Sociology at UBC. His recent publications have appeared in journals such as the Canadian Review of Sociology, American Journal of Epidemiology, American Journal of Sociology, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Annals of Epidemiology, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, and Sociological Methods & Research. His ongoing research, supported by two SSHRC Insight Grants awarded in 2021 and 2024, adopts a reflexive, historical, critical, comparative, and computational approach to investigate the social integration, everyday life, and political orientation of immigrants and minorities from coast to coast to coast.

Secretary: Dr. Zohreh BayatRizi

Zohreh BayatRizi is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Alberta. She received her MA and PhD degrees from the University of British Columbia and her BA degree from the University of Tehran. Her main interests are the history of sociology, sociology of death and dying, and sociology of Iran. She is the author of Life Sentences: The Modern Ordering of Mortality. She teaches courses in social theory, sociology of death, and introductory sociology. She has previously served on the CSA Research Advisory Subcommittee and chaired the Social Theory Research Cluster.

Communications Officer: 

Canadian Review of Sociology Journal Managing Editor: Dr. Dominique Clément

Dominique Clément is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta and a member of the Royal Society of Canada (CNSAS). He is the author of the award-winning books Canada’s Rights Revolution, Equality Deferred, Human Rights in Canada, and Debating Rights Inflation. His edited collections include Alberta's Human Rights Story and Debating Dissent. Clément has been a Visiting Scholar in Australia, Belgium, China, Ireland and the United Kingdom. He has written extensively on human rights, social movements, and legal studies. He has consulted for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and has served on the board of numerous community organizations, including the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. His websites, HistoryOfRights.ca and statefunding.ca, serve as research and teaching portals on the study of human rights and social movements in Canada.

Anti-Islamophobia Subcommittee Co-Chair: Dr. Nadiya Ali

Nadiya has pursued a multidisciplinary international social science career, with a focus on race, racialization, cultural production, and community-action research. She has given particular attention to examining and innovatively supporting the pathways of resistance and subject-formation that come to be carved out by populations sitting on the receiving end of racializing and marginalizing structures, with particular attention given to Anti-Black Islamophobia/Anti-Muslim Racism. More broadly, her scholarship is in conversation with and continues to be informed by Black Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, and Critical Muslim Studies. Nadiya currently holds an Assistant Professor position with the Sociology department at Trent University and is the co-founder and Chair of the newly formed Anti-Islamophobia Subcommittee.

Anti-Islamophobia Subcommittee Co-Chair: Dr. Ayesha Mian Akram

Dr. Ayesha Mian Akram is an Assistant Professor (Teaching) in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary. She completed her doctorate in 2023 from the University of Windsor where her SSHRC-funded dissertation research explored Muslim women’s community-building and the politics of resistance through wellness. Her community and academic experiences have led to a scholarly agenda located in the intersections of gender, racialization, emergent research methodologies, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Ayesha has been involved with CSA since 2015 through the Student Concerns Subcommittee, the Equity Issues Subcommittee, and the Women's Caucus, and is now pleased to serve as the co-founder and co-chair of the Anti-Islamophobia Subcommittee.

Black Caucus Co-Chair: Dr. Johanne Jean-Pierre

Johanne Jean-Pierre is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at York University. Johanne conducts research in English and in French in the fields of sociology of education, sociology of race and ethnicity, youth studies, and research methodology. Her research focusses on the social, cultural, and political factors that shape the school and postsecondary trajectories of marginalized and minoritized children, youth, and young adults. Her previous and ongoing research examines specifically the experiences of official language minorities, newcomer youth, and Black Canadians. Johanne is a co-founder and 2023-2024 Chair of the Black Caucus.

Black Caucus Co-Chair: Dr. Giselle Thompson

Giselle Thompson is the Assistant Professor of Black Studies in Education at the University of Alberta, where she teaches in the Social Justice and International Studies in Education graduate specialization and the Bachelor of Education program. Her award-winning research exists at the nexus of critical studies in the Sociologies of Race, Education, Gender, Diaspora, and International Development and seeks to understand how colonialism, racial capitalism, white supremacy, and modernity operate globally and are implicated in the ongoing (mis)education of Black people. She is particularly concerned with how anti-Black racism in its various iterations including, but not limited to, lack of accessibility, under-resourcing, and curricular deficits impede on holistic learning for Black school-aged children and youth and diasporic groups in both local and transnational contexts. Her current research project examines the ways in which the transhistorical phenomenon of Black motherwork is deployed in school settings and in other sites of learning to resist these social maladies, whilst transmitting ethics of love, care, and concern.

Decolonization Subcommittee Co-Chair: Dr. Sofia Locklear

Dr. Sofia Locklear is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. She is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and is 3rd generation Ukrainian from Kenora, Ontario. Her research examines the racialization of Indigenous people in North America. This includes but is not limited to white identity formation, health and education outcomes for Indigenous people, as well as applied Indigenous Evaluation in the field of public health.

