Features

A PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies, Gerjan is especially interested in Buddhism and East Asian Religions. He is creating a series of infographics presenting a map of the intertexuality of some Buddhist monastic commentaries found within the Tibetan Buddhist Canon. Gerjan says that “this project will be helpful to scholars and translators working on Buddhist monastic literature in the Canon.” Gerjan is sponsored by Dr. Shayne Clarke.

Farhana Khanam is an Economics student specializing in econometrics and health economics. Because Farhana is currently working at the RDC, she is able to use data from Statistics Canada for all three chapters of her Ph.D. dissertation, which examines different aspects of access and utilization of health by immigrants to Canada. She is supervised by Dr. Arthur Sweetman.

Political Science Ph.D. Candidate, Marcel Goguen, explains that a recent increase in large data projects has caused an increase in 'datafication', which is the process of transforming activities into data. Goguen's research examines how “big data functions in practice and how it, and the 'datafication' it entails, is in the process of changing how human beings interact, form groups, and organize themselves.”

Supervised by Dr. Paul Glavin, Tomislav will be conducting a study that investigates the factors associated with whether an individual remains self-employed over time, or transitions to wage work or unemployment. Tomislav's research asks the question, "under what conditions are self-employment patterns indicative of the spread of precarious work versus growing entrepreneurialism in Canada?" His research would build upon previous work to determine what factors cause a transition from self-employment to wage work or unemployment.

Sponsored and supervised by Dr. Marisa Young, Allison has been a research assistant at McMaster University and collaborated with Dr. John Fox on an article titled ‘R and the Journal of Statistical Software’. Allison is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Sociology.

Shaun is a Ph.D. Candidate in Economics. Part of his thesis investigates the analysis of trends in health data under non-classical measurement error using a novel approach combining the presence of multiple cross-validating diagnostic codes and advanced methods in the econometrics of partial identification. Through CRESS, Shaun hopes to “network with empirical researchers in the broader social sciences that can introduce me to other interesting and useful areas of application for my current and future research interests.”