Decolonization Subcommittee Co-Chair: Dr. Yvonne Sherwood

Yvonne P. Sherwood is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Her work is grounded in and through Indigenous womxn’s frontline organizing and activism. She is Spokane-Coeur d’Alene and raised on the Yakama Nation Reservation in what is currently known as WA State. These locations and relations inform her work. From this perspective, Yvonne studies the politics of knowledge, environmentalism, and law with a focus on the interplay of settler colonialism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy. She also contributes to language revitalization and food sovereignty efforts through her learning and scholarship.

Equity Issues Subcommittee Chair: Dr. Jessica Braimoh

Jessica Braimoh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Science at York University. As an anti-racist, queer, feminist sociologist, Jessica’s research focuses on three integrated streams. The first stream investigates how geography mediates the institutional response to social disadvantage. Here she considers how understandings of geography are embedded in policy dimensions and institutional responses to inequality and vulnerability. The second stream of research examines how processes of criminalization and surveillance are embedded in multiple systems of domination including settler colonialism, white supremacy, capitalism, and cis heteropatriarchy. Finally, the third stream of research explores the coordination of socio-legal processes among multiple organizations and public institutions. Guided by principles of social justice, Jessica’s research contributes to an understanding of how seemingly neutral policy categories and institutional practices work to exacerbate and rationalize historically entrenched relations of exclusion and oppression.

Francophone Affairs Subcommittee Chair: Dr. Guillaume Durou

Guillaume Durou is an Assistant Professor, Campus Saint-Jean whose research areas include; Sociologie historique canadienne et Québécoise, sociologie historique de la famille, antisémitisme, histoire du capitalisme, analyse des classes, théories des classes sociales, et Francophonie de l'Ouest. He is a co-founder of the Francophone Affairs Subcommittee and the Prix d'excellence en sociologie de langue française. In addition to this, he founded the Marxist Sociology Research Cluster and is the Chair of the Comparative and Historical Sociology Research Cluster.

Justice for Palestine Subcommittee Co-Chair: Dr. Katie MacDonald

Katie MacDonald (she/her) is an Associate Professor, Sociology and MAIS in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Athabasca University.  She is a community engaged researcher located in amiskwaciwâskahikan, or what is currently known as Edmonton. She is interested in how people work collectively and what learning looks like in these spaces. She look at issues in relation to Canadian affordable housing and experiences of transnational solidarity.

Justice for Palestine Subcommittee Co-Chair: Dr. Christopher Powell

Christopher Powell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University. As a sociological theorist, he has worked in genocide studies, helping to develop a critical, decolonial, and pluriversal approach to antigenocidal politics. More recently he has worked in relational sociology and complex systems theory as these relate to socialist praxis. He is author of Barbaric Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Genocide (MQUP) and co-editor of Conceptualizing Relational Sociology Ontological and Theoretical Issues and Applying Relational Sociology Relations, Networks, and Society (Palgrave). Chris is a member of the TMU chapter of Faculty for Palestine.

Public Engagement and Professional Concerns Subcommittee Chair: Dr. Eloy Rivas-Sánchez

Eloy Rivas-Sánchez is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Center for Social Sciences at Athabasca University. He holds a PhD in Sociology from Carleton University, with a specialization in Political Economy, where he is also appointed as adjunct research professor.

Eloy serves in several scientific/academic boards and committees in Canada and around the globe, such as the Research Ethics Board at Athabasca University, the RC47 of the International Sociological Association, the UNESCO Chair on Democracy, Global Citizenship and Transformative Education, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. His ongoing sociological research, community service, and publications, are engaged with topics highly interlaced with ethical issues and the professional practice of sociologists, such as activism in research; public sociology; illegal labour practices, undocumented migration, among others.

Research Advisory Subcommittee Chair: Dr. Kara Brisson-Boivin

Dr. Kara Brisson-Boivin is the Director of Research for MediaSmarts- Canada’s non-profit centre for digital media literacy. She is responsible for the planning, methodology, implementation, and dissemination of key findings from original MediaSmarts’ research studies as well as evaluations of MediaSmarts’ programs. Dr. Brisson-Boivin also holds an appointment as an Adjunct Research Professor in the Sociology Department at Carleton University. She works with a number of partners on online issues including digital well-being, digital equity and inclusion, privacy, hate, activism, and algorithms and artificial intelligence. She leads MediaSmarts’ efforts to centre and empower youth voices in the field of digital media literacy education as well as their advocacy for a national digital media literacy strategy for Canada.

Student Concerns Subcommittee Chair: J Overholser

J Overholser is a PhD student at the University of Calgary. Their work both in academia as a queer and trans* studies scholar and within community/public service has been built upon a foundation of critical social theories. Thus, J emphasizes the need to apply academic research, knowledge, and inquiry to address contemporary inequalities and marginalization faced by a variety of communities and their members. With this foundation J also focuses on improving the accessibility and inclusiveness of academic/research institutions and spaces. J is truly excited to bring their academic experiences and background in 2SLGBTQ+ community outreach to this position. Most notably when it comes to collecting and disseminating information and resources to help address specific community concerns, further building knowledge mobilization networks to support graduate students, and engaging in accessible and informal communication methods.